The Full Dinner Pail

Some deep but not very deft University budget cutting has trimmed the resident tutors' meal tickets this year. Though the House Masters juggle the diminished allotment at their own discretion, most tutors will be paying for their third meal each day. With the end of unlimited board privileges, many tutors will forsake their Houses for the more inspiring Faculty Club, curtailing one of the House systems most rewarding features.

Free meals for the tutors should be reckoned on a higher plane than "X" cggs or "Y" pancakes. Dining room diplomacy was the main objective of the resident tutor plan, for the informal House atmosphere offers virtually the only opportunity for students to associate with instructors outside their own fields. The free meals that help link the tutors to the House equally hold the Faculty and undergraduates together.

A Cut of just $15,000 threatens to impair the effectiveness of the decentralized Deans' office plan which Faculty headaches and dollars designed several years ago. If limited meals for tutors mean Houses working at limited efficiency, surely the University's budget can yield in a softer place. Famous and enriching educational customs should receive some form of budgetary precedence at Harvard, yet even a jump of several dollars in room rents would be a cheap price for restoration of unlimited meals for the tutors.

The monetary loss from the reduced meal ticket may be the tutors', but the intellectual losers are the students alone. Economy invariably means sacrifice, but the Faculty should at least avoid trimming with a double-edged hatchet.