Continue NSA

Tonight the Student Council will decide whether it will go on paying for the College's NSA delegation. So far NSA has been an expensive proposition: its first year cost $1300, and this year will come to near $800. A few of its projects have fallen through. But with revising NSA can do some good work; the Council should continue its support.

During its first two years, NSA here has worked on jobs ranging from publishing a "welcome" sheet for football weekend visitors to financing DP students. It has sponsored international tours which worked out well, and attempted a purchase card plan, which did not work out at all. But most of its funds have gone to pay the way for delegates to an annual intercollegiate conference in the mid-west. The Council's problem tonight is to decide whether these conferences are worth the money.

The chief function of these conferences as one NSA official puts it, is to "bring different schools together and let them exchange ideas." Delegates talk for ten days about problems like fraternity discrimination, scholarships, and teaching. Then they are supposed to scoot back to school and tell people what other colleges are doing about these problems.

Harvard's NSA started out by sending eight delegates westward. It now admits it could effectively work with four, knocking its total appropriation down to $100. But it will take more than this trimming to make NSA's expeditions worthwhile. The organization should become an effective clearing-house for information on what students at other colleges are thinking and doing. It is not serving as such now. It should become a source to which other student organizations--especially the Council--can turn when they want to know how other colleges go about things. With such improvements, plus its excellent international work, $400 for NSA sounds like a good investment.