PETITION PRACTICE

The Foreign Student Committee of Phillips Brooks House, with the additional weight of its faculty advisory committee, has sent to President Hoover a firmly worded protest against the recent regulation of the Department of Labor limiting the employment of foreign students. As a question of controversy, the so-called Deak ruling, against which the protest has been filed, has already created noticeable stirrings in the press of the country.

The giat of the matter is the ruling of the Labor Department dated September 1, which limits as employment available to foreign students, work which directly pays for the man's board and room. To work for one employer and use the wages received to pay for board in some other place has been forbidden.

The strong stand which the Brooks House petition assumes should have definite significance in the quarters to which it has been sent. Harvard's large group of students from districts outside of the United States has for many years afforded the members of the University an unusual means of international communication of ideas and social impressions. Despite the fact that the number of men here affected by the ruling is limited to about 30, the principle is one for which Harvard's contentions should form a strong case.

The art of petitioning which has been practiced here in various forms in recent years by faculty members and undergraduates alike is somewhat unlike Mayor Walker's methods of government by the partition system. And in this particular instance it is more than likely that the Department of Labor will wink a kindly eye at cases involving the conscientious foreign student worker, while the regulation will remain to check the cases of unmitigated student visa violations. If the Brooks House message influences the Washington officials to adopt such a liberal interpretation, the time and effort that have been put into it will be well repaid.