Schrag says he sees the same principle in Ignatiev's tilting at toasters.

"His letter fits into his more general political view," says Schrag. "Rather than just talking about his views, he looks around him and finds a petty little example, a fucking toaster."

But other students say they found Ignatiev's complaint unnecessary and offensive. His active role in house life has not been a constructive one, these students say.

"For a tutor, whose mission is to foster a certain sense of community--for a tutor to argue that Harvard should not provide food for some students, meaning that Dunster House should not be a home for them--is outrageous," says Dunster resident Gordon N. Lederman '93, who is a Crimson editor.

Other critics say that the much-maligned toaster represented only a small concession to kosher students, who face numerous other obstacles in the dining halls.

"So many Jewish students here, they pay the same money and they are not allowed to have a variable meal plan at all," says Dunster resident Anna Fateeva-Berenfeld '93. "All they can eat for lunch is Wonderbread and tuna, and there's no kosher breakfast."

The introduction of the toaster to the dining hall should have been cause for applause rather than attack, says Fateeva-Berenfeld.

"If the University makes conditions for some students better, so that they can eat normally once a day, that is not a good issue to attack," she says.

But Ignatiev says that such an attitude ignores larger issues involving the separation of church and state.

"In this very limited context, Harvard is a public institution," says Ignatiev.

By funding the kosher toaster oven, Harvard is forcing all students who use it to engage in a religious observance, says Ignatiev.

Although Ignatiev says he supports the provision of kosher foods in Dunster House, setting the oven aside for kosher use is, he says, unavoidably "a religious observance."

If Memorial Church compelled everyone who enters it to genuflect, it would be much the same thing, he says.

"Private religious observances should be supported privately," he says. "It's better for everyone that way."

Mixing church and state in contemporary society could lead to "another series of religious wars [like] the Wars of Reformation," says Ignatiev, who seems to view toasters as the thin edge of the catastrophic wedge.