THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
Editorials
Commentary
Wednesday, December 6, 1967
Page 2
r v.1
iy i
IFC Move . . .
$$ Trends
Perhaps the fact that the four Inter
fraternity Council executives will receive
salaries beginning in January is not Im
portant news in itself.
But it becomes more Interesting when
one considers that it is part of a trend
in which the executives of prominent col
lege organizations are now receiving sal
aries. The IFC officers now join the
executives of the ASUN, the Daily Ne
braskan and the Cornhusker In receiv
ing salaries for their work.
At first glance this move might seem
to some to be Indicative of the image of
money-hungry American and the college
students emergence Into this image. A
more careful look proves more revealing.
No longer can these jobs be con
sidered an extra-curricular activity which
takes about two or three hours a week;
now they are virtually full-time jobs.
This is complicated further by the
fact that most college students will not
finish their college career without work
ing at least part-time, and there are
many who maintain full-time Jobs.
If these executives did not receive
salaries, It Is very likely that some very
qualified individuals would be unable to
apply for these positions because of the
lack of financial remuneration. In es
sence, this would limit the executives po
sitions to those who are able to get fi
nancial support from elsewhere. And this
is something which is contrary to the
American system of democracy at
least in the ideal sense.
Although, the salaries, In most cases,
are far from what one could earn in the
commercial labor market, they are, at
least, an attempt to prevent finances from
being a great factor in determining wheth
er one should hold an executive office
in these organizations.
At a time when students need the
most qualified leadership possible, the
Daily Nebraskan applauds attempts to
prevent finances from being a deterrent
to qualified candidates for executive po
sitions in major campus organizations.
Are You Kidding Me?
Prof, Bernard S. Morris of Indiana
University, when asked his opinion on the
effectiveness of United States involvement
in Vietnam here last week: "I think the
facts speak for themselves; but I had al
ways been under the Impression that a
good big man could beat a good little
man. I think we've done an excellent job
of disproving that."
Nebraska Union Director Allen Ben
net's comment on the Union Christmas
decorations: "Oh, good grief."
Dick Schulze's seven-man committee
to evaluate Senate representation is just
that seven MEN (Bruce Bailey, Bob
Peterson, Loren Schulze, Bill Mobley,
John Hall, Mike Eyster and Andrew Ras
mussen). Coeds, the time to organize is
now!
Quotables of the week:
A math professor, "I'd rather see
a student carry 12 hours than drag 16."
An SDS sympathizer, "I think our
society has institutionalized the beaten
path."
Half of all the girls expelled from
Zambia's schools are kicked out because
they are pregnant, a wire service re
ports. Most of the pregnancies occur
when the girls go on school holidays
'determined to have a good time," ac
cording to a government official.
Have a happy holiday.
The Merger
Today the Daily Nebraskan presents
the first of a four-part series on the pos
sible University-Omaha University merge
Today's story explains Legislative Bill
736, originated by state Sen. Terry Car
penter and passed by a large plurality
in the last Legislative session.
The second of the series will explore
OU student, faculty and administration
opinion of the merger question. The third
story will consider opinions on this cam
pus and the final installment will be a look
at some of the immediate and long-range
problems and advantages of a merger.
If the merger becomes a reality, stu
dents and faculty on this campus should
be aware of what it will mean for this
campus and for the state as a whole. The
Nebraskan urges readers to read the merg
er series and to consider evidence put
forward.
The Day Youth Was Defeated
By ARTHUR HOPPE
Herewith is another unwritten chap
ter in that standard unpublished refer
ence work, "A History of the World,
1950-1999." The title of this chapter is,
"The Middle-Aged Revolution."
The initial indication that a revolu
tion was brewing among middle-aged
Americans was a report in Look maga
zine in the autumn of 1967 that Senator
Everett M. Dirksen's first record, "Gal
lant Men," had "propelled him to fifth
rank position among 'Best Selling Male
Vocalists' " outpacing, among others,
Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan.
At the time, the item aroused little
interest. A month later, however, Sena
tor Dirksen was genteelly mobbed dur
ing a speaking engagement at the Os
wego Garden Club and lost, to souvenir
hunting middle-aged ladies, one button
from his double-breasted suit, a lock of
his flowing grey hair and the last three
inches of his sedately-patterned necktie.
The following week, after 13 ladies
swooned during the Senator's rendition
of The Bill of Rights at a League of
Women Voters gathering, the nation
awoke to the new phenomenon on its
hands:
A middle-aged sex symbol.
"Senator Dirksen," Mrs. Homer T.
