University Daily Kansan Monday. October 22, 1961
Page 2
The Kansan on NSA
For the last three years the KU National Student Association has been involved in an almost constant battle for survival. Tomorrow the All Student Council will consider a proposal to disaffiliate KU from the national organization.
The question of KU's continued affiliation with NSA is a complicated one. It is also an important one because KU must decide if a relationship of some eight years standing is to be continued.
NSA's present situation is not without national or local precedent. Several other colleges and universities are considering the question of continued NSA membership. This is the third time in as many years that KU has considered dropping NSA. In past years KU's NSA membership has been continued with the hope that KU would become more active in NSA and thus justify its attachment.
NSA drew more publicity last year than at any time since NSA was started at KU. However, examination of this publicity reveals very few accomplishments for the committee in the last year.
Basically the question of KU's continued affiliation seems to be of financial origin. NSA has always been one of the most expensive activities of the ASC. Last year the total tab for NSA activities, including the Foreign Student Leadership Program, ran to something over $1,200. Only Associated Women Students (AWS) received a larger appropriation. This year, since the foreign leadership program has been dropped, NSA has requested about $850 to cover this year's expenses. This money will go mainly for national dues and delegates' expenses to the national congress next summer.
If the ASC had access to an abundance of money the stand for continued affiliation would be considerably strengthened. However, the council operates on a budget that is becoming more limited each year. The $1,300 that People-to-People has requested for this year makes the budgeting problem more acute than ever. This is the first year of People-to-People's existence and thus the first year this organization has requested an appropriation.
NSA national dues provide privileges and services which each member college and university is eligible to receive. NSA headquarters can provide, upon request, information and material on almost any national or international question of current importance. NSA also organizes various types of tours for American students traveling abroad. But the primary purpose of NSA is to represent and express the opinions of the American student. These opinions might be expressed in dealings with student organizations
of other lands or in resolutions addressed to the Congress of the United States.
The question then, reduced to its lowest terms, becomes one of cost versus benefits. Are the benefits of representation in a national student organization worth the expenses of membership? But this, perhaps, is an oversimplification of the problem. For there is also a great deal of discussion about the way in which the opinions of KU students are represented by NSA.
The resolutions passed by the NSA Congress last summer are considerably more liberal than one would expect the opinions of the average KU student to be. NSA has officially endorsed the freedom rides and has asked that the House un-American Activities Committee be abolished. So the question of the type of representation afforded by NSA is also very much at issue.
It has been hoped that the KU NSA committee could serve as a forum in educating KU students on issues of importance. The NSA committee has performed this function to an extent. Last spring the committee sponsored a showing of the controversial film "Operation Abolition." The committee has also discussed the possibility of bringing the film "Harvest of Shame" to KU this fall. If KU severs its relationship with US-NSA and thus does away with the present NSA committee it will be necessary to provide for a way in which KU students can receive information on national and international issues.
The ASC motion that will be voted on tomorrow night provides for a Current Events committee to replace the present NSA committee. The people who are now on the NSA committee would be asked to continue to serve on the Current Events committee. But there are also several other groups that are set up to furnish information for the KU student. Many of these, such as the present Current Events Forum and Minority Opinion Forum have operated with more efficiency than has the NSA committee.
Because of the excessive cost of representing KU's moderate political views, The Kansan urges the All Student Council to adopt the motion for disaffiliation from USNSA. The slight vacuum that would be left could easily be filled by existing informational groups.
This recommendation involves a change from the previous editorial policy of the Kansan. However, previous editorship have not endorsed USNSA, they have only asked that NSA be allowed an opportunity to prove itself. It is the conviction of the Kansan editorial staff that the NSA committee has failed to establish a program which would merit continued existence for NSA at KU. —Ron Gallagher
Foreign Students for NSA
Recent Daily Kansan interviews at the International Club and during the weekend indicate general foreign student approval of the National Student Association.
Of 26 students interviewed 21 favored KU affiliation, one favored affiliation but was critical of the KU NSA committee and four declined comment.
TYPICAL OF THE students' remarks was this by Gerhard Bassler, Stuttgart, Germany, graduate, who said, "Foreign countries look very much to your young people to see what you are really like and
Michael Colson, Great Britain graduate student, said, "It is about time the local representatives of NSA stopped this political foolishness and used the national organization for the benefit of students. I do, however, favor the workings of the national organization," he said.
what your future policies will be like.
graduate student said, "there is a very definite importance for the United States to have a student voice in the international community."
