STUDENTS FIND SESSION WITH RUSK HIGHLY ENLIGHTENING
A group of 38 student leaders and campus editors from various parts of the United States received an opportunity to examine. the workings of the mind of Secretary of State Dean Rusk for almost two hours behind closed doors January 31. They came away much enlightened if also considerably disturbed by the experience.
“The students were a cross-section of some 200 young men and women who had issued a public statement: voicing doubt and uneasiness about U.S.~-policy in Vietnam. It was hoped that the exposure to Rusk's brain would help wash away their questions.
"Actually the reverse result occurred," reports James A. Wechsler in his column in the February 2 New York Post. "Those who previously had been most critical of the U.S. position found their hostility fortified; more important, many who had been mildly skeptical emerged as vigorous dissenters. All of them agreed they had found Rusk's responses so unsatisfactory and disturbing that they were engaged last night in drafting a letter to President Johnson asking for a personal audience at the White House."
Gregory Craig, student government chairman at Harvard, said, "We really came out quite disturbed and even frightened. We had the feeling that our government is not willing to accept any settlement except one completely favorable to us."
Rick Weidman of Colgate, who comes from a conservative Republican home, said, "I was pretty appalled. I have tended to be moderate on this issue, and I've really hoped we were pursuing a peace that could be negotiated. But I left with the feeling that we are looking to a solution through guns and bullets, not reason and words." .
Jim Graham, who was an active Goldwaterite in 1964 and the sponsor of a student petition at Michigan State University favoring U.S. policy in Vietnam, "was certainly eager to be convinced -- but he came out fuming."
Howard Kaibel, campus president at the University of Minnesota, "was so dismayed by the Rusk rendition that he solicited and obtained a meeting with Vice President Humphrey." Another student reported the results of that interview: "Kaibel told me he felt a little worse after that."
It is to be hoped that these students, who evidently find it extremely difficult to give up the illusions that have been instilled in them, will succeed in getting an audience with. President Johnson.
That great brain will surely be able to pick up where Rusk and Humphrey left off and bring their work to a dramatic conclusion. It should provide a model illustration of one of the causes impelling American youth into increasing opposition to the war in Vietnam.