Editor's Note: This is the first is an occasional series of open letters to President Neil L. Rudenstine to offer suggestions on how to spend Harvard's "Peace Dividend"--the money we will receive in the coming year as part of the $2 billion fund drive.

DEAR PRESIDENT RUDENSTINE:

We haven't heard much about it lately, but I can only assume that you've begun to think about the University's $2 billion fundraising drive. Postponed after President Bok's departure, the fund drive will probably start in the fall. Now that you have your provost, you can settle down and start adding to the endowment.

A few of the things President Bok and Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III wanted to do with some of the money should be reconsidered.

First, there's the conversion of the Freshman Union into a "Humanities Center." Second, there's the replacement of the Union with a dining hall in Memorial Hall. Finally, there's the use of the basement of Mem Hall as a student center.

These proposed changes are just plain silly, and I'll tell you why.

REMEMBER ALL those alumni from whom you plan to squeeze $2 billion? Well, most of them have fond memories of the Union.

Sure, it's a giant, impersonal dining hall. But we all met many of our friends there.

And if there's one thing Harvard's about, it's tradition. Since the 1930s, when the House system came into being, each new class of Harvard students has eaten its first meal in the Union. Back in the 1930s, if the "Freshman Redbooks" of that era are any guide, the Union served as a real cultural and extracurricular center for Harvard's first-year students.

When the thousands of alumni who still have fond memories of the Union hear that their money would go to take down Teddy Roosevelt's antler chandeliers, to remove the butter pats from the tin ceiling and to destroy the giant fireplaces at each end of the Union dining hall, they'll have second thoughts about giving you money.

Same thing with the use of Mem Hall as the first-year dining hall. It may be a return to age-old tradition--once upon a time, Mem Hall was a dining hall. It's not one, however, that any current alumni remember. And just think, President Rudenstine, what the grease of thousands of pan pizzas each week will do to Mem Hall. A permanent smell of pepperoni won't add to its cultural ambience.

Finally, the student center idea. This is perhaps the worst, at least from the viewpoint of the undergraduates you purport to care so much about. Take a short trip down Mass Ave. some day and peek into MIT's students center. Or think of Columbia's. Or even Georgetown's relatively new student center, completed a few years ago. All of these colleges lag behind Harvard in name recognition and prestige. They all have better facilities for undergraduate activities, however.

Aside from the obvious need to Keep Up With the Joneses, there are many reasons why Harvard should abandon the Mem Hall student center plan--and should think of constructing a real student center.

First, attracting students, Sure, the Harvard name alone serves to attract any number of intelligent students. But you must look to the future. Prestige alone doesn't attract faculty to Harvard; if it did, recent problems in filing the Afro-American Studies and History Departments with young scholars would never have occurred.

Eventually, attracting students will be more of a challenge, as Stanford. Yale, Columbia and other schools of our caliber attract higher number of students. A real student center would help attract students interested in more than just academics.