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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 8, 1968)
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN Editorials Commentary Page 2 Thursday, February 8, 1968 Cauldron brews The Quiet Revolution is stirring a simmering cauldron of dormitory problems in which each in gredient is reaching a different boiling point. Harper Hall last Sunday reached this point a little too soon when the dormitory purposely ig nored the "open door policy" ordered for open houses by a subcommittee on social affairs and activities. Whether Harper Hall's action should be con doned is not the question, but rather if this action will encourage the subcommittee to change the open door policy or if it will entice other dormi tories to emulate their stand. No official report has come from the Office of Student Affairs stating what disaster will befall the residents of Harper Hall. If a penalty is imposed, however, it could vary in degree from a withholding of the dormitory's activity funds to restricting Harper's open houses. If such penalties do result from Harper's action, other dormitories certainly are not going to be en ticed into taking the same stand, it is already ob vious their act of civil disobedience did not moti vate the subcommittee. While Harper Hall's action has probably been ineffective, the base idea of such action is not er roneous. No dormitory resident could disagree that the open door policy is an invasion of privacy and an unenforceable regulation. If the "regular channels of communication" with administrators and faculty members remain as impassable as they appear now, then willful disobedience of the regulations is permissible. While civil disobedience would be understand able, it can not be successful unless the entire dormi tory system takes a unified stand. Nothing is sad der than to watch a single group fail in a courageous action which could have been successful with better timing and staunch supporters. Unity has never been a strong point of the dormi tories but if the open door clause is to be rescinded, these groups must take a co-ordinated stand whe ther it is an act of willful disobedience or as another attempt to bargain their way through the subcom mittee's tightly closed doors. Cheryl Tritt State of Nebraska by Mike Lowe 'Dear Thomasina, Two thoughts to begin. The first concerning your visit here over Thanksgiving. You said that you liked Nebraska. But it was obvious that you are a cosmopolite, from a fairly cosmopolitan city.San Francisco. The second a remark made by several of my professors that "Nebraskans have a (cultural) in feriority complex." If we do have such a complex, coincidentally, I consider it at least partly caused Letters to Thomasina by other professional's statements that Nebraska is a "cultural wasteland." Poor old Nebraska. She takes it on the chin every time. I am reminded of the Centennial newscast one day last fall that quoted a Greeley editorial from 100 years ago. Horace's Predictions Old Horace predicted that his grandchildren could live to see the day when Nebraska would have five million inhabitants. A century later we are still pushing two million. If the prophecy still is to come true, it must be accounted to Greeley longevity, not to Nebraska's dynamic population qualities. At any rate, by Eastern standards. Nebraska may be a cultural wasteland. We won't see Len ny Bernstein in front of the Falls City Symphony next week. And O street will always be a long, long ways "off-Broadway." But there are no fewer educated men, no fewer refined men, per capita, I submit, in Nebraska than in New York. There are, I think we should observe, merely many more people in megalopolis. The number, and not the proportion, of tasteful men is increased. And this intense grouping in smaller geographic areas results in New York Symphonies and Metropolitan museums. There need be no head-hanging. That's just the way it is. To return to the first point that you enjoyed your visit, in fact, didn't want to return to San Francisco. I think it is because you sensed a freshness here, a spirit that may be the direct result of our pro vincial predicament The land insulates us from the Coast, and from the culture of the coasts. I think that is good, if we allow it to be. Our intellectual life should not ride on the in coming U.S. mails. Our cultural nerve ends need not be constantly atwitter to read the Times or the New Yorker. The land that insulates can also in spire. Nebraskans, cannot, let's face it, fully feel the alienation of the individual in a city, or in a mass society. The problems of urbanization have yet to plague us. Our streets remain free of garbage. Our sky is clear. But we have our problems. It's only that our Midwestern art should reflect our peculiar prob lems, snd not imitate or hinge upon coastal matters. Stop Mourning Students, and especially creative students, ought to stop mourning what we lack vis a vis major ur ban centers. They should emphasize rather what we possess Broadway lacks. If you still doubt what that is, take a ten minute drive from campus in almost any direction. Step, and take a good look around. A deep breath is also recommended. The result is a never ending pleasure. The al most predictable