SERVICE PLEASE

Without shutting its eyes to the objections to student waiting, the Student Council has in its recent report urged that the system be tried. Consideration of the obstacles suggests their seriousness, but on the whole the proposed trial seems a very proper course.

What are the disadvantages? First there is the question of dining hall efficiency. Obviously student waiters--at least for a time--will be less efficient than professional waitresses.

Then there is the question--and a weighty one--of how such a system would affect the social life of a House. One of President Lowell's principal reasons for inaugurating the House system was that it would provide opportunity for all students--no matter what their school or family "background" or what their wealth--to dine with each other in a congenial atmosphere. To set some students apart as waiters undoubtedly would compromise the "dinner table education," for which President Conant too is enthusiastic. Perhaps, also, it would cause a social distinction between the waiters and the non-waiters, but Freshman Union experiences have proved that by and large this is not the case.

Although last spring's Student Council report indicated that undergraduates favor student waiting, it showed as well 58 per cent in opposition if "no immediate saving" would result. And the general hesitancy displayed in the Council report stems from magisterial opposition as well. Of the Housemasters only Messrs. Ferry and Clark have expressed willingness to see student waiting given a trial. Finally, there is the unfortunate but inescapable fact that many waitresses would be put out of work by the inauguration of student waiting at Harvard.

In the face of the overwhelming demand for jobs among the student body all these objections seem trivial. For the Student Employment Office estimates that from fifty to one hundred students are annually forced to leave College because of inability to meet expenses. And last year almost five hundred men who applied for T. S. E. jobs had to be turned down.

The desirability of keeping these men in College far outweighs the disadvantages involved in the student waiting scheme. For Harvard still declines to accept N. Y. A. scholarship grants. All the more, then, it owes to needy students a fair trial of the proposed House student-waiting plan.