PSLM members unilaterally rejected the recommendations and attempted to continue agitating, but found administrators unwilling to listen.

Campaign organizers responded by taking a less visible approach to the campaign during the fall--temporarily foregoing the public rallies so central to their cause last year to instead strengthen relationships with Harvard unions, faculty and fellow campus groups.

“We were aware that it would be difficult to move the administration beyond the position that the report was satisfactory,” Bartley said.

“We knew we were in for a long struggle over that question,” he continued. “Once that committee report emerged, the administration would use it to prevent substantive progress from being made on the issue.”

PSLM actions in the fall often involved fewer people and a more light-hearted approach than the string of public rallies that characterized much of the campaign’s history.

On Valentine’s Day, about a dozen PSLM members walked for hours in cold, rainy weather through the streets of residential Cambridge attempting to deliver home-made pro-living wage cards to top administrators. Despite getting lost, they managed to successfully surprise Rudenstine at his Brattle Street residence.

Bartley said he remembers that rainy night in particular as an action that was only successful in that it “kept the core group of people working on this issue together.”

“The administration was definitely aware that PSLM was very much alive,” Bartley said.

But these actions just did not cause administrators to budge.

“The administration is willing to listen to us plenty, but they don’t give any indication of responding,” Madeline S. Elfenbein ’04 said in February. “They have a soft spot for us, but only as long as we are willing to run our head up against the brick wall of administrative indifference.”

Aim For The Top

At the start of second semester, PSLM members resolved to change the focus of their actions, and moved to target the Harvard Corporation as the University’s ultimate decision-making body.

They hoped that by focusing on the Corporation they would force the administration to implement a living wage and galvanize students to change the inner workings of the University.

But the students said their attempts to set up a meeting with Corporation members were unsuccessful and ultimately disillusioning.

McKean said he remembered asking Rudenstine whether students could sit in at a Corporation meeting during the president’s office hours earlier this year.