Tutors Take up Space

To the editors:

Scott Resnick's feature "Masters, Students Feel Pinch of Full House" March 21, reminded me of my own situation a few years back, in a five-person group crammed into a tiny two-bedroom suite in Winthrop House. At the same time, Winthrop had an unprecedented number of resident tutors. When I suggested in The Crimson on obvious remedy to our predicament, namely reducing the swollen ranks of the rather useless tutors, the response was immediate: a menacing answering machine message from one tutor and an invitation to the Senior Tutor's office for a dressing down for my "ingratitude."

A decade after overcrowding first became a problem, Harvard still refuses to countenance reducing the numbers of tutors (and their broods) it lodges. Students who find themselves in less-than-spacious accommodations should ask themselves whether they benefit more from their resident tutors than they would from the rooms they occupy. It's an open question. BEN HELLER '94   New York, March 22, 1999