Show Conservatives Weaken Rights Legislation By DEAN M. GOTTEHRER Press Service BLOOMINGTON Civil rights was to be the main issue of the Sixteenth National Student This was the summer of the civil rights social revolution and it was going to manifest itself in a great mass protest from the National 1 1 EXEC COUNCIL members Carmen Boyden John and Kay Atkinson display award received at the Sixteenth National Student The a first place in the academic affairs division of the student government achievement was given for the excellence of last year's Challenge The mass protest although it was somewhat less than but the action that materialized was no where near what the civil rights groups and the left The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee wanted the association to commit itself to directly financing six field This action never Neither did several other courses of action desired by the The attitude of most delegates seemed to be that the left wanted too Many delegates were willing to condemn the police action and brutality that occurred in but financing another secretary was more than they could In sev eral delegates were unwilling to believe that police brutality was a phenomena in the South until National Affairs Vice President Tim-othey Manring documented the charges in the text of a phone conversation with Americus attorney C. B. WHY WAS there little action when the plenary was willing to condemn the Americus An almost total breakdown in the floor leadership of the left is a partial A reticence on the part of most delegates to commit the association to any one particular course of action was another Perhaps the most important reason was the general atmosphere of the congress Throughout the proceedings most of the attention was given to parliamentary ma- dilatory irrelevant amendments and last ditch s attempts to achieve changes that had been defeated at earlier The only real victory that can be claimed by the left is the revised basic policy declaration on National Security and Civil In the most of the attempts made toward strengthening civil rights resolutions by making the mandate sections contain direct courses of action changed a great deal since the Fourteenth National Student where most of the resolutions passed at the Sixteenth Congress would have been endlessly amended to give them strength and THE ALMOST total failure of the left was symbolized in the defeat of Bruce of the University of Chicago who ran for office placing the main emphasis of his campaign on the civil rights The Sixteenth National Congress was perhaps the most conservative one to To attribute this to the so-called campus conservative trend is to But the fact remains nonetheless that the left did not accomplish all that it had hoped to achieve at the What this means in terms of the future of the association is yet to be The answer will be partially presented by the Seventeenth National Congress at the University of Minnesota next |