Maddening

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Last Friday, I found an appalling piece of news on my doorstep (Crimson 11/8/85). I discovered to my horror that the Faculty Council spent $11,000 in arranging for the mailing of the reports of the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities and the Commission of Inquiry to over 9000 members of the Harvard community. Stricken by this extroardinary feat of wasteful expenditure, I was curious to see how it had been rationalized.

Had the reports not been mailed, suggested Master Bossert of Lowell House, students would have thought that there had been a cover-up. Yet it is clear that, prior to the mailing, most students who were interested in obtaining copies of the reports would have been able to do so. Furthermore, the reports were given extensive publicity in The Crimson.

Dean Marquand offered a more practical rationalization. Said he, "It was [the council's view] that if they dropped [the reports] at doors, they would be picked up and swept away." Yet anyone who knows anything about doordrops also knows that they are an effective and cost-effective means of distribution on campus. Besides, who on earth would want to collect a pile of wordy reports from campus doorsteps in the early morning?

I would suggest, for my part, that the availability of the reports made such an expenditure completely unnecessary. There is no doubt that the money would have been better spent elsewhere. I can think of two possibilities off the top of my head. One is the PBH [Phillips Brooks House] Homeless Committee which, with the help of the Undergraduate Council, barely managed to scrape enough money to keep Cambridge shelters open during a part of last winter. The second is the Undergraduate Council itself which has received an unparalleled number of student grant requests this year from student organizations. I suggest that the Faculty consult students before repeating a mistake of such maddening stupidity in the future. Samuel C. Rickless '86