Quad Students Are Pressured To Pay Their 'Optional' Dues

Many students in the three Houses at the Radcliffe Quad said this week they feel pressured to pay so-called optional activities dues to their House Committees, but several members of Quad House Committees defended the dues as Radcliffe tradition and a way to promote House spirit.

The House Committee "tries to make it sound like you have to pay dues and when you ask what they're for they vaguely refer to activities later in the year," Henry C. Dones '79, a Currier House resident, said Wednesday.

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Paul J. Wang '79, representative to the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL) for Currier House, attempted to explain the need for dues. "River Houses make use of funding techniques that Quad Houses can't or haven't chosen to use. For example, Quad parties aren't usually to raise a lot of money," he said.

Mare J. Sobil '80, treasurer of the South House Committee, said because of financial losses last year there is no possibility of South House discontinuing dues at present even if students vote against them.

"We need the money; there's no two ways about it," he said.

The chairman of the Currier and South House committees said they believed River Houses received significant financial support from alumni.

Ann B. Spence, Associate Dean of the College, said she did not think any funds for current operation of the Houses came from alumni gifts. She added that College funds are distributed to Houses on a per capita basis.