"Leaving the association would leave you no chance of representing your own views in such international exchange."
Worth Repeating
Raja Mohammed Naib, Pakistan graduate student said, "For my fellow students at this campus who might not have heard much about the utility of such an organization, may I suggest that NSA is doing a very useful job in foreign countries with regard to the promotion of democratic ideas."
Jannik Lindbaek, Norway
Daily Hansan
The threes of the contemporary world are those of a birth. And what is being born with such great pain is a universal human society . . . What characterizes the events we witness, what distinguishes them from all preceding events back to the origins of history is . . . their global character, or, to say it perhaps more exactly, their planetary character. The unity of the planet is already accomplished. For reasons economic, industrial, and technical, reasons all linked to the practical applications of science, such a solidarity is established among the peoples of the earth that their vicissitudes are integrated in a universal history of which they are particular moments . . . These peoples are in fact parts of a Humanity . . . something of which they must now become conscious, in order to will it instead of being subject to it, in order to think it with a view to organizing it.—Etienne Gilson
Extension 711, news rooms Extension 376, business office
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
truxing newsletter 1912.
Telephone Viking 3-2700
Extension 711 press room
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service. 18 East Boston, New York, United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturday and Sunday. Under University fellowship examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Tom Turner     Managing Editor
NEWS DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher ... Editorial Editor
Bill Mullins and Carrie Merryfield,
Assistant Editors.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Tom Brown Business Manager
Focus on NSA
By Scott Payne and Arthur Miller
In 1960 several anti-NSA pamphlets were distributed attacking NSA's workers and its integration policies.
For the past two years the KU National Student Association (NSA) has been embroiled in bi-annual disputes over its survival.
In response to these attacks Frank Naylor, a Kansas City graduate of KU, then a member of the All Student Council (ASC), said NSA offered many potential advantages.
"But KU doesn't take an active part in NSA legislation," he said. "KU students' opinions are not presented."
"Helpful aids and publications are offered by NSA to student councils," he added, "but KU doesn't take advantage of this opportunity either."
In order to find out more about NSA, the ASC assigned Tonya Kurt, Pratt senior, then NSA coordinator, to prepare an analysis of NSA.
"KU student leaders had no conception of NSA's purpose," said Miss Kurt in a recent Daily Kansan interview. "Previous NSA coordinators here unfortunately had considered this position as another shingle to list in their senior profiles.
"No record of NSA purposes, programs or meetings had been kept by the previous coordinators," she added.
Miss Kurt said that at the end of that year she was to present her analysis of NSA to the ASC and to recommend a course of action in regard to it.
"On the basis of the analysis, I recommended highly that KU continue affiliation with NSA," she said. "I looked forward to next year when the committee would have time to concentrate on special student projects instead of having to fight for its existence."
Following a three week controversy, the ASC decided to retain affiliation, mandating the NSA committee "to discern which issues are pertinent and should be presented to the All Student Council."
"Further, it (the committee) is to reduce issues to their respective principles and major relevant arguments on both sides and to form opinions and present them to the ASC," the mandate continued.
Following last year's spring ASC elections, the ASC gave the NSA committee two specified areas of study:
★Student apathy at KU is such that the NSA foreign travel is not used.
Prior to the election, both campus political parties supported continuation of NSA affiliation.
★The KU ASC has not been pleased with the committee's foreign student exchange program.
The platform of Vox Populi party, then and now in power in the ASC, proposed utilization of the committee in the area of national NSA resolutions and stands.
University Party had argued that since the number of resolutions the ASC would have to consider would be small, there was no need for the special committee work. This platform held that NSA could better serve as an information agency.
New charges were leveled against NSA the following autumn.
Ronald Dalby, Joplin, Mo., KU graduate, then student body president asked: "Why disaffiliate when affiliation can do no harm and can do a great deal of good, if and when we want to use it.
"KU is wasting time, money and effort as a member of NSA unless it can assume a role of leadership for minority schools opposing demonstration sit-ins and other actions advocated by NSA."
The ASC voted 12-2 to continue affiliation with NSA.
The affiliation issue will be before the ASC again tomorrow eve-
(Continued on page 12)
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
HOW CAN YOU GIVE ME AN F' ON THIS PAPER WHEN YOU ADMIT YOU COULDN't EVEN READ IT.