serenity, the immediate erasure of society's tiny irritations, must surely rival the Metropolitan Museum of Art Then, and only then, we will all perhaps see what you, Thomasina, saw almost from the first. We viH tee, truly, the state of Nebraska. Love, Mick 7 v 41 Q sit, panglei William F. BucMey . . . Have American people had enough? Chaos in Asia argues at so many points the failure of Lyndon Johnson's foreign policy, two photographic sym bols of which appear on the front page of the Paris edi tion of the Herald Tribune. On top is the picture of a hasty execution. "Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Chief of South Vietnam's National Police, executes a captured Viet Cong officer. "They killed many Americans and many of my people," said General Loan after he h a d slain the guerrilla with a pistol bullet" The guerrilla, hands behind his back, wearing a check ered shirt, tilts his head slightly to one side, as if to deflect the bullet that is about to hurl out of a pistol held four inches away from his head. What is the matter with Saigon security that such guerrillas as these should, in the fifth year of war, be able to kill "many Americans and many of my people?" Warriors welcome home And then, at the other end of the page, a picture, of a desolate soldier, his face lined with grief, carrying the corpse of a little girl with a face like a madonna's. And the caption: "Warrior's wel come home." A S o u t n Viet namese officer carries the body of his child, executed with the rest of his family by the Viet Cong who over ran his home in a military compound while he was lead ing his troops against guer rillas in Saigon street fight ing." We haven't the strength to secure every little hamlet in South Vietnam from the enemy, but how can ve fail military compounds within the suburbs of Saigon in which little girls live? Coramunltst increase aid "The Soviet Union and oth er Communist countries," the UPI is summarizing the annual message by the Defense Secretary on the state of American defenses "have been increasing their military and economic aid to North Vietri im. Such aid may have totaled one-billion dol lars for last year alone, he said." And, the same day from Reuters: "Kosygin Boasts-Viet Cong Uses-Soviet Weapons." Elsewhere, it is speculated that our military victories have, paradoxically, hurts us: -because they have had the effect of shortening the supply routes. You see, if we had been less victorious in the field, then the Viet Cong would have had further to go in order to maul us. As it stands, having pressed their major units back to wards the 17th Parallel, our own forces are taking terrible blows from the massed strength of the enemy which has only a little distance to travel before hitting us. There is talk that our installation at Khe Sanh, where five thousand U.S. Marines are all but isolated, will become another Dien Bien Phu. China's missile success And another item in the news: Red China will possibly succeed next year with a medium-range missile. The Chinese ran into certain tech nical difficulties last year, but it is expected that they are fully overcome, and that in deed the Chinese will have an international missile system by the mid-70's. And completing the day's news, the North Koreans an nounce that they have no intention whatever of nego tiating the release of the Pueb lo or its crew. Had enough? One supposes that the Ameri can people have. It would seem clear that (I) the failure of the U.S. Government to interdict the flow of material to North Vietnam from the Soviet Unin is perhaps the major act of mascohistic sentimentality in the postwar period. The estimates are never any low er then Q0 and they go as high as 95 of the Soviet contribution to the material effort of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. If Lyndon Johnson's rea soning is correct that bomb ing the North is justified, then it is also correct to bomb the harbor of Haiphong and prevent the delivery there of the hundreds of thousands of tons of material being used against us, so effectively; (2) the notion that the Commu nist world is so fractured as to render impossible joint ac tion against us is a demon strated myth. It doesn't mat ter in the least whether it is fact that the leaders of the Communist states meet to gether in order to concert against us: in fact they do. The North Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans: are all of them applying pressure against us in triumphant disregard of our scholarly demonstrations that it cannot be so; (3) the wait-and-see policy on Red China is not bringing us the relief we sought from the nightmare of a Red China armed with hydrogen bombs and a deliv ery system. We put off and off and off the day when we must face the consequences of a Chi nese veto power on any Am erican effort whatever, calcu lated to help oases of free dom in the Pacific. Well the Republicans are trudging the snows of New Hampshire. They are telling us it is them for a change, but that they do not desire to make partisan politics out of the Vietnam war. What utter baloney. What other way is there to relieve ourselves of the current leadership? Peace Corps causes ideological question Washington (CPS) When Vice President Hubert Humphrey visited Africa