Council Investigates

In 1936, the Student Council began an investigation into the tutoring industry. A four-man committee was appointed "to determine whether the tutoring schools have grown out of their natural proportions and whether any effort should be made to curb their activities." They found that an alarming 75 percent of the College frequented the parlors, and that the average student spent $20 a year for tutoring purposes.

The only action taken by University Hall after the Council publicized its findings was to prohibit scholarship holders from using the tutoring schools without official consent.

Finally, on April 18, 1939, the CRIMSON opened the attack that was to drive the cram parlors out of the Square. A banner headline announced:

"Crimson Inaugurates Campaign to Eliminate Tutoring Schools as an Organized Vice Racket Violating University Rulings and Ethics."

A front-page editorial slashed out: "Lined up on Massachusetts Avenue, grinning obscenely down over Harvard Yard, there is a row of Intellectual brothels....They are making a mockery of a Harvard education, a lie of a Harvard diploma."

To make its drive effective, the CRIMSON withdraw all advertising for tutoring schools. A week later, the Advocate cut off these advertisements, a source of twelve percent of its revenue shortly afterwards, the Guardian, a social sciences magazine, followed suit.

In May, 1939, the Administration prohibited men from selling lecture and reading notes which were to be employed by schools, and prohibited any students from using commercial tutoring without permission. Violation of either rule-meant expulsion. To provide a substitute for the cram parlors, the University created the Bureau of Study Counsel in September of that year.

Several professors threatened to take action against students whose examination papers contained "canned answers." Perry G.E. Miller, professor of American Literature, said in 1940 that his last English 7 exam had "wreaked havoc among crane parlor habit`uees."

Although the measures served to slightly decrease the business of commercial bureaus, they functioned effectively for another year. Then, in April, 1940, the publishing companies again took court action against the parlors.

The College Tutors, ignoring the injunction of 1933, had continued outlining and selling copyrighted books. Macmillan brought suit against the school, and two weeks later, confessing guilt, the College Tutors settled out of court. It's proprietors, Joseph H. Hurvits '21 and Abraham Segel, promised to close down the offices of the combined University Tutors and College Tutors, to destroy.

stencils of outlines, and to cease all activities in Cambridge.

Hurvitz resumed the law business in Boston that he had begun in 1935. In 1942, he moved to Washington in order to carry on government work.

Segel is now operating another business in Boston whose success depends largely on the patronage of Harvard students. When he settled with Macmillan, he reserved the right to "carry on elsewhere than in Cambridge a `legitimate' business in notes and outlines of non-copyrighted books."

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