Vets Administration Wanted to Fine Ex-GI's Who Miss Classroom Muster

If the Veterans Administration had had its way last spring, every ex-G.I. in the University would have been held strictly accountable for every time he cut a class.

They only upshot of a hastily-withdrawn VA policy, however, was the establishment yesterday by the Vets Office here of a ledger-card attendance check for veterans on P.L. 346 or 16 in the Law School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Counsellor for Veterans John U. Monro '34 said yesterday that the ledger-card system in the schools where there is no monitoring of classes would let the VA know when a man has left the University. He added that the system will be considered for the other graduate schools but would not be necessary for the College.

Once a Month

The ledger-card system means that once a month the veteran student will have to sign in either at the Secretary's Office in Langdell Hall (Law School) or at Room 2 in Weld Hall (GSAS). He will be allowed to come in at his own convenience between the first and the fifteenth of the month, starting today.

In a supposed financial efficiency move last spring, the VA announced that daily attendance records should be kept for veterans studying with government aid, that colleges should report when a veteran has been absent for five days, and that a total of class cuts be sent in at the end of every term.

The VA intended to use the reports--with a complicated formula--to adjust the veteran's leave time and to dock him if he used more than the 30 days allowed, including Christmas, spring, and between-terms recesses.

Monro said yesterday that Harvard, along with other universities, protested the requirement because "it would complicate enormously the paper work on veteran students and also would impose on the university a rigid and undesirable attendance policy."

Rule Withdrawn

After a hasty trip to Washington last spring and hours of negotiation with the VA, Monro and his counterparts from other colleges succeeded in having the rule withdrawn. In its stead, however, the VA issued a new regulation which makes the University obligated to notify the VA "immediately when . . . the veteran ceases to be in attendance."

Monro declared that the ledger-card system was approved by the Law School and Graduate School Dean's Offices as the "machinery which would cause the least nuisance all around" in meeting the obligation.