Southwestern Complains

To the Editors of The Crimson:

As Harvard alumni we feel that Harvard students should have the opportunity to base decisions on the facts of issues. As District Sales Managers for the Southwestern Company we are more familiar with our program than anyone else in Cambridge. We therefore feel obligated to point up certain inaccuracies in this week's pair of articles regarding the Southwestern program.

1. Southwestern Publishing Company is in Cincinnati, and hyphenates its name, South-Western. The Southwestern Company is in Nashville, and has worked with college students continuously since 1868.

2. Very few students work 90 hours a week; the average student works between 12 and 13 hours a day over a six day week. Each student is self-employed; no students are employees. No student works for Southwestern; none gets "paid" by Southwestern; none has a "boss." Each student is an independent businessperson, and pays self-employment taxes. Southwestern is a publisher, supplying products at wholesale prices to these student retail businesspeople.

3. The statement attributed to Vaughn Wood of Southwestern, that returning students "have the responsibility for reaching the company's future employees" is completely inaccurate. First, because the students are not employees, and second, because student managers do not have the responsibility of reaching future student dealers. We do, as District Sales Managers. Student managers may if they choose answer questions, explain the program to interested students, and let people know about off-campus interviews.

4. Student managers are not paid to approach other students. They are not paid to send contracts to Nashville. They can earn a managerial commission based on the quality of their management--how well the students they manage do during the summer--and on the number of students they manage in the summer. This is in addition to their working approximately 80 hours a week in the operation of their personal retail sales businesses. Again, these commissions are based on summer management.

6. The following statement is wrong and misleading: "The problem, as far as the Harvard administration is concerned, is that most students who sign on with Southwestern find out the details of the job later rather than sooner." We won't even consider a student until he has heard the facts explained for at least an hour, has seen the books close up and told us whether or not he believes they are quality products, and has had a chance to ask all the questions he desires.

7. Southwestern has placed no posters advertising interviews at Harvard all year. No such posters have appeared on campus since the spring of 1974. While Southwestern has not placed posters on campus or in dorms, other companies have.

8. Dean Epps "banned" Southwestern not in the spring of 1975 but in the fall of 1974. He told the single Southwestern representative employed as a recruiter that association of Harvard with commercial companies would compromise the nonprofit status of the University, and asked that he not conduct business on University property. No business has been conducted by a Southwestern employee on university property. No business has been conducted by a Southwestern employee on university property since 1974. Yet, according to the article, "the recruiters' financial incentive is the reason Archie C. Epps III, Dean of Students, banned Southwestern from soliciting on the Harvard campus two years ago." If what he is quoted here as saying is the Dean's reason for the ban, then it is not the same as the one he gave at that time. If it was not his reason, then why does the article say that it was?

9. As Sales Managers for Southwestern, Harvard holds a special place in our minds. As Harvard alumni, Southwestern played a significant role in our Harvard experiences. We found the two extremely complementary. There is no reason why other Harvard students should find it any different. Don A. Nicholson '76   Daniel W. Moore '76

THE CRIMSON RESPONDS

On some details, particularly those about the internal mechanisms of the Southwestern, our stories may have been inaccurate. In other cases the points listed here draw a fine line between accuracy and error; for example, while it is true the company has not posted recruiting posters on campus since the spring of '74, there were recruiting posters on almost every telephone pole--Cambridge property--between the Yard and the Charles last spring. Otherwise, we stand by our stories.