Outside the Boston area, alumni do nearly 90 per cent of the recruiting, screening, and interviewing of prospective applicants. Although Glimp and the admissions staff try to maintain close contact with the 105 Schools and Scholarships Committees and 1,400 alumni workers, the old grads are of necessity on their own a good deal of the time. They represent Harvard to the students and parents of their areas, and in various ways they do much to influence the makeup of the Harvard student body.

Glimp points out that few schools place as much trust in their alumni as Harvard does in hers. For instance, Harvard informs its alumni workers of the ratings given by school principals to the candidates in their area--and this is highly confidential, highly volatile material. Twice in the past 10 years, high school principals have lost their jobs because information of this sort was "leaked," but on the whole the record has been surprisingly good on this score. In fact, for the most part, the alumni have worked out amazingly well. "Without the alumni, we could never screen and interview all our candidates," Glimp says, "and alumni often prevent high school guidance counselors from discouraging qualified applicants." Yet the feeling is hard to escape that the alumni might be better than they are; two illustrations, from central and southeast Ohio and from Minnesota, should serve to reveal these weaknesses. In both instances, the people contacted in these areas talked primarily and most enthusiastically about recruiting athletes. Sooner or later, they made it clear that they sought students, journalists, and the rest, but they evinced obvious relish only when discussing athletes.

The Best Recruiter

When Alex W. (Pete) Hart '62 was inaugurated as varsity football captain for the coming fall, one of those he thanked was "the guy who recruited me." The College's director of sports information, Baaron B. Pittenger, suggested "invite" as a more suitable synonym, but the meaning was clear. "The guy who recruited me" was Walter Birge of Columbus, O., president of the Harvard Club of central and southeast Ohio and Harvard's most famous recruiter.

"Pete Hart was my first recruit," Birge says today with pride. "And there are some good ones coming up. You watch the next two or three years."

Birge's Harvard Club covers one-third of the state in area, and roughly one-sixth of the population. The central-southeast part of Ohio is a rural area, dotted by small towns like Chillicothe, Gallipolis, Athens, and Mt. Gilead. The population of these towns runs from 2,000 to 15,000.

In each of the past three years Birge has sent 12 or 13 freshmen to Harvard from an area that was previously not very productive. Only one boy has not accepted admission in the three years. "There are lots of athletes," Birge says. "One boy has great SAT's in the mid-700's, and was an all-league quarterback and a three-sport athlete. He won all his school's academic prizes. He got a Harvard National."

Birge is enthusiastic about the Harvard Book Awards, given by many Clubs to outstanding junior class boys in their areas as a device to keep the schools Harvard-conscious. Birge likes to give out book prizes every year, but, he says, there are difficulties. "Sometimes, in a school that was disappointed (by not having its applicants accepted), I can't show my face--I run into bitter principals. So I don't give the books to the same schools every year. I do go to Columbus Academy every year; they always get a boy in."

The book prizes are generally for scholarship and character, but, Birge says, "Sometimes I tear out the inscribed flyleaf and give them for other types of ability." When questioned further, Birge explained, "This year I gave them to two scholar-athletes... but it's Harvard's book, and it states exactly what it's given for. There's nothing particularly wrong with it."

Despite the presence of sports-crazy Ohio State in his area, Birge claims to have no problem with competing schools. "Nobody can compete," he says, "because we have so much." But Birge recognizes a problem that has plagued nearly every Harvard Club--that of the good scholar-athlete whose father has a five-figure income, and who must choose between a costly Harvard education or a scholarship somewhere else. "We give on need, and they don't always do that out here," he remarks.

Curious Morality

He points proudly to the "case of an outstanding boy, all-Ohio, coming to Harvard even though he was offered a full scholarship elsewhere." But Birge--like Humphrey Doermann '52, a member of the Harvard Club of Minnesota and next year's Director of Admissions--adopts a curiously moralistic stand when discussing this type of case. "Sometimes a person thinks about money," he says, almost sadly. "If he's the type that succumbs to that kind of blandishment, we don't want him."

Doermann says on this subject, "If a boy's family regards cash outflow as what determines college, we lose out...if the family is going solely to dollars, we are hurt in competition." Then Doermann says, "I don't mean to take a moral tone," which seems a bit strange in view of his preceding remarks. But he realizes that the Harvard scholarship scale can be very tough on the middle-income family. "A middle-income job requires a certain standard of living--the money for spending is not great," he concedes. "A considerate kid may have a real problem." Still, he adds, "you have people who will scrape."

Spanning Minnesota

Doermann is a disciple of D. Donald Peddie '41, the guiding light of the Harvard Club of Minnesota. Peddie's incredible system for canvassing the entire state of Minnesota and parts of Wisconsin, the Dakotas, and south central Canada has increased the area's annual contingent from 10 or 12 to an average of 28, all in 10 years' time. The Harvard Club of Minnesota is widely recognized as one of the liveliest and most efficient alumni groups in the country.