STUDENT WAITERS

This has been an unfortunate year for self-supporting students at the college. Summer earnings, because of general business depression, have been below average. In addition, the opening of two new houses has decreased restaurant employment to a degree. Next year holds no promise of improvement, and the opening of the five new house units will be a great blow to students working in eating places. The administrators of Lowell and Dunster Houses have rejected the plan of having student waiters. Among the several reasons given to support this attitude it was not mentioned that student waiters do not harmonize with high tables and heraldic trappings. Longer breakfast hours in vogue at these houses are not incompatible with student service, as investigation of the Business School dining halls would reveal. Students living in the houses must pay a minimum board charge; they cannot work for their board in the house; they cannot work in restaurants, the most common way of earning expenses among students. The houses, instituted to democratise the college, put their benefits beyond the reach of less affluent students.

The question becomes one of preference and not of merits. These new houses will be unburdened by the traditions of Magdalen College; they are named after men who were an integral part of a more democratic world. It would be a fitting tribute to them if the new houses be made more American than the first two units. If but three houses should adopt the student waiter system, there would be employment for sixty or more undergraduates to whom work is the only means to education. Not only that, but a lesson in democracy would be taught both to waiters and diners. Harvard's roots may extend to England, but her nourishment comes from a more simple society. The system of student waiters would be a reversion to true origins.