Education Conference Discusses Student Problems in Democracy

Budget cuts, Jim Crow practices, and state committees for investigating education all took a rapping from the National Council for Democracy i Education, whose 400 delegates held stormy session for two days during the vacation in desorted halls of Harvard.

Making much of the fact that the meeting was initiated by the American Youth Congress and given the support of the Student Union, irate members of Gene Tunney's Youth Foundation helped the convention off to a heated beginning by handing out pamphlets branding it as the "Junior Fifth Column."

Called Red

The delegates had hoped for publicity on their proposals for greater tolerance and freedom in education but when F. Stephen McArthur Jr. eastern director of the Youth Foundation was shouted down and thrown out after proposing an anti-Red resolution papers all over the country played it up.

While the meetings stuck almost exclusively to studying democracy in education the executive council of the NCDE parried the accusations of redbaiters. Bruce Barton, Jr. '43, an executive, stated that "of all the conferences of students I've ever attended, this is the least open to charges of communism." Anne Grant of Radcliffe, another executive, said the congress was being victimized by a "bunch of professional disruptors."

In a drive to unite clubs, newspapers, fraternities, and student committees to defend democratic education, the National Council was voted a permanent organization to coordinate efforts and dispense information, and April 23 was named as the day for student peace and democracy demonstrations.

Brands "Inquisition"

The convention singled out the Rapp-Coudert Committee in New York State and the Tenney Committee in California, both of which investigate un-American activities in the schools, for special denunciation as agencies for "political inquisition." The NCDE hopes to arouse public demand that such committees be abolished. Another group attacked was the National Association of Manufacturers, which was condemned for its investigations of text-books.

After considering the effects of conscription upon the students, the Conference approved a plan to prohibit the drafting of undergraduates until the end of the academic year. Jack McMichael, chairman of the American Youth Congress, called for "more scholarships, not more battleships" and asked that students organize, as in England, to defer their conscription into the Army until after graduation.