Every fall, for instance, the dean of admissions and about four other staff members travel to Wallingford, Ct., where they spend two days interviewing students at Choate Rosemary Hall. In January, a single staff member returns to Choate Rosemary in order to interview "post graduates" (students who attend prep schools for one year after graduating from other secondary schools) for whom a fall interview would hold limited value. According to Susan Moriarty, a college guidance counselor at Choate Rosemary, the January trip is "essentially for the benefit of the athletic P.G.s [post-graduates]."

According to Richardson, the admissions staff makes comparable visits to about 40 other schools. He estimates that of the roughly 700 "man-days" staff members spend on the road, about 200 are spent on these trips.

Although many eastern colleges court the prep school and private school students, the interest Harvard displays toward them appears to be unusual. Moriarty said that of the hundred-plus colleges that send representatives to Choate Rosemary, Harvard alone provides one-on-one interviews with a staff member for all applicants. "Yale, for example, comes here with several alumni interviewers, but only one man from the admissions staff," Moriarty said.

Moriarty says that Harvard's trip to Choate Rosemary is purely a matter of convenience because "most of our kids who apply are very anxious to check Harvard out, so nearly all of them visit Harvard."

In an interview last week, Jewett explained that the function of Harvard's trips to prep schools is not primarily to recruit, but to provide each applicant the staff interview to which he is entitled. "If you're going to talk about would resources of time and effort, to have a hundred Exeter students making a trip down" is a much greater waste, he said. Harvard does not grant interviews to prep school students when they visit Harvard.

After listening to Moriarty's observation that most prep school seniors do in fact visit Harvard, Jewett provided a different explanation for Harvard's travelling policy: "We can't just automatically fit them all in. They come on the weekends lots of times. We're not going to sit around and interview them on Sundays."

Linden Smith, director of undergraduate admissions at Yale, says she finds Harvard's practice of sending a full team of admissions officers to secondary schools unfeasible. "We can't afford to send a team of admissions officers up to an Exeter or an Andover," Smith said, adding, "We find it much less expensive to interview these students on campus."

EVEN IF MINORITY RECRUITMENT is only a secondary responsibility for most staff members and alums who do admissions work, one element of the recruitment effort--the student recruitment office--exists entirely for the purpose of minority recruitment.

Jewett likes to speak well of this program. When asked where the main thrust of Harvard's minority recruitment effort lies, he responds that, "While the main impetus for recruitment has got to come from staff, students--certainly in the areas they focus on--would probably be at least equal in terms of what they produce.

"Our general feeling has been to incorporate their efforts and use them as best we could," he says, adding, "We clearly wouldn't do it if we did not think they were helpful."

The students say, however, that their effectiveness is severely limited by a lack of support from the Admissions Office. The staff has acted repeatedly in less than a supportive manner, they say.

'Within the budget we've got to deal with, I think we're spending all we could on minority recruitment without cutting into other things I think are equally important.' - L. Fred Jewett '57, dean of admissions

The student recruiters maintain that the Admissions Office does not provide them with the logistical underpinnings necessary for a successful recruitment program. Their budget for the admissions office is barely adequate, they say, and this year it must cover a greater number of expenses than ever before. Last year, for example, the students had complete access to office telephones, but now they must finance most of their calls out of the budget allotted to them.

Another complaint students raise is that the admissions office saddles them with various rules and procedural guidelines amounting to little more than "bureaucratic red tape." One such guideline requires the students to send out letters in the fall to all the minority students on the Search Lists, before they may begin any other form of recruiting. In light of the letter "official Harvard" sends these students, the minority recruiters say their own letter is a duplication of efforts.

The complaint about bureaucratic red tape is not in itself terribly important, but the rules and guidelines they criticize may be indicative of a generally negative attitude among regular admissions officers toward the program. According to Enrique Moreno '78, one of the students who has worked longest in the program, the recruiters "are always at square one with the admissions staff. Harvard has no long-range plans for us. Each year I've been here we've gone knocking on Jewett's door, asking for funds. Each year, we've been getting them, but we are constantly forced to legitimate ourselves, adopting at best a defensive position."