H.S.A. II

The Harvard Student Agencies has expanded widely and rapidly in its five years of operation. In so doing it has unquestionably provided needy students with more jobs with higher hourly wages and more flexible working hours than was possible before its institution. But HSA has expanded far beyond the simple idea of an employment service; it is now a business that operates by hiring students to fill the labor market it creates rather than by creating a labor market to meet student needs.

An ideal example of this new outlook is the Entertainment Agency. According to a newsletter in this week's Calender, Mr. Burke (director of HSA and director of Student Employment) "confirms the fact that the Student Employment office in recent years has found it increasingly difficult to provide student entertainers ...for requests.... Clearly the intent of the agency would be to encourage students to develop or utilize talents where there is a current shortage of performers or into areas where promotion and service promise greatly increased business."

It is precisely this intent that dangerously underlies HSA's expansion. If the purpose of the HSA is kept within its original limits--to provide jobs for needy students--the Entertainment Agency is neither needed nor desired. If the increased numbers of entertainers Mr. Burke wishes to develop in the undergraduate community required the money or badly wanted the work, they could undoubtedly find their fill of jobs. HSA employs student on the basis of need: the HSA needs you.

By charging a booking fee the Agency can undoubtedly do a more efficient job of filling requests for entertainers than can an Employment Office which Mr. Burke admits is strapped by inadequate personnel and an insufficient budget. With part of the burden of Mr. Burke's Employment Office assumed by a new service under Mr. Burke's HSA, the interests of both organizations are served, with the bonus of an all-around increase in efficiency in handling the request of potential employers of students. Indeed, if the purpose of College really were to provide students with money-making opportunities, everybody would gain.

Yet, of course, student actually ought not to work any more than they must to meet college expenses. HSA, which apparently does not perceive the virtue in the philosophy, often employs students of no obvious need whatever. It is incorporated as a tax-free, charitable institution. Charity has evidently taken a new meaning.

HSA urgently needs a strict and impartial board of review--and a board such as the present one, largely composed of HSA student managers, the inevitable Dustin Burke, and Dean Monro (one of its earliest backers), is hardly impartial. Slowing the Agency's expansion is consequently extremely difficult, especially since Mr. Burke has secured a voice in every relevant committee. He also holds, by the way, the seat of Secretary of the Committee on Solicitations, the very Committee responsible for the creating of monopolies to serve the Yard and the Houses.

Now it should never be said that all monopolies are bad per se. Agencies to sell beer mugs, banners, and class rings are natural monopolies concessions, into the proper province of HSA. But the late-evening snack is decidedly sinister. By a pre-HSA ruling of the Committee on Solicitations no delivery men or solicitors are permitted in the Yard or the Houses after dark. The same ruling made an exception for the student sandwich vendors with the little wagons and loud voices. Pizza could also be delivered at night, it was decreed, but only by students. Today the student vendors are HSA employees, but nothing else has changed. Since 1957 three attempts have been made to provide pizza delivery, but none has proved profitable either to the HSA or to the pizza companies.

If the HSA vendors provided a complete food service, or if independent concessions were allowed to deliver phone orders at night, students would have no ground for complaint save the noise the paddlers make. But the Agencies have failed to provide an adequate snack service, and it is time the Committee brought its ruling up to date. It is increasingly silly to refuse delivery men the privilege of filling phone orders at night.

The central issue is simply that more students are earning more money, at least in specific instances, than can be justified solely by need. HSA employs students to satisfy their needs as a business empire, not simply to help them pay their college expenses. Mr. Burke really should hang up some of his many hats. And the University must devise a stronger, more effective board of Review for the HSA than the HCUA or the HSA managers and director.