The Free Student

Glancing at the snappy format of the May Second Movement's new publication, The Free Student, one had the hope that at last the American student left had transcended its usually sloppy militancy and produced a journal in which issues of United States foreign and domestic policy could receive intelligent and much needed criticism. But, alas, it was not to be.

The magazine's lead article, "Free Student News," is a potpoun of student gripes from colleges all over the country. A teacher at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y., who traveled to Cuba last summer, has been fired by the "rich, conformist businessmen on its board of trustees." The New York branch of the May Second Movement has been subjected to "attempted intimidation" and "iron-fisted procedure" at the hands of a New York Grand Jury which subpoenaed several of its members in connection with the Harlem riots last summer.

Those who manage to wade through the extravagant language of the first page of this news column (and through a proof reading job that would make even a CRIMSON subscribe gag), will find a section headlined "Harvard and the FBI." "Most colleges," the writer declares, "find it sufficient to help Gestapo-like organizations behind the scenes...discreetly turning over rosters of student organizations, evaluations of students by their teachers, or even psychological information concerning a particular malcontent. Harvard, as the most noble institution of the country, doesn't stop there."

Purporting to cite an article in the CRIMSON, the writer proclaims that "The FBI regularly interrogates students in the very office of the Dean, with appointments arranged by the Dean's secretary." To top it all off, The Free Student announces, "Dean Watson regularly supplements the use of terror techniques by direct interference with student organizations."

This kind of gross distortion and dishonesty casts its shadow on the whole magazine. One reads the rest of the articles constantly questioning the "facts" presented, and certainly doubting the conclusions. No one wants to listen to moralizing about Vietnam or Berkeley from people who take truth so lightly.

For a magazine which presumably hopes to appeal to a college audience, The Free Student's articles are intellectually disappointing and occasionally insulting to the intelligence of the reader. One piece titled "Repression and Rebellion at Brooklyn College" begins, "Students at Brooklyn College are about to rise up in mass protest against new dress regulations which forbid girls to wear slacks on campus at any time, and which forbid boys to wear dungarees."

Only Richard Rhodes's article, "100 Years of Murder in Vietnam," stands out from this generally slipshod journalism, as a well reasoned attack on American policy in Vietnam. He presents a thoroughly documented historical account of our intervention in that country, and dramatizes the burden of guilt we must bear for our actions there. Even those readers who find his commentary a little too radical for their sensitive political palates will find that, like I.F. Stone, Rhodes has done his homework and has come up with astonishing quotations from the pages of the New York Times, the Congressional Record, and the Christian Science Monitor.

At a time when left-wing organizations on this and many other campuses are struggling for a meaningful role in the college political spectrum, it is sad that the May Second Movement has done such a disappointing job with a potentially stimulating and influential magazine.