ear ly this year, a group of Peace Corps volunteers in Liberia wanted to meet with him to discuss their sentiments against the war in Vietnam. The volunteers were told by a top Peace Corps official in Liberia that any comment by them either public or pri vate on Vietnam in the presence of the Vice Presi dent would result in their im mediate termination fronf the Peace Corps. Their story, made public by a letter to the editor in a re cent issue of the New Repub lic, is one example of why many students today are hes itating to become part of a program which for the past seven years has drawn strong s,u p p o r t from the younger generation. Within the last nine months, the Peaoe Corps has become a topic of controversy on many college campuses. Most of the Corps' problems have been a direct result of the war la Vietnam. Students who consider join ing the Peace Corps now must solve seeral ideological ques tions. Among them are: Are volunteers free to present their views on any topic, so matter how contro versial, as long as it does not affect their work as a volun teer? Can the United States honestly be working for peace in some countries of the world, while, at the same time, dropping napalm bombs on another country? Can volunteers be effec tive in their host countries at a time when the foreign poli cy of the United States is be coming more and more un popular around the world? If the Central Intelligence Agency was able to infiltrate private organizations such as the National Student Asocia tion, what then, would keep it from infiltrating govern ment agencies like the Peace Corps? Of these possible problems, the "free speech controversy" has attracted the most at tention and seems to be the most pressing. The second is primarily a personal question which the individual must answer for himself. The fact that an increasing number of young people think they would lose their freedom of speech br joining the Peace Corps is supported by a re cent Louis Harris survey. The survey showed about 20 per cent of college seniors ex pressed this fear, compared with only two per cent a year ago. The survey was taken af- Daily Nebraskan Fah. 7. 196 VoL I, No. 57 Second-Class SOttl baill mi Tincnln. Vti TELEPHONES. Editor 472-2MH, News 4T2HM. BuioeM 47MWS. 2?1!?0.. rI,S, C "" or 18 lor On academic W. ""bodMooday, Wednesday. Thursday and Friday durinc the school year, escept during vacations and nam period, by the studenta of dw liniverrity ( Nebraska mxW the Jurisdiction of the Faculty Subcommittee on Student Fnbueaum. puMieatkws shall be free from censorship by. Um Subcommittee or any aersoa snlsvde the University. Members ot the Nebraska an responsible fcr what they eaueto be printed. Member Associated Colleciate Press. National Educational Advertiataf Bervtca. . EDITORIAL STAFF Editor Cheryl Tritt: .Manatint; Editor Jack Todd; News Editor Ed loeaotle: Mbt News Editor J. I.. Schmidt; Editorial Pans Assistant jnne Wagoner: ' tt Md Kerns Editor Wilbur Gentry; Sports Editor George ICatifmsm Assistant Shorts Editor Bonnie Bonneam Newt Assistant Lynn Ptacekt J''? , W'rHeri: Jim fcvunmr. Bars Martin. Mam Gordon, Jan Parks. Joaa MrCuuooali, J net Maxwell, Andy Cnnnincham, Jim Pedersen, Monica Pokorny. Phyllis Adkisson. Kent Cockvwo. Brent Skinner, Nancy Wood, John Dvorak. Keith Williams; Senior Co pry Editor Lynn GottschaUt; Copy Editors: Beta Feramors. Dave Flllpi. Jane Ikeya, Molly Mtureti. Loa Mary fcnsseU; Pkotea raaners Mike Haymaa and Dan Ladelv. BCHsf N'KS" PTAFsP Business Manager Glenn Frtendt: Production Manacer Charlie Bsstan Hir Booii Ad Manarer Leete Hunch; Bookkeeper and elasslllej ad manager Gary Hollingsworth; Business Secretary Jsa Boatman; Subsolpttoa ""-iff Jaaa Boss; Salesmen Dan Crank. Dan Looker. Kalay Dreita, Tedd Waiiaaiar. DaMM MueieU, Joel Davis, Lyua Womacqua, ter a major free speech issue involving the Corps last sum mer. The incident occurred when a group of volunteers in Santiago circulated the "Negotiations Now" petition protesting the U.S. position in Vietnam. Corps officials told the volunteers to withdraw their names or submit their resignations. Volunteers also were told they could not iden tify themselves as working for the Peace Corps when writing for the A m e r i c a n press. One volunteer in Chili, Bruce Murray, wrote a letter to Peace Corps Director Jack Vaughn protesting the action. Murray's letter was subse quently printed in the Chilean press, after which he was called to Washington and not ified he was being dismissed as a volunteer. Corps officials said Murray defied a stan dard policy that volunteers not become Involved in "local political issues." After the controversy over Murray's dismissal became widespread, Vaughn's office backed down on the new poli cy and said volunteers will be free to write "individual lei ters" to officials and news papers in tu U.3. and to iden tify themselves as volunteers," Radicals change by Al Spangler Most politically radical students, and I am here talking about the whites, who come, for the most part, from middle-class families and large universi ties, have an uneasy sense that the whole nation is skating lightly over a cracking shell of rationaliza tionabout the war, about the so-called "Negro problem," about poverty and religion. To the extent