Word: shs
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...were so shocked," Elizabeth R. Mason '81, one of the fifteen SHS board members last year, said of the survey's findings. She shouldn't have been. The so-called guides--selected on the basis of a brief application form--were let loose in September with only a pep talk from Kyriazi. Although the SHS charter empowers the board to "conduct ongoing evaluations of the program" and to dismiss guides who fail to "perform required duties," board members never checked up on the guides until January. "By the time we realized that we had done something wrong...
Convinced that what worked at U/Penn would work at Harvard, Kyriazis approached Henry C. Moses, dean of freshmen, in the spring of 1978. Moses agreed SHS guides might introduce students to house life, but feared the guides would try to offer academic or personal counseling which they were not qualified to provide. "We do not want students doing what they are not supposed to do," Moses announced soon after SHS took shape...
Shlomchik noted that Moses was "exceptionally resistant" from the start. "He was afraid we would fail and then his name would be associated with it," Shlomchik said, theorizing that if Moses had "the guts to support us," he might have prevented SHS's downfall...
...However, SHS could not blame Moses for its fundamental weaknesses. Faced with over 1000 applications from entering students, SHS stumbled over the problem of attaching guides to freshmen...
...upperclassmen who filled out applications randomly distributed by Kyriazis and friends the preceding spring. No guides were interviewed. "The board read the applications and as long as the people seemed to have common sense and took the questions seriously, we accepted them," Mason said. Mason asserted that SHS doesn't need people "with special talents," because it provides "informal counseling." "We just need people with a desire to help fresmen," she added. By January it was clear that counseling--informal or otherwise--was in very short supply. To help choose freshmen for their absent "friends," Kyriazis decided to consult...