Purchase Card Failure

Two and a half months ago, the National Student Association's Purchase Card System began operations at Harvard. There was a little preliminary publicity, and cards were on sale for a few days in the dining halls. Ever since, the project has been quietly dying on its feet.

It is hardly fair to blame the failure on the plan itself. The NSA's idea--to persuade selected stores to grant discounts to student card-holders in return for the resulting increase in trade--is an ingenious answer to the high cost of learning. It was tried out last year at the University of Buffalo with some success, and has been instituted in 17 other areas all over the country. What with the new tuition hike and the financial pressures of living under the G.I. bill, any good plan for saving deserves a fair tryout.

This it did not get at Harvard. The Purchase Card Committee gave the plan utterly inadequate publicity, acting on the naive assumption that its job was completed with getting the System organized. Partly as a result of the poor publicity only about 550 students bought cards, a pitifully small number in a University of 12,000. Some of the contracted stores are already complaining that their discount has not brought in enough trade to pay for itself.

Perhaps the most important reason for the current failure of the plan is the limited range of participating stores in the area of the Square. The success of the Purchase Card depends upon its local showing; the present nine member stores around the Square form a good nucleus, but the variety of goods, services, and price levels they cover is not wide enough to make the plan sell. In the minds of many students, the present Purchase Card System is merely an ineffective duplication of the Coop.

The System, however, is not dead yet. It simply hasn't had a chance. Given effective publicity and a mammoth card-selling campaign next fall, together with the recruiting of many more local stores, there is a good possibility that the Purchase Card System will revive and bloom. Otherwise, it will expire, . . . and soon.