Schools and Scandals

If one discounts the unpleasant smell of the 17 secret appointments made by the Cambridge School Committee last year, it might well be said that this is the best thing that has happened to Cambridge in a long while. For it provides both the pro-appointments faction and the anti-appointments faction with the best election issue they have had in years.

The pro-appointments faction, which is found on both the city council and the school committee, is made up of names infamous in the minds of Harvard men. Belonging to it are such men as A1 Vellucci, whose schemes for running a highway through Harvard are well known; Mayor Sullivan, who used to give anti-Harvard speeches outside Harvard dormitories; and James Fitzgerald, who made several slurs on Harvard during school committee meetings last year. In the minds of these men, the outcry against the appointments last year was organized by the Cambridge Civic Association, a good-government seeking organization, as a political maneuver to malign the motives of the "independent" school committeemen.

The CCA, in truth, did organize the anti-appointments campaign--though not for political motives. It saw in the action of the majority members of the school committee a serious threat to the already weak Cambridge school system, and spurred on the other civic groups that were seeking to stop the appointments. The CCA itself was moved to act by the two school committeemen whom it had endorsed, Mrs. Catherine Ogden and Judson T. Shaplin, associate dean of the School of Education. These two fought against the majority of the committee in a valiant attempt to repeal the appointments.

In this then, the CCA also had a good issue with which to spark the speeches of the eighteen people it is endorsing for school committee and city council. Further, with its policy of making its candidates pledge to uphold a definite platform approved by CCA members, the association is a constructive force in electing good candidates to city offices.

Unfortunately, the CCA is not as strong and constructive a force as it could be. The hot appointments issue obscures the fact that the association has nothing else hot--and little that is particularly warm--on either its city council or school committee platform. It advocates urban renewal, which is proceeding nicely anyway, and offers other suggestions which are fairly obvious and seem to be generally agreed upon by both CCA and anti-CCA candidates.

Along with this general weakness of platform, the association is weak in candidates from less prosperous areas than Brattle Street and Harvard Square. The association is generally headed by Harvard Square realtors and lawyers, and has generally focused its campaign on the more well-to-do sections of the city. This year, even though the association has established a headquarters in Central Square and are attempting to campaign vigorously in these areas, the candidates whom they have chosen to endorse from these sections are not of the high caliber of CCA-endorsed Councilor DeGuglielmo, Shaplin, and Mrs. Ogden. Many lack civic and legal experience; one city councilor candidate is venturing into city affairs for the first time this fall.

One of the most serious weaknesses of the CCA, perhaps, is its inability to coerce its endorsees to keep to their platform pledges. CCA-endorsed city council members have squabbled with each other since they were elected, and were thus unable to put solid weight behind a good candidate for mayor when this council organized itself in 1955. The result of this was Mayor Sullivan, and, indirectly the appointments issue which CCA is now fighting. Even on the school committee, CCA-endorsed Anthony Galluccio bolted from his platform pledges and sided with the "independents" most of the time.

On the surface, then, it would seem that there is no real hope for good government. On one side are the self-styled independents, who do not hesitate to play politics even with school children; on the other side are CCA-endorsed candidates, who are pledged to a generally weak platform, who are not all candidates of the highest caliber, and who are subject to little force that will make them keep to their platform pledges. If the CCA would make a strong endeavor to find highly educated administrators to run for city council or school committee, and provide these men with a strong platform which they are bound to follow, the CCA would be the salvation of Cambridge.

In any event, the candidates whose names are prefixed by a "CCA points the way" sign are, in general, the best ones running. With the exception of a few non-CCA city Council candidates like McNamara and Watson, the CCA men are the best hope for a reasonably clean Cambridge over the next two years.