HUC's Proposal Coolly Received

President Pusey and Dean Monro reacted coolly Wednesday to the Harvard Undergraduate Council's suggestion of a sophomore-year exchange program.

"It doesn't seem to me to make very good sense," Pusey observed. "I don't see what you'd gain by a semester away."

Pusey said that Harvard students who participated in an exchange program would probably be looking not for new courses but for a new cultural experience--something they could find over the summer.

Monro said that he did not object. "In theory" to an exchange program, but doubted that many students here would participate. Very few people, he observed, now take advantage of the University's junior-year-abroad program, which he described as liberal.

Monro also pointed out that many departments "guard the sophomore year very closely," prescribing in detail what courses concentrators must take. "We've had trouble just getting seminars and independent study into the sophomore year," he said.

Henry M. Sondheimer '66, chairman of an HUC committee that has found other colleges responsive to the plan, conceded last night that Harvard's exchange students would have to be well-prepared in their departments.