College Adds Personal Touch to Frosh Advising

Despite the controversy surrounding the creation of the new freshman peer advising program last spring, it kicked off this week to the satisfaction of many of its undergraduate advisers.

The program is intended to match freshmen with an upperclassman for advising on academic, extracurricular, and residential matters. Students were initially upset when the new advising system was first introduced last spring as a replacement to the popular prefect program.

Under the new system, peer advisers will work with about 10 freshmen who share a common academic or extracurricular interest with their adviser.

The adviser is expected to meet individually and in groups with these students.

In addition, the advisers have also been assigned to specific freshman entryways. The advisers assigned to each entryway will plan study breaks, similar to the role formerly played by prefects.

Most peer advisers arrived on campus Thursday to attend a day-long training session on Friday. It was announced at the training that peer advisers’ budget—$30 per advisee per semester—would come in the form of Crimson Cash.

It is still unclear how peer advisers will be able to receive reimbursements for items purchased at stores that do not accept Crimson Cash, and several peer advisers expressed confusion about how a Crimson Cash-based system of reimbursement would work.

“It’ll make it more complicated to decide what to do with your two groups,” adviser Richie E. Schwartz ’08 said, but he added that he thought that the system would prove less complicated than it initially seemed.

“Since we’re aware of it from the very beginning, it’ll be easy for us to make the appropriate budget decisions,” Schwartz said.

Brooks Lamber-Sluder ’05, program manager for the peer advising program, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Undergraduate Council Student Affairs Committee chair Ryan A. Petersen ’08, a former prefect and current peer adviser, said he liked to think of the new program as “prefecting-plus.”

“It retains the social aspect of the prefect program, but it adds the academic advising that students need,” Petersen said.

Friday’s training session did not set forth a specific policy for peer advisers who see their advisees at a party. The prefect program did not allow prefects to drink in front of their prefectees, and prefects were expected to leave a party if first-years in their entryway were in attendance. According to peer adviser Eva E.M. Schlitz ’09, the message given at Friday’s training was for peer advisers to use their judgement to preserve their advising relationship with their students.

—Staff writer Brittney L. Moraski can be reached at bmoraski@fas.harvard.edu.