Room Rents

As the completion date for the College's eighth House approaches, the question of room rents has gradually forced itself on the Administration. Unfortunately, the unusual nature of Quincy House has tended to magnify the problem, owing to the fact that the rooms in the new House are almost identical in every structural aspect.

The debate over whether or not the College should institute a uniform rent system centers around the proposition that any other method would be obviously absurd for Quincy House. Upon examining the matter more closely, however, it is evident that such a uniform system would do far more harm than good.

According to present estimates, the uniform rate would be set at approximately $220-260. This would represent a sizable rent increase for the student who just manages to come to Harvard independent of financial aid, and lives in a $150 room. It would be unrealistic to hope that some sort of blanket financial aid could be given to all the people for whom the new rate would constitute a serious financial problem. Although the sums involved are of considerable importance to individual students, they are small enough so that they may well escape the consideration of the financial aid office, especially in the many borderline cases.

Another important factor at stake in such a system is the effect it will have on prospective applicants to the College. Should a uniform rate be instituted, the admissions officers will no longer be able to explain that there are rooms available to students of limited means at $120 a term. There will just be the inflexible fact that rooms will cost approximately $500 a year for every one. This will provide yet another deterrent to the prospective applicants who are already frightened away from Harvard by the steadily increasing cost of spending four years as a student here.

By comparison with the arguments against a uniform room rate, arguments in its favor take on in general a secondary aspect. Certainly there are many which can be readily eliminated by a modification of the present system. One of the major objections to retaining rents as they are is that the deconversion which will result from moving upperclassmen into Quincy House would necessitate a drastic raise in the upper rent bracket. However, it appears that this possibility has been overemphasized. While deconversion may indeed occasion a small general increase in rents, most of the newly-vacated space will be taken up by non-resident tutors' offices and upperclassmen moving out of Wiggles-worth and perhaps out of Claverly, to make room for freshmen and to eliminate forced commuters.

The objection that the existing rent system is in many aspects artificial cannot honestly be denied. At present there are twenty-seven rent levels which are embarrassingly out of keeping with the quality of the rooms involved, and when Quincy House is completed, a rent span of over $100 will certainly be unrealistic. However, this problem can be minimized by cutting down the number of different rent levels to not more than a dozen.

Low rates, for students in the lower and hard-pressed middle financial brackets, should definitely be retained. The medium and high-rental suites will enable the Houses to meet their financial requirements by letting those who can afford it shoulder most of the burden. This "soak-the-rich" policy has long been Harvard's unofficial attitude toward the problem, and it seems foolish, just because of uniform, modern Quincy House, to let thirty years of hypocrisy go down the drain.