P.B.H. Conference Stresses Defense Role of Colleges

Colleges cannot be considered separately but must be integrated into the community plan for protection, Joseph M. Loughlin, U. S. Regional Director, Office of Civilian Defense, stated in his keynote address at a conference Saturday held under the auspices of Phillips Brooks House. Faculty and student representatives of 80 New England colleges and universities were present.

"Understanding, planning, and work," Loughlin said, should be the key words of the conference. Considering the general problem of protecting the college, Major General Daniel J. Needham, Director of Protection Division, Massachusetts Committee on Public Safety, asserted that the colleges had a legal and moral obligation to blackout and take other precautionary measures in order to relieve the municipalities of the burden.

Lt. Governor Shepard Speaks

The morning session closed with a buffet Iuncheon at which Lieutenant-Governor Odell Shepard of Connecticut was the speaker. Humanities and a liberal education, he asserted, are a better training for the crisis than the sciences. Extra curricular activities should be curtailed for the duration since they are but luxuries, he said, and state-endowed universities are generally better than those that are privately endowed.

During the afternoon, Faculty and student representatives met separately to consider the individual problems of each college. It was specially stressed in the student round table that there would soon be an acute shortage of farm labor, and the colleges would probably have to meet this lack.

Volunteer Offices Suggested

In the closing session it was recommended that each college set up a Civilian Defense Volunteer office. This office should get complete information about each student's capabilities and the amount of time that each could devote to defense work.

Every student should be able to participate in some sort of work--college girls in child care and office work, and men in the more active positions. Maxwell Miller, Regional Youth Representative, Office of Civilian Defense, also suggested that a bureau be set up to dispense information about opportunities in the armed forces, such as that of Professor A. James Casner, Harvard Law School.