GOOD COLLATERAL

In the South Entry of University Hall is a room blithely inscribed "Loan Department," to which all students whose fathers are too entangled in the depression net to be of assistance are promisingly referred. Yet in late months there has been a change; too many have come for succor, more than there was money to go around; and now the room stands there with an apologetic air. Legitimate need in Harvard is theoretically covered by three sources, scholarships, beneficiary aid, and loan funds, and none have proved adequate to the exigencies of depression conditions. Scholastic competition has grown so keen that at present only a secure position well up on the rank list serves to draw down a scholarship of any substantial size. The beneficiary aids consist of small pittances doled out at the beginning of the year to enable the student to devote his time to scholastic endeavor rather than working. They will in all probability be discontinued next year. The one remaining source has been the loan reserve.

So emphatic has been the necessity of sifting and sorting out the more urgent of the applications that the University has adopted the expedient policy of showing preference to Seniors who must have aid in preparation for graduation. On the other hand, the undergraduate of only fair scholastic ability who has manifested a desire to attain a college education in spite of financial handicaps is no less deserving and his position no less acute than that of the departing Senior. The wholesale drying up of outside jobs accentuates the seriousness of each individual application. Faced with the necessity of procuring funds, the student naturally looks either to the University or to some outside employment as possible sources, and when one of these becomes closed to him he automatically turns to the other. It is imperative that this final avenue, the loan fund, remain open. open.

So long as a student is found to be a worthy liability, and inculcated with a proper sense of responsibility for his debt, there is no reason for the University to hesitate to make him a loan. Unattached gifts or money gleaned from economies within the University could be applied to no worthier purpose in the future. The alternative is the exclusion from Harvard of a considerable number of deserving students.