PRIVATE CONTRIBUTIONS

In a violent session the Cambridge School Committee, in spite of Mayor Russell, recently voted to request the faculties of Harvard, M.I.T., Radcliffe, and Boston University to contribute ten percent of their salaries to the needy of the city of Cambridge. This proposal was made on the ground that the four colleges, owning $200,000,000 worth of untaxed property in Cambridge, are burdening the city unduly, and should contribute in some way to its support.

The tenor of the remarks made by the members in committee implied that since it has been impossible to force the colleges to play taxes, this request was the best way out, and implied a moral obligation on the members of the faculties to comply. However this may apply to the other institutions involved, it is not wholly valid in regard to Harvard, which agreed several years ago to pay taxes on a large part of the University plant in Cambridge. In any case it is difficult to see why individual members of the faculty should be forced to make good the alleged remissness of the Harvard Corporation, especially since the majority of them live in Cambridge and are taxed accordingly.

If the members of the Harvard faculty desire to help the Cambridge unemployed by voluntary contributions, that is entirely their own affair. The school committee by implying that an obligation exists where there is none has taken a very efficient means of injuring its own cause. Whether or not the request receives the sanction of President Lowell on his return, any contributions received from individual professors should be recognized as private acts of charity which do not in any way indicate that the University as a Corporation, is involved.