"I'm sure a lot of students feel disappointed," Engel said, but the English Department "offers quite a number of courses now, and, by and large, students who can demonstrate qualification are getting into those courses."

Byker, Fitzgerald and Engel refer to the "qualifications" of students admitted to writing courses, but the standards of quality held by instructors has piqued several students.

The writing teachers here "definitely have a very defined opinion of what is good writing, and it is not experimental," Glazier said.

He compared the literature they hold in high esteem with "the stuff you read in The New Yorker." He said the prevailing literary opinion is "tradition bound," concerned more with content and theme than style, technique, and innovative ways of telling the story.

"I felt that I was writing in the wrong direction for them (the writing faculty) and so I didn't exist for them," Glazier adds.

Both students and teachers involved in Option III take issue with Glazier's criticism. Marc Granetz '78 said last week that most instructors are "extremely open to experimental writing, but most of what they've seen hasn't been that good."

Jane H. Shore, Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on English, said last week that the New Yorker characterization is "absolutely not true." She added that several faculty members are doing "very experimental work" and no "really good teacher" would "steer a student in one particular way of writing."

However, Glazier does not stand alone in his impressions. Mahoney said that in some classes "teachers pressure you to write in a certain way." Particularly in English C she said that she felt "a lot of pressure" and didn't feel that she was "being encouraged to write the way I wanted to write."

Writing courses at Harvard "encourage a great deal of freedom for students," Fitzgerald said, adding that he "would be surprised if instructors were ungenerous toward free experiment in writing." However, he also maintains that what one "ultimately wants is writing that gives satisfaction to both the writer and the reader. To obtain that, some standard has to be kept."

"There are standards by which writing can be judged," Shore said. Those standards are "very high" for Option III, she added, "but when you read a good manuscript you know it's really good, and you know why."

At all levels on which writing is pursued here, a combination of quantitative and qualitative limitations apparently discourages some students, especially those who insist they have little pretention to ever becoming great writers, but who would still like to take some writing courses.

Jon E. Polonsky '78 took a creative writing course two years ago to fulfill his expository writing requirement. He said last week that he "wouldn't have minded continuing," but he "wasn't up to the level of English C."

Students have "no way to do writing here without getting into a rough, intense course," Polonsky said, adding that students "go into it seriously or not at all." He said "informal workshops for people who just like to write but don't intend to publish for The New Yorker" are needed because at present those people do not have "much opportunity to get feedback" on their creative work.

John A. Spritz, an English major who said last week he was "scared off" by Option III because he had heard it was "rather confining," agrees with Polonsky that very little feedback or encouragement comes to writers at Harvard. "Most of the writing here is going on quietly in the middle of the night. People put stuff in drawers and you never hear about it," Spritz said.

Many of the students selected for Option III also believe writing courses should be more widely available. Judy Baumel '77, an Option III major, said last week "everyone should be allowed the exposure, though I suspect you wouldn't produce too many good writers."