Public Service Serving Itself

YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD a lot about public service since arriving at Harvard. The University in general and former President Derek C. Bok in particular have consistently stressed the importance of serving the larger community--breaking out of the Ivory Tower.

And you may have heard that the resources committed to this task are hardly sufficient.

But what you may not have heard about is how unwisely the available funds are spent. In fact, more than $117,000 spent per year on the Office of Public Service Programs (PSP) is a waste of scarce public service funds.

WHAT DOES PSP DO? A range of activities amount to support work for the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA). They help get housing for the PBHA summer programs, they spend about $13,000 for educational programs at PBHA, they help coordinate PBHA activities with the University.

All of this could be done by PBHA dealing directly with the relevant University authorities. But that is not happening--perhaps to gain more administrative control over PBHA.

A second group of activities can be called general public service promotion. The main vehicle for this is the biannual Connections newsletter consisting mainly of students reflections about public service.

This paper, which claims a readership of maybe 200 students, can probably claim the prize of being the least read newspaper at the Harvard. I have yet to find a students who has actually read Connections--excluding its past or present contributions.

But we are not talking about a paper with a tiny circulation serving a limited audience. Connections has a circulation of a whooping 13,000 per issues--i.e., two per undergraduate (one for the common room, one for the bedside table?) which makes it by far the largest newspaper serving undergrads. One of PSP staffer spends a significant amount of her time working on this paper. The printing costs alone are likely to total at least $8000.

Other promotional activities in the past included the poster listing service providing food and shelter. The poster repackaged publicly known information about human services in Cambridge.

The only new thing was the Harvard name at the bottom so as to the advertise the administration's concern for social issues. The 1400 copies of the poster cost $3000 last year. The project was discontinued for lack of the response this year.

In addition, PSP attends national conferences on public service, duplicating the attendance of PBHA representatives. These activities are at best a waste of money, at worst another attempt to replace real commitment with presence at meetings and conferences.

A third rubric of activities fall under the term control. PSP organizes and sits on a number of important committees on public service. Most importantly, they sit on the committee dividing up funds from the president's Public Service Fund, totaling around $120,000 a year.

Most of the Funds go to PBHA. But PSP, in concert with a committee consisting of Harvard administrators, most of whom have little or no connection to public service, wields significant power over who in PBHA gets how much.

Another committee directed by PSP is the Public Service Advisory Committee, In the wake of the infamous Stuart case, in which Charles Stuart shot his wife in the Mission Hill area and then blamed a Black for the crime, the Advisory Committee decided that it should suddenly be concerned about the safety of volunteers going to minority neighborhoods in Boston.

Just like the Boston Police Department, PSP fell prey to Stuart's correct and devilish estimation that urban violence turns into a public problem only when Blacks are said to commit crimes against whites.

After 18 months of deliberation, the committee produced a booklet called "Safety and Community Relations Guidelines for undergraduate Public service Programs."

While this report is detailed on potential punishments for public service programs which neglect those guidelines, the actual guidelines are very meager indeed. They include a virtual reproduction of the PBHA vehicle policy, the University shuttle bus policy, and then clear statements such as "adequate training of student volunteers, along with consistent positive relationships between Harvard students with the communities they serve, are two crucial areas that must be addressed, in order to provide high quality safe programs."

Once again, excessive bureaucracy, little substance and a display of power over other public service programs marks PSP.

Other committees include the Faculty Advisory Committee on public service and the meeting of public service tutors at the houses to coordinate the House and Neighborhood Development (HAND) program, among others.

AT TIMES, public service control turns into public service obstruction. A good example is last year's Rock for Shelter concert. Mary E. Dibbern '93, a Leverett House students active in HAND, planned a rock concert to provide funds for homeless shelters, PSP and HAND initially co-sponsored the event and then decided to pull their sponsorship at the last minute, threatening the entire project.

The PBHA Homeless Committee then agreed to co-sponsor the concert by assuming all financial responsibility and by giving administrative support. Although the concert suffered from bad luck (it started three house after the beginning of the ground war in the Gulf and conflicted with the Senior Soiree), it grossed nearly $11,000 and gave more than $5000 to two homeless shelters.

Had PSP had their way if would not have happened at all. Contrary to the assessment by PSP, the project was a great success.

After dropping their sponsorship, PSP then obstructed the organization of the concert. The focus was on a sponsorship received by the Rock for Shelter organizations. Budweiser had decided to give a $2000 contribution. But PSP, in conjunction with Dean of Students Archie C. Epps' office, prohibited Rock for Shelter from using banners which showed the Budweiser name.

Later, PSP, wrote to Epps and Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57, asking the college to adopt a policy on accepting funds from "companies whose products we do not want our students using. "This concern, which apparently was shared by members of the administration, seems strange after decades of University investment in South Africa and such worthy causes as RJR Nabisco.

The last group of activities PSP concerns itself with is the HAND program. Although HAND is nominally independent, it could hardly survive in its present shape without PSP. In fact it was created to have an administration-controlled competitor with PBHA. Look at the facts:

First, the central HAND coordinators received a stipend of $10,000 a year, an amount unheard of at PBHA or other undergraduate public service organization. Moreover, HAND gets support from 12 public service tutors (worth about $96,000 a year) whose main job is to nurture the house HAND programs.

And HAND receives $1500 in direct funds from PSP plus support form a variety of houses. So instead of scrambling for funds to run programs in competition with others HAND is financed by fiat of the administration.

Given this large amount of support the success of HAND is quite modest. It can boast of at most 200 regular volunteers compared to the more than 1500 volunteers at PBHA. I wonder how HAND would do without all the support from PSP.

In addition, it is important to ask whether the 13 neighborhoods served by HAND are the ones that need free public service. PBHA focuses its public service activities in Cambridge to poor and disadvantaged areas while HAND provides services in every neighborhood regardless of need.

Thus PSP serves as a support and control operation for student-run PBHA, an advertisement agency for the University's commitment to public service and a support operation for the HAND program. All for the price of $117,000 plus the $10,000 for HAND and the $96,000 for the house public service tutors. A homeless shelter I work at could run for five years with $117,000.

To be sure, this is not intended as a personal indictment of PSP staffers. Rather it is directed at the squandering of scarce resources PSP overseas.

PUBLIC SERVICE at Harvard would change little without PSP. The support work for PBHA could be done by PBHA, maybe with the help of a part-time work-study student. The public service promotions are unnecessary and can be scrapped entirely.

The Control of PBHA only obstructs public service and generates unnecessary bureaucracy. The president's Public Service Fund money should be divided up by the organizations who use it. And HAND should be treated just like any other undergraduate organization--in competition for funding without special support from the administration and salaried coordinators.

What to do with the savings? How about adding them to the Public Service Fund? That way, the money would go directly to public service--not a wasteful bureaucracy.

Stephen Klasen '91, a graduate student in economics, is a former chair of the PBHA Homeless Committee.