Freedom of the Press

Apparently not satisfied that yearbooks are running themselves properly, the Dean's Office is contemplating the attachment of Peter E. Pratt '40, Director of Alumni Records, to Yearbook Publications as a faculty guardian.

Yearbooks, the Dean's Office seems to feel, are sufficiently important to alumni relations and future fund drives that they cannot be permitted to get into trouble of any sort. The Class Albums, for instance, were uniformly late and lost money which the University had to pay. Yearbook Publication's first product, "314," was on time and made money, but its managers engaged in some legitimate financial haggling with their printer which alarmed Associate Dean Watson when the printer called him and suggested "314" was doing the name of Harvard no good.

But the failings of the post-war Class Albums and the dealings of "314" business managers scarcely justify supervision of Yearbook Publications' activities. The one year old group, whatever its failings, has established a financially solvent organization for publishing an annual and set up a staff that will not break up completely each year. It deserves the right to improve its product without University interference. There is no reason for judging it on records established by annuals organized on a wholly different basis, the Albums.

Nor should Yearbook Publications be chastised with supervision because certain parties with whom it was doing business took their complaints to University Hall. The managers of "314" employed practices common to the boards of other undergraduate publications. Watson would be establishing a doubtful precedent if he set an organization under official observation every time it had a business quarrel.

Yearbook Publications merits the traditional freedom from interference that other undergraduate organizations, especially publications, enjoy and require.