Proctors must usually take responsibility for 20 or more advisees, in addition to the informal advising they provide other students.

But Due says the number of students she advises does not pose a problem.

"[Non-resident advisers] volunteer to do this, so they obviously think advising is an important thing to do," she says, "but they have Faculty meetings and commitments all the time. We live here, so our time is more flexible--we can see students at 7:30 in the morning and 11:30 at night."

But not everyone agrees.

Room 13 Co-Director Ellen Schneider '01 believes proctors have too much on their plates, forcing first-years to look elsewhere for advice or support.

"[First-years] just don't really understand where they are and what they're doing," Schneider says. "They really look to their advisers to help them, and from my experience they just don't get that reinforcement or encouragement, or any sort of direction really. In terms of proctor advising, they have so many kids to deal with that it's hard spending a lot of time on any one student."

Other colleges get around the problem of giving residential proctors additional advising duties by assigning non-resident advisers to all incoming students and by assigning fewer students per adviser.

At Stanford, first-years are assigned to faculty, staff or graduate students who each advise six to eight students, writes Lori S. White, head of the Stanford Undergraduate Advising Center, in an e-mail message.