The Business of Government

RICHARD EISERT, the Undergraduate Council chairman, says he doesn't view the student government as a business. Looking at a few of the council's operations, it's evident Eisert isn't lying.

The Council is one of the richest student enterprises around, operating on its yearly budget of $20,000 provided by termbill charges. It doesn't take long with a council ledger to begin wondering, however, how serious the student government is about getting full value for each student-supplied dollar.

The largest chunk of the council's operating budget goes towards running a three-room office in Canaday Hall. Curiously, the better part of that chunk goes toward former founding council member and two-term chairman Brian R. Melendez '86.

Melendez graduated last year but has stayed on at Harvard as the council's "executive secretary," meaning basically that Melendez does the student government's typing and answers its telephone. Melendez, according to figures from the University's personnel office, draws a salary of about $9.00 per hour, 20 hours per week.

This is in line with salaries of other secretaries around the University. But it is way out of line with what the council actually could be paying for office help. Under the Federal Work-Study program the council could pay a student worker $1.62 per hour, let the government pay the rest of the salary, and save undergraduates $8.38 for every hour of typing done in the Canaday basement.

Actually, undergraduates would be saved quite a bit more. Since Melendez, who plans to attend the Law School next year, is not currently a Harvard Student, the council pays the University a $164 per month fee to allow its former chairman use of libraries, access to Harvard's health insurance plan, and other fringe benefits available to Harvard staffers. That expense wouldn't be necessary if a student were employed.

ALTHOUGH MELENDEZ'S 20 hour work week in Canaday will siphon off close to a third of the council's budget this year, he evidently is not adequate to the task of keeping a three-room office filled with typed documents. So the council employs a second office staffer, Tara Deal '87, a work-study student. Deal's job, Chairman Eisert says, is to make sure the council meets deadlines with the IRS, Holyoke Center, and banks. And he says she doesn't cost undergraduates any money at all.

The reason for this, he explains, is that Deal's employment will be terminated the day she stops being "cost effective," which is to say as soon as she stops finding errors more costly than her salary. What Eisert doesn't explain is why it wouldn't be more "cost effective" for one of the elected officers of the council to watch the student government's accounts.

IT'S HARD not to jump to conclusions about why the council would decide to employ a former leader looking for a part-time job in Cambridge or why such a secretary would end up with a princely wage. I asked the student government's leaders anyway.

Brian C. Offutt '87, who was chairman when the council hired Melendez last year, says that he selected Melendez because he wanted the best person for the job and saw no need to give special consideration to work-study students. Since Melendez had been the council's paid executive secretary while an elected council member in 1983 and 1984, Offutt concluded that Melendez was a better candidate than the work-study student who applied.

It is noteworthy that Melendez, who drafted 137 pages of Council by-laws as an eager underclassman (and pared the tome to 21 ages before graduating), is the consummate student councilor. No one knows more about the Undergraduate Council than he does.

This evidently didn't mean as much to Eisert, who succeeded Offutt at the mid-point of Melendez's reign as executive secretary. Eisert says he wanted to save money and looked for a work-study student to replace Melendez--but couldn't find one.

Martha Homer, a financial aids and student employment officer, said recently that a council job would appeal to many work-study students who are anxious to find secretarial work. She said that she would have helped the council find a work-study student had she been asked.

The most important question raised by all this is not whether the council pays people too much to do its job--the answer to that one is pretty clear--but why the council needs to pay people to do its job in the first place.

What is it that council members are elected to do. What's keeping them from answering the phones in their own office? Why don't they do their own typing?

The council wouldn't tolerate such carefree spending by groups that receive grant money. The student body shouldn't tolerate it in the Undergraduate Council.