With energy for the event building, Smith brought together more than 30 other student groups he thought would be interested in helping, including the Harvard African Students Association, Bhumi, the Black Students Association, the Catholic Students Association and others.

"Steve sent out e-mails like crazy. That's probably something Steve does better than anybody else on campus. He pulled together about 30 people," says Bonner.

The eventual core of the group that Smith brought together worked from early February to plan the mid-April week of events. They knew they would be up against Take Back the Night, but they didn't expect the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM), which started its sit-in during the middle of AIDS Week last Wednesday, to steal the spotlight. However, Bonner and Leslie A. Garbarino `04, who organized the day-long fast for AIDS Week last Friday, say the sit-in did not upstage their events, however, but actually increased attendance.

"PSLM inspired a sense of activism on campus that was either suppressed or absent, It just sparked people," Bonner says.

"I think people saw our fliers at the PSLM rallies. Attendance at events after the sit-in started was phenomenal," says Garbarino.

Perhaps the greatest inconvenience was that Smith was accessible only by cell phone, as he joined the protesters inside the building.

"I was very upset that I had to miss the event. If it were up to me we wouldn't have gone into Mass. Hall for another couple of days. It was a really tough decision, but since spring term of freshman year I've been working on the Living Wage Campaign and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience," Smith says.