The trouble for many students seems to start freshman year, when advising is narrowed to focus exclusively on every up and down of the freshman year experience. Evangeline Morphos, a senior adviser for several years in the Yard, says the Freshman Dean's Office (FDO) emphasizes too much "how to get through freshman year, rather than helping students to look at college as a four-year plan." Henry C. Moses, dean of freshmen, disagrees that the freshman advising system places too much emphasis on counseling on personal problems. He points out that proctors aren't the only source of advice--64 non-resident advisers sit on the Freshman Board of Advisers, but few students make use of them.

Proctors, Morphos says, are not qualified to serve as academic advisers. But about 75 per cent of freshmen are assigned to their proctor as their academic adviser, isolating them from seeking faculty advice from the start. Students "need to be fired up about academics here," Morphos says, but the FDO's approach "too often is to offer extracurricular options as an alternative to connecting with the University."

The Freshman Task Force (FTF) underscores this emphasis on counseling freshmen on what to do about the little problems, rather than advising them how to look at the bigger picture of how to evolve a fulfilling academic life or how to seek advice. Laura Riley, one of six students on FTF, says FTF chooses its representatives on the basis of an essay and two interviews, where they are tested out on case study questions such as, "What would you do if someone said that their roommate is homesick and wants to drop out?"

Students Helping Students handles the same kinds of minor crises, but last fall the Crimson reported that most of its advisers never contacted their freshman charges. These organizations do fill a need for off-the-cuff, friendly, if not strictly professional, conversations. But they don't prepare students for the transfer in their upperclassmen years to seeking advice from faculty.

The 1978 Horner report on advising and counseling pinpointed this lack of coordination between freshmen and upperclass years as one of Harvard's major advising trouble spots. The report states, "It became clear that the change in student initiative and behavior required by the shift to advising done within an academic department or framework and by the tutorial staff in the Houses is, for many students a source of considerable confusion, frustration, and misunderstanding at the beginning of a very important and difficult year."

By the time freshmen leave the Yard, the damage has already been done. Perceived isolation from faculty carries over into the next three years. Furthermore, because much of this experience is so well-orchestrated, so overly planned by the FDO from Freshman Week on, students expect to have their academic lives as clearly mapped out for them for the rest of their time at Harvard.