Wise Temperance

The Student Council acted wisely in sending the report on NDEA back to a committee. As originally presented, it never came near the excellent level of previous Council reports, being intemperate in language and exaggerated in scope. Such statements as, "Every student who signs the affidavit in effect forfeits the liberty of thought and expression guaranteed in the Bill of Rights... Should the slightest revolutionary idea enter his head, he commits a felony under the law," led one member of the Council to term the report "immaturely worded, overstated, and superficial."

The principal fault of the report, though, lay in its excessive stress on the danger of federal aid to education. In emphasizing that attaching "ideological strings" was a tendency of governmental aid, and recommending that that all federal aid should be held suspect, the report exceeded its mandate to report on the NDEA an delivered a thinly veiled attack on the concept of federal aid to education. The Council was right to order the new committee to "tone it down."