Still in a half-befogged state from Yale weekend, a member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club [HRDC] stumbled into the Loeb on a recent Monday morning to serve his eight-hour slot behind the box office window. Puttering through a collection of weekend mail, tattered ticket stubs and dog-eared programs, he caught sight of an unfamiliar sheet of stationery and did a double take. Someone had slipped the Loeb an anonymous note. The letterhead, The Yale Dramatic Society. The message, a poem:

Good night, poor Harvard

Harvard, good night.

You've got our ex-dean,

He'll take your lights.

Good night, poor Harvard,

It serves you right.

When the big Brustein gets after you,

Harvard, good night.

While the verse itself was decidedly third-rate, the warning came through clearly enough. Robert deButts, president of the Yale Dramat, later denied responsibility for this vaguely literary attempt, although he conceded the poem was the handiwork of a Dramat member. He also conceded the verse's sentiment was close to his own.

The love-hate relationship between undergraduates at Yale and Robert S. Brustein, dean of the graduate Yale School of Drama since 1966 and director of the Yale Repertory Theater, has become something of a tradition, as basic as Yale-Harvard rivalry. But it is a tradition, many Yale undergraduates say, founded on specific grievance--grievances accumulated over Brustein's 12-year term at Yale.

The conflict is two-pronged: First is an endless battle between undergraduates and Brustein's drama school over stage time, access to the shop and props. Second is the widespread feeling among undergraduates that Brustein has little respect for their productions, and even less affection for the undergrads as a whole.

Brustein views it differently. He claims "amateur theatrics" are "very important in developing an appetite for drama" and as "a preparation for professional theater." Dramat members counter that they don't appreciate serving as the hors d'oeuvres to Brustein's Yale Rep entree.

The circumstances surrounding the conflict have a long history, by this time obscured in a confusing mesh of accusation and recrimination.

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