Can Freshman Cliffies Take Care of Themselves?

CAN THE average freshman Cliffie find her way, unaided and unsacred, to sophomore year?

At Radcliffe, some administrators say that Harvard is much too complicated a place for freshmen to cope with alone. Others claim that it is an illusion to believe that anyone can provide adequate help.

It was in the early 1960's, when Mary I. Bunting was new as president of Radcliffe, that the current freshman advisor program was begun. Radcliffe Iuned teaching fellows up Garden Street with corporation appointments, offices of their own, free meals at Radcliffe, and pay equal to the pay they would have earned with one-fifth teaching time.

The goal of the program was to provide academic advising to freshman Cliffies, while also exposing them to Faculty types," as one dean calls them. The idea was partly to make Radcliffe more like Harvard, with its advisors, proctors, and resident tutors.

There can be no doubt that the program was an improvement over the old advising system, in which two undergraduate deans" handled two classes apiece, and grad students were paid to assist at study-card time.

But the issue now is not whether the program has succeeded on its own original terms, but whether those terms are still appropriate for Cliffies at Harvard ten years later.

THE ADVISORY system has not changed radically from its original organization in 1962. South and East House each have two advisors; North House, the largest house with the most freshmen, has three. Each advisor has thirty to forty-five advisees, and the three house deans advise all students cligible for advanced standing. Advisors are interested grad students with teaching experience or with current teaching fellowships, and most were at Harvard or Radcliffe as undergraduates. They are trained for their advising jobs and briefed during the year by the associate dean of the College.

But "Radcliffe was a simpler place then," according to Catherine D. Williston, associate dean and dean of North House (now on leave). "Students had fewer options, and advising was easier." Since the early sixties, Harvard has expanded freshman seminars, independent study, and general education, multiplying the choices of a freshman has and the decisions she must make.

The College is more complex, and so is the world. "These are anguished times." David K. Smith '58, Radcliffe dean of admissions, said. "Every girl wants adult advice whether or not she admits it to herself."

Smith has five advisees, each of whom comes to talk with him every week, not just about academic matters, but personal things as well. During the time between Fall registration and the study card deadline, he spent three hours a week with each of them. He knows them well, and says that it is only that context that enables him to give them advice. He views ten advisees per advisor as a maximum: "Any move in that direction would be an improvement," he says, "More than that is hard to control."

Someone who approaches advising with Smith's personal intensity sees forty-five advisees per advisor as a clear violation of the principles of adequate guidance.

Some others, administrators and students alike, perceive the problem in the current system differently. For them, the question of numbers is not the crucial issue.

Kathleen O. Elliott, dean of Radcliffe and dean of South House, spends hundreds of hours a year talking to students, and speaks about advising with great sensitivity. "The relationship between advisor and student is not a function of numbers," she says, "It is a function of both persons' temperament, locale and availability."

Even with forty students each, advisors are not over-worked talking to students. Freshmen. in most cases, simply do not come to their advisors any more than they have to, which is four times a year.

Dorothy Zinberg is acting dean of North House and was a freshman advisor for four years while working for her doctorate in psychology.

"There was always a small group of girls I was very close to, and who still keep in touch. Then there were the girls who would come with their study cards, but who never spent much time in my office. And there were those who would just slip their cards under my door with a note saying they would be back at five to pick them up."

She explains the last two groups by noting that some students are shy, and some, she says, are a "Radcliffe type," that is afraid of a "boarding school atmosphere."

"I got all kinds of guidance when I was going through high school," said one Cliffic sophomore, echoing Mrs. Zinberg's explanation of non-relationships with advisors. "When I got to college, I just didn't want to go through that. I wanted to be on my own."

THE LACK of student initiative in seeking advice is not a problem unique to Radcliffe's freshman advisor program. Many sources of counseling go untapped. Lionel Trilling, for example, has had an office in Warren House all year, and came to Harvard hoping to speak with many students. Not one has come to see him. A few years ago, seniors in East House volunteered to be semi-official advisors in their dorms. They were trained by the deans, and listed the hours when they would be available. No one ever visited, and the experiment was dropped.

Mrs. Zinberg says that students "like to know that someone is there, but no one likes to go to them.

Analyzing the reluctance of Cliffies to come to official advisors is something that consumes much administrative time and energy, and since counseling is optional, there seems to be few ways of solving the problem.

Administrators say that students and advisors must share interest in order to establish any meaningful relationship. But freshmen are assigned to advisors in their houses randomly; Dean Williston says there is a "deliberate effort" not to fit students to their advisors, for fear of limiting them. Administrators also say that advisors should participate in more house activities, but many are too busy with their own academic work to do so. One dean said that "You have to teach to understand students," but, as her colleague said, "Some people neither want you nor need you."

