Coop Elections Symbiosis in the Square

DECADES AGO, in those years before the Square bustled with its hectic profusion of hipboutiques, street people. Xerox services, and boarded-up windows, the Harvard Cooperative Society was a convenient and reasonably-priced college bookstore. It occupied an unpretentious Georgian structure near Harvard Trust with a friendly pillared entrance which provided ample shelter for bicycles and conversation.

Since then. the familiar Coop has undergone a gradual but methodical transformation.

In 1956, the front of College House- the building which rambles along the western side of Harvard Square- was remodeled to meet the demands of an expanding Harvard Trust and a growing Harvard Coop. Behind the remodeled facade whose ominous aluminum gratings shielded the upstairs office windows, these two establishments grew progressively closer. The redesigned structure- as well as its marquee- was shared by both Coop and bank.

By 1964 the Coop was rebuilding Paliner Street with a four story annex, into which it shunted its textbooks and book department. What had been the Coop's prime service for its members had now become only secondary.

In another ominous move two years ago. Harvard Trust began to sprout penthouses and offices. Some sprouted on top of the bank's Harvard Square office and some were slipped into the less narrow reaches of Palmer Street. The Coop, meanwhile, was having babies all over the Boston area- little Coops appeared at M.I.T. the Business School and the Medical School.

The move toward grandeur by both the bank and the Coop was reflected in the merchandise now filling the store's main buildings. The Coop, founded in 1882 to provide students with an alternative to the price-gouging of the Square's merchants, began to act like a department store, complete with men's department, ladies department, house waves department, and apartment department. Even a Beau Coup for the well-to-do swinger, although its prices are lower that Krackerjacks. The Coop was slowly becoming all things to all people.

As strange as it seems, Coop officials as recently as this spring seriously considered taking over the financially-troubled Northeastern and B.U. bookstores. With naive- almost missionary- fervor they believed that the Coop could simply administer a dosage of its superb management and retailing techniques to the blighted bookstores and all would be better.

Despite the growth- or perhaps because of it- the Coop was watching its profits and members' rebates grow smaller and smaller. Coop officials resolved to shore up the Society.

They adopted an agreement with their mighty neighbor, Harvard Trust Company. so that the bank would bill Coop customers itself, collecting interest on overdue accounts. Coop officials defended this arrangement, claiming that it would save members money and would be far more efficient.

THIS YEAR'S election of student directors seems to belie such a hope. Coming in the trail of the smallest rebate in the Society's history- three per cent for cash purchases and one per cent for charges- the elections were a model of bureaucratic inefficiency.

Harvard Trust had already begun to show its malefic influence in Coop affairs. Check-cashing services at the Coop were for example, strangled and finally destroyed by the bank's requirements. Last year, customers with the new Coop-CAP and Master Charge cards encountered far more paper-work and difficulty in cashing their checks than those with simple Coop cards. Over the summer even this service was eliminated and angry students were told to open a checking account at (guess where?) Harvard Trust.

The elections demonstrated even more remarkably that, despite recent reforms aimed at democratization, the Coop has somehow strayed from the control of student members.

Students are represented by 11 positions on the 23-member board of directors. Charles P. Whitlock, a Harvard administrator and Coop stockholder, sought candidates from the Houses by asking nominations from each House committee. Only three House committees- and Mather, which had been spared the curse of House committees- bothered to respond with names. Without asking for any statement, resume, or interview from the candidates, Whitlock selected one nominee on the basis of an endorsement made by the HUC, a student council organization which had gone defunct last year. The nominee had been a sophomore representative in the HUC. Another undergraduate who was chosen was the Leverett House Committee chairman.

In last week's election, only 3459 of 18,680 mailed ballots were returned. Many students claimed that they had never received any ballots. Although ballots were also available at the Coop's mezzanine, officials never bothered to advertise the fact.

In the waning days of the campaign, Paul A. Silver, an insurgent candidate, discovering that many of his friends had not yet received ballots, placed a notice himself in the CRIMSON informing members that ballots were available at the Coop.

Fred Fox, the Coop's controller, acknowledged that the tape containing membership addresses which Harvard Trust furnished for the election may not have been completely up-to-date. "Many members, however, are a very transient group and their addresses change frequently," Fox said.

Excuses cannot cover up the ineptitude which marked the election's handling. One student who received no ballot said that he had submitted four change-of-address forms to the Coop since August.

Fortunately, the group of student directors who were elected are a competent and promising collection. The Coop's symbiotic ties with Harvard Trust must be reexamined in light of recent bungling of the student director elections. Perhaps this election has provided the impetus for the reexamination.