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Show Investigate Model U.N.? Who Is Unpatriotic? Some 1500 Utah high school students gathered at the University over the weekend for the annual Model Mod-el United Nations assembly. It was a masterpiece of subversion of American principles and ideals, our constitution, foreign policy, flag, etc., etc. At least that's the way a member of the Utah legislature saw it yesterday and after hearing a speech by former University professor Richard Gibby, the Representative told the Chronicle he "shall have introduced in-troduced into the next legislature a resolution for an investigation of those responsible for this un-American and unpatriotic program." J. McKinnon Smith, who represents Salt Lake District Eight, visited our offices yesterday afternoon with Carydon Hammond, state president of the Young Americans for Freedom, to make the announcement. Both were upset, insensed, and dismayed that a state like Utah would support its largest University in allowing impressionable high school students to be duped into "having a greater love for the United Nations Na-tions than for the United States of America." Although it sounds incredible, and although the Chronicle is led again to wonder just how citizens of Utah and Salt Lake City can elect men like Smith to its legislature, we belive that the issue is not one of debating the values of the United Nations, nor is it particularly one of debating de-bating the values of the legislators themselves. What is at issue is whether or not the 1500 high schoolers are in reality being "subverted," (Smith's word, meaning that they are losing sight of the spirit which our Founding Fathers put into the Constitution). Constitu-tion). Perhaps Mr. Smith would feel a little more at ease if he had investigated the hours of research, re-'f re-'f lection, "reading and just plain work" which the students stu-dents go through before making their presentations in the Model UN: They must not only dig up and j read vast material on their respective countries, but must also learn all they can about every key country in the United Nations. While all this is being done, the students are relating the material to their experiences exper-iences and knowledge as citizens of the United States of America. It might also be worthwhile to note that the entire program, is only coordinated at the University level and is administered through Utah's high school principles and teachers, not infamous for their liberalism liberal-ism nor their desires to undermine United States interest, in-terest, goals, ideals, constitution or flag. Another proposition which Mr. Smith upholds is that the United Nations is somehow unconstitutional unconstitu-tional and is not aiding our foreign policy; he then draws the conclusion that when high school students study it, participate in a model session of it, that is also somehow unconstitutional and subversive to how our Founding Fathers saw the nature of our government. govern-ment. We might remind our Representative that at the present time, and since 1945, the United Nations Na-tions has been a fundamentally accepted part of our foreign policy and national interest, and has been upheld and promoted by every U.S. Congress and administration since then. It therefore seems a little incongruous for a man of some supposed political means to want to introduce a bill into his legislature to remove from an institution institu-tion of higher learning a program which enables more than 1500 high school students to study the current United States method of promoting peace. Furthermore, if the United Nations is what Mr. Smith says it is, truly un-American and unpatriotic,' we think the best way for that truth to bubble to the top is through the democratic tradition-simply talk about it, debate it in an open market place of ideas. The University of Utah is hopefully such a market mar-ket place. |