Fellow Teachers, Not Students

The University has armed itself with the employer's oldest argument in refusing the Federation of Teaching Fellows' request for a raise in pay: we just don't have the money. It may seem faintly ridiculous for an institution with Harvard's riches to plead poverty, but' the University is clearly in a financial squeeze. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences' budget contains a substantial deficit this year, and will probably run one next year too. The Federation's suggestions would cost Harvard $700,000 at a time when, as President Pusey said last week, "We're going to see more red ink around the 'University than we've seen in the past 20 years."

But what the University did not acknowledge is that the same inflation which steadily increases building costs for Mather House is also driving up the already-high prices that teaching fellows must pay to survive in Cambridge. Rents in the Harvard area are particularly exorbitant. If the University is under growing financial pressure, so are the teaching fellows. Sooner or later teaching fellows' pay must be raised, and the Federation is claiming, with justice, that the raises should come sooner.

The Federation and the Administration did seem to reach an uneasy agreement on the other major issue--that the present yardsticks for measuring the fifth-time teaching load contain inequities that should be eliminated. But they split sharply on the status and function of teaching fellows: the University has taken the very disturbing position that teaching fellows are not really Harvard employees but graduate students who teach as only a sideline. Throughout the Federation's campaign, the University has treated the group as though it represented only graduate students, not what one Federation leader called "the junior faculty of the junior faculty." Yet, teaching fellows bear a great deal of classroom responsibility, especially in introductory courses such as mathematics or languages. The University attaches a great deal of importance to the tutorial program as an antidote to Berkeley-like "impersonality," and teaching fellows are the mainstay of most tutorials. The teaching fellows have never tried to deny the graduate student portion of their role; why should the University try to belittle their function as teachers?

The University should have at least recognized the Federation's legitimate attempt to represent the teaching fellows as teachers, despite the infant organization's nebulous mandate and non-existent organization. It should have recognized the teaching fellows' need for more pay as well, even if it genuinely could not grant immediate increases. Eventually, the Administration will have to concede that the Federation is fundamentally right on these issues. The only question is when.