Tutors and House Courses:

This is the first of a two-part series examining education within the House system. Tomorrow's feature will deal with the realationship of freshman to the Houses.

HARVARD HOUSES, our college catalogues tell us, aim to combine the intimacy of small college living with the programs and resources of a large university. Yet continuing dissatisfaction with various aspects of the House system suggests a prevailing uncertainty as to how such a goal is to be realized and, more fundamentally, as to the values by which means to the goal may be selected.

Ambiguities in philosophy, insofar as a unified philosophy of the House system exists at all, manifest themselves at each planning crisis--whether consideration is being given to new programs and experiments or administrators are planning to change the levels of House programs' subsidies. Rarely can projects be definitively assessed, since no one is certain by what yardstick the success of an activity in the Houses is to be measured.

Several major issues over the past few years should have enabled the Harvard community to focus on the question: What should the Houses be doing? Though coresidential living should have been such an issue, the lack of commitment to a truly new attitude on women or on life in the Houses is evidenced by the continuing shortage of women tutors and faculty and the fact that there are no women Senior Tutors or women expressly chosen as Masters for Harvard Houses.

Two issues this spring--education in the Houses and the Houses' affiliation with freshmen--will again afford the opportunity to stop and ask toward what ends the Houses should aim. On the basis of past administrative actions, there is reason to doubt that this question will be answered meaningfully, despite the earnest, even redundant, investigative efforts of the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL) and the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE).

A look at past attempts to deal with these issues reveals, primarily, the conflict of budgetary priorities and policy decisions with those goals for the Houses which have actually been articulated. Furthermore, those involved in making relevant decisions seem uncertain as to what those goals do indeed represent.

I

SINCE 1969, two major studies have been conducted which pertain to the issue of education in the Houses: the November 1969 Report of the Committee on the Role of the Faculty in the Houses (the Homans Report) and the October 1970 Report of the Informal Subcommittee on the Harvard House System presented to CHUL. Though neither report has the official sanction of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, both committees did make extensive recommendations which have not been carried out, either in practice or in spirit.

In particular, cutbacks in spending on the Houses ignore the recommendations of these reports. For example, the Homans Report proposed to give each Master five dollars per undergraduate in his House for the support of student-initiated activities. The Homans Committee recommended the creation of House councils to represent students and staff in advising the Master on House affairs. Except for an early experiment at Eliot House, that proposal has also been ignored.

Lack of concern for the reports' recommendations is most clearly shown in the treatment of tutors. For instance, the Homans Report emphasized the importance of married residential tutors and urged that provision be made for more suites for tutor couples. At the end of 1970, in direct opposition to the spirit of this recommendation, a proposal was introduced to the CHUL advocating that married tutors be charged rent.

The proposal was not acted upon at that time, but was discussed and finally formalized at informal meetings of the Masters in Fall 1970 and February 1971. Dean of Students Archie C. Epps stated in an interview two weeks ago that the proposal represented an "implied criticism of the tutors", with which he did not concur. Nevertheless, only protest by tutors, students, and members of the Faculty stopped the measure. According to Steve Burbank '68, assistant dean of the College, the letters of several tutors were "instrumental" in forestalling the rent proposal.

DURING THE RENT dispute, the administration voiced a number of its arguments for charging the tutors rent. For example, it was alleged that free rooms for married tutors, particularly for tutors with families, granted them a marginal benefit greater than that available to unmarried tutors. Some alleged that tutors' spouses (in Harvard terms, that means "wives") did not take an active part in the Houses. Tutors' meal funds were consequently cutback, with Richard G. Leahy, assistant dean for Resources and Planning, seeing a drop in tutors' meals as a benefit.

"If I were a House Master, I'd like to see a better distribution of which tutors eat in the dining halls now," Leahy said. "The same tutors eat in the Houses all the time, while others never do." It so happens this measure does nothing to bring absentee tutors into the Houses; it only "equalizes" in making it more difficult for the "same tutors" to meet and to converse with students over meals.