The people who are not worried about the advising program are, in fact, the administrators and students who accept the minimal, academics-only demands most Cliffics make up on their advisors.

"He tried very hard to be a friend." said one Cliffic about her advisor. "He was always coming around and eating lunch with me and asking me how I was doing. But he didn't know anything about anything, because he hadn't been at Harvard very long. I was a freshman and I knew more about this place than he did."

Another girl, who is concentrating in clinical psychology, says her advisor spent all of their time together trying to convince her to major in English. She says that she was so discouraged that when he gave her "one piece of good advice, I didn't take it. I never really tried to get much from him-he tried to be friendly, so I guess it's my fault."

ONE student's comment-"freshman advisors should have to know the ropes"-is, in fact, Radcliffe policy, but no one can know enough ropes to satisfy everyone. For freshmen, who have the luxury of exploring fields, this can be a real drawback.

"No matter how much you care about students," added a former freshman advisor, "to help, you have to know the difference between Math 1a and Math 21." Limiting advisors to only academic counseling eliminates part of the problems, but even then, it is clear that they cannot help everyone. The key assumption in the Radcliffe system, according to Mrs. Elliott, is that will be "pluralism in counseling." Cliffics are obviously not using the official channels to find the information they need, and, in fact, some see the role of the advisor as an agent for directing the student to the places where she can better be helped. The sources freshmen are expected to use are their "big sisters," upperclassmen who write to them during their pre-freshman summer and who welcome them to the dorm in the fall, and friends they find on their own. Some dorms post lists of students who have taken the most popular courses. Dean Smith is right when he says that "most student information about courses and departments comes through the grapevine."

How can one reconcile into one program the people who believe Cliffics do not want advice, and those who believe they want it whether they think they do or not? Those who believe good counseling is a "function of numbers," and those who think it is not? Those who see advisors as friends and confessors, and those who see them as road-signs in Harvard's maze of opportunities?

William G. Perry '35, director of the Burcan of Study Counsel, says that these views do not represent a difference of opinion, but a "difference of function." "The problem is one of equilibrium," he says. "There has to be a balance between respect for freshman independence and the right of everyone to advice when she wants it and needs it."

A flexible system is needed, then, to allow for this balance. Right now, perhaps the problem is not one of mathematics, but, should the time ever come when more Cliffics want more counseling, the system would bog down. It is not difficult to calculate that if an advisor saw each of forty advisees only one hour each week, he would be working an eight-hour day five days a week without doing anything else. And that is more than a one-fifth teaching job.

SOME Cliffics, and some administrators, look to Harvard's system as the ideal. There, the dean of freshmen has five senior advisors under him, each of whom coordinates a geographical section of the Yard. Each section has thirty advisors, each of whom has eight to ten student advisees. Advisors do not live in the dorms, but proctors do, and they handle the bulk of student counseling. Each freshman has three official ("Viable," says Smith) sources of information, where as a Cliffic has only her advisor and her dean ("unlivable sources").

The proponents of the Harvard system applaud its personal approach and the accessibility of its advising personnel. But Harvard freshmen, partied and befriended all year ("He was a great guy, even if he didn't know very much," said a student about his proctor), are left alone at critical moments. As one secretary in Fay House put it. "Harvard prides itself on its personal approach, but at concentration time, it's Haravrd that simply posts notices and expects freshmen to see them, and Radcliffe that sends each girl her own packet of information."

Should there be more freshman advisors at Radcliffe? Radcliffe cannot afford to pay any more, but the Administration has at its disposal unused manpower. Each House has associates, for example, who have nebulous, unspecified functions but who appear at all House dinners. They are tenured Faculty members and have limited free time, but if each House has twenty, and each professor saw one student, each advisor's load would be cut to twenty-five. If, in addition, Radcliffe accepted the people in the admissions office who want to advise, for example, the Ioad would be lightened still further. (According to one dean, admissions officers, although extremely able, do not have the "right perspective" on the freshman year. Admissions officers claim they know as much as anyone about the places a girl here can find information. Advisors will at least be more visible next year, when some move into the dorms.

Next year's freshmen are being chosen this month and the Radcliffe Administration is in the process of reappraising its advisor program. The stumbling block to all proposals is the chronic lack of student enthusiasm about what is being designed for them.

After their freshman year, Cliffics' departmental tutors advise them in academics, and their friends give them personal advice and reassurance. For the time being, freshman advising remains a fragile bridge to sophomore year that not everyone prefers to use.