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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (April 5, 1967)
Editorials THE DAILY NEBRASKAN Commentary "Page 2 WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 1967 Two Impulses "The graphic pictures I adore, Indecent magazines galore, I like them more, If they're hard core . . ." "Smut" by Tom Lehrer On first impulse these lines from the infamous Tom Lehrer are not only enter taining, but very true. Magazines concerned with sex stir ring stories and tasty pictures are of ten entertaining, a source of relaxation and to say the least quite interesting. 'Girlie' Magazines Few University males could go on rec ord against "girlie" magazines and cer tainly few could list their favorite reading without including "Playboy." Thousands of mature University stu dents no doubt would and should strongly disagree, for example, with Douglas Coun ty Municipal Judge Eugene Leahy who said at a Nebraska legislative judiciary committee meeting Monday, after reading several pages from "Playboy," "This stuff is plain junk." Ridiculous Law A laugh and a smirk at those tradi tional people who make literature "ob scene" with ridiculous laws seems a fair reply to Leahy who was speaking in sup port of proposed LB859. This bill would make it illegal to sell, give or display so called "obscene" literature to any person under 18 years of age. Adolescents seldom come into contact with a piece of literature any more shady than many classical novels and personal experience proves in the great majority of examples that normal sex interest is made dirty or detrimental only when laws or teaching make it that way. Adequately Covered However, unfortunately some s o r t of liberal and practical obscenity law is needed in a society of people. This sort of measure is now adequately covered by the 1961 Nebraska obscenity law. This law enforces some tasteful restric tions on the extent of pornography and it does not set up different standards for adults and minors. Found 'Obscene' The present case of Bill Steen and the Heroic Bookstore falls under the 1961 law. Steen's merchandise in question has been found "obscene" according to this law. Basically it is wrong and extremely unfortunate according to individual con science and freedom for any type of law restricting literature to exist, but in a practical society of people there is some need for standards on the quality of such literature easily sold. LSE Interpretative (EDITOR'S NOTE: In receiit weeks, the London School of Economics has been subject to demonstrations described by English newspapers as a "British Berke ley." Numerous students have been sus pended from the school, including Mar shall Bloom, former editor of the Amherst College Student, who headed LSE's Gradu ate Students Association. The Immediate cause of the demon strations was the appointment of the past head of Rhodesia's University College at Salisbury to be LSE's new director. How ever, as In almost aD cases of student unrest, the roots of the disturbance go far deeper. Following is an Interpretative report on the London School of Economics, writ ten for the Collegiate Press Service by David Widgery. Wldgery, who has been associated with the British student maga zine "U", is currently a student at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, and a member of the Council of Britain's Radical Student Alliance.) The tragedy of the London School of Economics situation is that everyone knew it was coming except the administration. It had to come and on the same template of revolt as the university dissidents in Berkeley and Berlin and Michigan. So Solid It came because the administration w as longwinded and callous and the students are not It came because the channels of communication and organization are so solid, they are sewers. Because the administrators were so far away, when they came down the stairs from Connaught House offices, they scarce ly recognized their own students used the same words or understood their language. Cricket Lot us; It came because LSE is small and overcrowded and now filled with working class students who are no longer well bred and cricket loving and comfortable like a student should be. And wben it came, it was scarcely surprising that the student negotiators felt unable to rely on the administration's good faith and demanded the sort of bargains familiar is labor disputes. Mass Suspensions After calling in the police, after the mass suspensions without