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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 23, 1968)
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN Editorials Commentary Friday, February 23, 1968 Poge 2 Due process nonexistent No due process in disciplinary proceedings exist - at the University not a startling revelation to most students, considering that 99 per cent of the campus is not even aware there is a system for disciplinary proceedings at Nebraska. But for the student who has been called before the Student Tribunal or summoned to the Office of Student Affairs for a "conference" it means that ' their cases have been handled without the proper legal guidelines. " Finally a Student Senate committee has pre sented a lengthy report pointing out the failings of present procedures for disciplianry cases and also submits recommendations for completely revis ing the system. The report shows appalling deficiencies in al most every phase of disciplinary proceedings in cluding a court system which lacks cohesion and' consistency. For example one of the main problems is that the guidelines for disciplinary proceedings are not only vague and incomplete but they are scattered randomly throughout approximately four different handbooks. When a disobedient student makes an appear ance in the Student Affairs office there is no writ ten ruling which insures he has been informed as to the rule he has broken, how his actions were dis covered or which states he was given enough time to prepare a defense or enlist legal counsel. " The Senate committee's report also shows that legal safeguards during student hearings are lack ing in the following areas: the right to an open . and unbiased hearing; right of student to confront witnesses against him; exclusion of illegally ob tained evidence . . . and so the list continues. Another failing in the court structure i? the system for appeal, which is ill-defined and in some instances non-existent. No single court has the pow er to handle all appeal cases and so for all practi cal purposed the Office of Student Affairs has the loudest voice in deciding disciplinary cases. The days of the therapeutic Student Affairs of fice complete with an administrator acting as friendly adviser, psychiatrist and judge are over, as anyone who read the Senate committee's find ings will agree. ' " This committee has proposed a legalistic and workable system for disciplinary proceedings and a court structure which would assume the legal - guidelines so miserable lacking in the present courts. The University must adopt these proposals as n its official policy on disciplinary procedures. Cheryl Tritt John Reiser . . . Who else but Nelse? When Republicans meet in Miami this summer to pick the party's nominees for national office, three considerations should dominate all others. First is the selection of a candidate who can whip Lyndon Johnson. Second is selection of the man who would do the best job as President. Third is the return of the GOP to the main stream of American political opinion, after the di sastrous detour of four years ago. On all three considerations, their choice should be Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller has clearly demonstrated his abil ity to attract the votes of Democrats and Indepen- ( J Heart and Hands dents, which are so essential to Republican hopes of regaining the White House, and his equally-important ability to garner a significant number of votes in the large urban areas. Moreover, his status as a "non-candidate" has permitted him a certain amount of flexibility on the issues which will dominate the campaign. This flexibility could become increasingly important if circumstances change materially between now and August. His record as Governor of New York is nothing short of terrific a solid example of dynamic achivement at the state level. No candidate can match Rockefeller's grasp of and experience with our major domestic problems urban crisis, civil disorder, educational demands, air and water pollution and the straggle for equal rights by racial minorities. Foreign policy is a Rockefeller strong point, too. He has served three Presidents in this area, handling a number of special assingments. It is widely conceded that he is more respected among Latin American leaders than any other American politician. As a leader of our effort to obtain ratification of the UN Charter, he understands how we can co operate In the effective use of that organization to obtain world peace. Finally, there is the Rockefeller record as a Re publican. Nelson Rockefeller is identified, as is no other Republican, with the fight to deny extrem ists control of the GOP. His nomination would serve as a signal that the Republican party is not the vehicle of a small band of dedicated reactionaries who want to wind the clock back a hundred years or so. It would notify this nation that the GOP would again be actively seeking solutions to national prob lems and not contenting Itself with denying their existence. A restless and discontented country seeks a viable alternative to keeping Lyndon Johnson on the job. The nomination of Rockefeller will give them such a choice. If nominated in Miami, Nelson