Unbaited

Pre-holiday critics and cynics looked prophetically at the Chicago Student Conference and saw it as anything from worthless to dangerous. They feared that the conference would come up with plans for merely another violently partisan youth organization that would make much political noise and have little practical use as far as the average, non-rabid student was concerned. But the 358 delegates came into the new year with a new kind of plan, a plan that is based on the interests of students as students, and not as members of political or religious groups. Nineteen such groups had delegates present, but none made efforts to control the conference, and few were disgruntled at being limited to a total ten percent representation on the powerful executive committee of the National Continuations Committee.

Until next summer, when a national students convention will be called, the Continuations Committee will be the entire works. Among its many functions it will draft a constitution for the prospective permanent National Students Organization.

To guide the Continuations Committee in carrying out these functions in the spirit of the Chicago conference, a list of aims and activities was drawn. If carried to their full potential, the activities on the national level can affect the great majority of students in one way or another, and many students in several ways. For instance, one of the eighteen proposed activities suggests a "student employment center...to find employment for students along lines for which they have prepared." As a middle-man between employer and hopeful diploma-waver, the possibilities of such a center are tremendous. Other suggestions, such as the one which would "encourage the raising of the level of housing for all students and especially direct attention to the needs of married students," show the nature of the conference's interests to tally with those of most students.

Again on the international level, the conference proposed activities of practical use. Not only did it go on record strongly in favor of full participation in international student organizations, but it suggested a number of functions regarding student exchanges and student travel abroad. One proposal provides for a "bureau that will disseminate and publicize information about courses and opportunities for specialization in foreign universities for American students, and for foreign students in America."

At Chicago the Harvard delegates played an important part: Clifton Wharton was elected Secretary of the Continuations Committee, and S. Douglass Cater was a skillful chairman of one of the four panels. They can look back on a good job, and forward to the first student organization in American history that will be controlled by students, and not by student factions.