[HPforGrownups] Re: Who bought the Nimbus?

[Jenett]

No: HPFGUIDX 37031

At 3:59 AM +0000 3/27/02, saintbacchus wrote:
>Zoe Hooch writes:
>
>Um, yes it does. Imagine Lucius Malfoy (or any
>parent, really) finding out that money that could
>have gone towards his son's education went to buying
>Harry Potter a broom. A *broom*! It's not even
>important to his education! Even if the notoriously
>fair-minded McGonagall would stand for that, I just
>can't believe the school could get away with it.

In the schools I've gone to, it's quite common for there to be *some* 
discretionary funds that teachers or faculty can use or apply to use 
for various reasons. As long as the amounts are dealt with reasonably 
and above-board, no one's ever had any problems with it.

At the school (private day school) I currently work at, for example, 
there's some money that helps to buy some mid-range laptop machines 
that students who could not otherwise afford them can apply to use. 
The school doesn't have enough money to buy such things for all 
financial aid students - but they do have 4-6 machines or so. That's 
a pretty substantial cost that benefits only a small number of 
students - but it gets done. (We've got about 425 students)

The boarding school I went to also had special funds that only 
benefited some students rather than everyone. Sometimes they were 
special gift donations, sometimes the school itself decided that it 
was important to have discretionary funds for certain things, and 
made sure the money was available. Some of this money went for things 
like dorm snacks every Wednesday night for dorm meetings, other 
treats of that kind that weren't at all academic (movie nights, etc.)

The college I went to charged about $100 a student as a student 
activities fee - this money went into a general activities fund, and 
student groups were funded out of it (groups submitted a desired 
budget, and via a stated process and preferences, got a certain 
percentage of that budget to work with.)

If there *is* tuition at Hogwarts, perhaps something similar occurs: 
a small amount of money from each student gets paid into an account 
that benefits the House. With enough students and over enough time, 
that can add up to serious money, particularly if you're not 
restricted (as my college organisations were) to spending it all each 
year or losing some in the next round of budgeting.

So, there's lots of options here. Perhaps there's a House fund with 
funds donated by former students in each House, to be used for 
whatever the head of the house thinks worthwhile (which could be an 
extra treat, brooms for the Quidditch team, etc). Or perhaps there's 
a special Griffindor Quidditch fund. Who knows.

Or perhaps (and note: we *don't* know if students pay tuition, after 
all, which removes a lot of your arguments about "Oh, Malfoy would 
find it so unfair...": if no one pays tuition, and there's extra 
money left over from the available funds there's no problem spending 
that extra, for example) they've simply designated some bits of the 
budget to house activities.

We also don't know how *substantial* those funds are: it's perfectly 
possible, given how long Hogwarts has been around, that any such 
house/team funds would be *very* substantial, and that even a Nimbus 
2000 would be a drop in the bucket financially. Buying a Nimbus 2000 
wouldn't mean other people couldn't do things they wanted/benefit 
from the money in this case. (As an idle thought: do we know whether 
Fred and George got their brooms from their parents? I can't recall 
if this is explicit anywhere.)

But to start by saying "Oh, spending money on anything non-academic 
is ethically impossible" strike me as inaccurate to the extreme, 
based in my own school experiences.

There are certainly unethical ways to handle such situations - but 
there are plenty of ethical and reasonable ways to handle it as well.

Canon doesn't tell us *why* it was ok - but I think there are strong 
indications that it *is* a reasonable thing to be doing. After all, 
it's delivered in public, with other teachers about - even if they 
didnt' see the wink, it's pretty likely other teachers might have 
asked her about it. If it had truly been a problem, she could surely 
have delivered it in private or had it left on his bed or something 
with a note.

Or, given her personality, if it *had* really been a problem, I think 
she wouldn't have done it at all. The fact it happened, in that 
reading, indicates that what she did is perhaps unusual, but 
perfectly acceptable.

-Jenett
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