Grad Students Recommend Scrutiny of Financial Aid

The Harvard Graduate Student Council last week urged the Graduate Committee on Fellowships to study the feasibility of guaranteeing financial aid to graduate students beyond the present one year period.

In a letter to Regina H. Phelps '30, committee chairman and acting GSAS dean, the Council (GSC) said that controversy over guaranteed aid proposals made it necessary to study their potential scope and the ability of the University to finance them.

The Wolff Committee Report, issued March 5, recommended that Harvard should guarantee adequate financial aid for two years, and eventually for five years to all graduate students in good standing.

Lacks Concrete Date

The letter noted that the Wolff Committee Report was "lacking in concrete date" on the proposal and urged that both an ad hoc committee formed by the GSC and the Committee on Fellowships have access to all available information in studying the question.

As possible adverse effects of the proposal, the letter listed a teaching fellow shortage and conflict between departments.

Phelps said on Monday that the Committee on Fellowships had stated its "interests in the issues raised" in a reply to the GSC letter. The Committee discussed the letter with Paul F. Munyon, GSA president, and Jon L. White, GSA secretary, at its meeting yesterday.

Phelps and Munyon agreed that the Faculty should "have the first crack" at the Wolff Report. If and when the Faculty accepts the Report, Munyon said, discussions of financial aid extensions "should go on fairly quietly but intensively."