"Kristen Clarke is the best thing to come down the pike," Kilson says now. "Clarke and her board are the best leadership the BSA has had in years."

Through BSA recruitment some Phillips Brooks House (PBH) service programs showed a marked increase in their numbers of volunteers last semester. Afterschool programs for predominantly Black and hispanic children living in Boston public housing projects like Mission Hill in Roxbury and Academy Homes in Dorchester have drawn the most BSA members, according to PBH leaders.

In the fall the number of Mission Hill counselors had increased over 50 percent from 1993-94, to more than 100 Harvard students participating.

"We felt it would be important to have more minority counselors for these kids so they could have more role models," says Mission Hill Co-director Kim M. Nichols '97. "So this fall semester we had a really big push. We had people going to BSA meetings and recruting...A lot of Black men are involved, which is really good, because a lot of these kids don't have positive male role models."

Nichols attributes the increase, in large part, to Clarke's willingness to "address the importance of community service, especially in the Black community."

"You will find that a lot of Black students come and focus on their studies solely," continues Nichols. And that, she says, is the wrong approach.

"Sometimes you're here at Harvard and you lose your way," Nichols says. "You don't know why you're here and you don't know what you're going to do. The main positive thing that the BSA has done this year is make a big thing of community service."

One Mission Hill volunteer, BSA member Jiovanni R. Neblett '98, says that the unity within ethnic groups can galvanize students to action. "I think unity is the only way for people to solve problems. BSA is a great example of a vehicle where people use unity or strength to solve them," she says.

While the BSA is commonly perceived as a mainly political group which often finds itself in the middle of controversy, members say the understated actions of its service wing serve to bring together the often fractious whole.

"At the same time that we're perhaps divided on the surface, when we can get down to the core [of what we're doing for the Black community] it can only unite us in a better understanding," says BSA Treasurer Joshua D. Bloodworth '97.

Bloodworth characterizes his executive board as being "very dynamic," bringing energy and openness to the BSA. Because of that, he says, participation in BSA activities is high and enthusiastic leaders have a good chance of steering eager members toward their favorite projects.

"We are very interested in getting students spread out through the programs at PBH, and I think ethnic organizations should play a key role in the volunteer recruitment process," Lipkowitz says.

Harvard community service organizers say they appreciate the volunteerism boosts they get from ethnic organizations. "I think [ethnic organizations and PBH] do have a strong relationship, not in the institutional sense, but in the membership sense," says PBH Association President Vincent Pan '96.

Pan says he expects that community service groups like those which the BSA might undertake would have to be administered through PBH simply because of practical constraints such as financial resources and established relations with communities.

The PBH president cited the Roxbury mural project and the children's Kwanzaa celebration last December as "two really good examples of events where you don't need on-going [support or] training."