A decade ago the College Organization Division faced a crucial challenge. It was becoming insuperably difficult for the supervisor from Boston to visit every organization from San Francisco to Stockholm regularly. Letters alone were insufficient to help strengthen young organizations or encourage new ones.
Today seven Regional Assistants systematically cover nearly all of Western Europe, the United States, and Canada annually. Many of them joined the staff recently. Not surprisingly, the number of recognized college organizations in 1965 rose 131/2 percent over the previous year.
When a Regional Assistant arrives on campus, he may find a thriving organization, but sometimes he finds a small band of eager Scientists stymied by campus policy in their attempts to start an informal group. A case of the latter came up recently at a private teachers' college in Massachusetts. Denominational activity was considered "divisive" and was definitely discouraged there. Then the Regional Assistant brought the Christian Scientists together with the college Chaplain. They told him why an organization was so valuable. "We appealed to his sense of the school's responsibility to provide maximum opportunity for the students' spiritual growth," said the New England Regional Assistant. This school now cautiously allows informal testimony meetings on campus — the first spark of denominational religious activity there in several years.
