The reports of the officers of the constituent societies and chairmen of the various committees of the Phillips Brooks House Association show the direction and amount of growth in the work carried on during the past year. The twelve reports, which were read at the annual dinner and business meeting in the Union on Thursday, are printed below in full:
President's Report.
If any group of young men have enjoyed the privilege of success, and if that success is the result of serious work, it is extremely difficult for them to make any extensive report of their activities without the use of superlatives. That the Phillips Brooks House has enjoyed a successful year is evidenced by the reports of the several societies, and it is interesting and impressive to observe the wide field of activities covered by these organizations.
No institution in the University carries out the principle of individualism to a greater degree than the Phillips Brooks House. Here a man has a wide choice of serious work whereby he may devote a part of his life to the service of his God and his fellow-men. In short, I think that the Phillips Brooks House Association is composed of men who embody the personality of religion. It is not a Sunday religion, but actually a part of them, and it is most gratifying to note the seriousness, eagerness, and enthusiasm displayed by all the men who have been connected with the Association this last year.
Our home is dedicated to piety, charity, and hospitality, and I think that this has been the unconscious motto of all
their valuable advice and co-operations with us in our work.
During the summer of 1915 we made a personal canvass of over sixty places in Boston, Roxbury, and Brookline where rooms were available, and in some cases board, for men in the Medical School. As a result of this personal canvass we were able to publish in August a room-registry containing the names and addresses of people desiring to let rooms to our students, as well as the number and prices of both single and double rooms and the cost of table board, if such was available. Copies of this room-registry were placed with the Dean to be sent to new men coming to the School. Also copies were distributed at the registration desk on the opening day of school. We are unable to say just how many were assisted by this registry, but we feel it is a valuable aid, especially to new men coming to the Medical School for the first time.; Next year we expect to have a list of over one hundred available places.
At the beginning of the school year an Information Bureau was conducted at the School, during the registration period. Copies of the Harvard Handbook were distributed to all the members of the entering class and to as many members of the other three classes as wished them. During the year we have been able to given men in different parts of the United States, who are planning to enter the Medical School, information as to cost of living, available work, and similar matters of interest to them. It is our desire to be of as much practical assistance to such men as we possibly can.
In response to an appeal made last year by the Psychopathic Hospital for volunteers to engage in social service among out-patients of that hospital, we were able to arrange for Dr. Adler to meet the entire second-year and third-year classes and lay the proposition before them. Great interest was shown in this phase of the work, resulting in twenty volunteers from one class and about forty, practically one-half of the total enrollment, from the other.
In November, the Committee was supplied with a desk and chair by the Phillips Brooks House. These were placed in the Students' Room and there the chairman was able to keep regular office hours for a small part of the school year. The fact that such headquarters were established, however, served as a means of informing the student body of our existence and growth. During the year we have made constant use of the bulletin board in the Students' Room both for notices of meetings of interest in the School and in Boston, for additions to our room-registry, and for the announcement of opportunities for outside employment. It has been our aim to establish an employment bureau at the Medical School for the benefit of those men who must do outside work to continue in the School. We have made but a small beginning and it now remains to secure the co-operation of the public, so that it will communicate with the chairman of the Committee whenever opportunities arise for the employment of medical students.
In co-operation with the Student Volunteer Band, many medical men returned from other countries have been secured to speak at the Board meetings on Sunday afternoons. On March 9 Dr. P. W. Harrison of Arabia, for several months this year an assistant surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital, spoke to about thirty men at at 5 o'clock meeting at the School on "Some Attractive Locations for Surgeons." The address was very instructive and interesting. The Committee was also able to arrant for engagements for Dr. Harrison to speak at the Boston University School of Medicine, the New England Baptist Hospital, and the Peter Bent Brougham Hospital. We were unsuccessful this year in attempting to secure the Rev. G. A. Gordon of the New Old South Church and the Rev. Albert Parker Fitch of Andover Seminary to speak to the Medical School.
On March 21 the Committee sent out to the members of the three upper classes and of the last graduating class a circular letter asking for information as to the expensed incurred by each student in the Medical School last year. The questions included cost of board, lodging, tuition, traveling expenses, personal expenses, and in that way, if any, the student was able to meet these expenses by work in the summer or during the school year. We intend to arrange this data when the returns are in, and to publish it in pamphlet form, very similar to the "Students' Expenses and College Aids" published at Cambridge for the academic and graduate department of the University it is hoped that these facts will present to the administration and aural of the Medical School a very urgent appeal for a dormitory.
Two projects have been undertaken this year which have been failures. The open, a loan library, did not seem to make much of an appeal, evidently because so few medical men wish to dispose of their books. The other, a class in Bible study and discussion, could into be put under way because of our inability to find a leader.
The Medical School Committee has accomplished very little as far as actual results go during the current school year, but it feels sure that a beginning has been made in many directions which, if followed up, will prove but openings to greater opportunities beyond. To the new Committee we could suggest that particular emphasis be laid in three places. First, a practical and helpful employment bureau can and should be established at the Medical School. Second, with theca-operation which the administration of the Medical School is willing to give all efforts should be directed toward securing a dormitory. Third a class in Bible study and discussion can be established if the right leader is discovered. This is of the highest importance, as there is at present no real religious work being done at the Medical School. STANLEY B. WELD 4M., Chairman
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