Penny Foolish

Last week the business manager of the '47-'48 Class Album, scheduled to appear next May, phoned Lehman Hall to ask for the list of purveyors that the University has furnished student publications in the past years. The subsequent refusal to give any sort of list has resulted in the probable revision of plans for the Album, as well as the '51 Freshman Red Book. As soon as an outcry arose at this unforeseen, crippling move, University officials stiffened, a hasty conference between Lehman and University Halls resulted in a hidden-ball play as to the responsibility, a throwing up of hands in friendly sympathy for the plight of the publications, and a host of reasons, both ethical and financial, for the now frozen decision.

To give up a list of advertisers who supply the University is a form of blackmail, they said, ignoring the fact that no advertiser has ever complained on being approached, and that the procedure has been standard practice here and elsewhere for a number of years. Lehman Hall lot their ethical principles down long enough to imply that the books might get their list some other way, though the University would not give it. The move may very well be, as claimed, part of a plan to save money and at the same time turn over a new moral leaf, but then why start with the comparatively small case of undergraduate publications!

The University's hampering of undergraduate activities that lead to a loyal, as well as generous, alumni body stretches to other things besides purveyor lists, and, to be blunt, can only result in a smaller and smaller dollar harvest from the already less copious graduates. Such exorbitant charges as $30 for running off the stencils of the Album's mailing list, general milking of graduating classes for every cent of the wasteful costs of Class Day exercises, leave rancid tastes that are bound to linger through the years. And it is still expected that, through an almost dead class loyalty, the alumni will still come across with cheery alacrity.

Since the war, costs for producing an Album or a Red Book have risen about 85 percent, and the '46 Album, first under postwar prices, had $3600, or 85 percent of all advertising, through the purveyor system. Raising the price above the present $10 would decrease subscribers, while the University says it is doing the books a favor by not subsidizing. Though the Crimson and Lampoon are self-perpetuating organizations with policy that must be free of control by its very nature, an Album starts afresh every year, and the word "control" has no meaning for a collection of pictures and nostalgic, informative articles. The '47-'48 Album has a gap of $5000 to fill, now without purveyor advertising, and it is impossible for the Student Council, which has helped many such books, to pay so large a sum out of their treasury, which is intended for other purposes.

So after all the flustered words have been said a few times over in University Hall, the responsibility still remains with the Administration, if indeed they have any interest in the further publication of these books. Perhaps the Council will be able to help with an investigation of the University role in support of class activities, and their responsibility financially. But it is the Administration that must make a decision to help, or there will be the picture in the next few years of Album business managers hitting the last few advertisers again and again, and the Album soon disappearing into the annals of Harvard history.