Education: The Policy Makers

Equipped with bedrolls and pup tents, 125 boys & girls settled down last week at Rock Springs Ranch in Kansas for three days of talk. Their encampment was no ordinary one, nor was their talk idle. The 125, all students from Kansas State College, were trying to decide how to improve their campus.

Such conferences have become annual affairs at Kansas State; and from President James A. McCain on down, the entire faculty eagerly awaits their outcome. They began six years ago, when a group of veterans confronted McCain's predecessor, Milton Eisenhower, with a list of "gripes." Ike's educator brother (now president of Penn State) was impressed, called in some of the faculty to hear the complaints. Since then, students have elected representatives and the conference has become a full-fledged policy-making body.

Last week 40 professors were on hand to hear themselves criticized or praised. They listened while the campers discussed 100 different topics — from the time coeds should be in at night to ways of bettering the foreign student program. Gradually, the topics boiled down to 30 recommendations. Samples : try an honor system for one year in classrooms; paint campus trash cans white. The students voted down the idea of selling beer on campus.

This week President McCain will go over the recommendations, and students know that they will get careful attention. In the past the students have been responsible for such changes as turning the biweekly undergraduate newspaper into a daily, placing sidewalks around the campus. In seven years 80% of their recommendations have been adopted.