Charity Case

On Monday, the Student Council decided by a vote of nine to five that charity not only began at home, but should stay there. It defeated a proposal to transfer responsibility for the annual Combined Charities drive to Phillips Brooks House.

Though the majority presented sound reasons for retaining the drive as a council project, there are even better reasons for wishing the vote had gone the other way. Chief among these is that P.B.H. is experienced in all aspects of charity work and could probably work out a more efficient and more effective drive. The fact that the chairman of the charity committee, this year is also the head of P.B.H. is good evidence of the similarity of the two kinds of work.

The strongest argument for keeping the drive under council supervision is that it would be more directly responsive to the will of the students. But that responsiveness involves the drive with the political aspects of the council, and also interferes with the council's regular service and advisory duties. Furthermore, if the drive were under P.B.H., the council would still have a post facto control when it voted each year to authorize the drive as the only charity collection in the College.

The problem of P.B.H. collecting money for itself and granting itself a portion of the unallocated funds is only serious if one assumes that Brooks House will grossley overestimate its own requirements. In that case, the council could look into any irregularity when the time for approval came around.

In short, it is not a service function for the council to take direct responsibility for charity collections. The service is simply the council's establishment of the drive as the only solicitation of students. Charity should be the job of the group which knows most about it, and that group is clearly P.B.H.