("Cissie"! Pettibone, National President
of the blossoming Ev Dirksen Fan Clubs,
s"i:i with a discreet sigh, "voices the
secret aspirations of our confused genera
tion." The immediate result of the budding
revolution was a revival of old Marlene
Dietrich movies, the replacement of rock
music with Glenn Miller records on most
radio stations, and a new attitude to
ward the nation's youth, summed up by
the slogan, "Never Listen to Anybody
Under 30" or, in the phrase that be
came populaf in many households, "Shut
Up and eat your spinach."
Hardly a magazine hit the streets
without a cover story entitled, "The Sex
ual Revolution in Our Suburbs" the
gist of each article being that virtually
no one over 30 talked about sex in public
any more.
The biggest change was in men's
fashions. In pursuit of the new image of
dignity, age and wisdom, men gave up
perfumes, girdles and hair dyes, with
the single exception of "Silver Threads"
a product designed to provide "thai, dis
tinguished touch of grey at the temples
for those immaturely ungreying."
With a sigh of relief, they also gave
up Royal Canadian Air Force exercises,
in order to become portly, and took up
fat cigars, in order to appear imposing.
Across the land, men were once again
admired, not for their youth, but for their
age, experience and standing in the com
munity. As for youth, it said what it had said
for generations: "Our parents don't un
derstand us." Although one young man
did add perceptively: "I think it's just a
phase they're passing through."
This proved all too true. The crisis
came at the 1971 Chicago Convention of
the New Middle, when Homer T. Petti
bone, portly, greying and cigar-smoking,
suggested in a speech that it was high
time middle-aged ladies gave up per
gumes, girdles and cosmetics and length
ened their skirts to cover their ugly
middle-aged knees.
His wife, Cissie, led the resultant riot
by hitting him over the head with a pla
card while crying, "You're nothing but a
fat, cigar-chewing, over-aged slob!"
Across the land, middle-aged wives took
a good look at their middle-aged hus
bands and said much the same thing.
The revolution collapsed. The cult of
youth was restored. Anything anyone with
acne said was widely venerated. And the
country returned to normal.
THE HEAT'S ON v
For Colleges
What Approach To Drug Abuse
By DAVID AIKEN
Collegiate Press Service
College administrators were told last
weekend that they should adopt a policy
of "quiet rationality" in dealing with stu
dent drug users, that legalization of
marijuana is more likely to come through
the courts than through' legislative ac
tion and that there is wide disagree
ment over the dangers of LSD.
The administrators heard those views
at a conference on drugs at the Univer
sity of Chicago. The conference was
sponsored by the National Student Asso
ciation (NSA) under a grant form the Na
tional Institutes of Health.
Many of the administrators were from
schools where, according to some of them,
there is as yet little use of drugs. A
number of them acknowledged that they
are perplexed over what they should do
if they found students turning on with
marijuana or taking LSD.
According to Howard S. Becker, pro
fessor of sociology at Northwestern Uni
versity, administrators tend to take harsh
action for two main reasons: they believe
the use of drugs has bad effects on stu
dents and they are under pressure from
alumni, trustees and the public.
If drug use were dealt with more
quietly, without creating widely publicized
incidents, administrators would probably
act differently, Becker said. "To create
a drug incident on campus, it takes ad
ministrators and the press as well as
students," he said.
The most likely way to avoid campus
drug incidents, Becker suggested, is to
"educate administrators to a calm, ra
tional position." Trying to force students
to stop drug use entirely, he said, would
require "extreme totalitarian measures,
the equivalent of stop-and-frisk laws, such
as room searches."
The current laws against possession
of marijuana in most states, which usu
ally carry heavy penalties, figured in
much of the discussions.
The dilemma of administrators was
voiced, in an interview, by Jim Rey
nold, program director of the student
union at Kansas State University. "Do we
protect students from civil courts and
handle it as a matter of education," he
said, "or should students take the legal
consequences of drug possession?"
Many of the delegates were interested
in attempts to reduce penalties of posses
sion. Ralph Oteri, the Boston lawyer who is
currently attempting to bring a test case
on marijuana to the U.S. Supreme Court
said, "I expect to see federal marijuana
laws found unconstitutional very soon, be
cause they both require paying a tax and
make possession illegal, which is self-incrimination."
r
Judicial decisions, such as the one
Oteri is seeking, appear to be the main
hope fdr abolition of marijuana laws.
Michigan State Sen. Roger Craig, who is
attempting to get that state's marijuana
laws repealed, says, "Nobody is Interested
in touching it, and because of my stand
on marijuana, I may not be in the Michi
gan legislature much longer."
After hearing the evidence on the
relative effects and penalties, Robert Dew
ey, dean of the chapel at Kalamazoo,
(Mich.) College, said he concluded that
"marijuana must be set in the context
of general drug use, including alcohol.
There should be the same kind of ap
proach," he said.
