In addition, the office's "Boston Resource" files list information and organizations to which students with specific problems can be referred. Room 13's primary concern now is to involve as many people as possible in its operations, and the staff seems willing to amass a mountain of information to do this.

The staff's concern with publicity problems is reflected in the words of Pat Booker, who co-directs the organization with Marci Yoss: "We're just sort of groping for ways to attract more people. We're making an effort to casualize here."

This effort involves plans to hold open houses and forums with other groups at Harvard. "What's in the mill is inviting areas on campus, say dorms and entries, down to Room 13," Booker said.

The staff also hopes to publish a brochure that would clarify Room 13's purpose for students. At present they are evaluating the University Health Services doctors and psychiatrists, both walk-in and by appointment, so that they can give specific referrals. On one of this fall's holiday weekends, co-director Yoss is planning a staff retreat to formulate more long-term and specific plans for the year.

These plans seem to be an expansion of past efforts at publicity which evidently did not do the trick.

Staffer Bigda explained that calls and visits averaged two per night last year. That average has increased somewhat this year, but it is difficult to determine the average volume of calls at the beginning of the academic year.

Last year's program at Room 13 included three "concentration nights," in which freshmen choosing their majors could talk to representatives from the various departments. A housing meeting with a staff member from the University Housing Office was designed to explain to freshmen applying to Houses exactly what happens to their applications, and the hazards of trying to "beat the computer."

In addition to these meetings, the staff members have knocked on freshman doors, both to talk and to distribute free copies of a paperback entitled The Student Guide to Sex on Campus.

Although many students turned up for several of the open houses, callers have not increased as a result of the publicity provided by these meetings.

The publicity efforts continue at Room 13, but the main bulk of its work still consists of the every night, all-night vigils in the basement of Stoughton Hall. The staff members work in coed pairs, each person spending a night at Room 13 every 12 to 15 days, but never with the same partner. Their job is to answer the two telephone lines and talk with anyone who knocks at their door at the north end of the basement.

When no calls or visitors come in, the on-duty staffers are free to talk to each other, do some reading, or sleep in beds provided for them. When it gets late, they usually go to sleep with the understanding that at any time they may have to get up to deal with a surprise problem or to talk to a lonely voice.

"We are not professionals, and we don't try to be professionals," Bigda said. This sentence is on the lips of every staffer. "We try not to give advice," says co-director Yoss. "Rather, we try to help people decide what the issue is for them, to help sort out things for themselves. After all, they have to face the consequences themselves."

Yoss maintains that there is a definite need for the services of Room 13, "to provide a place where students can talk to other students about anything. Referrals are available and an ear is willing to listen."

The volunteers train themselves to listen well and long. Although only two out of the present 26 student volunteers at Room 13 are psychology majors, all volunteers must enter a training program in order to work there. Each volunteer must be interviewed, undergo a week-long orientation period and participate in weekly "supervision groups" presided over by two counselors from the Bureau of Study Counsel and one from the University Health Services.

In these training groups, which consist of nine or ten students and one advisor, the trainees participate in "role playing," in which one student plays the part of a counselor, one of a counselee. The seven other students look on as the first two act out a hypothetical conference. When their discussion ends, the spectators join the actors for a discussion of how the problem could better have been handled.