Council Inaugurates Its Own Freshman Advising Program

The Student Council's Committee on Education begins this week an experiment in undergraduate advising for freshmen to determine whether the program merits full-scale operation. This is the first positive action that has been taken on this question since it was advocated many years ago by President Lowell.

Starting this week, a cross section of resident freshmen will be selected at random as advisees. Five juniors and seniors interested in the project will be advisors to 25 freshmen this Spring.

The Committee hopes the system will he worked on a one-to-one basis in the future. The program will be carried out in an informal manner, with most of the actual advising coming across the dinner table.

The purpose of the new program is not to replace the present faculty advisory system, but to supplement it. Its emphasis will be on the social rather than the scholastic side of College life. According to one of the undergraduate advisors, the system will effect "an easier integration between the Yard and the Houses."

By advising freshmen on House and social activities as well as on courses and fields of concentration, the Council hopes to be able to aid faculty advisors in fields with which many of them are not well acquainted.

Personal associations in the Houses are now the only way which Yard residents have of learning about House activities, the Council fears. One purpose of the new system would be to remedy this situation by giving freshmen an overall and objective view of the House system.

The Committee on Education, under the co-chairmanship of Broward D. Craig '50 and James F. Hornig '50, will choose juniors as well as seniors in order to perpetuate the system.

Plans for the future are not yet concretely established, but if the experiment is successful this year, it will be put into full operation in two or three years.