New Price Rises Use Up 15 Percent Rent Boost

Rises in cost have used up the 15 percent rent increase that the College announced last February, it was learned yesterday. The original reason for the rent hike was an expected decrease in enrollment of up to one-third.

College room occupancy has only dropped this fall by 90 to a total of 3,736, but Vice-President Reynolds' office yesterday reported sharp increases in the cost of maid service, heat, and building maintenance.

Arthur D. Trottenberg '48, operating manager of the Houses and College dormitories, cited a rise in care taking expenses from $470,000 last year to an estimated $454,000 in 1951-52. Janitors' hours have been reduced by an average of two hours a week without any loss in wages. and maids have been given a five percent salary boost.

Below Break Even Point

In 1950-51 the Houses and College dormitories showed a $63,000 surplus, but this figure is $37,000 below the break-even point in operation. Because the University contributed a large amount of money from capital to build the Houses, the administration aims to give the Faculty of Arts and Sciences $100,000 each year from their operating "surplus."

The policy of the University is to make the non-educational aspects of Harvard pay their own way at all times, since the College would have to pay the fixed salaries of faculty members if the draft eventually cut the enrollment more sharply.

With the new higher rents, the dormitories are expected to show the normal $100,000 surplus again this year, as they did in 1949-50. Trottenberg reported that a series of budgets had been drawn up last year before the 15 percent rent boost.

The most pessimistic prediction was a 25 percent loss of College enrollment under which the dormitories would have shown a $121,000 deficit. Trottenberg added that under those circumstances the 15 percent hike would have erased the deficit without filling any of the $100,000 commitment to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.