While most of the psychologists and
medical researchers at the conference felt
that the danger from smoking the com
mon type of marijuana is no greater
than from drinking liquor, there was dis
agreement on the dangers of LSD.
Daniel X. Freedman, chairman of de
partment of psychiatry at the University
of Chicago, said reports of chromosome
damage due to LSD use have all the
elements of a scare story. Recently pub
lished research reports on the question are
split, he said.
Helen Nowlis, dean of students at the
University of Rochester, criticized current
policy of most universities on drug use.
"The posture of the university toward
drugs is really a prototype of all sorts
of things which never really get out in
the open," she said.
"Education is trying to meet today's
problems with elaborations of techniques
that may have been proper 20 or SO years
ago," she added. "In loco parentis may
have been all right when all the students
came from the same background. But
you can't be a parent to 6,000 students
whose families have very different social
and economic positions."
CAMPUS OPINION: Meaning Of Freedom
Dear Editor:
During the past few weeks there has been much pub
lished concerning the concept of "freedom." However, I feel
compelled to note that few writers have thought it necessary
to adequately define what they meant by this "concept"
Are we to assume that each person comes into this world
"knowing" what freedom means, or is it possible that one
of life's major tasks is to achieve a life style that will allow
man to discover his own freedom?
It would seem that many have come to believe that free
dom means t!w absence of all restraint. To be free, some
have suggested, is not to be hampered in their choice of
how they are to live their lives. Such a conception of free
dom 's in conflict with the total concept of freedom. Abso-lu'-e
freedom from any restraint would make of freedom a
demonic force. For example, some of President Lincoln's
adversaries, prior to the Civil War based the slavery
arguments upon this absolute concept of freedom. Free
dom, they maintained, allowed man to be free to buy
and sell slaves. ,
Freedom, I submit, is more situational than absolute.
We all possess sphere within which we operate with more
er less freedom from external restraint, but no one operates
within a sphere where there is not limit placed on his be
havior. In any University there are many situations that are rela
tively free from external restraint.
What is required is the development of an awareness of
the reality of situational limitations to the pure expression of
freedom. The person who fails to acknowledge and act upon
the requirements of freedom appropriate to each situation
in his own community is not a heroic reformer, but a
maladjusted person who has not developed a mature
understanding of himself, of the intellectual basis for his
actions and the basic requirements of social living.
Even more important is the fact that when students
look upon freedom as the absence of restraint they are
tempted to believe that the only freedom which they are
able to possess and exercise is that which they have
been able to win from a reluctant and opposing power
structure, faculty, administration, Board of Regents or
other governmental agencies.
When this happens the student often keeps score to
see who is winning. Campaigns are waged by which sup
posed increased freedoms may be won. Such an attitude
towards freedom will inevitably result in the lowest form
of cheap political activity. When this happens at an edu
cational institution, the very meaning of freedom in the
university suffers.
j1?6! student if he is to find freedom at all, must
find it in his creative invelvement in the social forms at
hand. Such freedom recognizes the obligation of the stu
dent to express his freedom within the objective struc
ture of the group or situation in which he participates.
For the person to act in a manner which denies the
intrinsic importance of the social form granted to him
for his own creative expression, is for him to pervert his
freedom. A person must discover the true expression of
his freedom in meaningful action within the social me
dium in which he is given the opportunity of acting.
Freedom then, is not something which comes to a
person from without but comes by developing a life style
which enables one to express himself creatively within
the context of that point of history whe lives.
For the reader who cares to explore this concept of
freedom more thoroughly, I refer him to Professor Her
bert Stroup's article on student freedom in the October
1958 issue of "Educational Theroy" from which these
concepts are essentially drawn.
John Breekenridge
Latin Writer
Witness Of Times
(Editor's Note: Latin America and its people should
concern and interest North Americans because of the
past Involvement of the United States and Latin Ameri
ca and because of possible important future focus on
the countries.
The following article was written by Ruben Ardila,
of the University Department of Psychology. Ardila, a
native of Columbia, is the author of a book and several
published papers.)
By RUBEN ARDILA
We, Latin Americans, are proud of Miguel Angel
Asturlas the new winner of the Nobel Prize for litera
ture. Guatemala's writer, had been a candidate for the
Nobel Prize two years ago, so it wasn't really a surprise,
However, given the quality of his work and its great so
cial message, this Nobel Prize has a very special mean
ing for Latin America.
