Burr Senior Tutors Revolutionize House Plan

Harvard's House plan will come of age next September and shake under-graduate life into a new pattern. No longer will students in trouble be called to University Hall and then plead their case to a Dean they may never have seen before; no longer will honors candidates monopolize the fruits of tutorial. With the appointment by the Board of Overseers this morning of Lowell and Leverett's Allston Burr Senior Tutors. President Lowell's dream, seems practically realized. The College has taken two steps--decentralization of the Dean's Office and revival of tutorial for all concentrators in the five largest departments.

Under the system to be inaugurated next term, each House will have a Senior Tutor who will replace the present Assistant Deans by serving on the Administrative Board and handling all serious disciplinary cases. More important he will have the job of coordinating the expanded House tutorial programs that are to extend group tutorial to all sophomore and junior concentrators in History, Government, Economics, Social Relations and English.

These changes are primarily the result of three committee reports (Bender, Ferry, and Gilmore that were channelled through Provost Buck's Committee on Educational Policy and passed by the Faculty last winter in two meetings.

Both Radcliffe and the Dudley commuters center are included in the plan. The only difference in the Annex between the old and new setup will be the location of tutorial, departmental tutorial changes apply to both Harvard-and Radcliffe. All sophomore groups will now meet in the renovated nine-room Tutorial House at 16 Appian way. Whether junior groups will be co-ed is still uncertain. Harvard opinion seems to side with Daniel S. Cheever '39, assistant professor of Government, who said recently, "the purpose of the plan is to have it focus on the Houses and they aren't co-ed."

Commuters will have tutorial sessions in 16 newly furnished offices on the second and third floors of Apley Court. Dudley's social and extra-curricular activities will continue as in the past--financed partly by the University and partly by membership fees. There is revived interest in tutorial for commuters, and as Arthur Smithies. Chairman of the Department of Economics, has said. Dudely is no place to get rid of the weaker members of the department.

The history of Harvard tutorial is committee-filled and confusing. Limited tutorial is a relatively new development; the new system next fall will merely turn the clock back some 300 years. Only since World War II has tutorial been limited to honors candidates.

During the college's early days every undergraduate had a tutor. Student-tutor relations were close, for tutors had both disciplinary and academic functions. The 1642 rules required tutor's presence at meals "to prevent disorders", a student had to visit his tutor at 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., and he even needed permission to leave town.

Estrangement of tutors gradually crept in with the elective system. Introduced a century ago, electives reached their peak 50 years later when 18 completely unrelated courses were sufficient for a degree. Tutors began to regard under-graduates as inmates in a reformatory, while contemporary student comment called tutors "invariably low-born, despicable rustics, lately emerged from the dunghill. . ."

President Lowell ushered in stricter concentration requirements and revived and expanded tutorial. Every faculty member was expected to tutor, and so, despite alumni and student opposition during the '30s, 95 percent of the college received tutorial. But of Lowell hopes that the number of course offerings would now decrease went unfulfilled departments still attracted how men by adding specialty courses.

Discussion of General Education in 1945 led to an examination of the situation that had developed during the war, and the college was forced to make curtailment a policy. The next year saw tutorial for honors men only, but departments gave the ruling liberal interpretation.

To investigate the possibilities expanding tutorial the Committee on Educational Policy appointed a 10-man faculty sub-committee headed by Dean Bender which then issued a 133-page report in the fall of 1950. This so-called Bender Report recommended decentralization of the Dean's Office appointing House Deans (name later changed to Senior Tutors), and bi-weekly group tutorial for all undergraduates.

Nothing that in 1948-49 almost 60 percent of upperclassmen concentrated in the five large departments which had a total of only 32.7 percent of the faculty, the Committee recommended that tutorial for these fields be curtailed to five percent of the honors candidates. (In 1941-52 these departments had 58.6 percent of upperclassmen, including Radcliffe.)

Faculty and departmental reaction was immediate and adverse. An unofficial committee headed by C. Crane Brinton '19, Chairman of the Department of History, felt that individual senior tutorial was essential, but that 8 to 12-man seminars could easily replace the Bender Report's 5-man group limit.

