Re "Students in Need"

Sir,—I should like to comment upon several suggestive and misleading inaccuracies in "E.G.M.'s" article "For Students in Need" which appeared in "Salient" on February 28.

Reference to the constitution of I.S.S.N.Z. will show that, contrary to "E.G.M.'s" suggestion, the national committee of I.S.S. is not "elected by nobody, responsible to nobody, and self-perpetuating." The officers are, in point of fact, elected at the annual conference by delegates from: (a) The university and training college I.S.S. committees in each of the centres. (b) Six interested national organisations, viz., NZUSA, NZSCM, NZEU, UNESCO, NZAUT (University Teachers' Association) and the University Catholic Societies.

The remaining members of the committee are appointed by NZUSA, NZAUT and each of the local I.S.S. committees. Co-opted members form a strictly limited minority.

"E.G.M.'s" vague remarks about "Booklets which could only lose money" have little meaning unless she supplies factual evidence.

The statement that ISS spent money raised for W.S.R. on "cultural activities" is misleading as the W.S.R. budget is drawn up, not by the ISS administration as "E.G.M." would have us believe, but by the assembly of W.S.R. itself.

"E.G.M.'s" statement that last year "ISS believed that material relief was no longer necessary" is in direct contradiction to the stated policy of ISS of spending 85 per cent of its income for the year 1950-51 on material relief.

I would, therefore, sugest that the contrast drawn by "E.G.M." between the "cultural activities" of ISS and the "material relief of ISR is a false antithesis and a distorted over-amplification of the facts.