Stop Congress

THE House of Representatives' current initiative to cut off Federal aid from students who disobey university regulations is a striking example of 90th Congress' confused and reactionary approach to the nation's most urgent problems. In approving the measure last week, the House showed once again, as it has in its responses to the riots and to the antiwar movement, that most of its members lack any understanding of the phenomena which they seek to suppress.

Something is seriously wrong with the way power is allocated within the American university. The recent disruptions at Columbia and elsewhere have dramatized this problem--Congress will not now solve it by trying to punish the students who have raised it.

Above all, the problem is not Congress' to solve. It is the job of each university, and not of the United States Government, to determine whether and how students and faculty are to be punished for breaking university regulations. The present House effort to "help" the universities in settling their own internal problems is an unnecessary and unjustifiable intervention into higher education.

The proposed measure is all the more inane for its discriminatory quality: it can affect only those students who are unable to pay for their own education, and will leave the rest untouched. Unable to punish the rich students involved in campus disruptions, Congress has apparently decided to crush the poor ones.

The measure now goes to the Senate, where its fate is still uncertain. Its chance of survival will be considerably greater if American educators do not strongly oppose it now. President Pusey and other university officials around the country should do everything they' can to prevent this regressive and unjust bill from becoming law.