NSA: Something of Value

If they prove nothing else, the arguments over Harvard participation in the National Student Association at least dispel the Silent Generation myth. The pro-and-con has been noisy and thoughtful, and today's referendum will reflect the views of a relatively well-informed electorate.

Disposing, for the moment, of the theory that Harvard can change the NSA by getting out of it, the controversy boils down to a debate over whether the NSA can offer the College anything of value. If participation in inter-college discussions on pilot programs for high-school teaching, on the problem and solution of racial integration, and on the problem of Federal aid to education is valuable, then NSA has something to offer.

But discussion is not NSA's raison-d'etre. Nor is it a rationale for participation. It is, however, hard to deny the advantage of membership and energetic activity within an organization which "represents" the mass of American college students. The Student Council has complained that the representation in NSA is phony, that student leaders are not elected on political grounds and cannot speak for their constituents in matters of national and international concern. The NSA does not pretend that its delegates are political representatives of their schools. What it does believe, and rightly, is that student leaders, elected from and by a student body, carry with them many of the views and characteristics of their electors. The NSA delegates are, at the least, aware of the trends of student opinion at their schools. It is these opinions which should and do govern their behaviour.

An organization representing American students has a vast potential for action. And the role which the NSA plays in international student affairs is an appropriately significant one. As only one of a vast number of better organized pressure groups in the United States, it is relatively ineffective. But in the foreign exchanges and relations which it promotes, it serves an indispensable function. No other group so effectively presents democratic views to the student leaders abroad where Communism expends a good deal of effort on student groups. Presuming that Harvard students are some day to be leaders of their country, it seems all the more important for them to be able to engage officially in the programs the NSA offers.

Certainly the substitute which the Council proposes is an unreal and valueless one. It is but another of the interminable and inconsequential inter-college bull sessions. The NSA is an action group. Moreover, the Council's ersatz NSA will have little or no remedial effect on the real article. The supposition that NSA relies on Harvard support for its prestige and will mend its admittedly mendable ways because of Harvard's withdrawal is a preposterous one. The same technique failed when Soviet Russia walked out of the U.N., and there is no indication that it increases in efficacy on a lower level.

If our withdrawal will have no effect, if the proposed seminar is a pointless exercise in spite, if Harvard can, in fact, derive great benefit from the NSA, there is no point in supporting the Student Council's hastily approved move.

But Harvard should not go back into the NSA on the same level it has maintained in the last few years. The reason for the apparent lack of benefit derived from it is the obvious minimum of effort Harvard has contributed to it. A Council which sends only two members to the National Student Congress cannot hope to remedy NSA's defects. It cannot hope to be well-informed on the resolutions so hastily passed on the floor of the convention, but so thoroughly debated beforehand. It cannot hope to derive full or even partial benefit from either the discussion programs or the international activities unless it subscribes to them enthusiastically.

Since the founding of NSA and the early dominance of Harvard representatives in it, Harvard has found other, less worthwhile diversions. A vote for NSA in today's referendum should be considered as a vote for increased Harvard representation in the organiztion's activities. A majority for NSA should be interpreted by the Council as a mandate for further and more strenuous participation. Only by acting on such a mandate can Harvard benefit from and contribute to NSA as fully as it should.