On April 9, 1969, Franklin L. Ford, then Dean of the Faculty, was forced by members of SDS to leave his office in University Hall. Later that day, on the steps of Widener Library, Ford announced through a bullhorn that "in order to minimize the risk of any spread of violence, the Yard will be closed until further notice." Early the next morning. Cambridge and other police entered the Yard and forcibly ejected the 200 students occupying the building.

Six years later Ford, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, says that things are very different. "I feel it's like old times, before the late '60s. There was then an atmosphere of hostility that is now behind us." However, he adds, there is one aspect of life at Harvard that remains affected by the acrimonious events of 1969: life in the Houses. "The scars have shown here," he says.

A substantial part of the senior faculty would agree with Ford, according to a recent sampling of professors' opinion on how present-day faculty-undergraduate relations compare with those in the politically-charged days of the late '60s. While almost all agree that the ension once so prevalent on campus has dissipated, many professors--though by no means all--say they feel that contact between faculty and students has suffered, particularly on an informal basis. While formal relations, centering on the classroom, have been largely restored to normal, they feel, more personal communication, especially interaction in the Houses, will suffer from the divisions traceable to the occupation of University Hall in 1969.

Dean Rosovsky, who wrote in his recent "Letter to the Faculty" that "we are near the end of a turbulent decade" when "social and political issues frequently dominated academic discourse," says that "one can't ignore the effects of the turmoil this university went through in 1969-70. A lot of faculty members lost a great deal of enthusiasm for dealing with the student body."

As a result, he explains, many faculty members withdrew from involvement with undergraduates, angered over the forced diversion of their attention from important academic work to political issues external to the University. Efforts to involve the University in protest over the Vietnam War. Rosovsky claims, "Politically, psychologically, and in every other way were costly to all of us."

And the memory of those days has lingered, he explains. "I'd compare it to a severe illness. If you are sick, it takes a long time to recuperate energy to perform your task well again. And if you were sick once, it is a reminder that you can become sick again." The dean says that he is concerned that the same events might repeat themselves.

Rosovsky explains that it is the extracurricular aspects of education, and not the academic ones, that have suffered the effects of the "illness" plaguing the faculty, "It is not a question of the classroom," he explains. Professors' teaching obligations have been maintained, but more personal relations, such as those involving time together at meals in the Houses, "have been hurt by the upheavals in 1969-70," he says.

Rosovsky stresses that the memory of 1969 is only one element contributing to the diminished degree of contact between faculty and students. As he wrote in his letter, the increased specialization of the faculty over the last two decades, together with a trend toward hiring professors with many associations outside of Harvard, has resulted in an underestimation of the importance of the College. However, Rosovsky says, the problem is there. "A human being doesn't wipe experience from his mind. If I had never gone through the events of 1969-70, this episode wouldn't remain on my mind as it will for my active career."

Rosovsky is more willing than most to talk about his personal response to the years of student protest. Yet other members of the faculty, while more reticent about their own attitudes, agree that the impact of the late '60s is still substantial.

For Robert J. Kiely, Dean of undergraduate education and professor of English, the disturbances of 1969-70 "stressed, in a way that's never been gotten over," that the nature of faculty-student relations is one of "contention."

While things have changed from the time when faculty members found not just themselves but also their departments and courses challenged. Kiely says, it is still true that "students want to talk more about what's wrong with the University than about Keats. Students have forgotten how to approach professors in terms of subject matters. And nothing is less interesting to most professors than that. If someone asks me to a House to talk about James Joyce, it's very appealing to do that," continues Kiely, who is also master of Adams House. "But if someone asks me to a House to discuss credit versus non-credit of English Department requirements, year-in year-out, month-in month-out, day-in day-out, I find it very boring."

While other senior faculty acknowledge the impact of the immediate events of 1969, they place the occurrences of that year in the context of broader social and educational change. "Student unrest and faculty response were symptomatic of a hardening of attitude that was going on earlier," posits Alan Heimert, chairman of the English Department and master of Eliot House. One of the things particularly bothering students was what they saw as the "dehumanization" of the University beginning in the '50s, with an increased emphasis on research and graduate instruction and a concomitant reduction in the amount of time devoted to undergraduate teaching.

What happened in 1969, according to Heimert, was political protest expressed partly as a countercultural life-style, including both the adoption of a new mode of dress as a defiant act as well as the repudiation of verbal communication--"flicks rather than books." "The murky McLuhanism lurking around was a direct challenge to the identity of faculty members," many of whom were attacked in "ad hominem" terms, says Heimert.

But what upset the faculty more than anything else in those years. Heimert says was students' "mindless sympathy" with activities that posed a threat to the functioning of a free university. "What you got in 1968-69 was a truly overt generational anger. There was a knee-jerk support for anything done by the young, and suspicion of anything done by the old."

In emphasizing the antagonism caused by the countercultural life style of students in the '60s. Heimert is touching on the aspect of life in the College--the general attitudes and values of students--that senior faculty most frequently address when they discuss student faculty relations. While they recognize that the political volatility of Harvard undergraduates has weakened considerably, professors still often view student life with skepticism, particularly the life they encounter in the Houses.