Spend on Alumni E-Mail

To the editors:

Re "111,618,000" (staff editorial, Feb. 18): Advocating increased Harvard spending would be more persuasive if you suggested imaginative ways of employing the University's recent financial windfall. Even without large spending increases, a touch of imagination could make a difference.

For instance, as you reported last fall, Dartmouth decided this year to give all future graduates e-mail accounts. This will draw alumni into the Dartmouth community and help friends stay in touch. Harvard's e-mail forwarding system is wimpy. It depends on who happens to live in an e-mail friendly environment and on who happens to register his or her e-mail address with Harvard every time he or she switches to a new one and who you happen to know has registered. An e-mail account system would be simpler, surer, and more befitting of Harvard's quest for greatness.

So why don't we support closer ties for the classes of '98 and beyond? Surely it is not a question of money. As Harvard's fundraisers know, strengthening a sense of connection to Harvard is essential to raising lots of money. An e-mail account system would, in the long term, rake in more moolah than syncophantic pleas like the one Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles just sent to seniors.

One of us suggested the idea to a Kirkland House Undergraduate Council representative in January. He said he would bring it to the attention of the council, but we have heard nothing of it since. Yet getting accounts for graduating seniors is the kind of political project even Beth Stewart's administration could champion. If such a project is not launched in time for graduation, students could only blame foot-dragging--or a perverse desire to be worse than Dartmouth. WALTON A. GREEN '98   DAVID S. GREWAL '98-'99   IAN T. SIMMONS '98   Feb. 19, 1998