Rockefeller will crush Lyndon Johnson this November. Fellow American we woo.d AU- TUtEHTS. Novo Y NfWON CfcU au9PUf TVE mT6U.0rfcNT, MOST Tftt&NTEOEV EfcUCfttED rtO&PSES Ttt UJ09.YJD HfS EWfc iiiiii!iiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniii I To those I who wait (ACP) While patience may be regarded as virtuous by the older generation, it is not a virtue coveted by the growing student generation, says the Ball State News of Ball State University 'in Mun cie, Ind. The newspaper's editorial continued: History, In many cases, re veals the futility of patience. "Be patient," the elder statesman of four generations said to the enslaved Negro. "You will have your day.' So the Negro was patient. And "his day" was put off until tomorrow. "Listen to all that protest," says the older generation which fights wars, domestic and foreign, from their desks. "There's no respect for age. These students are irresponsi ble. They make a mockery of freedom." Freedom does demand re sponsibility. But responsibil ity also requires freedom and events. If an individual's life is put in jeopardy for a cause, then he has a right to ques tion responsibly the reason ing that says his dying is ne cessary. The same hold true in a university. If an individual is getting a second-rate edu cation, he has the right to demand something better. If he is treated like a child in the determination of impor tant policies that affect his campus life and as a "young adult" in the less important areas, he should be able to actively seek a cure to this administrative schizophrenia. Things come to those who wait, but only those things which aren't very important. William F. Buckley Jr. . . . Nuclear arms in Vietnam I begin by saying I do not repeat don't believe it was all a Communist plot, but only because the Communists most likely didn't think of it. Certainly the mysterious, anonymous telephone call served their purpose. The anonymous call that reported to the staff of a Senate com mittee that the Pentagon was considering the use ef tacti cal nuclear weapons in South Vietnam, as witness that Pro fessor Ficard L. Garwin of Co lumbia University, an expert in the subject, was off on a mission to Saigon. During the ensuing ten days, that became the talk of the world, the moralizers rushed to their typewriters, their pulpits, and their ros- trums, to denounce the United States. Harold Wilson of Great Brit ain, who was in Washington apparently because he was temporarily out of ideas on how further to mismanage British affairs, contributed his opinion, namely that the use of such weapons would be "sheer lunacy." Pretty soon the Pentagon and the White House were sputtering their denials, and indeed it transpired that Pro fessor Garwin was in Saigon on business wholly irrelated to the atom; which, as a mat ter of fact, is a pity. The pity is that we are sav ing our tactical nuclear weap ons for melodramatic use, for use, presumably, at the apo calpyse towards which we may very well be headed in the long term. Take, i&r instance, the dis cussion of the use of the tacti cal nuclear weapons in the de fense of Khesanh. By this time, so much attention has been given to the plight of Khesanh that to use these weapons, for the first time in military history, in the de fense of Khesahn, suggests a mood of total desperation, perhaps even of panic. That interpretation feeds on itself, even as a bear market is said to justify itself. The time to introduce the use of tactical nuclear arms was a long time ago, in a perfectly routine way, when there was not a suspicion of immediate crisis, of panic. Professors Speak . . . War inflation, price too high Editors Note: Mr. Ivan Volgys, University Political Science instructor is another contributor to the Professors Speak series. Lt. Alan Williams Military Hospital Saigon, South Vietnam Dear Allan: Your letter dated January 17, 1968 reached me yester day and I am anxious to an swer you immediately. Sitting in the relative quiet of Ne braska your scribbled notes disturbed me and I am writ ing you to clear up not only your confusion, but perhaps clarify also my own thinking. Of course I am proud of your courage to learn so well and so satisfactorily to write with your left hand and un derstand that you were lucky to escape by losing an a r m only. It is Good to know that you have not forgotten the old admonition "Dum s p i r o spero" ... at least I have tangible evidonce in your ac tions of recent weeks that not all that I've taught you and those 38 other young people who took International Re lations from me is complete ly forgotten. I am shocked and saddened to hear that "Curly" Hammond is dead. The mental anguish, the questioning, that went Into your letter Is reciprocated nere.v We are locked in a cri sis of the intellect here as well as in the area of Dak To or in the Mekong Delta. You ask the question of why Curly had to die and why you had to lose your arm.Y o u complain bitterly about t h e decoration you received, how little will make up for the lack of an arm and you ask me rightly "Where d i d my nice theories about the under lining cause of the conflict being the different interpre tations of the national inter est" lead me, waht kind of an swers