The Secretaries: Keepers of the Wheels

Harvard has been the object of much name-calling during its 318 years of existence, dubbed with epithets ranging from "hotbed of Puritanism" to "haven for Communists." But perhaps the most objective appraisal of the University, and one that emphasizes a quite unheralded aspect of its daily functioning, is the one-word description suggested by an unknown Social Relations man. He simply said, "Harvard is a matriarchy."

Technically-as the Soc. Rel. man himself well knew-a matriarchy is "a state or stage in social evolution in which descent is traced in the mother's line," or, more generally, "a society in which women exercise the main political power." In applying the term to Harvard, however, he was merely pointing out that the University is essentially run by its female employees.

Nicholas F. Wessell, associate director of Personnel, readily agrees that women play a major role in Harvard's daily operation. Of 4,360 non-Corporation employees now on the University payroll, Wessell reports, 2,557, or more than half, are women. In addition, 153 of these woman employees have been with the University for more than 25 years, while only 141 men have comparable records of service.

And it is these 2,557 women-whether they be maids, file clerks, dining hall checkers, laboratory assistants, or Secretary to the President-who do the work that keeps all departments of the University functioning. "Male employees tend to get involved in policy decisions," Wessell explains, "and thus the women must see that the work gets done."

The credit for this accomplishment belongs, of course, to every woman on the Harvard payroll. But a few of these unheralded employees are particularly conspicuous for their invaluable service in "seeing that the work gets done."

One of these women is Mrs. Martha P. Robinson, who has served nearly 20 years in the tutorial office of Government, History and Economics, and whom Carrol F. Miles, teaching fellow in Government describes as the secretary "who sort of came with Holyoke 8."

Assigns Sophomores

As her main function, Mrs. Robinson keeps the tutorial records for all students who concentrate in any of these three fields-a group which last year numbered approximately 1,500, or nearly 40 percent of the whole Harvard-Radcliffe undergraduate body. Each spring she assigns all sophomores in these fields to appropriate tutors; she prepares the records of more than 200 honors candidates in the departments each year, to determine whether they will graduate summa, magna, cum, or sine; she makes sure that somebody reads and marks all the bluebooks that are turned in from general examinations in the fields; and she constantly answers such questions as "Who is my tutor?", "Do I have to take this course next year?", "Who is teaching Gov. 155 next year?", and "What did I get on the Economics general?".

In the words of Professor Charles H. Taylor, former chairman of the division of History, Government, and Economics, Mrs. Robinson is simply "indispensable to the work of the three largest departments in the College."

But she does not confine herself to keeping records for the 1,500-odd students to whom she refers as "my concentrators" or "my boys." In addition, she is the administrative secretary for both Government 1 and Economics 1, preparing the section lists for these courses, recording the grades, mimeographing reading lists, making sure the books are available, and telling countless anxious students that no, she does not have the results of their mid-year exams.

There is even more to Mrs. Robinson's job; technically, she is also the personal secretary to Professor Taylor. This has now become the least time-consuming of her many functions, however, for as Taylor explains-with obvious awe of his secretary's importance-"I try to bother her as little as possible."

But the really unique thing about Mrs. Robinson is not her industriousness or importance; it is the fact that her job exists at all. For the Division of History, Government, and Economics, of which she is still secretary, became essentially non-existent several years ago when it was broken up into separate fields. Since that time, the three departments have dropped their common tutorial function, have developed different formulas for determining honors, and have stopped giving correlation examinations to honors candidates. Also, since Taylor's period of service there has been no joint chairman for History, Government, and Economics.

Although the three departments had officially separated, however, they still felt it would be convenient to work together in various ways and to keep their tutorial records in the same office. Thus Mrs. Robinson's job has been to know the members of the three fields within the Division, to reconcile differences between the respective head tutors, to keep the departmental chairmen informed, and-in Taylor's words-"to keep the departments from forgetting they were part of a whole." And somehow she has managed to maintain some semblance of unity between the three fields-an accomplishment which, according to Taylor, "could not possibly have been done by anyone without her years of experience, energy, tact, and intelligence."

Mark-Seeking Students

Thus Mrs. Robinson is single-handedly responsible for the unique inter-departmental unity that still exists in the filing cabinets in Holyoke 8.

