Overseer Says Bolles Will Attempt to 'Sell Harvard'

The question undergraduates and alumni were asking yesterday was "Why Tom Bolles?"

The answer has to do with a wonderful new science which an Overseer yesterday described as Public Relations. He put it this way: "When someone asks you, 'What do you think of Tom Bolles?" what do you answer? It's automatic. 'Two Bolles is a nice guy and a great crew coach'."

The Overseer went on to explain. "The only trouble with Harvard athletics today is the trouble with Harvard in general. It's not getting enough of the right kind of students. Why? Because the alumni all over the country are complacent. They're sitting back resting, expecting Harvard to continue under its own steam. We've done less in the way of alumni-student work than any other major college in the country," the Overseer stated.

He continued: "Bill Bingham is a great man, a fine fellow for the office, but in his later years he wasn't doing the selling job that was necessary. It wasn't his fault, of course, nobody thought it necessary to sell Harvard. Perhaps he was bothered by the deficit or some other administrative problems. Anyhow, we though a new man would bring a fresh outlook to the job. Tom Bolles should be able to sell Harvard, and it has to be sold."

The move, then, followed a pattern which has been evident for some time now. This pattern includes the recent reorganization of the Overseer's Visiting Committee on the Regulation of Athletic Sports, and the revitalization of the Alumni's Schools Committees. Twenty-two winter speeches at sundry affairs by football coach Lloyd Jordan, and the weekly Harvard Club-sponsored visits of prospective students to Cambridge also follow in the new setup.

The ad hoe committee which selected Tom Bolles originally would have preferred a Harvard graduate for the job, but the salary offered was not big enough to entice the proper men to leave their respective fields for a life in athletics. Various other reasons made other likely prospects impossible.

Several men were considered, but when the committee noted this reticence it decided to choose a man already in athletics. The name of Bolles, high on the list from the start, was the only one the Corporation submitted to the Overseers' meeting on Monday.