April saw still another report. The Student Council unanimously accepted recommendations for "Tutorial at Harvard" by Donald L. M. Blackmen '52. While approving the principles of the Bender Report, the Council suggested that seniors should have individual thesis instruction, but the five-man limit on groups must remain. It also asked for heavier emphasis on essay writing.

Also in the spring came the report by the Subcommittee to the Committee on Houses headed by Ronald M. Fecay 12, Maser of Winthrop House that amplified the Bender Report. The Faculty heard the C.E.P.'s propose. Is in November, but didn't vote until December 11. Then he name House Deans became Senior Tutors, and they were to be appointed for five years and sit on the administrative board. They were made responsible to the Dean's office in all matters of discipline, and to the Housemaster in every thing else. Thus the faculty passed half of the ideas embodied in the Bender Report.

Meanwhile the Council was busy with alternate plans. A committee headed by Robert H. Cole '52 suggested that decanal functions be vested primarily in the Housemaster, who may delegate them "as he sees fit." The report included ideas for getting better tutors such as requiring them to sit one to a table. The Faculty rejected the suggestions.

The question of expanding tutorial was finally settled at the February 12 faculty meeting. For the first time the Faculty said that tutorial must be offered and taken and implied that lectures were not the best kind of instruction. A five man committee headed by Myron P. Gilmore. Associate Professor of History, presented a plan to the Committee on Educational Policy. It differed from the Bender Report in one major aspect by approving individual senior honors tutorial and not requiring any reductions of junior honors tutorial.

The Faculty approved the C.E.P.'s proposals that included the above two ideas and limited group tutorial to six men, giving tutorial grades of "honor" "pass or "fail", and not requiring tutorial for non-honors seniors. The student load on the five departments had fallen off 25 percent in the past three years, so the Bender Reports' five percent rule was discarded.

In March the corporation allotted $1,000,000 from the Allston Burr $2.05 million of unrestricted funds for the new program and named its administrators Allston Burr Senior Tutors.

The problem of getting the right personnel worried faculty and student alike until after the April Overseers meeting when the College announced the first four Burr Tutors. They were: Ayers Brinser '31. Lecurer on Economics (Kirkland); Daniel S. Cheever '39, assistant professor of Government. (Winthrop): John J. Conway, instructor in General Education, (Eliot): and Joseph C. Palamountain. Jr., assistant professor of Government, (Adams).

May saw the next two Burr tutors appointed: William H. McLain, assistant professor of German, (Dunster), and Charles P. Whitlock, Associate Director of the Bureau of Study Counsel (Dudley Center).

In the shuffle of reports the Brinton suggestion of abolishing the office of Dudley's Graduate Secretary and having commuters assigned to houses was scrapped. Also the proposed Committee on Advising was never appointed, although it may soon be set up. And despite all the careful discussion there are still four important problems that have been raised but only partially solved. The prevailing attitude seems to be "We'll just wait and see how it works next fall. . ."

Housemasters and tutors are unanimous in belittling student fears of "having a House Dean snooping on my cocktail parties. . . "Pointing out that much discipline has always been taken meted out in the Houses. Housemasters feel that this side of a tutor's function has been overemphasized, and that a student will gain by having at least one man on the Administrative Board who knows him.

Ferry believes that "by the first of November students will be entirely at case and appreciate 'dinner-table deanery.' Brinser summed up the tutor's view: "The office of Senior Tutor is not a job of control by an attempt to find a way of carrying out relatively new ideas." Really this is the House reaching up to the Dean's Office, not vice versa; essentially the faculty has broadened the definition of education to include disciplinary functions with a teacher's educational duties.

The second question is parliamentary. While retaining faculty members, the eight Senior Tutors and Registrar Sargent Kennedy will be added to the Administrative Board. Working on the theory that the Senior Tutor's responsibility is to the Houses and the Administrative Board's to the University some have suggested that the Burr Tutors should play advocate and plead his housemaster's case before the Board who would then act as judges.

Many professors feel that this is over-formalizing the system: "we aren't running a court of law, but an educational institution," countered Elliott Perkins. Master of Lowell House. Observing that the tutor is responsible to the House-master, Perkins added. "Maybe the House doesn't want the man. . ." Dean Leighton sees nothing new about this judge advocate relationship. "I have been a member of the Administrative Board and Dean of Freshmen for 21 years and the two jobs don't conflict."

