HYRC Claims It Dominates State Young GOP Council

The Harvard Young Republican Club has seized control of the Massachusetts Young Republican Council by setting up a series of "vassal" clubs in other colleges, Jay E. Jansen '50, club president, claimed last night.

"Because the Council is the most powerful arm of the Massachusetts GOP organization," Janson assorted, "the HYRC has become a major power in the state party."

About 80 clubs are represented in the Council. Each club, regardless of size, sends five delegates. "What we have done," Jansen explained, "is to organize clubs in other colleges whose delegates will do whatever we want."

Jansen claimed he has organized and now controls clubs at Amherst, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, Babson, Simmons, and Wheelock. By this spring, Janson predicted, Boston University, Tufts, Williams, Wheaton, Mount Holyoke, Bradford, and others will be added to the list.

"Real Political Power"

"The officers of the HYRC," Jansen stated, "have a lot of real political power. We can use this power, plus the contacts and the experience we have gained, to help us on our way to national prominence later on."

He said that the club is also founding satellite clubs in colleges in other New England states. His aim is to make the HYRC a major force in the New England GOP and later, he hopes, in the national party.

Jansen claimed that GOP leaders, "including Taft and Dewey" consider the HYRC the best Young Republican Club in the country and call it the "Republican West Point."

Jansen stated that, besides himself, Arthur W. Bingham '51 and Donald F. McNiel '52 are the ones in whom the HYRC's power is chiefly vested.

What Jansen called "the rapid rise of the HYRC" was climaxed at a dinner meeting of the Massachusetts Young Republican Council Saturday night when the council adopted a Harvard-sponsored resolution saying that delegates can't be over 36 years old and officers of the Council can't be over 35.

"Previously the Council had been bossed by cliques of men ranging in age from 40 to 70," Jausen asserted. These older men had made up an important part of the council membership, he said.

According to Jansen, many former HYRC members who held important GOP posts throughout the country still keep close contact with the Club.

In non-election years, Jansen emphasized, the Young Republican Clubs get one-third of the money acquired by the Republican Party