Debating Council Fails BC Test on Civil Rights Issue

Even a change from their standby topic, federal aid to education, hasn't improved the skidding fortunes of the Debate Council. It lost its third debate in two days last night when it met with Boston College in Kirkland House to discuss the subject: "A Comprehensive Civil Rights Program Should Be Enacted."

K. Bruce Friedman '50 and Dan Pierce '49, arguing the affirmative for Harvard, contended that a civil rights act was necessary from a moral point of view. They asserted that in allowing discrimination on racial and religious grounds to exist, the United States left itself wide open for criticism of its form of democracy.

Winners Cite State's Rights

Negative speakers Lawrence Spellman and Lawrence Vine, of Boston College, maintained that a federal civil rights bill would be an unconstitutional violation of state's rights. They added that such a program would be an impractical attempt "to force by legislation a trend that must develop gradually in people's hearts."

In the retort Friedman and Pierce claimed that there was no evidence to show that a civil rights act was either unconstitutional or impractical.