Even those faculty members--such as Franklin Ford--who otherwise recognize a normalization of student-faculty relations, perceive a deterioration in the atmosphere of the Houses. James S. Duesenberry, chairman of the Economics Department, while claiming that professors in Economics are recovering from the political controversies that have improperly engrossed the department's energy, simultaneously feels that the Houses are now on the decline. "There is a weaker attachment to the Houses than there used to be. The faculty used to enjoy the attachment. It was an amorphous thing, but it did lend something to student-faculty relations. The change may be a by-product of 1969--the habit of getting to the Houses regularly may have been broken. There is a problem in maintaining momentum."

In the view of David Riesman. Ford Professor of the Social Sciences, the countercultural revolution has "made the Houses less attractive to older faculty." The "cult of spontaneity" espoused by young people, he says, meant that "anything could happen." Riesman cites an incident to illustrate his point. "A couple of years ago my wife and I invited a group of Radcliffe students to come over for tea. Not all responded to the note we sent out, so we called them. Several told us on the day of the tea that they were coming. In the end, only four of eight telling us they would come actually came. I should have written them a letter to say they acted wrongly."

Another inheritance from the late '60s. Riesman feels, is the "democratization" of the Houses. As an example he cites the Senior Common Room gatherings in Quincy House, with which he is affiliated. "We used to eat on the dais in the dining hall for lunch." he says. "It gave tutors a chance to talk with me. Then it was thought wrong to have senior faculty cut off from students." Now the members of the Senior Common Room are expected to mix with students in the dining hall. As a result of such changes. Riesman says, many professors view the Houses as "locales into which one doesn't venture."

Oscar Handlin. Pforzheimer University Professor agrees: "The spirit of the Houses has changed. There was once much more involvement with the Houses, which were social and intellectual centers." Handlin attributes the change to a transformation in the nature of contact between students and faculty. "A lot of the relations that had prevailed down to 1966-68 later came to seem paternalistic. Now we work according to customer and client obligations. You do what is required, and you don't do anything more. Undergraduates don't realize that there's something personal missing."

Harvey C. Mansfield Jr., chairman of the Government Department, also feels that elements of the "youth culture" have reinforced the barrier between faculty and students. "When I came to Harvard as a freshman, you had to wear a coat and tie in the dining hall. You had to have gray hair to tell the difference between a professor and a student. Now college kids dress like high school kids." When a professor walks into a House. Mansfield, an associate of Eliot House, says, "he feels conspicuous and out-of-place."

"The by-word of this generation is 'informality,'" Mansfield continues. This has attractive qualities to it, among them friendliness and easy-goingness, he says. But one thing "conspicuously absent" is "formality--respect, pride, daring, sacrifice. If a faculty member wants respect for his learning, his years, his position, if he wants conversation to not be laced with vogue words, he must stay in the Faculty Club." However, Mansfield says, he eats in Eliot House at least once a week.

Such perceptions of an alien atmosphere in the Houses stemming from a widened gap between generational attitudes and cultural modes has led to efforts among some Housemasters to establish more formal channels of communication.

James Vorenberg, professor of Law, who is completing his second year as master of Dunster House, says that unplanned contact between students and associates of the House is rarely successful. "It makes no sense, as I tried last year, to urge senior faculty members to just drop in for a meal by themselves. It's awkward for them." What is important, he feels, is to identify those students who are interested in eating with a particular faculty member. "In general, if a meeting, talk, or dinner is planned, they are usually successful, either on a small or large basis. The job of Housemaster is to keep trying to find ways to fit particular students together with particular faculty members."

Kiely compares his role in Adams House, where he has been master for two years now, with that of his predecessors. Before 1969, Kiely says, when there was more faculty involvement in the Houses, masters didn't have to work so hard. "At that time there was less organized activity. A lot of good things were going on at the initiative of students and faculty members.

It was typical then, after a meal, for students and professors to go into the "Senior" Common Room and continue talking about John Donne or whatever it was. That almost never happens now on its own. Now it has to be more organized."

Comparisons between "then" and "now" raise the question of just how different student-faculty relations were before the supposed watershed of the late 60s. The image of a "golden age" of faculty involvement with students was conjured up in a 1973 Washington Post article written by a 1958 graduate returning to Cambridge to sample the mood on campus. "In my day at Adams House," Stephen Isaacs observed, "any day at lunch or dinner in the House, all the tutors and many professors would be there, eating with the students, counseling them, joking with them. In effect teaching them. For all practical purposes, this aspect of the House system has disappeared."

Zeph Stewart, long-time master of Lowell House, said that such a conception is "ridiculous." "I have been living in Houses steadily since 1948," Stewart says. "In all that time I would say there has been one change. As long as there was a separate table for faculty, a fair number came and ate together. When they dissolved it in the late '50s, instead of mixing with students, they just didn't come." Other than that, Stewart claims, there have been no changes in House life, whether pre-or post-1969, "I've found I've never been able to get faculty members over 35 or 40 years old to find an easy coming-and-going relationship with the House. This hasn't changed much."

Stephen A. Marglin, professor of Economics, says that faculty reluctance to become involved with undergraduates is not a new phenomenon. "I've been around Harvard for 20 years," says Marglin, who attended Harvard as an undergraduate, "and there has never been faculty involvement with students. This is true for before, in, and after 1969."

More Paper Shuffling

One post-1969 change about which few senior faculty members would disagree is the unparalleled expansion of the time they must devote to administrative work, usually in the form of serving on committees. As University officials came to realize the need for a broadening of the decision-making process, professors in many cases have been asked to serve on several of the governance bodies that have proliferated in the last six years. While the reaction to this newly-required service ranges from enthusiasm over the democratization of power to distaste for the burden of administration, faculty members are united in the belief that committee work is a time-consuming process that substantially limits the amount of attention they can give to undergraduates.