Breakfast for Champs

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The University's deceitful treatment of breakfast in the Houses typifies the inane conviction in the equality of the living conditions of upperclassmen as well as a confidence in the inability of students and their parents to demand consistent value for their money.

The school has deprived a large number of students of expected services and increased the vast gap between the quality of certain Houses with the justification that campus life is separate but always equal. The rationale has traditionally been that all facilities are open to all students who can benefit tremendously so long as they make an effort. Each House is assumed to be possessed of some peculiar attractive quality so that no matter where you live you still come out a winner. The trouble is that Mather House has lost out again, this time in the scramble for hot breakfasts, and I have yet to discover what its elusive peculiarity really is.

Mather, like certain other Houses, simply does not have the redeeming features for which the school gives it credit. If the laws of supply and demand held in establishing rents in the Houses, a room in Lowell or Adams would be worth much more. It seems absurd that the University can expect to supply its tenants with so little and still charge a considerable amount for room and board.

If a landlord in New York were to cut services to his tenants, he would be hoisted on the nearest lamppost. A company which reduced workers' benefits would be crushed in whimpering impotence by the unions. Yet Harvard gives its students inadequate value for their money and expects compliance with the fixed price. The argument may seem impudent but the matter comes down to be essentially one of financial injustice. Mather has no squash courts; it is a long walk from the Square; its rooms are uncomfortably small; its charm is limited if not nonexistent. Now it serves no decent breakfast. Separate it is. Equal it is not. I would appreciate some form of redress. Marc A. Rosenblatt '78