Political Union Collects Speakers, Is Testing-Ground for Legislatures

Among all the groups of Yale men intently striving to leave their mark on the college and then the world outside, none is more flery than the Political Union. Lacking a counterpart at Harvard, the Union--or PU as it is commonly called--is designed as a practical training ground for future legislators, and its usual biweekly meetings are often marked by all the bitterness, humor, and pomposity that can be found in the United States Senate or British Parliament.

The Union is open to all students who pay its nominal membership fee. A new member must remain a political independent for his first term in the organization, but after that he joins one of the PU's political parties--at present the Conservative, the Labour, and the Third Force. The first two parties have been mainstays of the PU since its inception in 1936, but the Third Force is a recent addition to the lineup, having been formed by a coalition of the disbanned Liberal party and right-wing Taft Conservatives. Any group which can muster 15 percent or more of the total membership of the Union--at present over 300--is entitled to full party standing.

The operation of the Union is comparatively simple. The president of the PU, who is elected by the entire organization, consults with the three party leaders on a topic to be discussed at the next regular meeting. The topics are almost always of an immediate political nature, although once a year the Union has a humourous debate with Vassar. After a topic is chosen the president begins to write letters to prominent authorities on the subject, asking them to address the Union. An attempt is usually made to get two outside speakers, one for each side of the question before the house, but if two opposing authorities can not be found one will give his address and then be questioned by PU members.

After the opposing speakers have presented their views, a spokesman for each party takes the floor to expound his party's position on the issue at stake. The spokesmen and policy for each party are determined at caucuses preceding the main meeting. After the party spokesmen finish, party members who may have been outvoted in caucus present their views. The meetings end with a vote of the House to determine the PU's stand on the issue presented to it.

Two weeks ago the main speaker at the PU meeting was Simon Gerson, secretary of the Communist Party of New York. Next week's featured attraction will be Col. Robert R. McCormick, Yale '03. Speakers in the past have included Harold Stassen, Robert Taft, Norman Thomas, Earl Browder, Justice Robert H. Jackson, and Justice Tom Clark.

PU president Robert Weinberg makes a deliberate attempt to get out-of-the-ordinary speakers. "Our big purpose is to get Yale excited about something other than football," he says, "and in order to do that you have to get something unusual." Some of the PU's most successful meetings have been clashes between Bill Buckley, Yale's own medival historian, and various defenders of academic freedom. Despite Buckley's persuasive arguments, the house has endorsed freedom of conscience each time.

The PU has, like Yale, been consistently Republican in complexion. This year, however, it endorsed Adlai Stevenson for the presidency, but then hopped around to vote for Richard Nixon for vice-president. Apparently the intellectual appeal of Stevenson was an over-riding factor.

The Labour Party, of which Weinberg was a member until he became president and had to abandon any party affiliation, now is the smallest of the three parties. It includes everything from Fair Deal Democrats to militant Progressives, like Weinberg himself. In pre-war days the party had several Communist members, but today there are none--at least openly. A neo-fascist bloc also is supposed to have flourished within the Conservative party prior to 1941, but all traces of that too have vanished