22 Algerian Students Here For NSA Winter Meeting

Twenty-two Algerian students arrived at Quincy House on Monday and Tuesday for their annual winter conference. The guests are living in Quincy rooms with College students and are eating their meals in the House dining hall.

The purpose of the conference, sponsored by the National Student Association, is to bring together the Algerian refugees who are studying at American universities and get them to know each other.

The four-day conference will deal mainly with Algerian culture and heritage, said organizer Alex Korns '62, and NSA representative Don Clifford. Paul E. Sigmund, Jr., Allston Burr Senior Tutor of Quincy House, and Elliot J. Berg, teaching fellow in Economics, will address the group.

The visitors are all members of UGEMA, the General Union of Moslem Algerian Students, an organization which actively supports the Algerian government in exile, the FLN.

The students are among 24 Algerians who have been relocated in the U.S. by means of scholarships granted by NSA and the State Department's International Institute of Education.

Students Refugees From France

Most of the students were studying in France on scholarships provided by the French government. Their scholarships were cut off as a result of their participation in a "protest strike" in May, 1956 against French colonialist policy.

Persecuted by police, the Algerian students found it impossible to continue their studies in France, and moved to Switzerland and other northern European countries.

The UGEMA, whose Paris headquarters were raided and shut down in May, 1958, reestablished itself in Tunis and sent out pleas for scholarship aid on behalf of the refugee students.

Iron Curtain countries responded with 200 scholarships; Western Europe and the U.S. offered about 100.

Beginning in January, 1959, Algerian students arrived in America. Knowing little or no English, they were placed in the English Language Institutes of Columbia, Rutgers, and Michigan. Within three months the students were speaking good enough English to be admitted to prominent American universities. Their records so far, stated Clifford, have been "far above average."

Each year the NSA sponsors two conferences for their "Special Algerian Scholarship Program," for which they pay all traveling expenses. Last year's winter conference was held at Yale. The summer conferences are held on the site of the NSA Congress.

"I am much more impressed by Harvard than Yale," said Rachid Benounmour, President of the U.S. section of UGEMA. Harvard students, he found, "are more aware of international affaire" and are more able "to get away from provincialism" than students of other universities he had visited.

Quincy's visitors will return to their American universities on Friday, when the conference is over