EXCESSIVE INSURANCE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Last spring the Harvard Corporation voted that henceforth there would be no exceptions to the rule that all full-time students must pay the Medical and Infirmary fee; and the fee was then increased from $30.00 to $37.50. Previously, married graduate students who were protected against sickness and hospitalization were allowed to petition for exemption. The Corporation's decision was apparently prompted by the continuing deficit in the Hygiene Department's budget. The new rule did not receive wide publicity; but a wary Graduate Student Council tried to persuade the Dean's Office that the ruling unnoticed in the spring would be unfairly felt in the fall. Last Friday's stream of incredulous and irate graduate students in Farlow House unhappily confirmed the Graduate Council's prediction. To the protesting students Farlow House, like W. H. Auden's judge, could only keep repeating, "Law is The Law."

We are not sure how graduate and undergraduate commuters who are full-time students are affected by the ruling; surely many of them would ordinarily by protected by their parents' health insurance plans. Nor are we sure how married undergraduates, whose number may not be legion but whose lot in college life is often enough forgotten, how these undergraduates with dependents are taking the rule that no kind of family health and hospital insurance will exempt the husband and/or father from buying additional service and insurance from Harvard.

Married Men Penalized

We are sure, however, how the married graduate students feel. The new rule is absurdly unjust. Few married men anywhere are without some kind of health and hospitalization insurance today. There is only one low family rate regardless of the size of the family. Even the employees of Harvard, among them a crowd of teaching Fellows, are offered Blue Shield and Blue Cross group rates. For the University to demand that these graduate students be doubly protected and twice taxed cannot be justified n terms of the students' own interests; they still have to keep their wives and children covered by family health insurance, and the Hygiene Department, understandably, makes no provision for their dependents.

It is absurd to suppose that the married graduate student who already has health and hospitalization insurance would got security or anything else for the money the University demands from him. It is unfair to force him to buy what he don't need. Few married students with the gripps would exchange home care for Infirmary routine; even fewer married and insured students would go to the Infirmary for anything more serious than the grippe. Single students have no real choice. Consequently the new rule amounts to a scheme for plugging the hole in the Hygiene Department's financial like with the fees from married students. According to the logic of the new rule we may expect that the solvency of the dining halls will be insured by making all students, married, single and commuting, pay full board charges. John W. Broderick '46 5G