Return To Self Help Advocated

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31726, 9 July 1968, Page 2

Return To Self Help Advocated

American students are not all militant liberals 21-year-old Miss Melinda Stevens is an ardent conservative who would like to see Mr Richard Nixon in the White House. Miss Stevens favours a return to individual initiative and self help. Arizona is her home State and she was a supporter of Mr Barry Goldwater, whose predictions on the state of the nation and the Vietnam war made during the 1964 campaign she considers to have come true. Asked in Christchurch yesterday if she did not feel in the minority when she attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, Miss Stevenson replied: “The liberals are the ones who make themselves heard, the many conservatives don’t speak out “I believe we must have welfare programmes to help those who need help, but there are many who could do a limited amount and feel -much more pride in that than accepting assistance. “The more the Government takes over, the more our lives get to be dominated by filling in forms,” she said.

Trip A Present Miss Stevens is travelling with her parents. Her father, Dr W. C. Stevens, Served in the Pacific during World War H and Miss Stevens persuaded her parents to take this trip after she visited Asia last year. The trip is a combined birthday and graduation pre-

sent for Mis* Stevens, who has just qualified as a medical assistant After becoming discouraged with the job prospects which would have been offering if she had completed her arts degree Miss Stevens left university and took a course run by the local county medical society. After more than four months of lectures and a month as an intern in a pediatrician’s practice she became qualified to do medical secretarial work and assist a doctor. During her first university year Miss Stevens lived in a dormitory and the next year was accepted as a member of a sorority. Although membership In sororities remained high It was falling off in fraternities. “Boys are now putting more

emphasis on getting through university with good grades to get scholarships and deferment from the draft,” she said.

Miss Stevens is not against all long-haired students. Some were very sincere in their beliefs, she said. “It's the ones who are just drifting along with the tide that I really despise. , “Those who are sincere are out working for people like Senator McCarthy, who they think will put the policy of which they approve into action,” she said. If her student friends were any indication. Senator Eugene McCarthy seemed to have a good chance of getting elected, but she was not making any predictions, Miss Stevens said.