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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 25, 1967)
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN Editorials Commentary Wednesday, October 25, 1967 Page 2 LSD Overwhelming Case The case against LSD is overwhelming too much for any individual to overlook or fail to heed. The penalties are foreboding a fine up to $5,000, imprisonment of up to 10 years in the State Penitentiary, and very probable expulsion from school. But these penalties are far less than the serious physiological and psychological effects of LSD. And these latter effects not only affect the individual taking LSD but also those innocent individuals around him and those individuals who are yet to be born. The possibility that an individual may ' commit suicide unknowingly far outweighs any advantages the individual may claim to gain through a greater insight into him self and the world of art and literature. What good are the claimed insights to the individual if he is dead? Or what good are these claimed insights if the person goes into a permanent or even partial amnesia because of LSD? If the person claims that it is his right as an individual to make this de cision, he can only have a very distorted view of his worth as an individual. But the problem of responsibility does not lie with the individual alone. The re sponsibility also includes those who also must share this world and those who have not yet been born. And here is the REAL responsibility. Studies have shown that individuals who take LSD are usually unaware of what they are doing in their relation to others, while under LSD. Thus, they may kill others without even being fully aware of what they are doing. Certainly this MUST be weighed against the use of LSD if it is being considered. There are also those who are yet un born who must also be taken into con sideration. It should not be denied that one does have a responsibility to see that one's children are not deformed through the foolish use of LSD. In the use of LSD the individual's re sponsibility toward his fellow man must outweigh his rights as an individual. The Daily Nebraskan is not denying that there may be very valuable uses for LSD. In fact, some researchers say that LSD can be used effectively in treatment of the mentally ill. But LSD is for the researcher, not the novice. Only the properly trained researcher has the medical knowledge to work with LSD. And only the properly trained re searcher should attempt to use LSD. There is proper and solid cause be hind the laws made by the Legislature and the rules set down by the Board of Re gents concerning the use of LSD. The Daily Nebraskan hopes that these rules and laws will be rigidly enforced in relation to LSD. Further the Nebraskan will not sympathize with any student caught in the possession of LSD. Although it is almost impossible to de termine, we feel that there is very little, if any, use of LSD on the University of Nebraska campus. The intent of the story and editorial on LSD is not meant to raise fears that LSD is used on the University campus. Instead it is meant to point out to any individual (whether he be student or not), who might be contemplating the use of LSD, the serious consequences of the drug's use. fmTWl'iT W(VSs,TY fcTUATlON. SUODtNL HtSftraYRCE. Yf Sim wear jk ' jyZ CilT DOKT $uT Too SOON. Myer ""ne: Tht aw.iwi ee 'm loco Pwro Journalist Reacts Southern Bourgeois Is Man Denatured By DAVID LLOYD-JONES Collegiate Press Service It is a truism of journalism that it is not possible to report events, just the way people and events react to a reporter watching them. This is nowhere truer than in the rural South. To spend a week in Arkansas and three days in a rural village near the Louisiana border is not to be able to tell what these places are like or how their people think. It is only to be able to write, with whatever ob jectivity one can manage, how their people react to a long-haired stranger who drives a car with Mississippi plates and speaks with a strange accent. And what objectivity one can manage is problemati cal. To visit and talk with the people of a small South ern town is an experience which forces one to suspend normal logics, to don new thought processes. The two policemen I encountered both waved guns at men in the course of ordinary conversation, and it was not until I had returned to the comparative normality of Little Rock that I noticed there was something off about the fact. In the surrealistic ambience of rural Arkansas it is not odd, shocking, or even frightening. Until one returns to the outside work it slips one's mind that the purpose of an "equalizer" is to shoot people. Children of both races have one characteristic they share with all Americans, but carry perhaps to extremes in the South the desire to always give the response desired, in word, deed, and expression. A white 13-year-old will tell a racist joke with a wide ;grin on his face, then switch to decrying the atitudes of :the people he heard it from when he detects that one does not think it funny. A black 14-year-old will explore the ridiculous in telling how much progress is being made, ihow good the white folks are and how his fellow blacks : cannot be trusted without white supervision. Significantly, ;the white child in question could adjust instantly to my : disapproval, while it did not penetrate to the black one :that I thought his pat answers ludicrous though revealing. With adult Afro-Americans one has two conversations, always. The first is the introductory one in which one is Dur Man Hoppe assured of their good will, lack of ambition, trust in the white man, and confidence in the future. Rap Brown is equated with the Klansman, and one is duly thanked for having passed the Civil Rights Act. After a while one makes the transition to a second conversation. In one case this happened as I was leav ing after a pointless 20 minutes with the vice-principal of a black school. He had reassured me that as a guidance teacher he took no steps to encourage integration, and was not at all worried by the inferiority of the equip ment at his school. "Ah ain't seen every school in Arkansas, but I guess we is as good off as any black school. 