FILES ON PARADE

One of the most important, and at the same time, one of the most difficult offices in the University is doubtless that of Secretary to the University for Student Employment. Due to increasing enrollment, more and more men are compelled to work their way through college, and there are many others who choose to do so in order that they may enjoy such advantages as a trip to Europe, first hand experience at earning their own living, or the chance for early matrimony.

Harvard, like most other leading universities, maintains an office which acts as a clearing house for the supply and demand of labor of some sort or another. The college, basically, of course, owes the student no chance for a paying position while he is enrolled, though the catalogue of the University encourages men of small means to believe that the difficulties of working one's way through Harvard are not greater than the advantages gained by a Harvard education.

The fact that the Employment Bureau was reorganized on a larger scale a few years ago seems to indicate that the University was of the opinion that working students were not undesirables, but were, in fact, assets. The new system under a new head promised more and better opportunities for a greater number of students. Finding a job, at best a hard task, was to be made easier, and the annual reports of the Secretary for Student Employment--if figures are to be taken as trustworthy--have shown that the Bureau has rendered valuable service.

But while the number of men registered at the Bureau and the amount of money earned through its agency are said to have increased, there have been reports by some of the many men who work their way through Harvard that things were not quite as they appeared.

Red tape, it is to be feared, has entered into the Bureau to such an extent that the individual, his rights and interests, has ceased to count: filing systems, ever more elaborate, even to the point of completely baffling the office force; questionnaires, ever more personal, so much so that the applicant for work must write home before he can proceed intelligently; ever increasing routine, requiring reports and whatnot, under dire threat of being blacklisted at the Bureau. The tyranny of so-called efficiency has reached new heights this fall with the requirement that applicants file pictures of themselves and a budget for their year's income and proposed expenses with the Secretary for Employment.

It is obvious that in order to put the applicant in touch with a possible employer, the Bureau must have on file the information that prospective employers, will need. The age, experience, and even religion are all facts that the employer, and hence the Bureau, is entitled to know. There are others, but among these is hardly the budget of the employee, the amount of money he has in the bank, and where it came from. It may be argued that the Bureau is interested in the thrift of its proteges, and though this interest might be legitimate on the part of the student's parents or of his house-mother at school, it is no concern of the employer or of the Bureau. How a man spends his money and how much he has, provided he earns it honestly, is no man's business but his own.

Many students who seek work at the Bureau have never before attempted to sell their brains and their muscles, and there are some even who feel ashamed of the necessity of doing so. Men working their way through college are sensitive, however loudly they may boast of how they "made themselves" once "arrived" and writing for The American Magazine. Others, though they are not unaccustomed to work, are indeed, proud of working, are not willing to allow their private affairs--of which their budget is certainly one--to be placed even on the more or less confidential files of the Bureau. And it is annoying, if nothing else, to have to fill out blanks about one's personal affairs, home address, father's name, and et cetera and ad absurdum. No intelligent employer will ask for such information and the sole purpose accomplished by the Bureau in requiring it is to make the sensitive applicant more sensitive and the independent applicant more determined to keep to himself what concerns only himself. The sensitive soul will fill out the blank, depart, and never more return. The independent student will sneer and get a job for himself. In both cases the Bureau fails of its function.

The Bureau, it would seem, is intended to find work for students desiring it. It is not its province to determine whether the applicant is entitled to work: whether, by a better balanced budget, he might get along without working at all; whether he is solvent; whether he spends his money on charity, the movies, cigarettes, or liquor. Assuming that the Bureau is finding better and more employment for more men--a fact that in the cases of certain individuals has not seemed to be the case--the Bureau can further help those who apply to it and can make itself more representative of the University by assuming some Harvard Indifference--indifference to what is not its business.