Advertisement

THE WRONG WAY

Regrettable is the fact that the Boston Community Fund Committee used the words "Harvard University, students, staff, and employees" in informing local papers the amount of money received from men with Harvard connections. The six thousand dollars donated the drive from here was given entirely unofficially. It is apparent that the Fund Committee attempted to use Harvard's name for an un Harvard purpose. Many Overseers may be Boston business men, but Harvard students come from all over the country, and Harvard itself is in Cambridge.

The students, it appears, have contributed a trifling percentage of the money. The amount donated by employees and the University staff is indefinite. Also indefinite are the methods by which the money has been collected from the employees and staff; but this is not the question in point. The fact is that most of the sum has come from the Faculty. Although a large number of Faculty members live in Cambridge and although by contributing to the drive they aid Boston charities which will benefit Cambridge, yet it would seem that they have more intimate connections with the University. The Faculty might divert part of the six thousand dollars from the Fund to the aid of students on "border-line" scholarships, students who are forced to spend too much time on jobs that they receive but a minimum of the benefit from education.

In any case, the fact cannot be circumscribed that the Fund has misplaced the stamp of Harvard officialdom on a charity which, from an educational standpoint, obviously concerns only a small piece of the University.

Advertisement
Advertisement