Committee to Review PBH Following Faculty Grant

The Faculty has allotted $14,000 to Phillips Brooks House for the upcoming fiscal year as an "interim financial subsidy" pending the findings of a special Faculty committee being formed to review PBH activities.

Dean Dunlop announced the grant in a February 25 memo to PBH executives and members of the advisory Faculty Committee on PBH. The service organization's request for long-term funding was turned down.

A preliminary study by the Committee on Students and Community Relations last year advised a thorough re-examination of PBH's role in the University and community. Dunlop's memo was attached to a five-page report by Dean May detailing the questions to be considered by the committee.

May disclosed yesterday that Charles P. Whitlock. associate dean and a member of the advisory committee for 18 years, would chair the committee. Whitlock said last night that the other committee members would be announced on Friday.

PBH has received University funds since 1967-68. when former Dean Ford agreed to provide $20,000 for three years. with the grant then diminishing by $5000 per year. At that time, PBH expected the funding to be a temporary measure until the PBH endowment was built up. Under this grant, PBH was slated to receive $10,000 this year.

Caught in a financial crunch last fall, PBH opened negotiations with Dunlop aimed at setting up another long-term subsidy plan. The $14.000 grant, a compromise figure, will be used for the salaries of the four-person office staff.

Both administrators and students involved have expressed concern for issues other than the financial one. May and Whitlock mentioned the question of making academic credit available for participation in PBH projects.

Barry O'Connell, retiring Graduate.Secretary of PBH, and PBH President Michael D. Robinson '71-3 of Lowell House expressed concern over University control over PBH policy.

"The new administrators are better mangers than the old ones, who handled community relations abysmally," said O'Connell.

Although May stressed PBH's uniqueness as an "interface between the University and the whole city of Cambridge and Boston," he said that "it's important for the students involved to have a maximum degree of autonomy."

"I suppose it's imaginable that something could blow up so it couldn't be left on its own, but I can't imagine it," he said.