Loyalty Test

Unmentored by adult-level leadership in U.S. education, the founding delegates of the new National Student Association have won a notable first success: UNESCO has awarded NSA a seat on its American commission to speak officially for this country's widely-dispersed millions of youth. Such authoritative recognition for the fledgling body has come only because of the imposing conduct of the young men and women at Madison. They strutted maturity and the best statesmanship of their generation.

But it is in the nature of its active personnel that the seeds of NSA's failure--as well as the credit for its current good behavior--are lurking without shame. For the student body representatives at the Chicago and Madison meetings have been almost exclusively leaders of student governments and editors of campus publications. If they have not met this description they have surely occupied a previous niche in other existent extracurricular activities. What confronia NSA now is a situation in which the great majority of its non-professional officers on the regional and campus levels have a first love outside the National Student Association. Perhaps the sincerity of their intentions cannot be questioned; they are at any rate not the devotees of a compelling cause who must labor for the ambitious ideal of an "overarching" force on the collegiate scene.

Before it is too late NSA must consciously set out to fulfill the crying necessity for a directing hierarchy unconnected with the many established influences at work on campuses everywhere. This is neither to rap any specific present leadership nor the particular point of view which a partisan group might advance. It is simply insurance that NSA not die of slow strangulation at the hands of those knowingly or not using it for personal political and special organizational ends.

While NSA tries on its officials for size the young organization deserves every support from students and faculty in member institutions. The Council at its meeting tonight should provide for formal College-wide approval of the Constitution. Then if this year's program follows through nationally on the oft-urged principle of selecting limited projects not running up every beckoning side-alley--students on each campus with no prior loyalty may find their way into the work of the commissions. By next spring the second-year leadership will have reached its stature through a record utterly within the NSA fabric.