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
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