Warning Signals

Wildly diverse in its membership and vague in its aims, the National Student Association is a loose affiliation of 368 student governments that has never held any real power on U.S. college campuses. Its main accomplishment has been to act as sounding board for the whole spectrum of student complaints. Its annual congress in Manhattan, Kans., last week served the same purpose. And the decibel count at the meeting signaled the almost certain approach of another year of collegiate unrest and uproar.

Hurting Good. Outgoing N.S.A. President Ed Schwartz summed up the student mood as "discouraged." Princeton's Bob Powell, a leading candidate to succeed Schwartz, thought the word should be "rage." Conservatives professed to see students as "more significantly aware" this year, while radicals contended that the emerging feeling is one of "violence." At times, in the wilting heat of a livestock arena on the Kansas State campus, the delegates seemed to be contending with all four moods at once.

The dominant issue was what the del egates called "the white problem." As they see it, the U.S. has no "black problem"--racial trouble is entirely a matter of white racism. An emotional ar gument was touched off by charges that the all-white University of Alabama delegation was unrepresentative and, in hopeless parliamentary confusion, a Negro Alabama student was seated, unseated, then reseated. Other wholly white delegations caught the spirit and issued challenges to their own credentials. Demonstrators, pretending to be a chain gang, beat themselves with belts and chanted: "Oh, it hurts so good, I don't want to do anything about it. But I like to talk about it." Lost in the con fusion was a motion to declare the whole congress unaccredited and send everyone home.

In its one substantive act, the congress took the first step toward breaking N.S.A. into two corporate groups: one would retain N.S.A.'s tax-exempt status and carry out its present "educational" functions; the other would pay taxes and remain free to engage in open lobbying for legislation approved by N.S.A.'s annual congress. But the more significant message of the meeting was its renewed evidence that campus disorders will probably increase rather than abate in the coming school year. As outgoing President Schwartz sees it, the more moderate students are so discouraged that they may drop out of student movements, allowing the radicals to take over. When that happens, anything can happen. "Once a Columbia raises the level of what is acceptable," said Schwartz, "mere demonstrations become innocuous."

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