Education: Liberal Control

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The United States National Student Association calls itself nonpartisan, but its officialdom is outspokenly and almost unanimously liberal. Reason: liberals have entered more actively into campus politics and thus have been chosen as delegates to the annual N.S.A. congresses that pick the association's officers. Last week, during N.S.A. 's 14th annual congress at the University of Wisconsin, the liberals were challenged for the first time by that small branch of awakened activism on U.S. campuses—vocal, intense conservatives (TIME, Feb. 10). The conservatives arrived with a dream: getting control of N.S.A. At best, they mustered only about 75 votes among the 500 delegates.

Out of Apathy. N.S.A. was born in 1946 as a counterpart to European student unions. It claims to represent the entire student body at each of some 400 campuses—around 1,000,000 students. The constitution specifically limits N.S.A. to issues affecting "students in their role as students," for example, academic standards. But as collegians thrust aside their 1950s apathy, N.S.A. took political positions. Recent resolutions (some of them adopted only after hot debate) include disapproval of nuclear testing, loyalty oaths, compulsory R.O.T.C. and the House Un-American Activities Committee. N.S.A. warmly approves the U.S. Peace Corps and the Southern sit-in movement, which the executive committee has backed morally and financially.

About a quarter of the delegates to last week's congress called themselves moderate conservatives, but they were neither organized nor vocal. The main voice of conservatism was Harvard Senior Howard Phillips, 20 (not a voting delegate because he is on academic probation). A leader of the Barry Goldwater-blessed Young Americans for Freedom, which claims chapters on 200 campuses, Phillips supports the House Un-American Activities Committee because "people are not as aware of the domestic threat of Communism as they should be." He opposes civil rights legislation because "I feel that the freedom of private choice in association should be maintained." He criticizes the Peace Corps as naively humanitarian, argues that it should consist of trained propagandists "qualified to speak up for the U.S. at every opportunity."

Into Polemics. As Phillips' band of conservatives moved onto the Wisconsin campus, outgoing N.S.A President Richard Rettig, a liberal Democrat, charged that they had "close financial contact" with adult conservatives. They bedded down in $12-a-day rooms at the Madison Inn, while other delegates stayed in dormitories.