Brown Votes To Re-Enter NDEA Plan

Princeton and Brown Universities have announced they will rejoin the NDEA student loan program.

The Brown decision came yesterday following a vote by the university's Advisory and Executive Committee; Princeton announced its re-entry last month.

Both universities objected to the loan program previously because of a provision which required applicants to affirm they did not believe in or support any subversive organization. This disclaimer affidavit was repealed by the Congress.

Harvard, which had voiced the same objections to the program, rejoined last Tuesday.

At Columbia University the Student-Faculty Committee Against NDEA Amendments is continuing to disapprove of the loan program. The committee, led by 60 students and several faculty members, objects to three amendments that Congress added when the disclaimer affidavit was removed.

In a letter to the New York Times the committee interpreted the amendments making it a crime for a member of the Communist Party, an defined by the Warren Act to apply for NDEA funds. The committee also objected to the vagueness of the amendment which states the Commissioner of Education can cancel or revoke an award if he thinks an award is "not in the best interests of the United States." The Columbia group protests that this amendment connotes "no guarantees of due process for the student."

Though Columbia has not yet announced whether it will rejoin the NDEA program, Grayson Kirk, president of the Faculty, has referred to the amendments as "not ones we would want to live with."

DeWolfe Howe '28, professor of a letter in the Times answering Columbia group, agreed that the added amendments were "deeply regretted" but noted, however, that the Columbia committee had misinterpreted the amendment which, in correct form, has no application to persons who are of unregistered or uncondemned leftist organizations."

Howe went on to say that the amendments were "needless and foolish," but predicted they would prove meaningless "in practice."