No Splintering

This concern for what local neighborhoods are thinking reveals the committee's fear of "splintering the community." "Obviously the program is not going to work unless it has the support of the people with whom it works," one member says. But what they really fear is that those for whom the program is meant will feel that they are being lumped into the solid block of the "poor," that they are being preached to, and charitably nursed by the anti-poverty program. (Incidentally, that's why some members believe that President Johnson marked the program with a permanent stain the day he opened his mouth about the "war on poverty.")

In the minds of many, a prominent rift already exists between the rich, University-oriented parts of Cambridge and the rest of the City. If people felt that the University community was administering the poverty program, the result might be open hostility to the project--and disaster.

For all that, there are a number of University people on the committee, including Charles P. Whitlock, assistant to the President for Civic and Governmental Affairs; John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics; and Theodore Sizer, Dean of the Graduate School of Education.

But the role of the University community remains vague and undefined, though undoubtedly it will be an important one. The one thing which is definite is that the University-oriented individuals and groups will make their contribution as individuals and not as part of a total University effort which might further aggravate town-gown differences. As Sizer puts it, "We're not giving advice on the terms that we have the answers and they don't."

One of the "University" people on the Committee is Norton Long, a Brandeis professor and a member of the Harvard-M.I.T. Joint Center for Urban Studies. Long heads the special research subcommittee, which will attempt to break down the gross statistics that the committee now possesses. With unemployment figures, for example, Long's group will try to find out how many people were unemployed because of old age, how many because of poor education, how many because of disability, how many because of alcholism, etc.

Long is also investigating this year's graduating senior class from Cambridge's two high schools. What he would like to do is give them all a standard skills test administered by major companies. This would establish an "inventory" of those who can and cannot meet the standards of the job market. Remedies to specific weaknesses would then be stressed in special summer sessions. Long has already held a meeting with a number of personnel directors for large firms in the area and is hoping to get their cooperation and aid in setting up the program.

Passing Birthdays

Many youths "go through school by passing birthdays," Long believes, and he would like to see skill tests--oriented towards employment opportunities--given as early as the seventh grade. Lower class children "need to be motivated to invest in themselves [in school] at the expense of present gratification," he says. "They must have some sense that the jobs will be there."

Students also will contribute to the program. Phillips Brooks House projects in settlement houses, and, in more recent years, in Roosevelt Towers, a City housing project, provide useful "pilot" experiments that the committee might expand upon. Moreover, PBH will channel all its requests for funds under the antipoverty act through the Cambridge committee. It is a foregone conclusion that PBH--long an important participant in the unofficial "war on poverty"--will be an important one in the official "war".

TEST (Teen-age Employment Skills Training), set up by the Harvard Student Employment Office to help local youths prepare for the job market, also has an important place in the City's program. If the government approves the application for a "neighborhood youth corps," Test will run it.

In the long as well as the short run, the poverty committee faces a difficult beset with many problems. For example, the federal government puts 90 per cent of the cost for projects, with 10 per cent coming from the local community. In Cambridge, it is possible that there might be some resistance to putting up any extra cash, for City Manager John J. Curry keeps close tabs on the budget. The City can offer its 10 per cent contribution in "kind" (donation of classrooms or personnel, for example), but even this sort of assessment can cost dollars.

Eventually how much Cambridge puts up in dollars--and consequently how much it participates in the poverty program--is a political question. And John Moot, who wants a non-political poverty program, must make sure that a non-political program is not one without strong political support