This proposal has now been put aside, and Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby says, “From the point of view of advising, there was not a compelling argument” for Yale-style housing.

But momentum is still building towards having freshmen take advantage of the resources available in the Houses.

In an interview this month, University President Lawrence H. Summers listed among his accomplishments of the past year a move towards an advising system that would “emphasize a peer-to-peer context” over the next few years.

Apart from interactions in counseling services and extracurriculars, the Prefect Program is the only formal structure through which freshmen have regular access to upperclassmen. But Dingman says the prefects have been constrained by the rules of the program, and have not been able to realize their full potential as advisers.

“Freshmen have appreciated the prefects who have stepped up and done their job, but [prefects] have been told up to now to pretty much not take on academic topics,” Dingman says.

Brown says that peer advising could provide freshmen with knowledge of “specific courses and specific professors, which is something that proctors usually can’t talk about.”

But Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin, who advised 22 freshmen as a proctor this year, says that students will always need someone impartial and unbiased to talk to about sensitive academic issues—such as poor performance in a class—who is not a peer.

“I think upperclass students have a role but I think proctors will continue to shoulder the weight of advising,” McLoughlin says.

Gross emphasizes that freshmen should be able to take advantage of different advising resources in different situations.

“I think freshmen benefit from advice from several different sources,” Gross writes in an e-mail. “Their proctors can give them invaluable advice on adjusting to college, dealing with roommates, staying healthy and getting enough sleep, etc. Upperclassmen can give advice on specific courses and on extracurricular life. And the faculty is the right source for advice on academic matters, especially on the choice of a concentration.”

BUILDING CONNECTIONS

Gross once said that freshman life in the Yard is like being surrounded by a “moat,” a metaphor that indicates the physical and psychological separation between freshmen and upperclassmen.

Several of the social and academic directives from University Hall, many of which will be planned by upperclass students, seem to be an effort to bridge that divide.

Dingman says any changes in the undergraduate housing system, or moves toward peer-to-peer advising, would be executed so freshmen could enjoy “more meaningful interaction with upperclassmen.”

“Here the freshmen are totally disconnected from the houses,” says Eliot House resident tutor Alexander G. Liebman, who spent his undergraduate years at Yale.