The Navy Checks Up

More than 300 midshipmen in the College's Naval Reserve Officer Training unit have just finished filling out four-page Loyalty Certificates. This is the first time that the Government's standards for rating the loyalty of an individual have filtered down to a large group of undergraduates at Harvard. The standards are very unfortunate.

The NROTC certificate uses one page of small type to relist those organizations originally designated by the Attorney General in the fall of 1947 as totalitarian, fascist, communist, advocating denial of constitutional rights, or seeking to alter the form of government by unconstitutional means. The facing page asks the individual to certify, among other things, whether he has been associated with these organizations.

There are three things wrong with this present standardized U.S. government method of determining the security risk for an individual.

1.) The list itself. This grouping of organizations was set up without adequate public hearings; inclusion of organizations is left up to the Attorney General. At the present time, it includes a number of groups to which a person can belong and be perfectly innocent of "subversive" activities. The list can be expanded at will; there is nothing to prevent it from some day including organizations like the Catholic War Veterans or the American Legion.

2.) The application of the list. Simple association with an organization, and this can include attendance at an AYD folk-dance, should not be a standard for condemnation of an individual. The questionnaire even asks, among other things, if the signer has ever been present at social gatherings of the listed groups. The only sure criterion can be "Does the individual believe in the policies of these organizations?"

3.) The misuse of information obtained from such a statement. The government's Loyalty program has received relatively little publicity, mainly due to the fact that Loyalty hearings are generally closed ones. In at least two publicized cases, however, including last year's notorious Remington trial, unconfirmed charged of association, similar to those obtainable from these statements, were used to fire government personnel although they swore they were anti-communist. The adequacy of the loyalty boards in applying this information is still pretty doubtful.

The NROTC is obviously not at fault in bringing this loyalty probe to Harvard. It is taking orders. So, for that matter is the Navy itself. But the U. S. Government's present all-over standards for security, as mirrored by the Harvard check, are dangerous and inaccurate.