Redemption from Exemption

While Harvard faculty and students were enmeshed in their terms-end Battle of the Blue Books, the Massachusetts Legislature considered and rejected a proposal which would have crippled not only Harvard but every institution of higher education in the state. Messrs. Jordan and Lobel, from Revere and Brighton respectively, introduced a bill to withdraw the exemption from taxation for all colleges in the Commonwealth whose student body does not contain a minimum of sixty-five percent Bay State citizens.

The bill, which includes only about three short paragraphs, would be fantastically simple in operation. All college property in the state has long since been evaluated. Once the bill were law local tax collectors would have only to write a short note to the colleges concerned, demanding them to remit certified checks for sums whose total would run up into millions. Harvard, M.I.T., Amherst, Radcliffe, Wellesley, Smith, and other colleges that cannot meet the sixty-five percent requirement would immediately be forced to curtail expenditures for instruction, research, scholarships, and salaries.

Of course colleges could avoid the tax by booting out enough of those students not so fortunate as to be residents of Massachusetts and putting further admissions on a strict quota basis. The bill was designed to encourage precisely this action. Its framers feel that local boys and girls are being denied their fair share of the state's admittedly outstanding educational opportunities. Failing to attain its primary intent, the bill would secure to the state a few millions of additional revenue as consolation for its flouted sovereignty.

Because the bill represented a rather unsavory attempt to use taxing power to coerce colleges into regulating admissions in accordance with policies laid down by axe-grinding politicians, even those colleges which would fall safely within the requirements for exemption joined Harvard's Administrative Vice-President and the President of M.I.T. to form an absolutely solid opposition. If the threat of removing exemption from taxation can be used to force compliance with an admissions policy formulated by men who have political power to control the legislature, it can be used later to accomplish anything up to and including state domination of every phase of college life and learning.

The good sense of the joint committee considering the bill and the all out opposition of an impressive array of academic authorities combined to result in a recommendation that the bill be deferred to the next session. This action amounts to rejection of the proposal--at least for the present. But the idea of taxing its colleges is one that has always had a strong appeal for certain Massachusetts politicians, both state and local. That such a bill as the one which seems safely laid away could even be seriously entertained should serve to keep Massachusetts colleges and the majority of citizens who are justly proud of them on the alert to forestall any future threat of a similar nature.