Mention the idea that a hard-pressed college boy, earning his board or part of it by waiting on table or washing dishes should be obliged to pay an Old Age Insurance Tax, in order to provide him with a theoretical Old Age Pension when he reaches the age of 65, and you are greeted with a wan, incredulous smile suggesting that you have made a creditable effort to perpetrate a rather poor joke. Yet this is exactly what a solemnly paternalistic government at Washington, probably unintentionally it is true, has decreed.

Under the broad general provisions of the Federal Social Security Act, each Fraternity must pay two per cent of its pay roll (or the equivalent of pay in board), in order to safeguard the latter years of such of its members as are given jobs to help them to pay for their meals. There is already a section of the law exempting, employees of educational institutions but under a technicality this does not cover fraternity waiters. Thus undergraduates working for Morrow Cafeteria and the fraternities eating there are exempt while the other fraternity members have to pay, creating an obvious incongruity. The act further provides for a gradual increase in this Old Age Insurance Tax to six percent by 1948. To meet these payments fraternities will be forced eventually to cut down on either wages or jobs, hurting those who most need financial help. Thus is higher education encouraged...." --The Amherst Student.