Yale, Dartmouth Drop Out of NSA; Both Complain of Political Activities

The Dartmouth Undergraduate Council and the Yale Senior Advisory Board voted last week to end their schools' affiliations with the United States National Student Association.

In explaining their reasons for withdrawal, both organizations expressed dissatisfaction with certain NSA political and social positions.

The NSA is a student-run group that attempts to express the consensus of opinion on educational, political, and social issues among the 400 or so campuses that comprise its membership.

Joel Sharkey, NSA's national affairs vice-president, was critical of the actions by the two schools. "If they are unhappy with present policies of NSA, they are certainly not going to accomplish anything by withdrawing," he said. "If the more conservative schools choose to disaffiliate because of disagreement on political issues, the result of their action can only be the further liberalization of NSA policies."

The withdrawal of the two "prestige" colleges was not a serious blow to the prestige of NSA, Sharkey said. "Dis-affiliations are common in the Fall, when each school is faced with the NSA membership dues."

Sharkey said he did not consider Dartmouth a heavy loss because "they have not had an active campus committee there for the past three or four years." But Sharkey added that the withdrawal of Yale was a "disappointment" to the national office, since there had been a small core of students there who had "worked very hard in NSA programs."

Marc J. Roberts '64, a past chairman of NSA's National Executive Committee, noted that the worth of the Yale and Dartmouth memberships in NSA could not be measured only by the visible accomplishments of the students from those schools.

"The primary function of these schools was that they brought into the organization people with the potentiality of educating others. We're losing the services of some potentially useful people."