bearings or ap peals, absurd allegations of conspiracy and the final statement that the suspen sions of David AdeLrtein and Marshall Bloom were never really under considera tion at an appeal hearing, this is the least the administration should expect In certain cases the gap of percep tion has widened into open hostility be tween students and some of those who teach aid admiriiiter them. The love and trust preached by the founders of the School seem a laughable nostalgia. Stodeat Charges The recent massive sit-in has come at the end of a long card year. It began with discussion and pamphleteering among the students about the desirability of the Director Elect He is Waller Adams, head of University College. Salisbury, Rhodesia. The exact student charges were largely ignored and unread by the press and endless letter writers to the London jv- t. . i. . I r . r t i lines grange? uiijj va ucuta m ui, Adams' conscience. At that time David Adelstein. the Undergraduate Student Union, was disci plined for writing a letter to the Times. As the case was heard, the College went on strike and pushed their case for change in the college regulations with direct ac tion, mass meetings and forceful nego tiation, Sapreme Irwy The supreme irony is that all this should happen in the LSE of Laskey and Tawney tod the Webbs who saw the college as the social conscience of a so ciety; critical and disenchanted with con temporary wisdom. For at a time when the professors are increasingly infatuated with modem Britaia and see its only needs as items oi political landscape gardening, the stu dents are making increasingly fundamen tal and wholesale rejections of the ide logy and basis of society. Accessible DecMcracy ISlile the Professor at Industrial Re lations claims the whole thing is the work of less than 50 Trotskyists, Anarchists Provos, and Americans, the students are at the same moment offering an au thentic counter society with an immedi ate accessible democracy. The students accuse the school as being now there to train up scientists for the cold war, rationalizers for indus try and lubrication for those parts of industrial society most prone to breaking down. Living Critique Now in their action they are offer ing an alternative scheme and from the university society in protest has emerged a vivid, living critique. The most crucial decision the stu dents took was when they chose to con tinue the occupation of the university premises on their own terms rather than leave a strong negotiating committee be hind. Live-in They chose, as Kufer said, to change this sit-in to a teach-in to a learn-in to a live-in. The students organized their own classes and tutors. They were in fact exercising Paul Goodman's "Lernfrenheit". the freedom to ask for what they need to be taught and if necessary invite the teachers in cluding the advocates of causes, to do it Union Committee Th&y are continuing the protest or ganization through the Union and the Union's ad hoc Committee of Thirty Three. The strikes and demonstrations have all been Unionized. LSE Student Union, like most of the English student unions, is the pivot rather than the rusty hinge of student action. Elections are run on a political basis and political consciousness and organization is high and sophisti cated. Extremely Good The democracy of the Union debates has been authentic. Tactics meetings filled the Old Theatre to breaking point with 600 to 700 and debate was exhaustive and extremely good. With mass democracy the tendency is to level, stamp and oversimplify. The debate at LSE (with students staff and leaders from other colleges participating, but only the LSE students voting), was an authentic participatory process. Great Distance When the press and administration substitute for this the theories of ring leaders and coups, they are just demon strating their enormous distance from the contemporary student experience. In between the debates the students organized films 'the most popular was "The Organiser"), Agit Prop theatre, poetry readings, and folk concerts . . . all the paraphernalia of student con sciousness but invested with importasce and urgency because of where they were happening and why. Concrete Situation As in Berkeley students and staff be gan to meet lace to face for the first rime in a concrete situation. Sometimes tempers flashed but even the disagree ments had a reality that the perfunctory lecture courses or dust jacket biograph ies just don't possess. The solidarity of the