Budget Bludgeon

A second bill to cripple Harvard financially comes before the State Legislature this morning. Failing in their first try two weeks ago, the advocates of the "hit Harvard where it hurts" policy have introduced a bill taxing all Harvard dormitories to the amount of $2,100,000 a year. There are strong and insistent forces in the State House favoring the measure, which if passed will lame the University through its fiscal Achilles' heel.

Arguments for Bill 993, presented by James J. Scully, Petitioner, are not only weak, but based on dangerous fancy. Calling Harvard dormitories "a non-essential of education . . . conducted for profit," Mr. Scully is inaccurate on both counts. The dormitories are not run for profit. Nothing is made from the board charges, and any surplus from the rent goes to make up deficits of academic departments. It may interest Mr. Scully that no one is throwing spare gold into the Charles. Further he says that Boston University, with a registration of 21,000, has no dormitories. He forgets that while B.U. is composed almost wholly of Boston residents. Harvard has a majority of out-of-towners. Perhaps Mr. Scully thinks they should live on the Cambridge Common instead of in the "non-essential" dormitories.

If the legislators decide tomorrow to make Harvard pay this levy, her delicate financial balance will be upset. With this tax added to problems of decreased endowments and interest payments, the University will have to start stripping off scholarships, teachers, and facilities. Tutorial, already flimsy at its best, would disappear.

It is time the men a squatting under the Boston dome started to realize the true function of the educational facilities at Harvard. President Eliot's opulent days, which Mr. Scully smugly uses as a measure of the University today, are gone and forgotten. Today there are few profits. The Massachusetts Legislature, instead of sniping at the roots of established institutions, might well mend their own educational fences.