What she most likes about her job, however, is not the records and statistics, but the students themselves. Describing her year's work, she cites the spring as the busiest time; "there is a steady crescendo of activity from mid-years on," she says. And yet it is this period that Mrs. Robinson likes best, when theses are due and pile up in her office, when honors records must be prepared, and when mark-seeking students either line up far out into the Holyoke. House hallway or just swarm wildly into Room 8. For it is then, she says, that "I can finally see some results coming out of my work."

The importance of Mrs. Robinson's organizational and statistical work may be unique in the world of tutorial, but throughout the University each office seems to have its own woman employee whose services are just as invaluable and indispensable. The University Hall counterpart of Mrs. Robinson, for example, is a secretary who essentially runs the whole Registrar's Office. Since this woman has asked that her name not be used, however, she shall be known here as Miss Jones.

In the words of Registrar Sargent Kennedy, Miss Jones is, quite simply, "the most important person in my office... the woman who runs the place for me." Under Kennedy's direction, she supervises the other employees in all the regular functions of the Registrar's Office; the recording of grades and attendance, the assignment of classrooms for lectures, sections, and examinations, the compiling of the academic records of individual students, and so forth. "If Miss Jones were a man," Keenedy says, "she would undoubtedly have a Corporation appointment as assistant Registrar."

Besides supervising the office's employees in these routine tasks, Miss Jones personally carries out a job that is as valuable to the University, and difficult to execute, as it is unique and unpublicized. In the early part of each spring she carefully guesses what rank of honors-summa, magna, or cum-each one of that year's honors candidates will retain when he graduates.

The necessity for these annual guesses by Miss Jones lies in the fact that each diploma awarded with honors by the College must have the honors rank and the field of concentration hand-written in fancy script. Obviously, there would not be time to prepare all these diplomas between the final determination of honors and Commencement. It falls to Miss Jones, therefore, to sit down in April, review the academic record of each honors candidate, and accordingly predict how each will be graduated. The diplomas are then prepared on the basis of her predictions, and any mistakes she has made are remedied by inscribing new diplomas at the last minute.

These mistakes are very few, however, and Miss Jones's accurate prognostications-based, according to Kennedy, on "intelligence, experience, and a knowledge of department and course idiosyncrasies"-have consistently saved the University a good deal of both money and embarrassment.

Miss Jones works in the Registrar's Office, which is on the first floor of University Hall. Directly above her on the second floor is the office of Dean Bundy and that of his secretary, Miss Verna C. Johnson. The work of Miss Johnson may not be as unusual as that of Mrs. Robinson or Miss Jones, but she certainly deserves a place on any list of "the women who run the University."

Formerly secretary to Provost Buck, Miss Johnson now handles appointments and routine correspondence for Bundy, supervises the work of four other secretaries in the Faculty Dean's office, and arranges meetings of various special Faculty committees. In Bundy's words, she is "irreplaceable," and her work "invaluable."

As chief secretary in the office, Miss Johnson supervises the recording of Corporation actions; of the minutes of meetings of the full Faculty, the Committee on Educational Policy, and other Faculty committees; and of action on Faculty appointments. In addition, her office handles recommendations to the Corporation on matters concerning the Faculty, and she is thus acquainted with such problems as the annual budget. And finally, it is Miss Johnson, together with secretaries from the President's office in Massachusetts Hall, who sets into motion the complicated machinery whereby the appointment of a new professor is recommended and approved.

Whereas Miss Johnson in her everyday work deals with budgets and professors, Miss Gladys M. Fales is more concerned with bartenders and magicians. For it is Miss Fales who, supervising the Student Employment Office, places nearly 2,000 students a year in jobs that range from student porter in Taylor Hall to accordionist at a cocktail party.

At present Miss Fales's office lists approximately 800 jobs within the University that are open to students on a part-time basis-a number that is significantly larger now than in previous years. And this increase in employment opportunities is directly attributable to the dedicated efforts of Miss Fales, who has done everything possible to persuade employers of what she firmly believes; that "student workers are the best you can find anywhere."

Undergraduates Reliable

"We have proven that students are reliable employees, and that if we put a man on a job we will keep him there," Miss Fales says. "No boy can get work through this office," she explains, "without signing a statement that he'll remain on the job throughout the term."

It is this insistence on student reliability that Miss Fales credits with overcoming the use of local high school students in University jobs, and their replacement with college students.

