CLASS INSURANCE AGAIN

In the matter of the insurance policy plan for raising contributions to the twenty-fifth anniversary gift of the class of 1931, the Permanent Class Committee inherited a nice problem. The note of the class to adopt the insurance plan was apparently taken without adequate investigation of the scheme by the officers and without sufficient knowledge of the question in the minds of the voters to make possible an intelligent poll.

More thorough investigation of the question by the new class officers reveals facts which make the insurance plan highly undesirable. In rejecting it because the average student is unable to accurately estimate in his senior year the size of his twenty-fifth anniversary gift, the Committee displayed sound commonsense. The most practical method for collecting money for this purpose used in recent years is an annual contribution by the members of the class to the Harvard Fund Council. This system enables a man to give what he can, when he can, and places no premature arbitrary figure for his total gift. Compared with the insurance proposal, the Harvard Fund has the advantage of allowing a man to determine the amount of his gift at the actual time he is making it and not ten or twenty years earlier.

In the face of these facts the Class Committee perforce could not carry out the mandate of the class favoring the insurance plan. Bad management by their predecessors necessitated action by the Committee which under ordinary conditions would be unjustifiable, but which in this case is sanctioned for the sake of expediency.