Entertainers' Agency to Go, Decides HSA

The entertainment agency of Harvard Student Agencies, conceived two years ago to help provide jobs for the talented as well as the enterprising, has closed its books.

Dustin M. Burke '52, director of Student Employment and general manager of HSA, said yesterday that "it looks as if this is a business that requires more energy and time than a student can put into it." He said that the agency had suffered small losses almost continuously for two years.

Listings of available jobs and of students with entertainment skills who are seeking work, a service of the defunct agency, will be transferred to the Student Employment Office. Burke pointed out that the Office had always shared this function with the agency and maintained its listings anyway.

When the entertainment agency was first established, many students protested that they would lose money, since HSA was charging a 10 per cent booking fee and the Employment Office had performed the service free of charge.

At the time, a number of students complained that they had plenty of referrals from the Employment Office and that the new HSA agency would merely duplicate the service and add a booking fee. HSA insisted, however, that its endeavor would not have a negative effect, and there has been no indication that it did.

Burke said yesterday that the agency has had four managers since its origin. All of them found that their work did not produce a profitable operation, he said, since it was "enormously time-consuming to make arrangements between customers and entertainers." The 10 per cent commission, which is a "standard agent's fee," was simply not enough to cover the expenses, he explained.