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Show University Studants Interested in Public Poli- cies Only as Citizens By DAVID KINLEY, President University of Illinois. In the years since the war there has been a notable increase in tho attempts to use college and university students for purposes of props ganda. Conferences have been called by individuals, "representatives of students end institutions have been sent to attend them, and resolutions resolu-tions have been duly drawn up to be presented to congress or the President, Presi-dent, or to some other public authority. I have refused to participate in any of these conferences. I havs taken the ground that if the students wish to participate, they are free to do so; that if they wish my help I will give it; but that I have no right to send one or two students, picked by myBelf, te any conforenco and say that they represent the 13,000 men and women of the University of Illinois. They do not represent them in any true sense, because they were not selected by them. Conferences of the kind referred to have been called mainly to help on movements for or against some particular public policy. Such matters are not students' business. Their interest in those matters is their interest inter-est as citizens and not as students. Such attempts to "use" college and university students seem to me highly objectionable. In some other than English-speaking countries it has been customary for university student to interfere in governmental matters, national and international. The practice has never prevailed among university students in English-speaking countries. Such practice, in my opinion, is unfortuniste and not " within the province of university students. ' |