1,600 Served: The community service commitment of the class of two thousand two.

Every year, the Stride Rite Senior Recognition Awards honor four Harvard seniors who have shown an extraordinary dedication to public service during their time at Harvard. This year, the selection committee couldn’t pick four winners. “We went through the nominations and we talked about each student and what they had accomplished and we got stuck on nine,” explains Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) Deputy Director Maria Dominguez. “We just couldn’t take one out.”

The Ames Award, given to a male and female in the graduating class who exhibited a commitment to helping others, is traditionally picked from a handful of nominations.

This year, 42 students were nominated by their peers, double last year’s total.

“Having read the letters, there are some amazing people,” says Ames Committee Member Avik Chatterjee ’02. “You have no idea what kinds of service people are doing.”

The Ames Committee finally chose only two seniors. The Stride Rite Committee returned to the Foundation and requested more money to honor all nine seniors.

So on May 7, when PBHA, Harvard’s umbrella student service group organization, held the annual Stride Rite Public Awards Reception, all nine names were announced.

Among them: Kelly Doran, the co-founder of the Women’s Resource Center. Morgan Bradylyons, Phillips Brooks House Association programming chair and Keylatch tutor. Ariadne Lie, with the Harvard Homeless shelter.

“They’re an amazing class,” Dominguez says.

Service has always been an important part of the Harvard experience, and Harvard is known for having an unusually high proportion of its student body involved in public service.

What changed with the class of 2002 was the number of students who took on prominent leadership roles and the methods they used to achieve their goals. A serendipitous convergence of enthusiastic students and new networks led to the growth of organizations ranging from the Progressive Student Labor Movement to Project Health to PBHA.

Sitting In and Standing Up

In the fall of 1998, first-years interested in progressive issues found a cadre of about five people running the almost non-existent Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM). The group had big ideas, but lacked manpower and support.

So when Benjamin L. McKean ’02 walked into an introductory meeting and expressed interest, he was quickly given responsibility.

“I didn’t have high levels of expectation because I wasn’t involved in high school,” McKean says. “I ended up getting shanghaied into this meeting with [University Attorney] Alan Ryan.”

Before long, McKean was hooked, realizing that Harvard might actually listen to what he had to say.

“It was easier than ever before to make a difference,” he adds.

An unusually dedicated group of first-years joined McKean for a battle that would last throughout their time at Harvard, climaxing in a sit-in last April. With the occupation of the Massachusetts Hall president’s office and the construction of Tent City in the Yard, PSLM moved from the fringes of the Harvard service community to the forefront of campus discussion.

“There must have been a special connection that formed between the people,” says Stephen N. Smith ’02, another PSLM member. “There was always a sense we were building. It felt like we were getting bigger.”

As PSLM grew, so did Harvard’s activist community. Suddenly, political protest and advocacy were back in vogue at Harvard.

“My impression is that the sit-in changed the playing field to a certain extent,” McKean says. “Activism makes sense now. More people now see activism as a legitimate way of being a part of the community and changing things.”

Students at PBHA recently voted to create a new support position for activist groups, mirroring the ones already in place for afterschool programs, adult education programs and other direct service groups. PBHA is now discussing the possibility of joint study groups with the Institute of Politics to consider issues of social change.

Beside PSLM, first-years interested in activism entering the College today can choose between Harvard Students for Prison Reform, the Harvard Initiative for Peace and Justice and the Global AIDS Campaign, in addition to other groups (all started during the past four years).

Smith, who has become something of a service icon on campus, says he views community service as a quick fix, but advocacy as a step toward a more long-term solution to society’s problems.

“The more I learn about community activism and community service, the more I favor community activism,” he says.

Smith himself roused much of the Class of 2002 to involve themselves in public service.

Before college, he had already started a service group at home in Texas during high school. (“A couple of my friends wanted an excuse to hang out, so we started a volunteer group,” he says.)

Since then, Smith has sat in with PSLM, founded Boston Area Students in the Community (BASIC), engineered the Harvard Day of Service (H’ard Corps) and worked with a series of other public service groups. (There’s a reason his middle name is Noble.)

A Growing Network

In 1995, at a rally in front of Phillips Brooks House, the newly appointed associate dean of public service, Judith H. Kidd, was decried as a tool of the University.

She had been selected against the wishes of students involved in PBHA who hoped to retain complete autonomy from the College administration. They feared Kidd’s loyalties would lie with the Harvard budget rather than the needs of the community.

The memories of the event kept students wary of any University efforts at reconciliation for four years.

Kidd has said the class of 2002 was the first she felt comfortable working with, and the first that could let the old bitterness die out.