'Course the white schools is better everywhere, but that's just the way things is." As I got to the door, his tone changed a little, from deferential to plaintive: "Do you think things will al ways be like this? What is happening in Washington. Will the Federal government ever do anything?" I answered as truthfully as I could, since I'm new to the U.S., that I expect civil rights enforcement to slow down because of the coming election year, and that I tnink the principle supporters of civil rights are a tiny powerless minority; I confirmed his world-view. Back to keeping the kids from shouting in study hall and running in the halls. Often the second conversation it would be pre sumptiuous to call it the one that follows the establish ment of trust, is less deferent, less based in the easy assumption of the superiority of any white man, even one from a college newspaper service. The man whose wife is a cleaner at Arkansas Light and Power: with a year of college she gets $1.15 an hour for a job at which white men are paid $2.45. The 16-year-old who failed at the white school and returned to the black one because he had not been prepared for the algebra his grade was expected to know. The angry par ent who accuses the black teachers of sabotaging inte gration because they don't have the quilification to match the whites. The youngster planning on joining the ser vice because he knows that is the only place he'll get Small Act Of Courage Arthur Hoppe Washington The leaves are falling, Congress is : drearily whittling down the once brave programs of the Great Society, the Administration is angrily attacking in : tellectualism and equating patriotism with assent and at Georgetown cocktail parties they rarely bother to talk ; about the war in Vietnam any more. It simply is. ; Over in a modest office tucked away on the top floor ;of the Longworth Building, Congressman Jerry Waldie leaned back in his chair, put his feet on his desk and J talked quietly about why he had changed his mind about ; the war. Waldie is a modestly handsome, neat, well-built man of 42, with a serious smile and Belf-contained air. He is Ifrom Antioch, California, a small river town where he iwas born and reared. His constituents usually vote Re : publican. He is a middle-of-the-road Democrat. : His only experience outside Antioch was in the State Legislature in Sacramento, where he was considered tough, honest, hard working and loyal. He has been a congress :.man only a little more than a year. As Washington judges : importance, he is not important. : "When I was in Sacramento." he said, frowning. 'I . don't think I had any strong feelings about the war. I generally supported the Administration. It was an issue . on which I was greatly uninformed." Waldie continued defending the war in speeches to j his constituents through the first half of this year. His "stand was popular. A mail poll of his district last April : indicated 73 per cent of the voters favored continuing the war and J63 per cent were for escalating it. Bv August, however, Waldie was expressing doubts in letters home. It was not one thing. It was a complexity of things. There were letters from constituents, a speech by Mariner Eccles attacking the war, the bombings ever closer to the Chinese border, and talks with a fellow congressman he admires who was also having misgivings. "Maybe it wasn't primary," he said, running his hand over his shock of dark hair, "but there were these per sonal notes I write to the parents of every GI from my district who is killed over there. It was no longer an iso lated thing. I was writing two or three a week. "And then General Thieu (now the president-elect of South Vietnam said they weren't going to draft any 18 or 19-year-old South Vietnamese. That's when I decided we ought to let them fight their own God damned war." In late September Waldie mailed a newsletter to all his constituents saying flatly that he had made a mistake and now favored de-escalating American involvement" as quickly as possible." Surprisingly, his mail haB been running about 60-40 in favor of his stand. But many letters begin, "I was shocked and disturbed . , M or "Your appalling position . . ." And there is no question but he had lost a good r-iany votes. "I think it will be a tolerable political loss," he said. He paused, searching his own soul. "If I knew it would have defeated me for re-election, I don't think . . ." He angrily shook his head. "That's nonsense. I KNOW I wouldn't have had the courage to do it." You may agree with Mr. Waldie that it was only a small act of courage not the kind of courage that wins great battles, but a common, every-day, very human act of courage. 