The problem of communication exists, according to Bok, not only with student and faculty groups, but with some outside the University as well. At times, his position becomes a frustrating one.

"The problems you encounter in this job are so numerous and the interested audience is so vast and diverse that it is very difficult to explain what you are doing and why in a way that will answer the questions and doubts of all those who are interested," he said. "This creates frustrations and misunderstandings with which I was not entirely familiar as dean of the Law School."

There are many cases in point, but the most apparent one is the crisis over Harvard's decision in April not to sell its stock in the Gulf Oil Corporation. The resultant occupation of Bok's offices in Mass Hall left him isolated with his advisors in Holyoke Center, unable to act decisively because of the likelihood of a confrontation with police. It was then that Bok, in an attempt to communicate his views on the Gulf issue, began a whirlwind of discussion sessions and written statements "to the University community."

He had tried this approach once before when he was President-designate, following the disruption of a pro-war teach-in in Sanders Theatre last Spring. The issue then was free speech, but the results were as inconclusive as those following his efforts to justify morally Harvard's proxy votes in April.

Now Bok is hesitant to discuss the takeover of Mass Hall, or any other of the "crises"--Herrnstein, SDS and its national convention at Harvard, the graduate students' demands for teaching fellows--which surfaced during his first year as President. He demurs when asked whether he would do anything differently, faced with the same situations again but drawing on the experience he has gained this year. The strong prospect is that he would not.

Bok said last week that he "thought it possible that some difficulties might arise" over Harvard's investment policies as early as last Fall, but that generally he feels it is "impossible to make accurate predictions." "I try to anticipate specific problems in advance, of course," he said. "But it is extremely difficult because there are any number of issues in a large institution about which serious disagreements can arise.

"Many causes beyound our control affect the general level of frustration and the nature of the issues that will arise. The best that we can do is to identify as many problems as we can by talking with a wide range of people and then try to make improvements before the issues become critical."

Potential disagreements over investments, Bok said, first occurred to him on a much wider scale than the eventual focus on the Gulf stock. He admitted that he "might well have met with PALC more often in the Fall," but he maintains that "it is very hard to predict what effect it would