will they provide to you and to others. ' I too have questions ... my sice theories crumble, often there is aneed to reinterpret them. Let me try to explain ... if I can at all. It is true that I conceived as needless and useless, but I did not object too loudly as long as I felt that the United States was trying to accom plish a political power-play, insisting to show that we are a Pacific power, for better or worse, that we are there to tay. But the ground has now shifted ... the questions of the morality of our efforts and our means are now called into question. As Walter Scott in his Personality Parade put it on February 4, we are in South Vietnam to "prevent a blood-bath". So far according to official sources 18,000 American boys, about 100,000 South Vietnam ese and at least that many Viet Cong and North Viet namese died, the wounded reach literally millions, the dislocated and the forced and unforced refugees total at least one million people. And in the moral dilemma of the century I ask the ques tion just as you do; Is it worth it? Is the price we pay equal the reward? Is it better to be dead than Red? After all this last question is at the heart of what we're doing. We are saving a coun try from "going Commie". We are stopping "Commu nist expansion" and once more we are carried away by the messianic hopes of "sav ing the world for democracy" or "fighting a war to end all wars." Are the lives of the millions who suffer worthy of the goal of saving South Vietnam from going Red? Would there have been more death had the Commies taken over in Viet nam. To these questions, I am convinced the answer must be given in the negative. No, the suffering is too high a price to pay for the freedom we hope to give the South Vietnamese. They do not know the term democracy as we know it, they do not value it; the vast majority in t h e countryside are affected by the war aversely and they do not care who is to win or lose ... as long as there be someone left alive. I do not believe that any one seriously believes that we are saving them from death when we wreck havoc with their economy, dislocate them from their villages, and quite unintentionally, to be sure rain bombs on them In the cities and on the country side. We are losing the war in Vietnam, in the hearts and minds of most people, save those who cling tenaciously to power which we back with Daily Nebraskan rb. , lm Vol. 91, No. i7 Second-class postage oa!d at Lincoln. Neb. TELEPHONES Editor 472-25S8, Newt S72-25M, Business 473-2M0. Subscription rate arc 14 per aemeiler or $6 lor the academic rear. Published Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday during the school war. except during vacation! and exam periods, by the tudenU of the Unlvercltr of Nebraska under the Jurisdiction of the Facility Subcommittee on Student Publications. Publication shall be free from censorship by tha Subcommittee or any person outride the University, Members of tha Nebraskan art responsible for what they causeto be printed. Member Associated Collegiate Press, National Educational Advertising Service. EDITORIAL STAFF Editor Cheryl Trllts Managing Editor Jack Toddi News Editor Ed Icenoglei Night News Edltoi J. L. Schmidt; Editorial Pane Assistant June Wagoner) Assistant Night News Editor Wilbur Gentryi Sports Editor George Katitmsni Assistant Sports Editor Bonnie Bonneaui News Assistant Lynn Puck; Stall Writers! Jim Evinaer. Barb Martin, Mark Gordon, Jan Parks, Joaa McCullnugh, Jane Maxwell, And) Cunningham, Jim Pedersen, Monica Pokorny. Phyllis Adkisson, Kent Cockson, Brent Skinnsr, John Dvorak. Senior Copy Editor Lynn Gottsrhalk; Copy Editors: Betsy Fenimore, Dave Fill pi, Jane tteya. Moll Murrell, Christie Schwartzkopf : Photographers Mike Hayman and Dan Ladely. BUSINESS STAFr Business Manager Glenn Friendt: Production Manager Charlie Baxter) Na tional Ad Manager Leeta Macheyi Bookkeeper and classified ad manager Gary Holllngsworthi Business Secretary Jan Boatman i Subscription Managar Jan vr.' iron, nan Looser, tutu vrau, iooa auaugntac. , our forces. Allan, here, at home, we are on the brink of another war . . . The programs started out so splendidly to enable Curly's kid-brother to learn the parts of a machine, to feed him when he is hungry ... all these programs are at a standstill. Sixty cents out of every dollar are spent on war machinery and the peo ple are rapidly losing confi dence in our government. Only you can save this so ciety, Allan, and you alone. You, coming back from the rotten jungles of South Viet nam, have to go to Curly's mother and to tell Mrs. Ham mond, that Curly's dreams will be fulfilled, that it is our responsibility first and fore most to make sure that the Hammond family can and will survive. You will have to speak up, Allan, to convince people that it is good to be alive, that even being a live "Red" is preferable to being a d ea d human being ... for you can always become "un-Red" but never "un-dead". And you will have to realize that mor ally or intellectually we can not and must not be the final decision-makers as to who has a right to life and under what conditions . . . 