NSA Congress, 1966
Today is the second day of the 2012 National Student Congress of the United States Student Association. In this excerpt from my dissertation I describe the 1966 Congress of USSA’s predecessor the United States National Student Association, a meeting that took place in a watershed moment in American student history.
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NSA’s health improved substantially in 1965-66 — attendance at the 1965 Congress had been among the lowest in NSA history, but in 1966 it rose above 250 schools. In the wake of Berkeley and the Vietnam escalation, student activism acquired a cultural resonance that it had not previously possessed. As protest became more pervasive — and as it became a mass-media phenomenon — the task of political organizers changed. At the very moment when campus activists had given up on organizing student governments, they discovered that student governments were beginning to organize themselves.