Elizabeth M. Hicks, associate director of financial aid, says the financial aid office might have to reevaluate its term-time and summer earning standards.

A new schedule could affect the amount of time students can spend on extra-curricular activities, and some students groups might have trouble gearing up for second-semester activities after the long break.

"The jazz band wouldn't appreciate it very much because ensemble practice is very important," Eric K. Rubin '80, former treasurer of the Harvard-Radcliffe Band, says.

But basketball coach Frank McLaughlin says he would favor pre-Christmas exams, calling them especially beneficial for the freshmen who would enter the bulk of a long season with their first set of exams behind them. McLaughlin says athletes would undoubtedly have to return during that mid-winter break to play a portion of their schedule.

Hockey coach Bill Cleary's view of a winter without students is less optimistic. "I'd hate it if we had to play a whole month without the students here for moral support," Cleary says.

But those breaks in the season are part of the reason some people would dislike the proposed changes. Courses with heavy reading lists require time for assimilation and reflection. Under the current calendar, Thanksgiving and Christmas vacation provide respite in the fall, and spring break and a longer Reading Period add extra time in the spring.

"I'm not convinced that calendar reform would be that much of a good thing--it would make Reading Period and exams very tight," Skip Stern '81, a member of the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life, says.

The assembly's proposal cuts several days of instruction as well as failing to include freshman week at all. Margaret E. Law, University registrar, planned sample calendars for the next two years with exams before Christmas but no changes in the number of days of instruction or exams. According to her projections, registration would fall on about August 26 for the next two years, with Freshman Week beginning on August 19.

Law has said it is not possible to cut any exam days because of the number of courses offered, unless the College scheduled three exams in one day. To start classes after Labor Day, as the assembly has proposed, students would have to miss still more days of instruction or Reading Period.

"I'm not willing to come to work on August 15," William H. Bossert, McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics and master of Lowell House, says, adding that it takes at least two weeks before the start of classes to prepare for a course. Bossert also rejects the idea of shortening the number of days in each term. "It's very difficult in 33 or 35 lectures to be able to give what we're trying to give anyway," he says. Fox also says he is not willing to cut into instructional time unless he has an exceptionally compelling reason.

And so the issue of changing the calendar comes down to a familiar one for the Faculty, pitting educational against financial interests. Olsen says a quarter of a million dollars in energy savings ought to offset the hassles of the change. "I never said there weren't going to be problems. I just said they could be worked out," he says. But Fox says he must see savings of more on the order of a half million dollars before considering educational concessions. "It would have to be a significant amount in savings for us to make an educational decision that many would deplore," he says.

The committee the assembly has proposed would study the energy question and perhaps even commission outside firms to find concrete figures for the Faculty to consider in weighing the tradeoffs. But Fox, clearly tired of the subject after its intense discussion a few years ago, says, "We have had a committee that was formed to study it and they did study it and they found it unfeasible and it didn't go away."

As an academic institution, the College will probably continue to give priority to educational concerns, at least until advisers from within instead of students from without bring up the energy problem. "As oil hits higher and higher marks," Olsen argues, "they will have to look at it. The ironic thing is that they're going to have to do it eventually anyway." For now, however, administrators are not sold on the idea, and something more than the assembly's $250,000 predicted savings would be needed to convince them to incur the educational costs they see in the proposal.