Word: pbh
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...This is the first of a two-part series on PBH. On Friday, Ben Sendor will examine PBH's relationship to the University, Its financial prospects, plans for educational programs, and the reorientation of PBH away from traditional institutions...
PHILLIPS BROOKS HOUSE NO LONGER amuses itself with beauty contests for Radcliffe freshmen. No longer do Thank a giving "turkeys," as volunteers were called 20 years ago, deliver holiday baskets to poor families in a spirit of noblesse oblige. No longer does PBH retain the sectarian thrust of the organization as founded in 1900 to "nurture undergraduate spiritual improvement by enhancing the charity, compassion and public spirit of these leaders." PBH is still engaged in a 72-year-old struggle to define a satisfactory role for volunteer work in terms of society's needs and demands. What has evolved...
Generalizing about success and failure in the progress of PBH poses difficulties. While evidence exists of both tremendous achievements and outright impotence, "success" is always viewed in terms of how much remains to be done, and "failure" in constantly mitigated by the sense of lessons learned and experience gained. Members of the Harvard community have caricatured PBH as a self indulgent haven for mindless do-gooders, an image that has taken its psychological toll on PBH's leadership as well as threatening PHB's support within the University. The sophistication of the House's understanding of its problems...
Almost all of the work at PBH is done through its 14 committees. Some problems exist for at least the larger of these. Each, for example, must reduce the volunteer turnover rate. Some members graduate; others move on to social work on a larger scale. More leave because of a lack of commitment, personal frustration, or changing demands on their day-to-day schedules. The decentralization of PBH contributes to a certain anomie among volunteers which probably contributes to the Tran science of PBH membership; few can envision PBH's operation in its entirety, and, according to Barry Gordon...
...reduce this atomization will be difficult because PBH seeks volunteers who are primarily committed to individual projects. The committees are now trying to give prospective volunteers a better estimate of the time and effort that will eventually be required of them. Meanwhile, programs of lectures, films, and discussions add cohesiveness to House projects giving the volunteer a stronger sense of a supporting organization, and enabling him to see his motivations and the problems to be comforts more clearly...