Regular gifts to Harvard fell 2.2 per cent during the past academic year, the University announced last month.

Gifts totaled $5.753, 812 from 47,372 alumni, parents, friends, and corporations. The total was $132.132 less than the $5,885,944 raised in 1968-69.

The "annual" gifts included in the figure are generally unrestricted and can be used for current expenses.

With faculty budgets especially tight now, annual gifts are particularly important. But the stock market plunge and general dissatisfaction with universities had been expected to cause a drop in giving, and University officials were pleased the drop was not larger.

President Pusey said in a statement that "this continuing strong support, particularly from the alumni, shows an intelligent understanding of the problems we face and the efforts we are making to overcome them, whether or not the alumni always agree with our actions."

'Optimistic, Resolute'

Optimistic and resolute? At Harvard?

That's the way the Administration feels, according to a newsletter sent to potential donors by the 'Harvard College Fund early in the summer.

"We have removed from our community by orderly process," Dean Dunlop wrote, "students who engaged in violence. . . The spirit is much improved. I am both optimistic and resolute."

Almost half of the newsletter consists of reflections by Chase N. Peterson '52, dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, on today's students.

"It's almost embarrassing to detail how good our students are," Peterson wrote, citing high board scores and awards.

"The larger group of students has behaved wonderfully well this year," he wrote. On April 15 "we were invaded-that was no insurrection!-by outsiders," he wrote.

Cereal Clash

Frederick J. Stare, head of the Department of Nutrition at the School of Public Health, thinks shredded wheat is good for you, and he told a Senate subcommittee so last Aug. 4.

But Jean L. Mayer, professor of Nutrition, disagreed in front of the same subcommittee the following day.

The committee, which was studying the problems of consumers, held hearings on the nutritional value of dry breakfast cereals during the summer. The hearings opened in late July with testimony by Robert Choate, an independent nutritional expert, that dry cereals contain little nutritional value and do not contribute to a good breakfast.

Scientists representing the cereal companies counterattacked soon afterward.