9 As 1 walked down from Capitol Hill under the gray Washington skies. I was strangely elated. My faith in the inherent strength of our democratic process was re plenished and renewed. mechanics papers. These are all second selves, symbols of the schizophrenia racism, behind the smiles and the well lubricated traditions, forces on the black. For the white the corresponding mental set is para noia. For he knows his society is crumbling, despite the radio programs that tell him otherwise. Yet there is enough decency in his tradition to tell him the offerings of the liberal society that would supplant his own are rotten and corrupt. "We've never had a Detroit in the South" is a ready answer to all questions. And while it is irrelevant, it is nevertheless true and evidence to the Southerner that the lawyers, agitators and journalists who question him so impudently have nothing to offer him as they tear down his world. The ancient grace of the South is now corrupted. Hospitality is a shot of bourbon from a bottle under the counter, and erudition is the well-memorized cataloque of Northern ills. The ancient trusts, the business done with a handshake, give way to the finance companies and the modern corporate legalisms. Noblesse oblige has the Churchillian ability to recognizes that the trade union con sists of real people with real concerns. The surface de cency that was possible when the niggers knew their place crumbles when black men ask for justice instead of charity. Despite this catalogue of decadence, the South is no worse and is probably better in most ways than the North at least to my eyes, in which progress and efficiency are not the capital virtues. The Faulknerian fixation, the love-hate relationship lo the South, infects many there. For the poor the hatred of the land that has given them so little is combined with the clinging love for what little they have. Among the well-to-do one hears passionate de nunciations of both the racism of the South and the com mercial moralities of the North. The most thorough-going dissection of the cult of the gun, the willingness to prove manhood through violence tomes from those who were raised in the Zeitgeist they decry. If most the religion of the South is based on ig norance and Bible worship, it is nevertheless possible to find people who still follow the laws of the prophets. The town liberal of Strong, whose sons have cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis: they live out ther blighted lives at home, a trial but loved. In the North they would be in asylums. There is a peculiar attraction for even the outsider to the South. The conservatism, nay, the ossification can seem at times to promise something better than the wor ship of the dynamic, the compulsive world of permanent change. But the spell breaks. As much as the unorganized working white or the semi-literate black, the Southern bourgeois is a man denatured: short-sighted, demoralized, and uncultured be cause the information content of his life is false. His pretended independence is made otiose by the direction of his world by the Northern economics, the temper of the times, the mysteries of progress emanating from elsewhere. Empires are great fun to be at the center of. but to accept their mythology and be stuck serving them in Little Rock is as dehumanizing as working in the Burmese police. Daily Nebraskan Vol. tl. No. 35 Oct. 39, 1K7 heuuad alaei poetaee paid at Lracom, Mat. mUEPllONE: m sm, 472-KN. 47S-ZM0. SutaartMlaa rataa are fa ear oouioomi or ts far the academic Mat. Pub IMMd Maada. Wedaeadaa. Thoradw and Friday durtnt tha ochool rear, except dunae vaoauaaa and mm periorJa. Or tha etiuteiua ej UN Unreeaalto of Nabraaka oader tha ftinadtcUoa of tha raeulla fcaOaaovailtMa m Hodaai Publtcatloae. PublleatMne eball ba Irac tram ceaeuialitp hv tha tkfbreminUtee or any aaraoa eowide tha Uaiveretty Mambara of tha Nabmataa ara raaaoaalblo tor what war eauaa to ha primed. Member Aeeocnted Colleelatr Proa. National Meertlemi ftarvtaa. tacar aoratod. Puhlidted at Room II. Nehreeke tlahw. Ubeora, Nab.. OK II KIlrTORIAL ajTAFT Editor Bnirp Gllea: Manaainc Editor Jack Todd: Newg Editor Charsrt Trltt: Niahl Nrwt fcdllor Alan Plrwniall: Editorial Pew AaeanaM Julie Morris; Upon Editor Mark (.oidnn. Aitnni Sport Editoi Charlie Oavtr: AMMIam Niatil Nwa Editor, Randy Irey: Mall Wrltere. Dave BunWIn. Andy Corriaan. lar (illlen. Ed IrvnoKln. IMn Looker Mir Lowe, Sherry MrGallin. .ion Park. Tom Virtor; New AAitanl Kendra fiewfand: Kenior Copy fcditoi. lick Tentmer. Copy Editor, Lvnn GotlArhalk, Rtv fentmora. Jim Evinger, Jean Heynold; Photoaraprier Mike tiayman and Dan l-a4le uuNEin ar. p RtMlnaee Manaier Glraa Prtendti National ndvertlntn Manoaer Roeer Boy', Produtioa Manager Chariee Baxter; Secretary Janet Boatman; Hookkeepmg and Ciailiea Allan Brandt; taibarnnUoa Manager Jaaa Roe; Circulation Maneaera Tbivtd Kneanauati and Gary Mever; Sale aUuuniv 2MB Crook Kam IlralUb Rick iiaaacB. Ken ftllller aod Wayne Moraa. Dear Editor: The opposition to the Vietnam War and the draft is predominantly misguided, inconsistent and frequently a dishonest front for collectivist ideologies. The arguments offered in defense, however, are even more irrational, particularly in reference to the draft. Neither the draft nor any other form of involuntary servitude can be justified by the notion that "rights im pose obligations." As Ayn Rand has said, this implies that rights are given to us by the government. Rights are not a gift from anybody. They are conditions of existence. To survive in the manner appropriate to man, he must have the right to his own life, the choice of his actions, and the use and enjoyment of the products of his labors. The obligation is to be consistent: to observe the rights of