She also expressed doubt that PBHA could raise enough money from alumni to pay staff salaries.

"Do they really have alumni that are prepared to give money to a separate organizationl Maybe they do, and then the question would be: Is the best thing for student public service at Harvard to cut itself off from the University... [and] its resources?" Skocpol said.

Peretz agreed with Skocpol that a PBHA board would not be able to hire nine staff members on a continuing basis without the University's support.

"I think we might be able to do it for a year or two, but I think it's very dicey," Peretz said. "Alumni like to give to Harvard."

That makes it all the more necessary that the University participate in a new board, Peretz said.

Kidd, Lewis and Skocpol were invited to last week's meeting to plan the board, but only Kidd attended.

"They have issued directives for various meetings to plan a new organizational structure, and I gather that a new board is supposed to be part of that," Skocpol said this week. "I didn't go and Dean Lewis didn't go, [because] we felt that it made a lot more sense to sit down and have a discussion about mutual concerns and ideas. What it means is we don't like to be ordered to a meeting that has a predetermined goal."

Lewis said that he has repeatedly offered to discuss PBHA programs but that student leaders have rarely taken up his offer.

"The agenda that was put before us was quite detailed and far advanced in its design," Lewis said in an interview Wednesday. "While we have repeatedly made ourselves available for more formal discussions to the leaders of PBHA about the concerns of the PBHA leadership, those kinds of discussions haven't happened very much."

Peretz said that she hopes the University listens to discussions of the new board carefully.

"I hope that the University decides to listen and to participate and not to prejudge and name-call something that is really being done in a very serious manner," she said.

Committee Conundrum

Whatever governing board is ultimately created, the main interaction between students and faculty members likely will occur in Skocpol's student-faculty committee on public service.

The committee is scheduled to meet for the first time on Feb. 11 in a party at Skocpol's house.

She has invited student public service affiliates besides those on the committee as well as committee members.