The so-called early calendar made its annual appearance around Faculty-debating circles this week, but unlike other years, the issue has taken on a whole new context.

In the past, as when the Faculty voted down in 1973 a first-semester exams before vacation proposal, the issue was always one of giving Harvard students an earlier crack at the summer job market.

"But now there is a new and very important consideration: an energy problem," Dean Rosovsky, who reportedly favors a September 7 Opener with a five-week winter break, said yesterday.

Rosovsky will have to compile a pretty impressive log of energy saving figures before he can even get to the point where the Faculty will debate the issue.

The Faculty Council is the first obstacle in his path, and although the group was receptive to switching to an earlier calendar in 1973, it drafted no legislation on the issue all last year.

A plan much like the September 7 one took third last week in a student opinion poll taken by the Educational Resources Group that showed that more than half the 2000 sampled favored a plan with an earlier start and close and exams before a four-week vacation.

But on Thursday, members of the Committee on Undergraduate Education apparently bucked student opinion and approved the September 7 plan by a 9-1 show of hands.

"I hey expressed great reticence but that is the way they voted." Francis M. Pipkin, associate dean of the Faculty for the colleges, said yesterday.