others. Today we are told that men have the right to force others to provide for their welfare and fight their wars (worthwhile or not). Both the "right to be a parasite" and the draft obviously negate the principle of rights. Sadly, the guiltiest are the victims, the otherwise com petent and moral majority, who sanction altruistic self sacrifice enforced by "consensus rule," thereby sacrific ing everybody's rights. Abolition of all forms of involuntary servitude would benefit us in many ways. A volunteer army would be much more competent, efficient and economical in fight ing worthwhile defensive wars. Rational men would not volunteer for futile wars, such as Vietnam, or immoral wars typified by Commnnist aggression. Even more im portant is the basis of these and other benefits: the af firmation of individual rights that are so crucial to man. David P. Demarest Film Festival Dear Editor: The "Camp Film Festival" idea turns everbody on. We will back it. So shove it on through. Suzy Creamcheese Student Machine Dear Editor: The room was noisy: typewriters chanting an almost hypnotic "click-click-ding"; forms documents, briefs, pa pers, all subject to the wrath of busy and deft fingers rustled and cracked in seeming defiance. Voices, deep and husky, full of authority, penetrated the din through a half-open door several feet to my right. Occasionally, as if by cue, laughter would resound from the cubby hole, followed by a mysterious silence. My eyes, more from drowsiness than curiosity, traveled the expanse of my chamber, seeing all yet looking at nothing until they finally rested on a sign, barely in telligible, painted in bold letters on the exterior side of the door's translucent glass: "Dean of Student Affairs." "Yes," I muttered half aloud, "Student affairs is dic tated by a machine a machine so complex that it as sumes the identity of persons, ruling, drafting, regulating, crediting." "OK," interrupted a young secretary seated at a large mahogany desk, "508-70-7646, the Dean will see you in room 204-B." Slowly I rose and sauntered through the waiting doorway, insecure, as if entering a death chamber. "You sent for me, sir," 1 asked. "Yes," he replied without looking up from a pile of papers in front of him, "Sit down." I did as I was told, grateful, yet still very unsure. "In regards to parking violation received on the day of May , you failed to comply with regulations established by this board of directors. We established these rules with due consideration of comparable prob lems, all in your behalf." He went on in a monotone and 1 was only vaguely aware of what he was saying. Finally my mind excur sion was cut short as he concluded: "And therefore it is the decision of this board to sus pend all privileges and credits until compliance with these statutes is established and recognized. Good-day."" Dumbfounded, I again rose and began a subtle re treat when he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. "The student interests and problems are our fore most concern, and it is the policy of this board to solve or aid in solving all student problems 'click-click' all student problems 'click-click' all student prob . . . 1 slammed the door behind me and ran headlong down the stairs and onto the street, stopping only when my breath was coming in short, painful gasps. Finally I spied an acquaintance, a true friend. His warm smile cheered me, comforted me. I told my my problem and he listened sympathetically until I finished. Leaning closer, he whispered: "You know, this whole campus is one vast piece of machinery." His smile was gone and his face became flushed. "Even the students are stereotyped 'click-click' are stereotyped 'click click' are . . . Will this nightmare never end ! Bob Van lJerslice Dear Editor: 1 agree, let's take a look at the human angle In the Oct. 4 Daily Ne braskan there was a letter from "A Correspondent" writing on the "human an gle" of Greek rush. As a sophomore pledge 1 can say that the writer obviously has not had much to do with the Greek system. Last, year as an inde pendent at a small college 1 found myself with much more freedom than I ever had in high school and many more "extracurricu lar" activities which could be done instead of study ing. Looking at a large uni versity 1 can imagine how much more there is to do outside class here as a freshman to distract the student's mind from studies. As a sophomore and a fraternity pledge I find you do not have any choice but to study. Most fraternities have some tyte of enforced study rules for all pledges. The fraternity I pledged, for instance, requires a pledge to be in class or study nail from 8.30 a.m. to noon and from 1 p.m. to 3:30. Of course, we have a lot of time for social activi ties in the evening since, again most have study hours from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The social life, of course, cannot be denied, but it is put in its place 'ery prop erly for the pledge. Now to the point that "a freshman needs to find himself before he can de cide what he really needs. The Daily Nebraskan comic "Voice in the Wilder ness" by Ron P s o t a an swer; ;hat argument easily enough what better way to ""lose" yourself than to come to a university of 18.004 and not know a soul. The Greek system ex tends to the pledges the confidence needed to face the "big bad University life" as well as to meet people. Deterring rush would not help in any way to solve tlie problems of a freshman at the University. So. 1 agree, let's take a look at the human angle of the Greek rush system. Steve Burnt