THE SPOTLIGHT

So that no gleam of publicity should illumine their plight, student waiters at the Harvard Union have been warned to keep all evidences of dissatisfaction strictly between themselves and the Dinning Halls authorities. In the past the waiters have sought, by petition or discussion, to arrive at a better understanding with their employers, and have each time been granted some trifling concession accompanied by dark hints and sombre intimations. It would suit them far better, the Dining Halls magnates have implied, if professional waitresses were substituted entirely for the present undergraduate helpers. Student waiters, in other words, are employed by the magnanimous moguls of the University Dining Halls simply as a sacrifice to the needs of the student, and their jobs will be recalled without compunction if they show signs of unrest.

This is a thoroughly unhealthy attitude on the part of the authorities. In expressing their preference for female service they have admitted much of the wrong that is in their system. They confess that their methods of discipline are too unreasonable for even the most docile undergraduate, that they could get away much more successfully with petty tyranny exercised over professional waitresses who are less apt, to cry out against conditions. There can be no other reason why outside help should be preferred, unless it is the arrangement of more convenient hours, because student waiters are certainly on the average more intelligent, more capable physically, than the full-time waitresses. The Dining Halls are not losing a great deal of money on student waiters, for they manage to pay them at an hourly rate of forty-one cents--some 18 per cent below the minimum established by the University Employment Office. So that in threatening a clean sweep of student waiters' jobs, with a resultant corps of entirely professional waitresses, the authorities are motivated primarily by the desire to avoid investigation and publicity.

He who has nothing to be ashamed of has nothing to hide. The Union officials and the heads of the Dining Halls may have adequate but unapparent explanations for everything which seems so distressing and unjust to the observer, But these explanations will never find sympathy with the undergraduate so long as the present timorous and unpleasant attitude toward publicity continues.