Yet, house masters and administrators agree that the senior common room should play a role in students' lives as well those of the faculty, so most masters invite undergraduates to at least some SCR events.

However, students usually have better things to do. Only half of the 70 Leverett students who are formally invited to each bi-weekly student-SCR dinner actually attend, Dowling says. And few students attend the North House SCR meetings, although they are always welcome, says Robert Franklin, North House senior tutor.

Even when students show up, they frequently do not interact with faculty members. "The students clog in one corner and the professors are somewhere else,"says Mona A. Khalil '88 of the Adams House SCRmeetings with students. "It's ineffective. I don'tknow what they are trying to achieve."

Given the all around apathy, masters say it isno wonder that faculty and student attendance isfar from complete at SCR events.

For the ever increasing numbers of facultymembers who live outside of Cambridge, attendinghouse events can be a burden. So if facultymembers do not enjoy their first few experiences,they rarely return. "It's really hard to pullfaculty down to the houses, so when you do that,it had better work," says Mather House MasterJeffrey G. Williamson.

The problem is particuarly acute at the newerhouses where the SCRs have not yet becometraditional faculty gathering places, housemasters say. Unless they can provide contact withstudents, those SCRs have very little appeal.

Almost all members of the Faculty of Arts andSciences, and many members of the other faculties,have been been invited to join some house's seniorcommon room, and most of them accept, housemasters say.

The masters also try to divide up the list ofnew faculty members, so that each house gets itsfair share of the departments. One master may say,according to Williamson, "I don't have a chemist,can I have this chemist."

But most students seem more interested inmeeting the professors who teach them than theones assigned to their house.

When the North House masters institutedbiannual student-faculty dinners, where studentsinvite the professor of their choice to dinner,they proved very popular and many other houseshave picked up the tradition. "It is a moreeffective way of getting students and facultymembers together," says North House Master J.Woodland Hastings, because the students andfaculty members already have something in common.

Buddy systems, in which students are assignedto specific SCR members with whom they shareinterests, also work reasonably well, most masterssay, although some faculty members make betterbuddies than others.

And students say that if they know an SCRmember from outside of the house, the in-houserelationship can strengthen the tie. " I know oneSCR member well, [because] he went to school withmy roommate's parent. I'm very good friends withhim," says Cabot resident Dana J. Randall '88.

Despite the house masters' continuing attemptsto bring students and faculty members together, abasic problem remains. Many undergraduates andfaculty members say they simply do not have thetime to establish the informal relationships whichthe houses are supposed to promote.

As a result, Jewett says he believes SCRmembers should play a more formal role in theadvising system. Houses' intellectual life wouldimprove, he says, "If the SCR and residentialtutors were more involved in the tutorialrelationship. The formal [relationship] has got toimprove. It would work better than if they're justa resource."

Formal Intellectual Role