Sugared Doughnuts

When freshmen answer the call of "milk and doughnuts" after January first, the man waiting with a basket of food and drink may look the same as he does now, but there will have been a change. The new milk and doughnut men will be controlled by a strong central agency.

After this term the Office of Student Employment will assume supervision of the Yard concession as it controls the House operation. In fact, the new policy of the Office is to bring under its control all student enterprises that involve selling or canvassing on Harvard property.

There is no question that some supervision is necessary and the Employment Office has always been responsible for processing student applications to sell goods or services in University dormitories. In the first place, the item for sale must be enough of a necessity to warrant disturbing students in their own rooms. But, the student's trade must not be lured away from the Square merchants, lest the local men claim unfair competition. There is a difference, however, between supervision and control. And a wholesale policy of bringing all student operations like the doughnut men or laundry canvassers under the aegis of a sub-deanery is unnecessary and unfair.

The Employment Office would do little more, in its newly paternalistic position, than it now does to improve business methods, volume of sales, or net profit. Carefully screening applicants for selling positions, it would be in a better position to influence the hiring of new men. This is one of the big aims of the new policy because the Office fears that men whose selling ability outstrips their need will get job preference over those who are less effective salesmen but in worse financial circumstances.

Certainly Harvard should shy from anything that would lead to Princeton's system of rigid, almost dictatorial, control. With all its enticements of bonus pools and guaranteed minimums--siphoned from weekly earnings--Nassau's version of the welfare state would not thrive in Cambridge. The situation is too different, with many more jobs available nearby, more complete service offered by local merchants, and thus, less variety of goods that students can sell in the College.

The Student Employment Office should end its policy of swallowing student operations that it does not now control, and remain solely as the licensing bureau for selling at Harvard and the placement agency for students in outside jobs.