B’nai B’rith Warned to Plan Increased Service to Jewish Students

The tidal wave of boys and girls resulting from the high birth rate of the early Forties will double the student college population of this country during the next 15 years, overflowing educational facilities and creating serious program and financial problems for colleges and universities, the B’nai B’rith Board of Governors was told today at its three-day annual meeting here.

Dr. William Haber, University of Michigan economist and chairman of the B’nai B’rith Hillel Commission, said that many of the five million students who will be attending colleges and universities in 1970 will be enrolled in the newly established junior colleges located in every sizable community. He predicted that as many as three-fourths of Jewish youth in the 17 to 21 age group will be on campuses at this time, placing a heavy burden on the B’nai B’rith Hillel movement.

“It may require B’nai B’rith Hillel directors, who are mainly rabbis, to ride a circuit from one college to another.” Dr. Haber said. He described the B’nai B’rith Hillel program as one “devoted to providing for Jewish college youth the kind of intellectual and ethical exposure that will make them better people, better Americans and better Jews.”

Forerunners of this trend, boys and girls of 14 and 15, are already knocking at the doors of three B’nai B’rith youth groups, Label A. Katz of New Orleans, chairman of the B’nai B’rith Youth Commission, told the Board of Governors. He said that if these three organizations – Aleph Zadik Aleph, B’nai B’rith Girls and B’nai B’rith Young Adults – are to fight juvenile delinquency and continue to help teen-agers to recognize their responsibilities as members of a democratic society, they must obtain more facilities and more trained group-work leaders. More than 30,000 Jewish youth throughout the United States and Canada are members of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization. Jewish college students are served by B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations on more than 200 campuses.