From the Commie Archives (February 28, 1940; Volume 10, Issue 2) — Justice Begins at Home

Editor’s Note: Following the publication of an investigative story about issues regarding faculty-administration relations, including salaries, The Commentator is reprinting an editorial it published in 1940, urging the university to change its policies towards clerical employees.

Justice Begins At Home

The Commentator has often projected its editorial interests into the realm of the surrounding political scene and has more than once taken an interest in the problems of labor and social welfare. To our utter amazement we suddenly find that our own house needs cleaning. We can not honestly preach economic liberty and social justice to the world before we see it put into practice inside the walls of Yeshiva.

We have in mind, specifically, the attitude of certain members of the administration toward their clerical employees. Secretaries and clerks, it must be remembered are human beings too. Considered as such, it would be against the unwritten laws of an ethical society to play, as G-ds, with their fates. It is in the Yeshiva, if anywhere, that the rights of the individual-from the floor laborer to the secretarial employee must not be tampered with.

Exploitation, if and where it exists, must be banished. We mean to admonish no one but we do feel it our duty to caution the powers that be against trifling with the uncertain positions of the office staffs. We think it would be well to consider twice and then count ten before precipitating the dismissal of any office help.

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Photo Caption: Stern College for Women

Photo Credit: Yeshiva University