NO AAUP APPEAL

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Word has it that the Teaching Fellows Federation, last week denied significant salary increases, is planning at present to take their case to the American Association of University Professors, a powerful organization that has improved in every way the working conditions of college and university professors on campuses across the country.

This would indeed be an unfortunate move for the Teaching Fellows for a number of reasons. First, because the AAUP has been unsuccessful in the past challenging three universities, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton: the best example of this was the sad case four years ago of a professor of English at Princeton whose case of tenure was championed by the organization, its lawyers and mediators, to no avail. Secondly, because Teaching Fellows are legally students, and however many teaching duties they perform, they have no legal claim to bargain with the university on the same level that full-time teaching members, from instructors to full professors, have. Thirdly, because the administration, this year (1966-67) obviously suffering from a financial pinch, is now irked at the Teaching Fellows and could take irrational steps against the group if sufficiently provoked.

This is not to say that the Teaching Fellows should rest silently. They cannot. Everyone at Harvard wishes to see their lot, especially their financial lot, improved. The leaders of the Teaching Fellows would perhaps be well advised at this time to return to Deans Elder and Ford and explain once again their dire financial plight: the imminently rising cost of living in the Cambridge area. This administration is not tough and hard-boiled; they can be made to understand that their graduate students cannot make ends meet on the present shoe-string salary they receive. In fact, they must be made to understand before the situation gets out of hand: before it blows up into an issue that could well embarrass Harvard University, administration and Teaching Fellows alike. G.S. Rousseau Instructor of English