Thanks to the work of Miss Fales, says Graham R. Taylor, Jr., director of Student Employment, "the incidence of students leaving their jobs during examination periods has become negligible."

Currently the Student Employment Office places up to 1,500 students a year in steady term-time jobs, and another 300 to 400 in casual jobs around the Boston area. These casual jobs include anything from baby-sitting and leaf-raking to modeling for an art association or bartending at a private party. For the latter type of job, incidentally, the Office has at hand an experienced group of professional student-bartenders.

Up on the second floor of Massachusetts Hall sits a small, grey-haired, sparkling-eyed lady who is obviously very happy in her job of arranging welcomes for all of Harvard's official visitors. Mrs. Alice Belcher has served as secretary to the Secretary of the University since 1936, and describes her works as "an extremely human job making things pleasant for people."

The people for whom she makes things pleasant come from all over the world, and usually drop in to visit the University-either unexpectedly or with a big fanfare-at the rate of at least one a week. Recently, for instance, the chief abbot of a Japan monastery and an archeologist from Turkey showed up quite spontaneously for a short visit. Mrs. Belcher had only a few hours notice, but she was nevertheless able, at the archeologist's request, to round up four of the University's seven Turkish students and have them meet the visitor.

Among other qualifications for the welcoming job, Mrs. Belcher has the advantage of speaking some eight languages. Most of the University's visitors are able to speak English, she says, but still "Its fun when they unconsciously lapse into their own language and I answer them in it without their realizing what's happening."

In the case of unexpected or minor visitors, Mrs. Belcher and her staff usually handle all arrangements for their stay at the University. When a more important personage is scheduled to arrive, however, the plans are more elaborate and are arranged jointly by Mrs. Belcher's office, the University and Cambridge police, and, in the case of foreign visitors, the State Department.

The recent visit of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, for example, was first planned last March when the State Department wrote Mrs. Belcher of the projected date for his tour. Mrs. Belcher then checked to make sure that President Pusey would not be out of town at that time, and notified the Government that the date was suitable. Then, knowing that the Emperor would be especially interested in something relating to his own country, she arranged for a special exhibit of Ethiopian manuscripts in Houghton Library.

When Haile Selassie finally arrived at the University, met President Pusey, and signed the official Guest Book, he did not actually meet Mrs. Belcher. But she was standing nearby, and it was on account of her careful planning that the Emperor's visit ran as smoothly as it did.

To Mrs. Belcher herself, however, the most significant aspect of her welcoming job in the help she gets from other people within the University. She especially thanks the Crimson Key for its tour service and Faculty members in general for the help with all arrangements. "They act as though this office performs a genuine service to the University, and is more than just a nuisance," she says.

Back in University Hall is the office of Miss Eva F. Wooks, secretary to Dean Leighton, and a 39-year employee of the University. Among her other duties, Miss Weekn keeps all the records of the Administrative Board, and consequently is, in Leighton's words, "the current historian of Harvard College."

Records Scholarships

The Administrative Board does not make all its decisions on the basis of precedent, Leighton emphasizes. But when a disciplinary case comes up that has been handled before, he explains, the Board is interested to know what the previous ruling was, and it is at such times that Miss Weeks' complete Administrative file, in addition to her long experience, becomes especially, valuable to the University.

And in addition to keeping the Administrative Board records, Miss Weeks also handles the office's correspondence and records prizes and scholarships awarded to students through the Dean.

But the best testimonial to the work of Miss Weeks and also to that of all the University's woman employees, is found in the last annual report of Wilbur J. Bender '27 as Dean of Students. Writing in 1952, Bender, who is now Dean of Admissions, concluded his report by expressing his "feeling of deep obligation" to Miss Weeks, "who has survived the idiosyncrasies of five Deans of Harvard College and deserves a medal for that achievement alone.

"She had done much more than survive, however," Bender continues. "Her ency clopedic knowledge of Harvard, her efficiency, her tact and patience and good will have made her literally invaluable. She is the embodiment of the wisdom and tradition of 4 University Hall and the true exemplar of that select company of selfless women servants of the University without whom Harvard's wheels would quickly grind to a halt."MISS GLADYS M. FALES, supervisor of the Student Employment Office, places nearly 2,000 students a year in a wide range of local jobs.