The Best Classes at Harvard...

ALTHOUGH Neil L. Rudenstine is "dying" to teach a freshman seminar (according to the assistant director of the program), the freshly appointed Prez will not have the time to do it this year. But more than 30 Harvard professors will.

It's telling that Rudenstine chose this as the one contribution he wishes to make to academic life at Harvard. These seminars--offered exclusively to first-year students--are the one aspect of the undergraduate experience that is the object of praise from just about everywhere, Mass Hall to The Confi Guide.

And no wonder. The merits are obvious and irrefutable. Intimate classes of six to 12 people. All-star profs. No grades. It's also no wonder that a president eager to win the hearts of the student body said last spring that he planned to teach one.

But even though administrators cite the freshman seminar program as Harvard's best, it cannot escape the influence of a University whose number one priority is clearly not providing a top-rate liberal arts education.

The problem is not the substance of the seminars, which is usually top-rate, but the way they are packaged.

This was true from the beginning. First-year seminars were started in the 1960s, as an alternative type of education, something completely outside of the mainstream course offerings. The seminars were (and still are) portrayed as a special perk freely available to anyone who had survived Harvard's cutthroat admissions process.

Until this year, in fact, the potpourri of frosh-only courses didn't even make it into the official register. Everything about seminars was supposed to be different, wonderfully unique. This would have been great.

But in reality, the seminars spark yet another competition, this time for one of eight spots in the Dunster House small dining room instead of one of 1600 spaces in a Harvard class. This is not great.

WHEN I ARRIVED on campus, I was plenty excited by the prospect of taking a seminar. An hour before the deadline for applications, just a few days after dorms opened, I scribbled out essays for four of them.

I had lots of company. From the crowd gathered at the FDO, I could tell that my application was less an application and more a ticket to an academic lottery. Professors, given only a few days themselves to choose 8 students from among a pool occasionally ranging into the hundreds, scramble to interview those interested. Needless to say, they often end up picking winners out of a hat.

Ginger Mackay-Smith, who advised frosh for years before she took on her post as acting dean, says it's fairly clear to her advisees what goes on. "They're pretty sure it's just a random draw," she says.

This year's lineup of seminars lacks the obvious crowd-drawers of the past, like the one formerly offered by Henry Rosovsky. But, as program official Jerry DeNault says, he never turns down a nobel laureate or any other big-named, tenured prof for a seminar slot.

And so this year it will be Robert Coles, instead of Roso, who shuffles through hundreds of applications to find a lucky few. What remains constant is the message to undergraduates, poised for their first academic experience at Harvard: These professors are for looking (and bragging), but not touching. That privilege is only for the lottery winners.

LET'S NOT exaggerate. About half of those who apply do end up in a seminar. Plenty of first-years are accepted into one of their choices (as I was) and end up having a great experience (that was me, too). But last year, more than 400 students were turned awry from the program to which they had been drawn by relentless advertising by upperclass students, proctors and the administrators of the program itself.

Because they are also a limited resource, Mackay-Smith notes that seminars are Exclusive. Like VES studios and high-powered Government seminars, there aren't enough to go around.

But wait. Weren't seminars supposed to be the aspect of a Harvard education that was exempt from hassle, free of competition? The different program? Isn't the hypocrisy apparent when seminars are hyped as the best of Harvard and then held arms-length away while 400 first-years salivate?

That's just my point. For all the plusses of a Harvard education, there are some lessons that we have just not learned from small colleges like Oberlin and Williams. Intimate contact with professors is rare. And often, as is the case with these seminars, to put oneself in a situation where that sort of contact is possible, students have to go through hell.

All of the groundwork is laid for Harvard to do good on its promise to give first-year students a taste of the best that education can be. The program is in place, and it does good things.

It just doesn't do them for enough people.

Joshua W. Shenk '93, a Crimson editor, wishes he knew Henry Rosovsky well enough to call him "Roso" to his face.

...if you can get in. That means an application. And maybe an interview. And a lot of luck.