A Legitimate Condemnation

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer will names be with-held.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

In the Graduate School column on March 3, you set forth the reasons for the ruling just issued concerning students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences living in Perkins and Conant Halls. Although it must be admitted that the general purpose of the ruling--that is, to give those who cannot afford high rents an opportunity to live in inexpensive rooms, and to eliminate those perennial inhabitants who, by virtue of full time teaching appointments could (so they say) afford to live elsewhere,--is just and reasonable, the method of carrying the ideal into effect involves a fallacy and contradiction which should be pointed out.

Your article implies the belief that the less wealthy students, to whom the advantages of Conant and Perkins Halls should be given, are those who are taking the full program of four courses, while, on the other hand, the men who hold half-time assistantships, etc., have the same means as the men taking four courses, and that, to these men who are working half-time, the remuneration for this work is an extra income, thus putting them in a more favorable position than the full time students. How such an obviously fallacious theory could find credence among Harvard men is beyond comprehension. Although there are some members of the Graduate School who are taking only half of the prescribed number of courses, for all practical purposes it may be said that all of the men who hold half-time teaching appointments or do other work for pay are doing so because they have little or no other income. To them the half-time pay, ranging around $800-900 on the average, is their total income, and not an extra income over and above that received by the students who are carrying four courses. They are taking only two courses of instruction because of a rule of the school that no student who does outside work to the extent of six hours or more a week may receive credit for a full year's work (page 75 in the Catalogue of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, May 26, 1930).

From the above outline it is obvious that, as the object of the rule is to give the more needy students the advantages of low room rents, the rule goes directly against its avowed purpose and forces the men it hopes to aid to seek accommodation either in more expensive dormitories or in private houses in Cambridge. In attempting to remedy a condition which admittedly needed remedy, another condition is created which is more inequitable and discriminatory. It would seem that the true solution of the problem would have been to shorten the time during which a student is allowed to live in these dormitories and apply the same rule with the privilege of a longer stay to those students who could show that their financial condition demanded it. It is a situation which cannot be governed by a hard and fast rule, but which must be met by the intelligent exercise of discretion by the Faculty of the Graduate School. A. P. L. Turner, Jr. '30.