DEPUTY PRESIDENT

When new boards and positions creep into an organization, they are all too likely to create a bureaucratic maze of red tape and impede rather than facilitate smooth functioning. The New Deal may be justly criticized for an unfortunate tangling of bureaus, but certain of the new boards of the government are equally as justly to be praised, as necessary expansions in a widening sphere. Harvard's new creation of a Dean of the University may also be praised as a justified expansion of administrative agencies.

For, like the government, Harvard has expanded rapidly, with the Littauer School of Public Administration being the most obvious example of another "bureau." The Business, Medical, and Law Schools, while not increasing in enrollment, are nevertheless enlarging their activities in the general direction of the public. The annual reports issued from the School of Public Health and the Law School have definitely shown this trend. This expansion has meant new and more numerous duties for the President of the University, whose obvious duty it is to supervise actively all the engagements of the "bureaus" under him. Perhaps the actual expansion of the President's office itself in recent years into a more public position has much to do with the new position.

A popular and influential teacher here for thirty-nine years, Dean Chase was a happy appointment to the post of "deputy president" with functions closely paralleling a governmental vice-president. In his new niche in the pyramiding of authority, the Dean should prove a valuable asset in general superintendence.