N.S.A. Will 'Go Easy' During Adolescence, Says Delegate

The big question-marks of the new National Student Association's future-standing firm on hot issues without losing "respectable" support and reaching through a lofty federated superstructure to rank-and-file students will add up to healthy skepticism concerning NSA success on the part of numerous persons.

But to those who will lead the group during its first year of formal existence the answers lie implicit in proposals adopted by the panel and plenary sessions at Madison. They lie further in the determined implementation scheme. Two NSA vice-presidents will chair respectively the commissions on student domestic affairs. They will be fulltime salaried employees (along with the president, secretary, treasurer, and editor) required to leave school. In the reports of the convention delegates there are suggestions for specific projects sufficient to keep them busy far longer than their one-year term.

The student domestic affairs commission heads will work to encourage strong and useful student governing bodies-not only for the practical political experience they provide but to solidify the NSA structure at its very base. They must tread softly; the method at the outset may well be a fact-finding survey showing the state of student self-rule across the nation. A more peppery issue: that of "student rights" to free expression and free enterprise in behalf of political belief (no matter how unpopular at the hour). The NSA uncompromisingly supported the right of such groups as AYD to exist with official recognition so long as they meet standard local extracurricular requirements. On the question of discrimination in professional training and quota systems in undergraduate schools the NSA decided upon a policy of bringing the light of publicity to bear upon the facts-when they can be winnowed out-and simply urging each campus to take whatever action is feasible. Here the delegates saw striking illustration of that crying need which NSA can attempt to fulfill even in its cautions opening months: the need for a clearing house agency to act as nerve-center for students across the country autonomously attempting to solve their difficulties.

The subpanel on curricular reform showed an awareness of this need when it urged the establishment of a uniform "permanent operating mechanism" in the form of a curriculum committee in each student council. On an organized basis students night work with faculty in the evolution of study materials on the basis of cooperatively-gathered information on curricular developments. Perhaps the most tangible suggestion in this connection with which the commission can deal in that for investigating the manner one coherent course presentation could strike into the controversial questions of the era. Dartmouth's "Great Issues" experiment will be easily observable evidence for student councils helping to draft such a sample syllabus for NSA's adoption.

In the student international affairs there will be an acceleration of present activities by that commission in foreign exchange and foreign travel as well as in relief to the impoverished students of Europe. Cooperation with such agencies as World Student Service Fund, International Student Service, "Junior Year Abroad", and the Institute for International Education has been called for specifically. Furthermore NSA has secured a seat on the United States commission for UNESCO (international commission chairman Robert Smith 1G will occupy it) in an effort to take part in top-level intercultural activities. In the item personally crucial to many here-student travel during the summer months-the commission has been instructed to begin negotiations immediately for low-cost transportation on special Maritime Commission ships, equalization of fares for the sexes, and arrangements whereby one can work for his passage.

This is the second in a series of three articles on the National Student Association Constitutional Convention by Selig S. Harrison '48, a College delegate to Madison and a member of the CRIMSON editorial board.

The basic agreed-upon theme of the Madison delegates when they actually came to grips with their enterprise's scope was: "go easy". For effectiveness the stripling organization would have to stress certain limited goals. The domestic affairs commission looks ahead to everything from regional "culturale" festivals to countrywide graduate job placement. The international anticipates greater attention to foreign students to show them America at its best. But the NSA has only two hands, and it's a beginner.