"There was always a small group of girls I was very close to, and who still keep in touch. Then there were the girls who would come with their study cards, but who never spent much time in my office. And there were those who would just slip their cards under my door with a note saying they would be back at five to pick them up."

She explains the last two groups by noting that some students are shy, and some, she says, are a "Radcliffe type," that is afraid of a "boarding school atmosphere."

"I got all kinds of guidance when I was going through high school," said one Cliffic sophomore, echoing Mrs. Zinberg's explanation of non-relationships with advisors. "When I got to college, I just didn't want to go through that. I wanted to be on my own."

THE LACK of student initiative in seeking advice is not a problem unique to Radcliffe's freshman advisor program. Many sources of counseling go untapped. Lionel Trilling, for example, has had an office in Warren House all year, and came to Harvard hoping to speak with many students. Not one has come to see him. A few years ago, seniors in East House volunteered to be semi-official advisors in their dorms. They were trained by the deans, and listed the hours when they would be available. No one ever visited, and the experiment was dropped.

Mrs. Zinberg says that students "like to know that someone is there, but no one likes to go to them.

Analyzing the reluctance of Cliffies to come to official advisors is something that consumes much administrative time and energy, and since counseling is optional, there seems to be few ways of solving the problem.

Administrators say that students and advisors must share interest in order to establish any meaningful relationship. But freshmen are assigned to advisors in their houses randomly; Dean Williston says there is a "deliberate effort" not to fit students to their advisors, for fear of limiting them. Administrators also say that advisors should participate in more house activities, but many are too busy with their own academic work to do so. One dean said that "You have to teach to understand students," but, as her colleague said, "Some people neither want you nor need you."

The people who are not worried about the advising program are, in fact, the administrators and students who accept the minimal, academics-only demands most Cliffics make up on their advisors.

"He tried very hard to be a friend." said one Cliffic about her advisor. "He was always coming around and eating lunch with me and asking me how I was doing. But he didn't know anything about anything, because he hadn't been at Harvard very long. I was a freshman and I knew more about this place than he did."

Another girl, who is concentrating in clinical psychology, says her advisor spent all of their time together trying to convince her to major in English. She says that she was so discouraged that when he gave her "one piece of good advice, I didn't take it. I never really tried to get much from him-he tried to be friendly, so I guess it's my fault."

ONE student's comment-"freshman advisors should have to know the ropes"-is, in fact, Radcliffe policy, but no one can know enough ropes to satisfy everyone. For freshmen, who have the luxury of exploring fields, this can be a real drawback.

"No matter how much you care about students," added a former freshman advisor, "to help, you have to know the difference between Math 1a and Math 21." Limiting advisors to only academic counseling eliminates part of the problems, but even then, it is clear that they cannot help everyone. The key assumption in the Radcliffe system, according to Mrs. Elliott, is that will be "pluralism in counseling." Cliffics are obviously not using the official channels to find the information they need, and, in fact, some see the role of the advisor as an agent for directing the student to the places where she can better be helped. The sources freshmen are expected to use are their "big sisters," upperclassmen who write to them during their pre-freshman summer and who welcome them to the dorm in the fall, and friends they find on their own. Some dorms post lists of students who have taken the most popular courses. Dean Smith is right when he says that "most student information about courses and departments comes through the grapevine."

How can one reconcile into one program the people who believe Cliffics do not want advice, and those who believe they want it whether they think they do or not? Those who believe good counseling is a "function of numbers," and those who think it is not? Those who see advisors as friends and confessors, and those who see them as road-signs in Harvard's maze of opportunities?

William G. Perry '35, director of the Burcan of Study Counsel, says that these views do not represent a difference of opinion, but a "difference of function." "The problem is one of equilibrium," he says. "There has to be a balance between respect for freshman independence and the right of everyone to advice when she wants it and needs it."

A flexible system is needed, then, to allow for this balance. Right now, perhaps the problem is not one of mathematics, but, should the time ever come when more Cliffics want more counseling, the system would bog down. It is not difficult to calculate that if an advisor saw each of forty advisees only one hour each week, he would be working an eight-hour day five days a week without doing anything else. And that is more than a one-fifth teaching job.