other students in Britain has been overwhelming and shows that the LSE situation is per ceived to have rational implications and repeats local experience. Daffodils The solidarity Mitten people show to people, symbolized by the daffodils worns by all the marchers on Ihe protest rallies and passed and tossed out into the crowd, again serves as a counter system to the bureaucracy of the official National Un ion of Students, which has disowned the students were taught by men of two generations ago that all questions were complex, all ideologies complex and all larger passions fanatical. Yet it is these very students who were able to demysii fy administrator's rhetoric and shell games and tee a situation of blatant problems and patent injustices. It was the students who showed an immediate and undeniable concern for bumas freedom and self-erpressioa. rxy for April IS enj pMplyBo&rJs Our Man Hoppe ' Swinging England Arthur Hoppe London London swings! There are discotheques and gam bling clubs and pots cf pot and LSD. Members Only Of course, the West End discotheques are open to members only. And in the sedate atmosphere of the posh gambling clubs no los er would ever consider put ting a gun to his temple un less it had a silencer. But, aah, in this home of the Beatles, there are hippies who are just like hippies anywhere. Well, almost like hippies anywhere. A leader of the London hippie movement is Mr. Peter Stansill, a soft-spoken, articulate, intelligent young gentleman of 23, who is business manager of the International Times, or 'IT," as it's called. New Sport At least he was until the police seized the newspa per last week under the Obscene Publications Act. They appeared offended by such articles as one sug gesting in detail that a new sport be added to the next Olympics or rather an old sport, but one that has usually been confined to the bedroom. I asked Mr. Stansill over afternoon tea if many young Londoners were fol lowing the hippie creed that everyone should "turn on, rune in and drop out." "Oh," said Mr. Stansill, "we certainly don't advo cate that just anyone should take LSD. Quite a few members of our staff are definitely opposed to it. And as for dropping out of organized society, that sim ply isn't done. Acid Heads "Most acid heads (the term for LSD users) ran boutiques, discotheques, mod shops or are in pop groups. After alL work is spiritually necessary to us Englishmen. A sense of du ty, you know. So while per sons from all walks of life do flee their skulls (a hip pie phrase for the wild psychedelic experience in duced by LSD), they at all times carry on." All walks of life? "Oh. yes," said Mr. Stansill. "We have business executives, lawyers, and Foreign Office types who will approach you to say that they've 'always wanted to try some of that er stuff.' And should you ask them after they've blown their minds on it for 24 hours, how they liked it, they invariably reply, 'Oh, I found it quite amusing.'" I inquired if the London hippies had some project going, such as the Provos of Amsterdam, who pro vide white bicycles which anyone may take, ride and leave wherever he pleases. "Well, we did think of hanging black umbrellas from lampposts, but what Englishman would take an umbrella that wasn't his?" said Mr. Stansill with a grin. "Particularly if it weren't tightly furled." And so we leave swinging London. Personally, I'm on my way to swinging Toot ing Bee. If you think London swings," said an old Lon don hand I know, "you should see Tooting Bee. It's about a 30-minute ride on the Underground. Now it may seem a typical London suburb rows and rows of row houses, a friendly pub and a fish 'n chips estab lishment. Nothing out of the ordinary." And what does rwinging Tooting Bee do for kicks? "Well, confidentially," be said, lowering his voice, "I'm told that on Saturday nights they all gather at the Laundromat to watch the tumble-action washing ma chines." After two days in swing ing London, I can hardly wait The Peaceful Snatch ... by Steve Abbott Recently a great Ameri can died. A. j. Muste dead at 82, That he was an American was merely an accident of fate, as it is with most of us: that he was a great man was due to the fact that he owned up to his principles. Same Tradition Muste you say you haven't beard of hiro? Well, he wasn't in the same tra dition as our usual heroes. Jay Gould, Eillie Sol Estes, Bobby Baker. Unlike most of us. he was first and last conscientious ly moral. WM3e most of us have ('vaguely good inlen