Thesis Writer Quits as Leighton Warns College

Hours after Dean Leighton had warned students against "commercial tutoring schools," Miss Edith E. Taunton of "Editorial Consultants" bowed out of the College thesis-writing business.

"I have no desire to upset the College in any way," she said last night, promising that the thesis-writing operation she began here this fall would be her last.

Miss Taunton claimed, however--in contradiction to her own previous statements--that before this fall she had never helped to write a thesis for a student at any college or university.

This denial clashed directly with a letter written by Miss Taunton on October 1, 1955, and now in the possession of the CRIMSON, in which she offered to write a thesis for a College undergraduate and said that such services were "frequently used by University and College students . . ."

It also contradicted her statement to a CRIMSON reporter that she had helped to write theses for "approximately ten" Harvard College seniors last year, but would not reveal their names because there might be "broadcast around so professors can hear . . ."

The possibilities were, therefore, that Miss Taunton was either understating her volume of business now for fear of University action; or that she had previously exaggerated her student thesis writing activities in order to impress her prospective customer at the College.

Dean Leighton Warns

Dean Leighton, in his statement yesterday, expressed the view that Miss Taunton's previous claims of many satisfied students as customers were mainly "advertising." He warned, however, that: "Any thesis-writing service such as the CRIMSON described today clearly comes under the heading of 'commercial tutoring school' in the regulations of the Facility of Arts and Sciences, which state that a student is liable to disciplinary action if he makes use of the services of such a school."

Miss Taunton, when contacted last night in Newport, R.L., could not deny that she had contracted this fall to write for a College undergraduate a 60-page thesis on the topic: "The role of Michael Bakunin in the Russian Revolutionary Movement of the Nineteenth Century"; that she had met with the undergraduate in Widener and given him a preliminary bibliography and 20 pages of typed book-notes on the subject; and that she had accepted for these services $7--approximately one-third of the $20 total cost of the thesis. Like Miss Taunton's business letters, the bibliography and notes that the prepared are also in the possession of the CRIMSON.

Asked why her price for writing the entire paper was so cheap, Miss Tannton had only this to say: "You obviously don't want a thesis written now, so why does the price concern you?"

Faculty Marvals

Meanwhile, several Faculty members who yesterday inspected Miss Taunton's bibliography and notes on Bakunin were unanimous in marveling at the low price. "It's incredible that she would do this for only $7," said Richard E. Pipes, research associate in the Russian Research Center.

Pipes described the thesis-writer's book-notes as "intelligently done" but criticized her bibliography on Bakunin as "less than I would expect from the competent undergraduate." Admitting that Miss Taunton "obviously knows how to use reference works," he pointed out that the bibliography includes such unimaginative entries as the Encyclopedia Britannia and fails to include Bakunin's own works or some of the foreign books on him.