The Most Lucrative Job on Campus

IF YOU'RE A HARVARD undergraduate, Brian R. Melendez '86 took 66 cent from this year. He says he's considering doing it again next year, and you can't really blame him. You see, Melendez, has perhaps the best student job on campus. As Executive Secretary of the Undergraduate Council he earns $3808 a year: 17 hours a week; seven dollars an hour.

That's 50 cent an hour more than student computer programmers usually make. It's a dollar more than the dorm crew supervisors make. It's two dollars more than other student office workers get. And it comes directly out of the students' pockets--Melendez's salary is financed by the $10 Undergraduate Council fees tacked on to student term bills.

Council officers blame the University. University officials blame the Council. Meanwhile, Melendez spends his weekday afternoons in the basement of Canaday Hall, performing secretarial duties and earning one twelfth of the Council's annual budget.

It is really necessary that the Council spend so much for a job which a student can do? It depends on whom you talk to. At the Council, they point to the Dowling Report of 1981, which drew up the blueprint for the present Undergraduate Council. The Council's budget, the report said, should "include funds for secretarial help and associated supplies," among other necessities (p. 29). On the basis of this recommendation, the University required the Council to hire its Executive Secretary on the University payscale. That, according to Council officials, is why the salary is seemingly so high; that's the way it was written into the Council bylaws: "The Executive Secretary shall be an employee of the University, but his salary shall be drawn upon the treasury of the Council" (Article XIII, Section 131.35). So, even though they've hired a student, the Council has to maintain the official wage level.

University officials tell a different story. According to them, full-time students aren't even allowed on the University payroll. "There's been some error made," says Marcia Mintz, assistant dean for financial affairs. She says that Melendez must have "slipped through the channels somehow. There is usually a cross-check against various lists."

In other words, everyone agrees that the job wasn't originally intended to be filled by an undergraduate. Last year's Executive Secretary, in fact, had a Ph. D. degree. But nobody seems willing to do anything now that it's been proven that a student can fill the post. Members of the Undergraduate Council praise Melendez as a competent, efficient office manager. "I think there will always be undergraduates qualified to do this job," Melendez says. So why are we stuck with the seven dollar rate?

On the face of it, it seems mean-spirited to take money away from a dedicated hard worker like Melendez. He earns it, doesn't he, by doing the same work that an outsider would? Maybe so, but other students who work at Harvard make much less than their non-student co-workers. In the dining halls, on the security force, and in the libraries all over campus, students make four to six dollars an hour. And that money comes from Harvard's millions, not from the Undergraduate Council's meager coffers.

BESIDES, DOZENS of Harvard students work for nothing. The heads of Phillips Brooks House, the Drama Club and numerous other time-consuming undergraduate organizations--including the chairperson of the Undergraduate Council--put in 25, 30, or more hours per week and receive no remuneration. True, their work involves less drudgery than does the Executive Secretary's and in some cases they hire others to do the typing, filing and telephone, answering. But the concept in similar--an organizationally talented student is selected to play an honorary leadership role.

"You won't find a volunteer to take the position," says Melendez. "This job is a job." How about splitting the post up into several bite-size chunks? "If there were four of me coming in and out of the office," Melendez explains, "three-quarters of the time they wouldn't be able to answer questions. It's necessary to have continuity through the week." Assuming this is true, we are back to the original proposition: pay the Executive Secretary, but pay him or her a reasonable amount.

To make this change would require some effort on the part of the Council. The representatives would have to amend the bylaws, make the job a student position rather than a University one, and survey student office job salaries on campus. But the results would be well worth the trouble. It is both silly and extravagant for a single student to receive the Council's largest budget item.