Connecticut Legislative Body Hears Civic, Religious Groups Ask Ban on Bias in Colleges

A Connecticut state legislative commission yesterday heard representatives of civic, religious, labor and veterans organizations support” passage of a bill barring in this state non-denominational educational institutions that discriminate against applicants because of race, color, creed or national origin.

The legislative body also heard representatives of the four major colleges and universities in the state–Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity and the Connecticut College for Women–deny that they had a quota system or discriminated against Jewish, Negro, Catholic or Italian applicants. Among the organizations favoring legislative action against schools which discriminate were the Jewish War Veterans, the Anti-Defamation League, the Hartford Jewish Federation and a Hartford American Jewish Congress group. One of the witnesses, Rabbi Samuel Sandmel, who serves as the Hillel Foundation’s chaplain for Jewish students at Yale, declared: “I would tell my fellow Jews that Yale doesn’t discriminate.”