Louder Than Words

The student bodies of Harvard and Radcliffe have voted to affiliate with the National Student Association in the hope, rather than in the conviction, that the organization will develop into a vital and beneficial force for students. The vote was not a vote of confidence. It was a highly deserved sanction for NSA to go ahead and do something.

At least one major university does not share even this reserved optimism. At Northwestern last week, the student government voted against affiliation, on the grounds that "NSA is not a workable organization and will not do Northwestern any good." The students nonetheless left open the possibility of future participation in NSA, should it "prove successful." Here in two words is the task before NSA. With a few exceptions, such as Northwestern, it has been given the green light. It must now prove successful.

The organization, and its Harvard and Radcliffe representatives, must realize that success does not lie in more meetings. There have been enough regional this and national that and international the other, enough constitutional conventions and enough assemblies, to satisfy even the most gregarious of students. Nor does success lie in more talk. There have been enough announcements of fine objectives to take years, if not decades to fulfill. If NSA is to be successful, it must now proceed to produce the goods. And it can do so only if its representatives realize that the individual campus, and not the occasional intercollegiate gathering, must be the dominant factor in NSA activities.

When the regional newsletter becomes an actuality instead of a plan, when facilities for publicity become organized, when, in short, students and student organizations in one college know what is happening in other colleges, NSA, will be in a position to start achieving objectives. The educational opportunities of minority groups, to take one example, can be studied by means of information exchanges, perhaps improved through conclusions based on a comparison of differing problems and solutions. No material good will come on such problems as minority groups, or student employment, or cost of living in college, through occasional meetings of regional executive committees. Results will appear only when NSA has set up machinery for week-by-week, day-by-day contact between its member colleges. And only when it gets results will NSA have proven Northwestern wrong and Harvard right.