THE POOR STUDENT

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 4, 6 January 1926, Page 3

THE POOR STUDENT

HARVARD'S "NEW IDEA"

FOR HELPING THE IMPECUNIOUS,

The United States i« often the land of surprises in connection with its claim to being the land of the free. One often hears of customs and practices in democratic America, where in theory there are no inferior and superior stations, pecause one is just as good as another, which would raise a rare storm if ihe attempt were made to introduce them here, where the sharp class distinctions of feudalism are still supposed to linger. A remarkable example of this comes from Harvard University (says the London "Daily Telegraph"), where what is described as being "a new way" of helping impecunious students has been introduced this autumn. The idea is to en- i rol thirty-five poor students as waiters in one of the freshmen's dormitories. That is enough to make Ruskin Hall fcee a deeper shade of red than ever. Waiters indeed! And on "freshers"! Moreover, there is a full day's "waiting" to be done, for the hours are 6.30 to 8.65 for breakfast, 11.30 to 1.55 for lunch, and 5.0 to 7.30 for dinner. . . This is really prodigious. In the first place, it is hard to conceive these three meals dragging on for all these hours, unless Harvard students are fed by companies, like the old prophets, and, secondly, the 1 poor_ waiter, must be a glutton ior learning if he has much stomach for lectures and the humanities after he has been moiling with dishes and the capricious tastes of freshmen for so many hours on stretch. It seems to us an astounding scheme, of which the "class distinction" is emphasised by the fact that the stu-dent-waiter is not to be allowed even tn his off-days to dine in the university dining halls. That could not be seriously suggested in this country without an explosion of proletarian wrath which would shake the pillars of Oxford and Cambridge to their foundations.

Harvard's "new idea," however, is a very old one by the Isis, the Cam, and the Liffey, where it was in use for centuries before jt yielded to the liberalising influences of the Victorian era. . It still lingers, curiously enough, in one of our oldest public schools, where the scholars are waited upon in college hall at dinner by the choristers or "quiristers," tjs they are called—a menial duty often as indifferently performed as the reluctant quirister dare perform it. At the Universities, however, it has gone out intircly, thoujrh the name still lingers at St. John's, Cambridge, where certain .■ inhibition's "are called "sizarships." At Oxford the poor students who pot their chrince of the scraps of learning by: waiting, on their betters were called servitors —a . name which carried its meaning upon its face—whereas the Cambridgo sizar was so called because an allowance of bread arid meat was known as a '' size' '—the size of bread being half a half-penny loaf, which, we dare say, was as big as our balfquarten. They got their meat and drink and lodging and they performed very much the same duties as aro now performed by the college servants.; They made the beds, thiy drew the water, they waited at table, and iri one college at Oxford,' at any rate, they dine.i on wooden plattevs outside the hall'in the draughty corridor, and polished the pewter. . Dr. Johnson reports that in his day, at Pembroke, the Master would send tbo servitors round the staircases to knock at the students' doors and iaquire if they were within, and to report them absent if there was no answer. It cannot have been an enviable life, though, no doubt, it very much depended on the good nature of the undergraduates whether it was famy tolerable or not. On the other hand, it was either that or nothing for maaf poor but ambitious boys, and scores o° men made good their way in t'aa world later on who, but for these sizarships or servitorships could never have found their way through the gates of learning. The custom gradually fell into disuse • without evor being formally abolished. In Chriit Church it dwindled away until at length the servitors simply carri?>l tho first dish into Hall. The name dropped into deseuetude. \ln a fe*v colleges it was changed to "Bitalo Clerk," whose duty still is to say "Grace"; in moat it was changed to the colourless "exhibitioner," and when the Noblem3n and Gentlemen Commoners lost their gold tassels tho exhibitioners seem to have acquired an ordinary black one. 80 tho liberalising steam-roller rolled on. "It i 3 not so much that we haye 1 abolished servitorships," said Mark Pattisoc, "as time and manners that have made the position untenable." And now Harvard, U.S.A., is deliberately recreating it as "a now idea!"