N. S. F. A.'s World

When U. S. college students get into a serious discussion among themselves they usually start with religion, end with sex. Incomprehensible to most of them is the European student's passionate preoccupation with political and sociological problems, which often impels him to strike, riot, kill. But U. S. colleges have their minority quota of young men and women who look curiously, if conservatively, out upon the larger world, ponder its problems and predicaments. They are more likely to belong to a debating society than to the football team, more inclined to politics than to literature. Most of them like to organize and represent, to agitate and orate.

An organization of such students is the National Student Federation of America, founded at Princeton in 1925, "to give consideration to questions affecting students' interests . . . develop an intelligent student opinion on questions of national and international importance . . . foster . . . an enduring peace." Its most active membership is among the state universities of the Mid-West. Many a Harvard, Yale or Princeton man would have been startled to learn that he was being represented by a delegate from his own college at N. S. F. A.'s seventh annual meeting last week at the University of the City of Toledo. Ohio.

Attentively the delegates listened to the following opinions:

"Students are not people because they do not function as people should. They are not influential enough either in the management of their own collegiate affairs or in the determination of public opinion and public policies. If students are to be influential members of their civic communities after their graduation, they must learn to manage their own affairs as college students." -- President Henry Noble MacCracken of Vassar College.

Military training is fostering a belief among students that war is necessary-- Richard Cadwallader of Louisiana State University.

Colleges must eliminate the student tendency "to bargain-hunt for credits."-- President Henry John Doermann, University of the City of Toledo.

Because they had assembled to pass judgment on "questions of national and international importance." N. S. F. A. delegates voted that: 1) compulsory military training should be opposed; 2) the U. S. should join the League of Nations and the World Court: 3) Prohibition, as it exists, is unsatisfactory: 4) the Volstead Act should be retained: 5) college drinking is not a problem for student jurisdiction. One group of delegates decided that a football player who adds to his school's fame should get a free scholarship. Examined was the first issue of The World Student Mirror, a monthly published by N. S. F. A. with the aid of the Columbia School of Journalism. Before going home N. S. F. A. delegates elected Francis Kelly Nemeck. University of Arizona graduate, president for 1932.

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