"Too Darned Docile"

Last week while scientists were reporting their researches in Boston and economists were airing their views in Philadelphia, college students earnest enough to spend their holiday discussing Problems swarmed to Washington. Reds and Pinks (National Student League, League for Industrial Democracy) arrived early, as usual got the most press attention by making the most noise. They marched 300-strong to the White House, to serve notice on Presidential Secretary Louis McHenry Howe that they would fight in no Capitalist war.

Preponderant mass of conservative U. S. student opinion was represented by the National Student Federation, composed of heads of student government and other delegates from 175 colleges & universities. Federal Commissioner of Education Zook greeted them with this pronouncement: "My complaint about college students is that they are too darned docile. They are too easily bossed. They don't create enough problems for the college and university administration."

Next day the Federation bussed to the White House to hand Mrs. Roosevelt a bouquet of roses.

When Editor Arnold Beichman of Columbia's troublemaking Spectator declared for a free college press, his resolution was snowed under. Several scholarship-holding editors leaped to their feet to defend a college's right, through faculty censorship, to keep "its dirty linen from being washed in public." Similarly swamped was a resolution by Student President Sara Mentschekoff of Hunter that R. 0. T. C. funds be diverted to general educational activities.

The Federation approved a proposal of Secretary of Commerce Roper, presented by proxy, that beginning in 1935 a selected group of 150 or 200 politically ambitious college juniors spend the first three months of each year in Washington studying government first hand. A motion for sponsorship of junior NRA clubs throughout the land was tabled.

Finally some Federation members took their first aggressive action of the week when a group of Southerners stomped off a convention dance floor because three Negro delegates were present. They threatened to resign from the Federation if the Negroes were allowed to remain. The Negroes politely withdrew. But after sweating over the problem in an all-night session the Federation's executive committee decided to uphold its constitution, which bans racial discrimination. The Negro delegates attended the grand ball & banquet.

Meantime a National Conference on Students in Politics composed of eleven Red-to-Pink student organizations was hearing Secretary of Agriculture Wallace crackle: "There is something altogether too smug, complacent and self-satisfied about the youth of the United States." Before adjournment the Conference took a stand against R. O. T. C., war, racial discrimination, Fascism; for Federal aid to education, a Government "equally concerned for the good of all."

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