PBH to Teach With New Project Inter-College Roxbury Planning

Several University students will soon begin extensive tutoring work in almost all areas of one of New England's most depressed areas.

The tutorial program, under the direction of the Roxbury Community Council, will include nearly 100 students of the Phillips Brooks House Tutors Committee, and will constitute the first time that an all-out effort by any group (except Council itself) has been directed towards Roxbury.

Robert McCreech, executive director of the Boston United Community Service, told the CRIMSON that this was also the first time, to his knowledge, that a group of colleges had engaged in an all-out project on a single community.

Although Phillips Brooks House is supplying the largest number of volunteers, at least five other universities are also cooperating in this program.

The program will aim at improving the educational levels of the citizens, expecially the younger students, of Roxbury. According to Noel Day, director of the St. Mark Social Center, the program is oriented along the belief that "education is one of the more basic problems in the sense that only as people get educational improvement can they think in terms of better employment in the future."

PBH, which had at first expressed doubts about its being able to enter the program, eventually joined after it became apparent that the committee, consisting of more than a dozen social welfare agencies, would supply all its volunteers with orientation both about the nature of the neighborhoods and the natures of each individual tutee.

The most immediate problem now facing the committee, beside selecting a name, is to build up solid contacts with the local schools, in order to learn more about the backgrounds of youngsters who are referred to it for tutoring.

A spokesman for PBH pointed out that this is the first project which it has entered in coordination with other colleges. Brooks House has traditionally refused to surrender any autonomy even in individual programs; thus the actual assignments of tutors will still be controlled by PBH, although the council will still supply orientation and tutees.