PBH Plans to Scrap Old Tutor Program; Seeks Volunteer Pool

Phillips Brooks House plans to scrap the present individual tutoring program, and with it the whole "tutoring qua tutoring ethic," PBH president Wesley E. Profit '69 said yesterday.

The PBH Executive Committee is considering turning over the Tutors Committee to the Intercollegiate Council of Boston. Plans for providing tutoring and other services through a new "volunteer-pool" drawing on colleges throughout the Boston area will be discussed with representatives of the Council, Profit said.

The Tutors Committee, which has 300 members, now receives more requests for tutors than it can handle. "The volunteer-pool would continue this service on a wider level, while freeing PBH to involve volunteers in programs with more of a chance for permanent institutional changes," Profit said.

Profit defined the purpose of PBH as finding non-violent alternatives for acting upon the critical social problems facing America. "There is not much chance for producing change with a program not connected in some way with the schools," Profit said.

Tutors are often too minimally committed, Profit said. They work on a one-to-one basis, usually for only one hour per week, with the children of families who cannot afford to pay a tutor.

Tutors work primarily with high school students. Profit said that PBH hoped to establish a program in which pure tutoring would give way to counseling and later to help in finding employment.

"Pure tutoring tends to be stop-gap activity; we want to work more closely with the actual causes of today's problems and not with their symptoms," Profit said.

The decision to discontinue the Tutors Committee program followed a study of the Committee's plans by the PBH Executive Committee. The present Executive Committee is the first to study programs under the new PBH intensive evaluation goals.

Profit said that most committees and chairmen would be approved for the following year by March 12. "The effectiveness and continuance of at least three committees other than the tutors is still under discussion," Profit said.