twns. our public indifference and private materialism un does us. I admit, not out of hatred or even spike, but sadly, that most Ameri cans have no principles be yond self-interested pleasure seeking. Material Security Even men who claim lofty religious principles are, when it comes down to brass tacks, as indifferent and cowardly as the rest We mean well, but since we have enthroned material security as our Savior, we are unable to take risks for Christor man king anymore. Rather than tali for A. J. Muste. I'll let bim talk for himself. No doubt some will slander bim as irrational and impractical, but such talk is cheap coming from hedonist?. The following ex cerpt is from "Of Holy Dis obedience" written in "952, republished by Eobbs-Mer-rill in 'The Essays of A. J. Muste." Holy Disobedience "It is of crucial impor tance that we should under stand that for the indivi dual to put himself in Holy Disobedience against the war-making and conscrip ting State, wherever it or he is located, is not an act of despair or defeatism. "Rather, I think we may say that precisely this in individual refusalto'go along' is now the begin ning and the core of any realistic and practical movement for a more peace ful and brotherly world. 'G Along "For it becomes daily clearer that political and military leaders pay viruai Iy no attention to protests against current foreign pol icy and pleas for peace since they know quiet well that, wben it comes to a showdown, all but a hand ful of the millions of pro testers will 'go along with the war to which the policy leads. "AH but a handful will submit to conscription. Few of the protesters will so much as risk their jobs in the cause of 'peace.' The failure of the policymakers to change their course does not. save perhaps in very rare instances, mean that they are evil men who want war. Score Of Billions "They feet as indeed they so often declare in crucial moments, that the issues are so complicated, the forces arrayed against them so strong, that they 'have no choice' but to add an other score of billions to the military budget, and so on and on. "Why should they think there is an reality, hope or salvation in 'peace advo cates mho. when the mo ment of decision comes also act on the assumption that they 'have no choice but to conform . . . (but) as Life stated in its unem pectedly profound and stir ring editorial of August 20, UM5, its first issue after the atom bombing of Hiro shima: Conscience " 'Our sok- safeguard against the very real dang er of a reversion to bar barism is the kind of moral ity which compels the in dividual conscience, be the group right or wrong. The individual conscience against the atomic bomb? Ves. There is no other ay. " On Vietnam ... by Stephen Voss (EDITOR'S NOTE: The following column by Stephen H. Voss, Instructor of philosophy, will appear in the Daily Nebraskan weekly. In this column, Mr. Voss plans to air some of the more unfamiliar facts and opinions about the war in Vietnam and to stimulate thought about the conflict) I'd like to comment on some typical reactions of stu dents and others to atrocities in Vietnam, as displayed, for example, in the SDS exhibit "The Arrogance of Pow er." Typical Reaction 1. "I made a point of trying to avoid it after I saw it the first time." This is perhaps the most typical reac tion among Americans to the ugliness they have helped create in Vietnam. In other wars they have been quick to explain the necessity of this ugliness; now they wish mainly to avoid having to think about it This reaction is no accident: most people unable to avoid thinking about it eventually lose some respect for their country's leaders, and most of us would rather re spect our leaders. Learned Little 2. "Many male students thought the Vietnam war to, because, in the words of one, 'It's my duty'." (Daily . Mohractan Marh 9A if vnu reDlace 'the Vietnam war Dy tne war on jews you may ue icmyicu w uwu ; can students have learned little from the sins of their " pre-war German counterparts. For how can doing what is, on the whole, wrong ever be one's duty? No; surely there comes a point at which it becomes one's duty to oppose the leader of one's coun- a. a ill - ti tny rianTao ITT and fnr Hitlpr. II y - n uus was cue ia iv uvww - , is it unthinkable that it snouia De ine case ior i-nuun Johnson? Another Question 3. "But people are killed and wounded in every war.' Compare this reply to another question: "Richard Speck isn't so bad, even if he did kill all the nurses. After all, people are killed and wounded during any mass murder." (Of course there are differences, but certainly one of these is the fact that more killing occurs in a war; why should we be so callous about killing in war, granted this fact? reflect that if Speck, Starkweather, and so on had com mitted their senseless murders in the right place in Viet nam say in a Vietcong hospital they would be heroes. Or, at least called heroes.) 