Vacuum Gap

A booming economy has brought students better jobs, and dustier rooms. As a result of tightening supplies of skilled labor, students who used to vacuum rooms can now find more attractive, higher paying work elsewhere.

The reduction in vacuum service--from once a week to once every two--will allow more lint and old newspapers to accumulate under beds and furniture, an annoying inconvenience for the more fastidious undergraduate. But the cause of the manpower shortage is certainly welcome: Students who work part-time can now wear white collars, instead of blue.

The most recent cut in service is consistent with the trend in recent years. Services have been steadily reduced since 1942, when a maid visited each student's room every day. More responsibility for keeping rooms neat and clean has gone to the students, who have not always responded with equal efficiency.

Following the recommendations of the Harvard Undergraduate Council, the University should either hire non-student help, to continue the present level of service, or consider cutting the fees that students pay to live in University rooms. Although officials argue that non-students would not be willing to work for the rate now paid undergraduates--$1.75 an hour--they might at least make some attempt to offer the jobs to people outside the University. After all, the unemployed in Cambridge and Boston are primarily the unskilled--those who cannot type, or do research, or any of the other kinds of work that are now drawing students who used to vacuum rooms. The University could do the community a service by hiring them.