Faculty Committee Rejects PBH Request For Permanent Fund

The Committee on Students and Community Relations (CSCR) yesterday recommended that the Faculty deny Phillips Brooks House (PBH) -Harvard's undergraduate social service organization-the permanent subsidy it has requested.

In a two and one-half hour closed meeting, the CSCR accepted a subcommittee's report which recommended a temporary subsidy of at 'ltast $10,000 for 1971-72.

The CSCR resolved that during the next year, PBH should institute "an extensive examination of the financial cost of its central operation," and that the Faculty Committee of PBH should also review closely the PBH organization.

These recommendations will be forwarded to Dean Dunlop, who has virtually final authority over the Faculty of Arts and Sciences budget. He will almost certainly confirm the committee's recommendations.

The Faculty first granted PBH an emergency subsidy of $20,000 in 1967-68, with the understanding that PBH would concentrate more forcefully on raising money from alumni, thus eliminating the need for the grant.

But the expectations of alumni donations were not met, and the dean of the Faculty renewed the $20,000 subsidy for 1968-69 and 1969-70. In April, 1969, Dean Ford, Dunlop's predecessor, stated that he would reduce the subsidy by increments of $5000, starting in 1970-71, and would eliminate the grant after June, 1973.

The members of PBH, faced with continuing financial pressure, asked Dunlop last March for a permanent subsidy. Dunlop referred the issue to the CSCR, which set up a subcommittee to study it.

Christopher D. Hoy '71, president of PBH, said that the Faculty subsidy has been used to underwrite administrative costs and help pay for professional consulting fees.

Referring to the general financial squeeze, Hoy said, "Obviously, this is a difficult time to make this sort of request." He emphasized, however, that "the money PBH wants is a pathetic, trivial sum in relation to the whole Faculty budget."

The CSCR subcommittee report had both praise and sharp criticism for PBH. On the positive side, the report stated, "In a broad sense, all the current [PBH] programs are educational and some provide unusual experience in teaching. We were impressed with the high level of performance demanded of the volunteers..."

The report did note, however, that the number of PBH volunteers has plummeted during recent years, from nearly 1100 in 1968 to about 400 in 1969. "It is our impression from talking with students that the professionalized emphasis in PBH programs makes some upperclassmen feel that they are not sufficiently qualified to participate," it said.

The subcommittee also pointed out that this Fall, "approximately 200 interested students, primarily freshmen, were turned away because they could not be accommodated in existing programs."

During yesterday's closed CSCR meeting, Edward C. Banfield, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Urban Government and a member of the CSCR, asked whether, the decrease in the number of student volunteers, and the increased use of professional consultants for the various programs meant that PBH was creating a core of professional instead of student-volunteer social workers.

Robert P. Smith Jr. '71, vice president of PBH, was invited to attend part of the CSCR meeting in order to answer the questions of committee members. "The sense of the meeting was not overwhelmingly positive," Smith said.

He pointed out that even if the CSCR had not investigated the PBH subsidy, that PBH would have gotten $10,000 for 1971-72 because of prior Administration commitments. "In the past three months, we've gone full circle," Smith added.