4. "The end justifies the means." Such a statement in uonorni rpfwts a shabbv moralitv: this is no excep tion. The slogan 'Better dead than Red' may be a noble one if you impose it on yourself, but it seems a mon strosity to impose it on Vietnamese peasants whether they like it or not Ten To One Reflecting on the sorts of wounds caused by napalm and Lazy Dogs, you may be moved to amend the slogan to read "Better dead than wounded". Then recall that most competent estimates of the ratio of civilians to Viet- cong wounded by allied forces are about ten to one. Since 1945 over one million Vietnamese have suffered deaths because of the war and last year alone the allies saved about 50,000 civilians forever from the threat of Communism. smiiiiHffimmininiiHiHHiHiminMwiuimiiiimiiiiiiHiniiiiiimnm!iiiuiiiiiiiHiiiumimuiiiiiini Campus Opinion Students Ought To Aid Steen Dear Editor: The recent arrest of an Heroic Bookstore employee for selling allegedly pornographic literature is a plain case of police harassment. While Mr. Steen, owner of the store, was recently found guilty of selling obscene material, the constitutional ity of the statutes under which he was prosecuted is, to say the least, dubious. County Attorney Paul Douglas, according to "The Lincoln Star," said that he hoped the arrest would keep the bookstore from selling any more of the "questionable material." Since when have the police been charged with the duty of suppressing "questionable" material. Students ought to aid Mr. Steen and his employees in any way possible. Have you read any questionable material this week? Al Spangler Free University 'Whimpers' Dear Editor: Some proponents of the "Free University" have im plied that the sterile and authoritarian education avail able from NU's regular courses cannot slake the intellec tual thirst of many who seek "true" knowledge in the NU desert. They have suggested that the NFU alone would bring enlightenment and a swinging "joie de vivre" to Nebraska land. This letter, perhaps something of a minority re port, suggests that what was begun with a burst of ideal, ism and great expectations has not been a resounding success. ". .' My experience: I offered to "direct" two courses, "Psychology of Humor" and "Cultural Impact of Mass Media." The original response was splendid 35 signed up for "Humor," 15 for "Mass Media." I then spent some 10 to 12 hours assembling, typing and duplicating bibliographical material to band out, and checking on availability of some of the material. Loaded with materials, I met the first classes. ' Of the 35 who signed up for "Humor," IS showed up at the first meeting; four came to the second (two of which were a faculty couple); the third meeting went un attended. Of the 15 who signed up for "Mass Media," eight came to the first meeting, none to the third. "Not with a bang, but a whimper." Charles R. Graner -Associate Professor ' Daily Nebraskan VL M t. U Ayr . 17 mma. v mt Uwk Kt. aaWrW nui arc (4 far wmir r M tar dw aeaararie tutm Usmur. wemtr. rwtnfr mat rm aanar, Ow ana nana ana nrw. M a aw a araakual af la. ftemHr Iwkium aK ma tmiiitaj i.i n ua UsmarMty. aVnn at la Hi.i.tti ar cmn M k. fOttt. mm mm pakf. aimn mm mi a) (mm vmtmmu 1 ftwarMts waaiMW m ttalii Pawn minmm MaHU( ar mmm wtnm KnM, fMMaal at i. Htm tmt Vmtm. Uamtt. mi. tontmui. nur mm Wmt Inanm Muni CdMar KIM C4m: Mm tMum i.m feJuat ttm Mm Baaar Pc t iia.nit tMvrtti fmmm AaMUa ttm Pk4m; Mn. tvum td lwawl. AaMUaa Cam etar Tm CnanMks futt Wnun. 4U Mam. Carry) Tntt, kaaay Iral Jtmm UU mm.. Hick Imk, Oma feaaun. ttw Bw. Jim tuvar, pat Laaatr. p.at fMim. Urn Caraua. Can. Carta) Mm uaa.ai bMi Wmki raMnmanii n. ttaav JUrmn. DM Ht. taw Carur tummrm iiu. Lm M fiatrnMnf ktnr Imih. JimM GteMsc. Can aUrdnad, Ua lawl nia. 4a. MatV m-mxem murr IMmi Kuxcer Cw Cm! atMa1 awmf Mnuaw a ' mmeuai Mauwr Caa-tit aruri CaWa) UaZrm tZ tuoumnM. titm CtanuH! aoWI IkMai -mi. in iauu iT- Carvr. Oka rrrnmOu la, roller. Can Lm. KtOm, faaara. T trli JaMwi tirwuoa Mm Mm Jtm feuaKi Orcarl.tRa Mamum Lrm --- cLZl a m m tm Gtuj Marart InWurai Cni Hmutmm.
