Perfectly Useless

HAVE YOU ever felt useless? As if you are completely and utterly wasting your time?

Well, that's what I felt about participating in Harvard's prefect program. Although I made friends with some freshmen I probably would not have met in the course of my normal routine, I got very little out of being a prefect, and I don't think my freshmen got much out of it, either.

In principle, the prefect program is a good idea. Designed to give freshmen contact with undergraduates who have had some experience in the Harvard jungle, the program aims to help mitigate the consequences of housing freshmen apart from more experienced upperclassmen.

The Freshman Dean's Office (FDO) assigns between one and four prefects to every proctor who participates in the three-year-old program.

However, many of the proctors don't know what to do with the prefects, and the prefects don't have a clue what their role is. The FDO runs a couple of "training sessions" which are supposed to enlighten prefects and suggest ways to interact with freshmen, but the first one was so boring and of so little value that I didn't bother going to the second--which took place three months later.

PREFECT INSTRUCTIONS boil down to series of don'ts. Don't date your freshmen. Don't do drugs with your freshmen. Don't give your freshmen alcohol--but don't make them stop drinking either. Don't give your freshmen academic advice because that is the proctor's role.

But what should you do?

The FDO is a lot better at coming up with prohibitions than at making positive sugestions. Visit your frosh, they suggest. Take them to dinner in the houses. Well, freshmen are busy people, and some upperclassman who shows up once or twice a week to run a study break or take people to dinner just doesn't generate a lot of interest.

I enjoyed visiting with my freshmen and attending their study breaks, but I don't think I ever became more than a Harvard-sponsored "friend."

Even in the midst of the housing lottery freshmen were reluctant to trek up to the Quad or down to Mather on a night that fits someone else's schedule. I should have been prepared to eat dinner by myself when I scheduled a trip to Currier House. I wasn't, and I couldn't help feeling angry and unwanted.

At most other universities, where undergraduates working as resident advisers are live-in sources of comfort and advice, upperclassmen have a real opportunity to influence their advisees. Here, there is no such chance.

This year's decision to wait until after the first study cards were due to introduce freshmen to their prefects intensified the program's lack of purpose. Freshmen might have needed and wanted the advice of upperclassmen as they tried to figure out the shopping system and chose their first Harvard courses. But by the time I met the freshmen in my group, they already had developed sources of information and weren't particularly interested in others.

THE PREFECT program is admittedly still in its early stages. The FDO only recently selected a prefect steering committee to oversee the program and chose next year's prefects. And not every freshman group has a prefect. Only proctors who asked for them were assigned prefects. Ultimately, every proctorial group will have prefects, the program's organizers say, but no one knows exactly when that will happen.

Before that time, the FDO needs to come up with a concrete vision of what they expect prefects to do beyond providing friendship. Otherwise, prefects will continue to be frustrated and feel (correctly) that they are just wasting time.

I hope that the FDO eventually works out the kinks in the prefect program. But I won't be around if they do. When I received my application for next year's prefect program, I took a long look at it and tossed it in the trash.