The Mail WEAKNESS OF SLOP

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Despite the overall accuracy and fairness of Garrett Epps' article on the Harkness Commons boycott. I would like to point out a few subtleties in the situation which the article could not have been expected to cover. Unfortunately, the subtleties are of the greatest importance in determining results.

Although the Harkness managers implemented the changes which have stirred discontent, Harvard administrators ordered them because, as Dean Bruce pointed out. Harvard absorbs any losses. Harvard determines policies at Harkness, and those people in SLOP who know what they are doing wish to voice their discontent to Harvard, not to the Harkness managers, who are in constant contact with students, highly aware of their discontent, and ultimately helpless.

In my comments to Mr. Epps. I meant to convey that the GSA hasn't been very effective in dealing with the food problem, not that "we haven't been very active" because we lack expertise. The situation is complex. However, I have learned enough to believe that most inefficiencies in food policies derive from Harvard's contracting and accounting policies, with some contributions, as always, from the ever-inefficient B and G. As in most of my overtures for improvements in student living conditions. I feel like I'm arguing with an accounting system. The locus of responsibility for this is so obscure that students have no access to it whatsoever.

I can suggest palliatives, which may or may not be helpful in the Harkness situation. However, the roots of this and many other student monetary problems are buried deep in the heart of the Harvard bureaucracy. No student has the time to unearth them. He can only, like the members of SLOP, protest and hope some administrator tries to help. The great majority of the administrators I have encountered are eager to help. Frequently they too are defeated by financial restrictions, bureaucratic mazes, and encrusted tradition. There remains, of course, the occasional administrator who exhibits the dense and callous reaction one presented to Mr. Epps: "It's their tuition-If that's what they want to do with it, that's O. K."