The paucity of such help is what makes Harvard's flexibility uncomfortably rigid for a great many students. Harvard insists that it "does no nursing job," but says that anyone who needs advice can get it readily if he wants to ferret it out. Here again, part of the claim is legitimate: advice can be gotten by those determined and sure enough of themselves to go out and seek it. The dilemma of the unhappy and confused student is that he rarely has the determination and confidence to seek help. Either the student is half-ashamed of his problem, and doesn't want to admit its existence by seeking help, or else he's so far gone off the deep end that he literally cannot get help on his own initiative.

The very attitude of the Deans--who do "no nursing job" --as well as what Riesman calls the machismo of the Harvard student (we all see ourselves as self-sufficient "Harvard Men"), operate to intimidate students from admitting that they have problems which they cannot solve themselves. Dr. Perry of the BSC claims that Harvard is forced into this posture to avoid charges of paternalism from students who resent an overactive counselling staff.

This would seem to indicate a gross misunderstanding of paternalism, as well as what it means for one human being to help another. Paternalism is obviously repugnant to students when it is manifested in an administration that regulates the college environment so completely that there is opportunity neither to err nor to do good. But there can be another form of paternalism, and this seems to have completely escaped Harvard. There is nothing wrong with a faculty, which, as older and hopefully wiser people, advises and helps its students--much as a father would his grown son. There's a certain amount to be said for encouraging people to stand on their own two feet, and work problems out on their own--this is one way we develop self-confidence. But on the other hand, there are times when we all must learn that it is only humility and common sense to know our own limitations, and not feel that it is degrading to go to others for help.

It can hardly be a good object-lesson for students to see such help and advice thought of by Harvard as interference. Perry once said students had yet to learn that people can get help for themselves without getting it by themselves. It is ironic that Harvard evidently expects its students to learn this important piece of wisdom by themselves.

Hopefully, help and encouragement to the discouraged student might be found in informal student-faculty contacts. That such is rarely the case is doubly tragic: not only is the student left to fend for himself, but the quality of academic intercourse is impaired.

Intimacy Among 400

Tutorial and the House system are supposed to countervail the size and impersonality of the University with a degree of personal contact and intimacy. The Houses, now with an average population of 400 students, two-thirds more than the number originally intended, have become little more than overcrowded dormitories; there is no excuse for such waste of what might have been Harvard's most attractive feature.

Tutorial has worked out slightly better. Here, at least, there is opportunity to meet on a relatively individual basis with one's instructor. When difficulties arise, they usually come either from the tutor's transient interest in education (most are graduate students working to continue their own studies) or from the fact that students are so accustomed to sitting passively in large lecture halls that they simply do not know how to behave in a one-to-one classroom situation.

Despite the occasional successes of Tutorial and the Houses, most students experience Harvard as a lonely, impersonal place. There is little or no sense of community--the CRIMSON is about the only thing Harvard shares in common. And such lack of community is regrettable, for it is in community that one is able to learn and share with others on a personal basis; it is in community that one finds relevance and immediacy in education; and it is only in community that a college can flourish.

With neither the community, nor for many the relevance and immediacy, the increase in students who feel alienated from Harvard is not surprising. Now that the alternative of leaving is temporarily closed, the student who might have otherwise left will be around to voice his discontent. If self-criticism is a virtue, then perhaps the draft will have served Harvard well.

Harvard is certainly in for its share of self-criticism; it will be as long as it continues to maintain discordant admissions and educational policies. Since the admissions policy is by far the more admirable and realistic of the two, it is the education Harvard offers which needs scrutiny.

Harvard, as well as every other American college, is caught in a difficult situation. It has to abandon its old function of professional training, which has been taken on by graduate schools, and find a new role for itself in American society. That the college will have a role is inevitable. The American people are convinced of the magic of a college education, and will continue to make it part of the life pattern for their sons and daughters.

The Purposeless Grind

There is nothing bad with a society which says that all its youth should go to college. As long as one has faith in the ability of men to learn much more than most are taught, there is no reason why college should not become a life experience for all Americans. No special cynicism is required to admit that colleges today contribute little to the quality of American life. It is not difficult, however, to envision a college which does raise the level of our society.

For this to happen requires a radical and thorough reorientation in the sorts of things colleges are to do. Most men may be capable of advanced thought, but most are not academics.

It is not too soon to expect Harvard to consider what its new role in society should be; it may be too much to expect that it will. For the draft is only temporary; even now there are those who leave in desperation, unwilling to suffer any longer what they consider to be the inanity of a purposeless grind. And the frank, radical self-probing which will be necessary for meaningful change to take place may well prove to be beyond the capacity of a community noted for its "liberal cool." If such be the case, then Harvard will be around for a long time--its $1 billion bankroll assures that--to remind us all of a glorious opportunity missed