By an act of 1636, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts has "full power and authority" to "dispose, order, and manage" the "college at Cambridge" to insure fulfillment of its duty to dispense "piety, morality, and learning."

Today Massachusetts legislators think that Harvard's attitude toward leftist tendencies among its students and teachers is lax, its tax status is as it should be, and its admissions policy is fair, a CRIMSON poll of the Commonwealth's lawmakers indicates.

Since colonial times the General Court's attempts to enact legislation which would interfere with Harvard affairs have been sporadic at best. But when the legislature has tried to mold to its own standards Harvard's brand of "piety, morality, and learning," University officers have usually protested vehemently. Mostly they succeeded in staving off restrictive action on the part of the legislators.

Asking to be let alone has been the dominant theme in the University's recent relations with the Massachusetts Legislature. Like a growing child, Harvard craved progressively more independence of its parents as it developed physically and economically.

To see how the parent felt, the CRIMSON this spring asked each senator and representative of the Massachusetts Legislature 15 questions about the University. Most of the inquiries dealt with academic freedom, taxes, and admissions--matters about which the legislature has recently been particularly concerned, not only in connection with Harvard but all the state's schools and colleges.

The questions were based largely on sentiments expressed by various legislators on two education bills that same before the General Court in the spring of 1949. The first, House Bill 442 or the "Sullivan Bill," was designed to "prevent the teaching of atheistic communism and safeguard the ideals of American Education." To do this, the author, Ralph W. Sullivan of Boston, urged that any institution found by the Commissioner of Education to harbor communists on its faculty be deprived of its tax exempt status. His bill was defeated after several changes in form, but others like it have since been dropped in the General Court hopper.

The second bill, the Fair Education Practices Act, empowered the State Board of Education to issue cease and desist orders to any school or college found guilty of discriminating unfairly in admissions on grounds of race, religion, or nationality.

Hotbed of Communism

At the hearing of the Sullivan Bill, Harvard of all the colleges in the Commonwealth was singled out for special attack. Testimony of six witnesses and commentary from the legislators on the Education Committee combined to give the impression that the University was a hotbed of communism and revolutionary thought.

During the hearing on the Fair Education Practices, several witnesses and legislators demonstrated by their comments that they thought Harvard was perhaps guilty of unfair discrimination and certainly not sufficiently partial to students from Massachusetts.

Results from the CRIMSON's questionnaire showed, however, that the majority of the 66 lawmakers who answered the questions had resigned itself to letting its offspring lead its own life. In fact, the legislators were proud of their creation. Those who thought the successful child was a disgrace to the family constituted a minority. The minority, though, was large--around 40 percent of the legislature's personnel--and it was vocal.

The first questions on the CRIMSON's poll dealt with the control of leftist sympathies at Harvard. This particularly concerned the legislature at the time of the Sullivan Bill hearing because Harlow Shapley, Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy, was simultaneously acting as chairman of the allegedly Russian inspired Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace and Daniel Boone Schirmer, a confessed Communist testifying against the bill, turned out to be a Harvard graduate.

Responses to the questions on academic freedom were as follows: 1. Harvard does sufficiently control extreme leftist sympathies on its faculty. Agree strongly  9.5% Agree  23.8% Disagree  28.6% Disagree strongly  17.4% Don't know  19.7% 2. Harvard does sufficiently control extreme leftist sympathies in its student body. Agree strongly  7.8% Agree  21.8% Disagree  28.1% Disagree strongly  12.5% Don't know  29.8% 3. Harvard makes too much of the principle of academic freedom. Does  32.8% Does not  54.7% Don't know  12.5%

The next questions dealt with Harvard's tax free status. Some legislators claimed that since the University's tax exemption constituted a huge loss of revenue for the state, the Commonwealth had every right to either more control over Harvard or more taxes from it.

University officials could counter that Harvard, its intellectual contribution aside, more than made up for the taxes it didn't pay through the commerce its purchasers and students provided for Massachusetts businessmen.