'Cliffe Pays Students $2 Per Hour For Doing Bells at Currier House

If you're looking for a comfortable part-time job that pays pretty well and provides constant company, you'll be interested in "sitting bells" at Currier House.

About 15 Harvard and Radcliffe students receive two dollars an hour for performing the notorious "bells" duty, a job that Radcliffe requires "voluntarily" of those residing in North, South, and East Houses.

Radcliffe is willing to pay for bells service at Currier, according to Master Jerome S. Bruner, because the desk there serves more than 300 students and resident tutors, as opposed to 75 or 100 residents of other Radcliffe dorms.

Unlike the other Radcliffe Houses, which are scattered among several dorms, Currier exists under one roof.

In addition, Bruner said, Currier's security system has led to a 24-hour-a-day bells system, as opposed to a 16-hour-a-day system in other Radcliffe dorms.

"It's not just a voluntary job. It's a very responsible job that should be treated as a paying job," Bruner said. The three-week-old system of paying students to do bells "seems to work quite well," he added.

John O. Lash '72 lives in Eliot House at Harvard and might never have done bells at Radcliffe if Currier had not begun the new payment system. "I heard that there was a real sinecure job there and I applied for it," he said