I WAS EVICTED last week from Dunster House, and it wasn't pretty. I was a squatter in I-entry--living with just a few clothes, a bedspread and a pillow. I was busy writing for The Crimson's Commencement issues. I figured that when dorm crew came, I would tidy my stuff on my bed and leave.

The superintendent did not like that plan.

First he sent dorm crew kids with mops and scrubbers and brooms. Then painters, a locksmith and window people. Finally I was awakened one morning by a man standing over my bed bellowing in Spanish.

After I left that day, my clothes and bedding were confiscated. Someone in the super's office told me I could reclaim them by surrendering my keys. If I was caught in my room again, they said, they would change the locks.

This did not surprise me. I didn't think staying past deadline was a big deal, but I was in fact breaking College rules. The super was just doing his job.

I wouldn't have given this much further thought if my eye had not fallen upon the nameplate of a first-floor room in my entry as I was moving out. It was the tutor's suite. The lights were on.

Tutors, you see, need not adhere to any ordinary restrictions on College housing. Their suites are available year-round, if they are returning for another term. And even if they are quitting or have not been rehired, they have until July 1 to move out.

LIKE MANY STUDENTS, I have been disappointed by the advising network at Harvard. My proctor in Grays West, a decent person who had lived in that entry for 22 years, was an admissions officer. Even in the turmoil of my first term at the College, he had virtually no comment while signing my study card.

In Dunster, I have also found the tutor system to be lacking. Besides the senior tutor, only two of the dozen or more tutors even know me by name. I haven't engaged with any of them over some intellectual matter. I haven't received course advice from them, or had a fresh insight into a tutor's field of study.

In plain terms, the tutor system is a failure. At a College which assumes that the houses are adequate to meet the social and outside-the-classroom intellectual needs of its students (and thus consistently puts off building a student center), tutors have an enormous responsibility conferred upon them.

As far as I can tell, they haven't even begun to live up to it. The Committee on House Life this year has taken up the issue of recharging intellectual life in the houses. House seminars and discussion tables are oft-cited means of working toward that end.

Still, I've yet to see any College or house official recognize the prevalent opinion among undergraduates--that drastic action and a complete overhaul is necessary to revive the tutor system.

The irony in my eviction last week is apparent. I paid thousands of dollars for housing this year and was given very little slack by the house when I needed a place to live for a few extra days.

My entry tutor, on the other hand, lives in Dunster for free, has two large rooms and a bathroom at her disposal--all with almost no restrictions. This is the same tutor I've spotted outside the suite only four or five times the entire year (once in the dining hall, once while breaking up a party in my room, two or three times at study breaks).

Tutors complain that students do not take the initiative in getting to know them. Perhaps that's true. But if any of the tutors were to learn my name, and make themselves available, I might be more inclined to do so.