What's It Worth?

Since its formation in 1947, the National Student Association has been the source of continual controversy within the Harvard Student Council. Every year the question of NSA's value to the Council is asked; every year the question goes unanswered, and annually the Council appropriates $600 for NSA activity.

Actually it costs the Council only $200 to belong to NSA, but $400 is supposedly required for travel expenses to the organization's national convention and living expenses while there.

There is considerable doubt that membership in NSA is worth $600, not because of positive proof, but because of no information on the subject. Even NSA's staunchest supporters admit that the Student Council has never availed itself of any of the organization's services. NSA apparently has an information office for common college problems, such as student parking. If such a service exists, the council has never bothered to find out what, if anything, NSA has to say on parking or any other subject.

NSA does have a national convention which various members of the Harvard Student Council attend. According to reports, the last convention passed a resolution against segregation and set up a committee to study various forms of student government. Whatever else was done, and why, are questions on which the Student Council knows as little as the average undergraduate.

The organizational set-up of NSA raises another set of unanswered questions. Council members are at a loss when asked about such matters as the NSA budget, salaries of student officers, and revenue from dues and other assets. Critics of the group maintain that it is run by "a tight core of Midwestern professional students;" and this claim has never been proved true or false.

Lobbying is also among NSA activity, but what bills are lobbied for or against, and who decides on such policy, is again in the realm of the vague hearsay.

The international activities of NSA are, in fact, the only aspect of the organization on which enough is known to make any sort of value judgement. Harvard has taken the lead in international activities if only because Harvard is one of the few international universities in the United States. NSA maintains its international office in Cambridge, and Harvard men generally fill the important executive positions.

The international work of NSA has been valuable as a counter to various Communist student organizations which seek to indoctrinate students with Marxist propaganda and biased information about the Western world. NSA has frequently asserted itself by distributing such simple "democratic propaganda" as copies of Roberts Rules of Order. In addition, NSA has sent informed delegates to various student meetings throughout the world in an effort to present the American student as something more than a person concerned with the vagaries of the stock market.

The international committee, however, is only one part of NSA activity, and the remainder remains its nebulous self. Perhaps the whole is valuable and deserves the Council's financial support, but at present there is no information to warrant such a conclusion.

In its approval of NSA expenses for the current year, the Council stipulated that this was a trial period after which the value of NSA to Harvard would be appraised. As this has apparently never been done, the Council members are well-advised to find out just what it is to which they belong. At the end of the year, the Council might consider devoting some of its report writers to the question, "What does NSA do for Harvard, who does it, for how much, and why?"