Veteran's Assistant Helps Students Save G.I. Money

A mild, affable woman is responsible for $6,000,000 of the government's money. And this same woman saves veterans enrolled in the University thousands and thousands of dollars in G. I. benefits, according to John U. Monro '34, counsellor for veterans. Margaret A. Witt, assistant to the counsellor for veterans, is the one person responsible for this giant saving for both student and federal government.

Miss Witt's job is to act as a liaison between the veterans enrolled in the different sections of the University and the Veterans' Administration in Boston. Most of this involves the usual paper work. But, through Miss Witt, Harvard's set-up for processing veterans' troubles has become unique among colleges.

New Ideas Help Vets

For one thing, her office is the only one which treats the student veteran's problems individually. This, of course, involves a great deal more paper work, but both Miss Witt and Monro think that this pays dividends in the end.

In fact, during the summer, Miss Witt hit upon a new idea: to help the veteran mailing veterans' applications to them prior to registration. This saved last year's veteran the ordeal of standing in line at Memorial Hall to register and then parading to the New Lecture Hall and register again.

If something slips up in Miss Witt's department, everything will go wrong: the veteran will not receive his G.I. check so he cannot eat, and Harvard will not receive its tuition money. But nothing has ever slipped up in Miss Witt's department and her superior, Monro, doubts that anything ever will.

Strange Doings

Her duties at the present time include running a staff of ten workers, straightening out entitlement benefits, and redirecting veteran's benefits from future tuition toward present book buying or board payment.

All sorts of strange things happen when the Veterans Administration sends out its checks. Once, after checks were distributed, there was a sudden invasion of the Counsellor's office. The telephone began ringing incessantly. There were 100 veterans milling about, waving signed but blank checks. "What's the story?" they shouted. Then someone on Miss Witt's staff discovered the trouble: the Veterans Administration's check writing machine had stopped and left a big wad of them undone.

Explains Complexities

Most of Miss Witt's work is straightening out the complexities of the Veterans Administration. She issues a bulletin several times a year to help unjumble the VA's abstruseness. A recent complexity that must be explained to veterans is the new ruling that they cannot begin a new course after July, 1951. A veteran who is going to graduate cannot, after this date, go on to a graduate school and receive benefits from the G.I. bill.

Miss Witt has been working in the University since 1937. Near the end of World War II, she was secretary to President Conant and worked with him and Bernard Baruch on their famed Rubber Report. She has been with the Counsellor for Veterans ever since the position started at the College in 1945.