THE WATCHFUL WAITERS

Within the last two years, the University has assumed a greater responsibility towards the needy student than ever before. The most striking manifestation of this heightened interest in financially needy undergraduates is the provision of emergency jobs for those who have neither the scholastic standing to obtain scholarships nor the desire to borrow money from the Loan Fund. While all men above Group VI have been eligible for the positions, it was found possible to place only one hundred and thirty-eight of the two hundred and eighty-five that applied. In spite of this failure to cover the entire need, however, the innovation has been both a saving balm for many and an encouragement for all.

It is becoming evident now that the plan, successful though it has been, may stand in need of revision in a very short time. The funds to maintain the jobs were obtained, originally, from the profits of the Dining Halls; now that the rates have been reduced and food prices are rising, it is unlikely that any similarly adequate profit will again be realized. If the University, therefore, is to continue its policy of providing work for those men who need it, and if it is unable to turn up another source of income to support the present jobs, it will have to find for them a substitute both inexpensive to the Administration and sufficiently lucrative to the workers. Fortunately, there is a substitute, filling these two requirements, which would put one hundred and ninety-five men to work whenever applied, and which is in all respects feasible: it is simply the institution of student waiting in the Houses.

A plan already advanced along this line in the Student Council Report of 1932 provides for two shifts of students, working on alternate days. In all probability, however, it would be necessary to arrange for more than these two shifts to take ever the work now performed by one group of waitresses, because of the conflicting engagements which some of the waiters would find unavoidable. The cost for such a program is admittedly more than the present. Whereas the total cost per week for one waitress is now $20.50, the cost of feeding the number of students necessary to supplant one waitress would be $21.25, that is, if the needed allotment of five student waiters to replace two of the present waitresses is made. The additional expense thus involved would bring the total cost for the year to a sum $2000 greater than the ordinary. This increase, nevertheless, is a sum which compares most favourably with the $40,000 being spent this year on student employment.

Although the University has never explicity stated its objections to introducing some plan of student waiting in the Houses, these objections have unofficially and implicity been made evident. The fact that student waiting is permitted in the Freshman Union and in the Business School, but not in the Houses, points to the University's fears for the tenderly nurtured gentility now supposed to exist in the Houses, and indicates its assumption that the waiters from the undergraduate body would do much to destroy this gentility. This fear, the available evidence shows, is not only groundless but in any case inapplicable in a time of emergency. In the first place, it has been customary to dispose of student waiting as "sloppy." The whole question of efficiency, however, is one which is chiefly to be determined by the management. By improving the management, and making it clear that the retention of the job depended upon the quiet efficiency with which it was executed, it should not be difficult to train students to serve as efficiently as the present waitresses. In the second place, it is objected that the necessity of granting students leave to fulfill their academic engagements would lead to irregularity in the service. Although provision for this very situation would be effected by employing the thirty-nine extra men mentioned above, it would still be possible to make the students' schedules more flexible, and guarantee the Dining Halls regular service, by hiring a few more men at half-time. The final, and perhaps the strongest objection to the scheme is the assumption that a social distinction will be set up between the waiters and the students whom they serve. That such a distinction would have commonly been made at Harvard a few years ago does not seem improbable. Since then, however, there can be no doubt that the average undergraduate is coming to have more respect for the man who is working his way through college. To determine the general attitude on this problem, a questionnaire was distributed last year to the student waiters in the Union and the Business School. To the query, "Have you noticed any tendency on the part of the students who are being waited on to regard the waiters as interior?", ninety-three out of the one hundred and forty-seven answers were in the negative; of the fifty-four that replied in the affirmative, twenty-one declared that they were considered thus inferior only by certain individuals. Further evidence, relating to the lack of social distinction and the success of the system at other colleges may be seen in the reports submitted by them and reprinted in today's issue.

The University's objections to the plan are thus shown to be opposed by a strong weight of evidence on the other side. While a dignified and in every way cultivated House atmosphere is by all means to be developed, the flimsy arguments originating by devious courses from this true promise should not be allowed to stand in the way of the introduction of student waiting. Tradition is a thing long in the building, and can wait for an emergency relief. The temporary installation of the plan would serve not only to test the validity of the objections to it; it would afford a much-needed relief in a time of necessity.