Word: vistas
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...Nixon Administration in 1970 abolished occupational draft deferments, including those for VISTA and Peace Corps volunteers. Possibly to conciliate the young, however belatedly, Nixon used a speech at the University of Nebraska nine months later to praise their altruism and to propose a merger of the Peace Corps, VISTA and a handful of smaller Government volunteer groups into a new corps that would provide "an expanded opportunity" for service. Last week the House okayed the consolidation; unless the Senate disagrees this week, which is considered unlikely, the new agency-called Action-will come into existence on July...
...merger is designed to pour into one pot not only the Peace Corps, VISTA and the Teacher Corps, but also an acronymic amalgam of such disparate agencies as NSVP (National Student Volunteer Program), RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program), SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) and ACE (Active Corps of Executives). Also to be incorporated will be the Office of Voluntary Action...
Putting all the Government's service groups together seems plausible enough on paper, but the amalgamation followed several months of infighting between Peace Corps and VISTA officials over which group would predominate in the merged organization. VISTA lost, and one reason may be that its young volunteers have displayed strong political activism; this has piqued some of the nation's more conservative mayors and Governors, both in the North and in the South...
...VISTA wars were fought with leaks to the press-most dramatically, the release of part of a sociologist's report that some Administration officials interpreted as meaning that VISTA workers are "radicalized" by their volunteer experience. One Washington Republican concluded: "VISTA is just a federally financed hate-Nixon postgraduate school." In fact, Dr. David Gottlieb of Pennsylvania State University, who conducted the study, decided that most volunteers in VISTA found it an opportunity to work for change "within the System...
...VISTA has been a particular target for conservative criticism. Richard Nixon plainly wants to put his own stamp on the voluntary agencies begun by his Democratic predecessors, and the merger into Action, by absorbing VISTA into a larger, less controversial whole, may blunt the attack. Some think that the reorganization is actually a Machiavellian maneuver by the President to gut VISTA and the Peace Corps, although both programs can continue effectively if the Administration really wants them to. Shuffling bureaucracies about means nothing in itself...