Asturlas is our second winner of the Nobel Prize of
literature, after Gabriel la Mistral, the Chilean poetess
(1945), An Argentine received the Nobel Prize for peace
in 1936, and another Argentine got the Prize for medi
cine in 1947. Nobody has received the Nobel Prize for
physics or chemistry in Latin America, and it would be
interesting to think how many years will have to pass
before a Spanish American produces scientific discover
ies, in physics or chemistry, or great enough importance
to win a Nobel Prize,
Although our science is only beginning, our litera
ture has reached a great level and everyday becomes
better, more ripe and more sophisticated. The work of
Latin American writers like Carpentier, Guimaraes Rosa,
Neruda, Cortazar, Mejia Vallejo, Fuentes, Borges, As
turias, and many others is given an important place in
the world panorama,
However there are many steps to be climbed. The
literature of our continent is mainly descriptive, exter
nal and without enough psychological depth. A large, num
ber of young writers, however, are producing works with
more universality and profundity. Surely the first subject
that would interest a Jose Eustacio Rivera, who was a
good observer, as all writers pretend to be, is the majes
ty of the landscape that surrounds him, the "vortex", the
jungle, the conflict among men, and the perennial fight
against nature; he will write about that natural world,
he will say that the forest is like a cathedral, he will show
how men become monsters In that wild world. The book
that results from this, La Voragine (The Vortex), is a
literary jewel and describes a living reality. The next
step is to center our attention in another type of reality,
the human reality. A more refined society produces a
number of conflicts that offer a rich material for litera
ture. Today we have Leon de Greiff, who protests against
the "foolish dispositions of fastidious ethics", and Jorge
Zalamea who conceives a great Sueno de las Escalinates
(Dream of the Staircase) in which all the injustices of
the world are brought in front of the tribunal of humanity.
One of the most serious discussions in Latin American
literature in the last years has been the polemic between
the writers who talk of commitment, of social reality,
and the ones who prefer to write "pure literature," and to
describe universal problems. Miguel Angel Asturias is
probably the best writer of the first viewpoint, and Jorge
Luis Borges the main defender of pure 'literature. The
bitter discussions around this problem are now over, and
we realize that it was nothing more than a pseudoproblem?
Asturias has been a writer aware of the realities of
his epoch, a real witness of his time. His cause has been
the cause of Latin America. He said that he wanted to be
the tongue of his "tribe", to talk about the hopes, the
dreams, the myths of his people. A novel like Hombres
de Maiz (Men of Corn), published in 1948, utilizes a ver
nacular language, against the rigid patterns of the aca
demicians; and at the same time it deals with Indian
legends Indian psychology and Indian cosmography
El Senor Presidente (Mr. President) was published in
1946, and it is probably Asturias' best known novel. The
subject is dictatorship, that plague of our countries, that
has been one of the causes that delayed progress!' Al
though Asturias doesn't talk about Guatemala, is very
easy to realize to what he is referring.
His life has been imprinted by his time. Asturias, was
born in 1899, the son of a lawyer and a teacher. In his
childhood he felt the problems caused by the dictatorship
of Estrada Cabrera in Guatemala. When he grew up he
studied law, he became a student leader, collaborator..of
student newspapers and cofounder of the Popular IMrer-
sity, an experiment in public education in Guatemala.
In 1923 Asturias was sent by his family to LondSiim
order to study and to escape from the political problems
of the country. Visiting Paris he became aware of his
main interest: to study the Mayan culture; he stayed in
Pans several years; he translated the Popol Vuh (1925
19261 , that philosophical work of the primitives inhabitants of
America that is the cause of astonishment in the intellec
tual circles of the whole world. In Paris he wrote a lot
of poetry. His first book, Rayito de Estrclla (1925) was
published there.
Asturias has spent half of his life abroad. That -peregrination
began when he was very young. In 1933 he'-went
back to Guatemala. He devoted himself to writing poetry
and articles for newspapers. Among his books of this period
worth noting are Emulo Lipolidon (1935) and Sonetos (1937).
His diplomatic career has been as brillant as his liter'
ary career. At the moment of receiving his Nobel Prize
he has the post of AmbassEidor of Guatemala in Paris His
political interests were on the side of Arbenz and Arevalo
the left wing reformists. Asturias' main political work was
to avoid an invasion of Guatemala from El Salvador (1954)
However, when Castillo Armas entered Guatemala he de
prived Asturias of his citizenship rights and obligued him to
go into exile in Buenos Aires. Only last year, after the elec
tion of the moderate leftist government of Mendez .Mon
tenegro, Asturias was invited back to his country and to
rejoin the foreign service. ., .,
In order to understand the social problems of the Time
the best thing to do would be to read the trilogy of the
United Fruit Company, three novels devoted to the red-hot
problems caused by the famous American company in Cen-
iralmica Vlent0 Fuerte Stron Wlnd 1950), El Papa
Verde (The Green Pope, 1955); and Los Ojos de los Enter
rados (The Eyes of the Bured, 1960).
Daily Nebraskan
Dee. . 1967
Vol. 11. N,v JJt
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