REBUTTAL

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

We request that the CRIMSON publish this letter in correction of misstatements and distortions of fact in your editorial entitled "Leviathan," published May 1.

1. Your editorial asserts that the Harvard Student Agencies Corporation has its office on University property and has an association with Harvard that endangers the University's tax-exempt status.

The facts are that the Agency Corporation rents office space in a commercial building at 4 Holyoke Street, on which taxes are paid by the landlord. The Agency Corporation has a separate status, as a private, non-profit charitable corporation, under the laws of Massachusetts, apart from the University. Harvard University has no legal or financial responsibility for the Agency Corporation.

2. Your editorial charges the Agency Corporation with bad faith in its relations with the merchants in Harvard Square, alleging that we have failed to keep our promise to steer student enterprises generally into areas other than those now existing in the Square. The editorial charges that the Corporation is now competing unfairly with Square merchants and is creating bad feelings about Harvard in the Square.

This statement is contrary to fact. The Agency Corporation has consulted carefully with the Harvard Square Businessmen's Association from the beginning of our operations, and has not undertaken new ventures harmful to existing businessmen. In your recent news column accounts of our preliminary plans for a new photographic agency, the CRIMSON did its best to create the impression that the Square businessmen were upset. But, as the President of the Businessmen's Association, Mr. James Brine, said in your columns April 26, "The Agency is trying awfully hard not to interfere with business in the Square." Mr. Brine told your reporter that up until your news stories about the proposed photographic agency, "There had never been any trouble with the agency before." Mr. Paul Koby, the local photographer, told you on the same day, April 26, that he was satisfied with Mr. Brine's judgment of the situation.

It was in the face of this information appearing in your own columns on April 26 that your editorial on May 1 states flatly that the Agency Corporation has broken faith, is competing unfairly, and is creating bad relationships with the local merchants. The CRIMSON is here clearly guilty of making contradictory charges.

3. The editorial charges that the Agency Corporation exerts monopolistic and coercive powers against students who refuse to associate with it, against merchants who want to do business at Harvard, and against student purchasers who want to buy things from merchants outside the Agency group.

There are four types of agencies:

1. Those created and supervised by Student Employment Office.

2. Agencies which require the supervision and support of the S.E.O.

3. Agencies resulting from ideas generated within H.S.A.

4. Self-sufficient agencies which are completely independent and do not require the support and assistance of the S.E.O.

Agencies in the first three categories are members of H.S.A. Agencies in the fourth group have the option to join the corporation or not. Several agencies are operating outside of H.S.A. such as: the House Newsstands, University Credit Club, Matchabelli, Harvard Laundromat, Cafe Mozart, and two Student Laundry operations.

Another fact is that the Housemasters and the Freshman Dean decide who shall do business in Harvard dormitories, and that the Agency students must ask for permission like any other student enterprise. We do hope that the approving authorities will be impressed with the financial soundness and conduct of Agency businesses; that is one basic reason for the existence of the Corporation. But we have no monopoly, and certainly do not want a monopoly on business in the dormitories.

As for the charge that the Agencies dictate the student purchaser's choice of a service or product, that is simply untrue, as any student purchaser knows.

4. The CRIMSON charges the Agency Corporation with "misuse of the tax-exempt status."

This is untrue, and indeed libelous. The Agency Corporation has a solid, carefully worked out structure of doing business, approved by the Massachusetts Department of Corporations and Taxation, and open to their inspection. The heart of the matter is that virtually all the income passing through the Corporation goes to students for wages; and that the Corporation itself plans just to break even on operating expenses and overhead. No officer of the Corporation and no Director receives any pay.

In conclusion we would like to say that the CRIMSON's editorial assault does serve to make us aware that we in the Agency Corporation, in our earnest effort to respect the concerns of the Harvard Square merchants, have perhaps failed to develop a comparable concern for, and good relationships with, other student organizations in the Harvard community which are dependent on commerce. The Agency Corporation, we now clearly realize for the first time, is different from other student organizations in that it does have a special relationship with the Student Employment Office and an active and interested Board of Directors that includes Harvard faculty members. The CRIMSON's May Day editorial, though seriously inaccurate, has had the valuable effect of making us aware of our special problem of relationships with other student organizations. We will do our best in the future to put this new awareness into operational effect. Gregory B. Stone, Pres.   Guido F. DiMeo, Treas.   Theodore H. Elliott, Jr., Clerk