The rent proposal was not only insensitive to the importance of tutors, it contradicted the position of administrators who have declared support for strengthening the educational role of the Houses. Dean Epps, in his interview, advocated stronger emphasis on the Houses as an advising system, as a source of department tutorials and independent work, and as an other source of formal courses. Epps called strengthening the tutor system "absolutely crucial" and House courses a way to get senior faculty back in touch with tutors and with undergraduates.

BROAD POLICY GOALS aside, the rent proposal did not even reflect the real position of married tutors in the Houses. Good tutors sacrifice in time and in privacy, and tutors' spouses do play a substantial role as advisors. President Bok, on March 9, 1971, also stated that the Houses should provide non-academic role models for undergraduates, a role which tutors' spouses may be best equipped to fulfill.

It is not even true that married tutors always enjoy larger suites than single resident tutors. The rent proposal, which was made without any consultation with the tutors, discriminated in favor of non-married resident tutors and the spouses and children of Masters, Senior Tutors, and resident Superintendents.

By charging each tutor's spouse $1500 per year as proposed, the University could have raised an additional $28,000 per year. As explained by Dennis S. Klos, a married resident tutor in Social Relations living in Adams House, the same amount could have been raised, if need be, by charging every staff resident in the Houses $13 per month.

In other words, at the risk of driving away from the Houses married residential tutors, whose activities were judged in a major committee report to be a vital contribution to Harvard House life, the Administration was prepared to charge a discriminatory fee which would not even have substantially added to the University's income.

Two more reports on the role of tutors in the Houses will be forthcoming soon, one by Burbank and one currently under preparation for the CUE by Assistant Professor Regina M. Kyle and David Oxtoby '72.

THE BURBANK REPORT, which will focus only on Harvard Houses, was conceived as a briefing for President Derek C. Bok and is based on interviews with Senior Tutors and some residential tutors in most of the Harvard Houses, plus interviews with several small groups of students. The report is now before the Masters, Burbank said, and will be released once the Masters have had time to consider it.

The CUE Report, based on questionnaires circulated to residential tutors, will be ready in about a month. Preliminary findings may be reported to CUE in two weeks. The questionnaire tries to determine: the number of tutees associated with each tutor; the number of sections for which each tutor may be responsible; and the feelings of tutors with regard to tutorials in the Houses, extended informal contact with other students in their areas, and the current duties of the residential tutors in the Houses. As of a week ago, however, only 30-40 per cent of the residential tutors had replied.

According to Kyle, it may turn out that the name "residential tutor" is misleading, since the original concept of the tutor involved as much an advisory as an academic role. She called morale among tutors and grad students "low", and would personally suggest greater cooperation among tutors, Senior Tutors, and Masters, consultation with tutors on decisions affecting them, and a better evaluation of the Houses' needs as a means of improving the tutors' outlook. Kyle regards the proposal to charge married tutors rent as "insane."

II

MANY OF THE SAME contradictions and confusion over purposes have arisen with proposals to broaden the role of Houses in offering courses and independent work. On December 8, 1971, the CHUL "endorsed in principle" a proposal calling for each House to have a Committee on Instruction of six associate faculty members in order to deal with:

* Special Studies concentrations

* independent work petitions

* 91 or 910 courses which may be offered in the Houses

* the coordination of House tutorials

* the coordination of an advising system for non-honors students

* the coordination of sections in the Houses, and

* recommendations for House courses.

Few of the Harvard Houses have instituted such a committee.

In support of expanding the curricular role of Houses, Dean Epps has stated that he would like to see a freeing up of classroom space in the Houses, greater House accessibility to technical aids such as closed-circuit television and computer teletypes, and more "rigorously intimate" contact between undergraduates and Faculty, a contact he finds particularly lacking in the situation of non-honors students. Changes in students' life styles in the Houses may have discouraged Faculty contact since the late 1950's, according to Epps. He sees a strong need to reemphasize the "intellectual and academic character of the Houses."

