Word: pbha
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Rosa A. Ehrenreich '91, the newly-elected president of PBHA, defended her advocacy of a more politically active PBHA in a recent commentary in the Harvard Independent. "[P]ublic service is inherently and profoundly political," she wrote...
...politics, by Ehrenreich's own definition, still involves elections. Although Ehrenreich denied any interest in "[associating] PBHA more closely with any particular candidates or partisan ideologies," she defended the official involvement of PBHA's leadership in a ballot contest in Cambridge this fall. This sort of "politics" is precisely the realm into which PBHA should not venture...
THERE is nothing wrong with promoting awareness and discussion of public policy among PBHA volunteers. But PBHA's leadership has gone beyond political discourse. The cabinet of PBHA recently endorsed an electoral position. And last February, as Ehrenreich wrote in The Independent, the cabinet granted themselves the option to consider endorsing candidates for public office. PBHA should do neither...
Even Ehrenreich has acknowledged as much. And discouraging volunteers directly undermines what should be PBHA's fundamental purpose--bringing students into public service to help local residents "gain control over their own lives." Every time a would-be volunteer balks at PBHA's political involvement, a few more disadvantaged citizens will go without a helping hand...
...PBHA cabinet's recent opposition to Prop 1-2-3, a Cambridge ballot initiative that would weaken the city's system of rent control, is a classic example of the ambiguous political implications of opposing social problems. Ehrenreich defended the move by saying that "the proposition would severely hurt the populations our programs are trying to serve...