A PROTEST

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Not long ago, Time magazine cited as a major triumph of campus conservatism, the election of Howard Phillips '62 as President of the Harvard Student Council. And the National Review published a photograph of Mr. Phillips, identifying him as S.C. President and quoting some of his right-wing views. At that time, the S.C. warned its President against using the prestige of his office in order to further his ideological position, and Mr. Phillips promised to avoid further confusion of the two roles--as President of the non-ideological S.C., and as a member of such conservative groups as the Young Americans for Freedom (which, by the way, has denounced liberals as "the diehards, the misinformed, and the blind").

Imagine our surprise, therefore, when--at the recent National Conference on Youth Service Abroad, held in Washington--we were given a press release from the "Committee for an Effective Peace Corps," which listed as its Chairman, "Howard Phillips, President, Student Council, Harvard."

In this statement, Mr. Phillips and his group asked that the Peace Corps "under no conditions be transferred to a supernational body such as the United Nations," that the training program include "extensive, rigorous training in . . . the Communist menace," and that the applicants undergo an F.B.I. security check. Attached to the statement was a newspaper clipping which called the Peace Corps a "publicity stunt," an "amazingly naive project," and "the children's crusade of 1961."

As President of the S.C., Mr. Phillips was quoted in the Washington Evening Star (of March 30) as saying of Sargeant Shriver's speech to the Conference, "Some of the things that man said frightened me." In the same article he called for an "Anti-Communist Freedom Corps."

Although we support Mr. Phillips' right vigorously to express his political views, we strongly object to their association with his position as President of the S.C. Since it appears that a word of warning from the S.C. was insufficient to stop this practice, we suggest that Mr. Phillips might better understand a vote of consure and a formal demand that he scrupulously refrain from further misuse of the prestige of his office. Michael Hornblow '62,   Edwin Winkier '62.