The task she has taken on has been to unite the service community, bringing together PBHA with other campus organizations.

“Dean Kidd gets the ball rolling. She’s really good about getting these things started. So many resources, so much knowledge and experience,” gushes Trevor Dryer ’02, who worked with Kidd on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Committee for Public Service.

“Our class was the first not to feel connected to that event that put people at odds with the administration,” Smith says.

Students still have not found a perfect system for balancing the University's priorities with their own service goals, but the support network is growing.

And students say they appreciate the autonomy that the primarily student-run PBHA affords.

“PBHA structure empowers students to take on leadership,” she says. “It allows you to be more involved,” says Rebecca A. Windt ’02, who directed PBHA’s Environmental Action Committee and served as the PBHA secretary.

Jan Hridel ’02, who won a Stride Rite senior award, jokes that his main hobbies before coming to Harvard were model trains and aquariums. After enrolling at Harvard, he realized that there were few opportunities to participate in these activities. Instead, the affable Czech found that the PBHA structure allowed him to follow his other interests.

“I thought about what I care about in American society—homelessness, immigrants and people with handicaps,” says Hridel, who joined the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, Best Buddies, the Chinatown Committee and the Boston Youth Refugee Enrichment Program.

Joshua A. Cogswell ’02, who was a coordinator for Mission Hill, ran the Summer Youth Enrichment Program camp and served as the Program Resource Coordinator for PHBA, explains that the culture of support is incredible.

“It makes you feel like you’re a part of something and a part of something big,” he adds.

In the Future

Kidd says three things have caused the class of 2002 to stand out in her mind: the belief in advocacy, a greater emphasis on international service and the desire to find service careers after college.

“To me, it seems like a higher percentage of students are interested in demanding more support for careers in the service world,” she says. “This class has been the most vociferous.”

It is no surprise then that an abnormally high number of students are planning careers in public service—helped along, perhaps, by the downturn in the economy.

Applications shot up this year for Teach For America (TFA), which places recent college graduates as two-year teachers in needy schools. More than 20 members of the Harvard Class of 2002 will be joining the organization, according to campus representative Ajarae D. Johnson ’02.

“This year was huge for TFA,” says Johnson, who will be moving to Los Angeles next year to teach for the program.

Like many of the people who work for TFA, Johnson does not necessarily plan to stay in education forever, but she appreciates the chance to experiment.

“I see TFA as a two-year extension on my decision,” she adds.

Those with more long-term teaching goals are starting in other places.

Windt, who considered doing TFA, opted instead to teach at a school in Boston, near the communities she has worked in for the past four years.

Hridel, who will be teaching in Belgium, originally contemplated other career options, but decided that teaching was the only way to go.

“I was considering policy,” he says. “But the more service I did, I became convinced that I was a field guy rather than an ivory tower guy.”

For Hall, the road to teaching at a school in Brooklyn next year began in the second grade. Her dreams were repeatedly discouraged by people who told her it would be a waste for her to go into teaching, but she says she was never swayed.

“Ever since then I’ve been trying to think of another career that would be as challenging and have redeeming social value,” she says. When she couldn’t, she decided she had to be in a classroom.

The night Stride Rite presented the senior recognition awards, another four seniors were presented with post-graduate fellowships to take part in service projects related to their work at Harvard.

Impressed by the impact sports can have on kids’ lives, Cogswell will be using his money to help create a youth football league in South Boston and Roxbury.

Kate Johnsen ’02 is going to help establish a drop-in group for teens in South Boston and Michael J. Schultz ’02 plans to work with two Orthodox Jewish day schools to emphasize the importance of service to children.

Zayed M. Yasin ’02, who has received reams of press for the speech he will be delivering today, also has service plans for next year. He’ll be working for Aga Khan Health Services in Gilgit, Pakistan.

The student with the most ambitious schedule for the next year is Smith. This summer he will work for the volunteer group he helped start at home in Texas.

Then, on the Richardson fellowship, he will go to Botswana to work in alleviating the AIDS crisis in that country.

He’ll then move back to Boston and help Sociology Professor Marshall Ganz for a month before setting out on a three-month road trip in which he will head to 100 schools to teach students about community activism.

He also has tentative plans to write a book about his techniques while he is on the road.

Certainly, the Class of 2002 has an impressive track record when it comes to service, but most people hope this extraordinary collection of leaders is the sign of a trend rather than a spike.

Dominguez, who will be on the committee choosing the Stride Rite awards for the class of 2003, wants to face the same dilemma they dealt with this year.

“I hope next year we have trouble choosing between 10 people,” she says.