The third problem, that of fluctuating House enrollments, seems more serious. Since sophomores, and juniors if feasable, are to be tutored in their own Houses, there are only four main solutions if the number of men from a particular field of concentration entering a House varies much from year to year. These alternatives are: 1) screen House applicants according to concentration 2) allow bigger than normal (4 to 6 men) tutorial groups, 3) alter the number of tutors or 4) "farm" tutees out to other Houses.

Diverging Plans

Housemasters, prospective Senior Tutors, and departmental representatives alike rejected the second solution. Most disliked screening applicants although Perkins warns that "it might become necessary." "Farming out" will be practiced by all departments to some extent in the case of juniors. The majority agree that the best way to control fluctuations--which records show are seldom as much as six percent--would be by adjusting the number of non-resident Tutors.

The fourth problem still lacks any solution. The departments and the Senior Tutors must decide what is the real purpose of sophomore tutorial. Is it to be uniform and supplementary to a specific course or should it merely seek to arouse intellectual curiosity? The five departments concerned have diverging plans.

History, Government, and Economics are pretty well in agreement. In Government and Economics individual tutorial goes to all honors candidates, while in History most sophomore and all junior honors candidates receive group tutorial and senior honors men and a few juniors get individual attention. Next fall these departments extend tutorial to all sophomores and those juniors not having individual sessions. Economics, hitherto weak on tutorial, may offer individual attention to a few promising sophomores.

English and Social Relations have different plans. Social Relations has always offered a term of group sophomore tutorial to any concentrator. Talcott Persons. Chairman of the Department of Social Relations, notes, however, that "only a minority have taken advantage of this." Juniors in Group IV and above get group instruction, and senior honors men individual. Next fall everyone gets group tutorial except senior honors candidates.

This past term the Department experimented with a uniform tutorial curriculum and it probably will be continued next fall for sophomores because "you can be sure that people will read certain important books in their sophomore year." Junior sessions will be arranged around different elective topics.

Herschel C. Baker, the new Chairman of the Department of English, intends to corrolate tutorial to courses. All honors candidates (group 111 and above) now get individual tutorial; next year the department will have sophomore and junior groups, while retaining junior and senior individual sessions. English 1 (renamed English 10) will be compulsory for sophomore concentrators and tutorial will replace the old English 1 sections. Next year, however, those members of '55 who have taken English 1 will have special tutorial groups.

Non-Honors Seniors?

What to do with non-honors seniors has furnished much food for discussion. The Economics Department has a tentative proposal that such men should have their junior group tutor as an advisor. Faculty members are split between those like F. Skiddy von Stade. Jr. '38, Master of Kirkland House, who favor tutorial for non-honors seniors, and Smithies who thinks that such seniors would prefer to be left alone and derides the undergraduate's "juvenile desire to have frequent association with the faculty." Most professors agree that these men should receive help in preparing for generals.

Boundaries of Department and Tutor control have caused friction. Departments feel they should control-their tutorial's content, emphasis, and method of teaching. Baker termed the desire to retain it "a modest request." Senior Tutors agreed, but add that since they are responsible for the overall functioning of the program, they should have "consultative powers."

"To fuzzup fine jurisdictional lines" Smithies has appointed Kirkland's new Senior Tutor. Brienser, as Head of the Department's Board of Tutors. Printon summed up general feeling, "there will always be a certain push and pull between the departments and the Houses."

Perhaps all these small problems are merely part of one big one decentralization of the University and the rise of autonomous House units. A few men think that House loyalty should stand before college ties and even advance the thesis that Harvard should follow the English tradition and solicit separate endowments. (although Cambridge and Oxford are now getting gifts to the University) Most agree that furthering this trend would break up the college. Hence the strife over what records to field in the houses. Parsons reassuringly adds since faculty interest centers on graduate research, this trend can't go too far until graduate students are in the Houses: only then will faculty interest center on the Houses.

The House plan still has kinks in the but these will probably be settled by discussion the traditional Harvard way. Although many flowery phrases have eulogized the system, perhaps one tutor his the crux of the matter when he said. "Houses are thus samples of Harvard criticism, but the idea of the Houses is creative. The problem is adjustment."