mat Americans have achieved a good society, they believe that it has been achieved at the suffering and denial of others. Hence, it is not good at all. They wonder at the celebration of greatness, as opposed to decency. They see this country as the stumbling hero of its current drama, inarticulate and unable to see its own saving qualities in time to avoid a meaningless end, grotesquely symbolized by President Johnson. Time for Burning In the early sixties, they felt themselves to be racing against the time that has come now, the time for burning. The posters one used to find on the walls of their partments said: We Shall Over come. Now one sees pictures of Che, with the motto: "In Revolution One Wins Or Dies. This is not to say that they are ready to die, nor that they can look at a picture of Malcolm X ("He was ready, are you?") without a sense of deep shame. But they think about buying a gun, so that when It happens, they can shoot a cop. They know that talking will do no good, yet they continue to talk, to "rap." They have learned that marching produces no change, sve in the con dition of their feet and in their sense of solidarity, but they march on. They are sickened by their own hypocrisy, and their complicity with "the sys tem." They mimic the rationalization that produced them, and wish for a purification: "When the revo lution comes, it will all be different." The fire next time. Festive rights marches Not so many years ago, when civil rights marches were unfailingly festive in spite of the most brutal cracker cops, it was believed, naive as it seems now, that changing the laws would change the lives of men. They were radical then because they found themselves in a world of lies. But they couldn't believe that this was a lie. Now they know that even the Constitution is a sham. It was believed then that the white radical could help the oppressed black; now they know that it is the other way around. Perhaps that is, at best, a caricature of "the radical." (Of course there is no such th't rs the radical, only people who identify themselves, for one reason or another, as radicals). Yet these peo ple no longer talk about "progressive change," but about "revolution, rebellion and death." That is why agonized discussions about "civil disobedience" are a thing of the past, however recent that past might be. When Thoreau is quoted today, one hears: "The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my goodbehavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?" Perhaps this kind of repentence, and its accom panying near-fascination with violence, is a kind of madness. But if it is, we are seeing some of thj best minds of our generation destroyed by madness. And this should give us pause. i S!iiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiainriiimnmiiiiiii;iH!i!iimiiiiiiiiiii!iniiiraiiiiiiiiiiiii!iiiiituiiiiiiiiiiiy Campus opinion E Dear Editor: Before the Harper rebellion attracts more ir rational followers, let's examine the more positive aspects of the open house rules. Granted, Rule 5 the signout restriction is ri diculous, is probably unenforceable and perpetuates adolesences, rather than promoting adult responsi bility. But, the open house rules do clarify what has been a vague situation since the Regents' veto of coed visitation last spring. And they do so in a manner that reflects (1) an increased student voice in decision-making in this University community, and (2) an attitude of the faculty and administra tion committee members which is more favorable to the students than either they or the student com mittee members have been willing to admit. Remember, the rules allow 12 open houses per floor per semester, or almost one per week. They also permit actual coed vista tion in dorm rooms, provided the doors are open (a not unreasonablo regulation to all but those who desire coed visita tion expressly for other than public social activi ties). This is virtually what the student voice has been asking for. Number Indicates Strength The number of open houses indicates the strength of the student voice on the committee. Seemingly, it also indicates a willingness of the fac ulty and administration representatives to bend as far for the students' wishes as possible without di rectly violating the Regents' stand. It's time that the student representatives make known what surely they must realize as the posi tive aspects of the open house rules. And it's also time that the faculty and administration represen tatives admit their desire to cooperate with student wishes. They should fear neither being "on the stu dents side, nor antagonizing the Regents for tak tag a pro-student stand. Hopefully, the Regents will trust their own willingness when in the first place they allowed the committee to develop the specific rules once the Regents themselves had set the stan dart, and will not overrule the committee's deci sions. tihi5ri 1". a.cfpt?bIe; but " rcmams a minor cZZff ,in dve,0Pm.ent of a truly community students, faculty, administration-approach to Unl- EldyrSHm?h h0 change, should be made through this approach J'X revoIutio,i in Universi Sincerely. William P. Eddy Mike Jess Roger J. Blood Richard Page Glenn McFarren Lu Johnson Gary Meyer Grove Betts Rod Michaelson Tom Granger David Worm