Who bought the Nimbus?

[saintbacchus]

No: HPFGUIDX 37059

Jenett writes:

<<
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. 
>>

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, those computers
were for the students to *use*, not for the students
*themselves*. As I said in my last post, the broom
belongs to Harry, not the team, and that makes all
the difference.


<<
The boarding school I went to also had special funds
that only benefited some students rather than
everyone.
...
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.)
>>

I'm a graduate of the American public school system,
and we had those kinds of treats too - as carrots for
either joining extracurricular groups or achieving
some kind of academic or extracurricular achievement.
But the point is that the reward was there for anyone
who wanted to work for it, not just as a prize for
being an orphan or whatever.


<<
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.)
>>

That's how my college works, too; but that's different,
as it does in fact benefit the whole student body - or
at least, those who choose to make use of the activities.


<<
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.
>>

Are you suggesting that Harry Potter is a house activity?


<<
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.
>>

And since that's not what I said, I'll agree. What I
said is that it's unethical to use school money to buy
a broom that belongs to HARRY and not the team. As
Uncmark put it, "spending house funds on a personal
broom for one student would be like a school's entire 
athletic budget on a $5000 shoes for one member of the
team." And no, I don't think it really matters if the
$5000 was a drop in the bucket.

The comment about the broom not being educational was
meant to point out that Harry doesn't really *need* a
broom. It would be different if he were too poor to
buy quills and ink, or something. Obviously, the
school would have to step in at that point.


<<
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.
>>

As I said in my last post, I see no problem with
McGonagall or the other teachers using their own money
to buy Harry a broom. I see a problem with her using
someone else's money to buy Harry a broom.

--Anna