Scheme to Help Students Survive Exams Collapses

A sophomore who wanted to provide his fellow students with "Harvard Exam Survival Kits" has cancelled his orders and pulled out of the business after talking with University Police Wednesday.

On Jan. 4, letters advertising the kit arrived at the homes of every Harvard student. For $8-89, parents were offered a moment of relief for their children during exams.

The kits were to contain five or six kinds of cookies, including brownies, oatmeal cookies, and special "brainpower" cookies, crackers, peanut butter, raisins, fruit, a panic button, and for 50 cents extra, a special "Knowledge Hammer," designed by an Italian scientist, for wedging facts into the brain. Similar kits have reportedly been sold in 22 colleges across the country.

The letter was signed by John P. Walter '67, "chairman of the Harvard Student Rescue Committee."

He declined yesterday to identify the central office that organized the country-wide movement or the "wholesale food house" which was to supply the kits.

On Wednesday, Walter cancelled all orders for the kit. He plans to return 140 orders received by Wednesday, and the post office has agreed to return all the rest.

Possible Fraud

Walter had been called to the University police station earlier that day at the request of the Cambridge and M.I.T. police to answer a question about the possible fraudulence of the Student Rescue Committee.

Warned about an "implicit" restriction on using the University's name without its permission. Walter decided to withdraw the offer. He indicated that he had opposed using Harvard's name when the promoters of the kit originally proposed doing so.

Walter's duties as chairman of the committee were to obtain the class registers from which the addresses were taken, receive the orders, and distribute the kits.