Bok, Horner Oppose Buckley Proposal For Pre-College Service Requirement

Presidents Bok and Horner said Wednesday that they disapprove of a proposal by columnist William F. Buckley that would require students to complete a year of public service before entering college.

Buckley, writing in The Boston Globe on March 22 and 23, said that the most important service youths in public service could provide would be care for the aged. Under the proposal, students would work in nursing homes at subsistence wages.

The program is designed to help both the young and the old, Buckley wrote. "It would mean, for the aged, continuing contact with young, spirited people in their most effusive years," he wrote. In addition, it would tech "young people at an impressionable age of the nature of genuine, humanitarian service."

Buckley asked that the program begin in the fall semester of 1976. He called for an endorsement of his proposal by the trustees of the "top" ten colleges in the country.

Bok, speaking at a press conference, said that he would not support a plant that would "compel all our students [to do a year of public service] as a condition of receiving a diploma."

He said that "Harvard should work at trying to develop a more interesting range of opportunities" for students, "many [of which] would be for public service."

Bok contended, however, that it is not part of Harvard's role as an educational institution"to use it attractiveness in education to compel students to do something else."

Horner said in an interview that she agrees with Buckley that there is a need to encourage contact between the young and the aged in our society.

She said, however, that Buckley's plan might fail to meet the needs of either the young or the old.

People coming straight from high school "might do more damage than good," Horner said, if they have not yet acquired enough skills to care properly for the aged or perform other public service.

Horner said said that some young people would benefit from a break in their formal education between high school and college. She said, however, that others would do better if they interrupted their education at a later time.

Francis H. Burr '35, a fellow of Harvard College and trustee of Radcliffe College, said yesterday that he did not support Buckley's proposal. Burr said that "on a voluntary basis I think public service is an excellent idea, but I don't like the idea of its being compulsory."

Francis D. Fisher '47, director of the Office of Career Services and Off-Campus Learning, said yesterday that Buckley's proposal is too narrow. Fisher said the proposal "has picked out only one of many problems and one particular year of life."