We have to do some serious thinking on that issue of credit. Master Chalmers is still behind us. But credit will no doubt mean restrictions, and the New College has to be wary of restrictions. Then there are the larger questions of whether we should accept a status that we believe illegitimate, and of how we expect to change anything around here if we don't.

Without credit, though, our groups will face the same big problem they had last year: an often crippling rate of attrition. A lot of people quit because of the demands made upon their time by Harvard Old College. A lot more quit because they expected miracles without trying to cause them. If a New College group is successful, it is because the participants make it that way. If they sit back and wait, they'll probably be disappointed. Without the undeniably negative incentive of credit, many people will see no reason to keep on trying.

There are other problems. Our ideas haven't changed much over the summer. For instance, we're all the more convinced that encounter experiences are educationally valid. But encounter has become another Great American Fad. It's a serious and extraordinarily delicate undertaking, but people are rushing into it mindlessly. Even as we try carefully to integrate encounter with university education, there is a chance that the New College might degenerate into a far-out headquarters for home-made encounter groups. The same dangers exist in other areas. We want to avoid meaningless frivolity, but it won't be easy.

And there will be sticky decisions to make that we certainly can't foresee. The New College will no doubt be criticized sharply in educational terms from the right and in political terms from the left. We'll have to deal with such attacks- or will We?

Last Tuesday night we had a meeting in the Winthrop House Tonkens Room. More than a hundred people showed up. We talked about everything: what we did last year, what we hope to do this year, how broke we are, what kind of groups we've already set up. It was as exciting and encouraging as those first meetings during the strike last spring. After it was over, many people stayed and talked.

We may not have any particular reason to be optimistic- but we are.