THE GREATEST opponents of the Committees on Instruction recommendation are reportedly department chairmen. Morton W. Bloomfield, Chairman of the English Department, believes some courses are "ideally suited" for Houses and that tutorials, if possible, and sections for large courses should also be held in students' Houses. However, he regards the proposed committees as unnecessary, since departments are now handling the responsibility of House courses. Unless this check exists, Bloomfield believes, House courses may conflict with or take time from department courses.

Furthermore, Bloomfield suggests that only 15-20 per cent of the students would be represented on such committees. "This machinery is not going to help," Bloomfield stated. "It would be a big to-do with relatively small benefits."

Kyle, however, emphasized that in courses and tutorials, the needs of people in the Houses should be the main consideration.

On the other hand, it would be impossible, in Kyle's view, to hold all tutorials in the Houses without massive new tutor assignments. As it is, she says, some departments do not even cooperate in matching tutors and tutees in the Houses. It is most important for juniors and seniors to have personalized tutoring, and until budgets for tutors and House education go up, she warns, nothing should be done which would leave students "boxed in" to their Houses for tutorial.

THE ATTITUDE of Harvard House Masters toward House courses is cautious. Zeph Stewart, Master of Lowell House, said in an interview that House courses work fine "insofar as people want to give them." Lowell House, he stated, has had a committee like that proposed by CHUL since the beginning of special concentrations. He would like to encourage House courses as an option, but believes a departmental effort to concentrate sophomore tutorial in the Houses would be far more valuable.

William Liller '48, Master of Adams House, would like to see more House courses, which he finds to have been "enormously popular." Adams House, he said, has several proposals for a committee under consideration, but he is not certain yet how all groups, including non-resident senior faculty members, can be most effectively represented.

Freshman Dean F. Skiddy von Stade Jr. '38, Master of Mather House, has not instituted the CHUL proposal which he regards as an "imposition" on the departments and a duplication of effort with regard to Special Studies which have been "competently handled" up to now by the Senior Tutors. He describes his attitude as "wait and see", and believes more House courses will not be pulled together unless more money is found. Von Stade cited year-to-year changes in resident staff and the lack of compensation in money or time for senior faculty members as factors discouraging the expansion of House courses.

Kenneth Andrews, Master of Leverett House, says he is interested in House courses as long as the experience they provide does not compete with departments'. Leverett House does have a committee of senior professors to generate and screen ideas for House courses and independent work. The committee, according to Andrews, is also considering ways of meeting departmental objections as to the quality of House coursework.

SIMILARLY, Arthur Smithies, Master of Kirkland House, thinks House courses are a good idea as long as there is "some advantage gained by the courses being in the House." Smithies finds it conceivable that a course which begins as a tutor's experimental field can evolve into a departmental course.

Bruce Chalmers, Master of Winthrop House, believes House courses have channeled previously untapped talent and enthusiasm, expecially in interdisciplinary courses difficult to find outside the Houses. According to Chalmers, the concept of general education has become "amorphous." "Remnants of the assumption that undergraduates should master the methodology of several disciplines," he said, "are based on the assumption that all history majors will be historians." Chalmers stated in an interview that House courses could be "a very important component of a problem-solving approach to general education."

A discouraging aspect of the consideration being given to House courses is the small amount of student input to the discussion. None of several House committee chairmen interviewed had heard of the CHUL proposal. Even Winthrop House, which has had a faculty committee considering instruction in the House since before the CHUL proposal, involves no student advisory group at the moment.

Masters and department chairmen will reportedly be meeting in the next few weeks to determine the specific objections to House courses, whether they be objections to their structure or reservations on control of the courses.

Hopefully, consideration will also be given to the courses as they relate to a philosophy of the Houses. Would certain instructional arrangements increase the diversity among Houses? Are Houses devoted to particular academic areas advisable, or can flexibility be assured in allowing students to take courses at Houses other than their own in order to maintain a random distribution of students by concentration? What are the advantages of academic experiences in the Houses? How might House courses contribute to a more personalized education if, in fact, the Houses are striving for such an ideal?

Any arrangement on House courses adopted for next year will prove as arbitrary as the proposal on rent for tutors, unless House education is examined more as a philosophical than as an economic issue