Combined Charities to Revive Exchange Plan

The German student exchange program will be revived here by the Combined Charities Committee after a one-year lapse. Surplus funds of $1,300 will allow at least a two-student exchange between Harvard and the Free University of Berlin in place of the 12-man program from which the State Department withdrew its aid this year.

But at the same time the Committee will announce that its Charities drive is not to be held in the spring next year because of its failure last fall.

The Combined Charities Committee has $1,300 of unassigned funds left from this year's campaign, and co-chairmen Kirby L. C. von Kessler '54 and Robert C. Terry, Jr. '54 have recommended that "the greater part of it, about $1,100," be turned over to the Student Council Committee of International Activities to reinstate the German exchange plan, von Kessler said last night.

Limited to Berlin University

This would allow one student to come here from Germany for a year and one Harvard undergraduate to study there. Two years ago, six German students came to Cambridge. The exchange will probably be arranged with the Free University of Berlin, since it sent the largest number of exchange students here in the past.

The exchange program was dropped last year when the State Department, which previously guaranteed the transportation costs of German students, curtailed its contribution.

Last October the Committee considered including the German exchange program in its list of charities for which funds would be explicitly solicited when the government out-back was announced, but the plan was voted down.

Von Kessler said that the grant now would undoubtedly be passed by the Committee, as would the proposal to hold next year's Combined Charities Drive in the spring term, "when there are no football weekends."

Drive Failure

The Charities drive collected $11,896.20 last fall, far less than its goal. Only 2,370 students, or 54.8 percent of the College enrollment contributed, and greater support is expected if the campaign is held just before or after the March hour exams.

One other reason besides the monetary demands of big fall weekends contributed to this poor showing, the Committee felt. Most serious was the University decision that Charities donations could not be put on students' term bills.