An Open Letter A Union for Social Responsibility at Harvard?

(The author is a junior living in Jordan J. He was a student member of the Committee on Undergraduate Education last year and is now active in community organizing.)

HARVARD is not just an educational institution but also a corporation, a financial institution with an endowment of $1.3 billion, the largest employer in Cambridge, and an influential institution throughout Boston and America. As students, we are a part of this institution and therefore have a responsibility to work to change its operations so that they are in accord with some standard of social responsibility.

We need real community at Harvard and Radcliffe and that means sharing of responsibility and decision-making. An administration is supposed to make available resources for the needs of students and faculty. The H-R community should make the decisions on social and educational questions. The administration should not be the executive, arbitrary rule-setting body it has become. In the past three years, protest activities from petitions to building take-overs have assumed the authority of the Harvard administration to say yes or no to the proposals. The result has been no real change in Harvard's policy on housing, investments, and discipline because the protests came from a powerless position. Students must be able to place themselves in a bargaining position with Harvard with an organized group holding real power within the University.

To get into this union-type relationship, students must withhold something from the Harvard administration that will make them bargain collectively over social and educational issues. A strike on classes would not do this. However, a tuition strike or withholding of the $200 tuition increase might bring this about. Such a tactic must be justified in itself besides being the means to make Harvard socially responsible.

The tuition raise will give Harvard $1.2 million. The University maintains it is in serious financial trouble. Yet, the problem is that Harvard can neither operate as conservatively in finances nor as opulently in unnecessary frills as it did in the past. In 1970. Harvard investments earned $50.7 million but Harvard only spent $39.29 million of this. Therefore, more than $11 million of income was reinvested as in past years despite the endowment growing by way of capital gains and gifts ($7 million of $33.5 million in gifts received last year was reinvested). The Faculty of Arts and Sciences alone has accumulated an $8 million surplus of unspent money front what was allotted them in previous budgets. Students have no say over how their tuition money is spent in terms of the quality of their education. This must change.

What Would A Tuition Strike Mean?

If all 6000 undergraduates withheld the first $100 of the tuition increase in the September term bill, there could be $600.000 in an escrow bank account yielding $15.000 interest by April 1, 1972. The interest could be spent on scholarships, day care, a free university, etc. The purpose of the escrow account is similar to rent or war tax withholding where due money is held in a bank until the dispute is bargained over or arbitrated. The person withholding his or her money is protected against normal reprisals for non-payment for services rendered. A court case may arise to protect students' dus process and recognize Harvard's obligation to bargain collectively with the union or submit the dispute to binding arbitration.

HOUSING

Over 9000 Harvard students, professors, and administrators live off-campus in Cambridge. They can afford higher rents which forces poor and working-class families to leave old neighborhoods as rents skyrocket. Universities like Harvard and M?LT. tend to attract research and technical firms to Cambridge, further altering neighborhoods and bringing more middle income people to the city to live. To alleviate the housing shortage, the high rents, the break-up of neighborhoods, Harvard must do its part:

-On its own land, at the Business School and next to the IAB, build more dorms and apartments.

-Except for extraordinary reasons, all undergraduates must live on campus-students must do their part too.

Over time, rent some of the 451 off-campus units to low-income people and have them on the rent supplement program.

-Where land is available, Harvard should finance the construction of 1000 units of low-income, low-rent housing. A community organization representing the tenants should control management of the buildings.

COMMUNITY USE OF HARVARD FACILITIES

The non-Harvard community should have the use of the IAB, Homenway Gym, Watson Rink, one night a week and Saturdays for recreation programs and free play. Athletic fields and rooms for meetings should be similarly made available.

COMMITMENT TO SOCIALLY USEFUL INVESTMENTS

A commitment of 1/2 per cent of Harvard's endowment to socially useful investments would mean about $6.5 million for such purposes. This money would not be given away but invested in socially useful concerns that normally pay a lower rate of monetary in-

terest but higher rate of social interest. Harvard is not being asked to stop being Harvard, but to recognize that all institutions must do something more than their normal functions. Examples:

-Harvard could deposit $1 million in the First National City Bank for five years at three per cent interest. First National usually lends out money at eight per cent but since Harvard would agree to accept a lower interest rate. First National could use this interest differential to invest in black businesses. They would do this through their Small Businses Investment Corporation (SBIC) which could put up an equal amount, thus giving $500,000 to a black or community-owned business over a five year period. The stock in the business would be 51 per cent owned by the community group and Harvard would get three per cent interest regardless of how well the business did.

-Buy 10-20 year bonds at four per cent interest in the Fund Development Corporation, the economic development arm of the Black United Front, the umbrella community organization for Roxbury-North Dorchester.

-Buy shares in Freedom Industries, a black-owned enterprise owning several supermarkets and a small electronics company which plans to go public soon.

SOUTH AFRICA INVESTMENTS

Unless companies Harvard invests in which have subsidiaries in South Africa are willing to terminate operations there, Harvard must sell its stock in them. The State Department and even Henry Ford II have admitted that American companies operating in South Africa must obey the laws there. The United Nations Economic Commission on Africa has documented the discrimination in jobs, pay, benefits, restrictions on migration to new jobs. Harvard, by way of dividends, is gaining money from this racist exploitation. The rhetoric here fits the situation.

GENERAL MOTORS

Last year. the Corporation disregarded votes by students, Faculty, and alumni and voted for the GM management and against proposals by the Project for Corporate Responsibility for environmental and consumer safeguards. GM continued to show why such confidence is wrongly given when this December it had to be ordered by the Department of Transportation (with a little help from Ralph Nader) to notify the 250,000 owners of GM and Chevy pick-ups of defective wheel dises in 1960-65 models. GM throughout has maintained that the defect did not exist.

Harvard must vote its stock in favor of the proposals of the Project for Corporate Responsibility to be proposed at this year's annual meeting as well as the Episcopal Church's proposal that GM cease manufacturing in South Africa.

DAY CARE

Harvard must provide adequate day care facilities for children of all employees and students with minimum fees adjusted to income.

COMMITTEE OF RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The recent CRIMSON articles on the CRR well document its role. Besides, since administration and faculty are not liable to trial nor are issues of demonstrations ever considered, the minimum reform must be substitution of an all-student elected and composed group.

Recently the Student Association of the 50 state university campuses in New York State brought suit in Federal Court against the university for violation of due process in disciplinary cases. This might be necessary here.

PBH FUNDING

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences subsidy to PBH should be reinstated at its present $20,000 level. It is disgraceful and incredible that Harvard seeks to destroy the only student organization with continuity of sustained effort in working for others. The budget of this Faculty is $70 million but they cite financial problems so PBH gets cut.

All this moves toward a new Harvard with a minimum sense of social responsibility toward the outside and community within itself. It will be difficult to create a union. The tuition strike will be hard to organize and hard to persuade parents about. The union must choose issues that the majority of students support. If we could do this little at Harvard, we would be beginning the institutional change our country needs. Small efforts add up.

[There will be a meeting to better define these issues and begin organizing a union at Harvard 201. Thursday at 7:30.]