1 It is my hope that someday we will find it within our means to stop the fighting. I still hope that we will have the courage to do so and to withdraw from a place where the vast majority of the peo ple do not want to be "saved", do not want "democracy" or "freedom." The price of freedom in our country is high. What would we gain if we won in South Vietnam and lost in a civil war at home? Get well, Allan and come back soon to see us. With fondest regards, your friend and former teacher, Ivan Volgyes Cater Cliamblee Sight and sound The President's Analyst, starring James Co. burn, is a film exploring some of the wilder possi . bilities inherent in the President's requiring the , . services of a competant analyst, i The security problems would be overwhelming, right? Particularly if there were intramural com petition, both in style and substance, between the two agencies responsible for security, (the FBR and the CEA, get it?). And then there are all those countries who would be legitimately after the an alyst. It would be satisfying if one could say the film Were a brilliantly acted, brilliantly directed screen comedy successfully exploring some of the para noid tendencies built into the structure of American life today. Because that is what it starts out to be from the moment Coburn, as the shrink, is overcome by the therapeutic value of a black CEA man's ability to successfully to relieve his racial hostili ties in a socially accepted manner by murdering an occasional spy. , , It continues along these lines when we are in troduced to the head of the FBR, a short, rigedly puritanical anal-sadist using his office to fight as best he can the decadence around him. And the fact that all the FBR men are very short, rigidly puritanical anal-sadists, uptight to a man adds more to the comedy's exploration of our scene. Fine, also, is the point that as soon as Coburn runs, every embassy in town sends their men out to grab him. We are hardly surprised at all that the chief Russian spy is a good friend and confi dent of the CEA man, beautifully acted by God frey Cambridge, and that the two of them work together against the FBR, who have orders to kill Coburn so that the secrets will remain secret. Af ter all, isn't that the way things happen these days? Indeed, that everyone in the film is totally and absolutely mad makes it, well almost normal. True to life, as it were. Unfortunately, the comedy breaks down at this point, particularly when Coburn falls in with a hip py folk-rock band (only because every comedy must have a hippy bit these days). From here on out, despite nature and a chick and the truly mad conversation between Coburn and an FBR agent, who patiently explains that he really must kill Coburn because his orders say to. The movie is pointlessly energetic. The ending in which the real enemy is revealed to be the phone company is a disaster, despite Lee Lemon's erroneous opinion to the contrary (Can one trust the taste of a man who doesn't like The Ginger Man? I think not). The entire phone company section is only the director's desperate attempt to tie all his loose ends together so that the picture can stop. Not end stop. For there is no logic, no necessity in this par ticular ending. Which is a shame. For the indirection of the last third of the movie and the pointlessmess of its end betray the bright promises implicit In its be ginning. But there will be those, I suppose, who will ar gue that the film is too far removed from reality to bother with. Who could believe that the FBI and the CIA peopled by bureaucratic madmen cheerfully will ing to break every law, moral or civil, in adher ance, to the dictates of their leaders' paranoia? Or that J. Edgar Hoover is a perverse little bigot trying to force the rest of us in to the tight box of a world he finds so comfortable? Or they ask a lot of ones credibility here that L.B.J, serious ly needs a good psychiatrist? I mean, what's fun ny about that? Dan Looker Sneak preview Performers love applause. It's the applause, they say, that keeps the old-timers like Jimmy Du rante and Goerge Burns coming back year after year. Newspaper writers also have their own odd form of audience appreciation that keeps them pounding at their typewriters. Nothing makes them happier than an irate letter to the editor or phone calls in the middle of the night from fuming crack pots. The only response this column has gotten is Outlook i 1 that occasional! someone tells me he liked an ar tide. I might as well be booed off a stage! In a last desperate attempt to salvage my writing reputation I am going to run a series of atrociously controversial articles with such topics as: Why we should adopt a racist foreign policy, Why a Democrat supports Nixon for the GOP presidential ticket, A prophesy of doom In two parts, ' Part I: It is true that the Unite,. States hes no foreign policy. Partll: vVhy our cities won't even be nice places to visit in a few years. Nixon seems to be immensely popular these days. Prophesies of doom also seem to be In style. (That may be because the tow subjects are sy nonymous.) . . It seems to be appropriate to take a look at both subjects from a radical, new point of view, of course. The other article will show how racism can be a liberal new direction in American foreign relations. For some strange reason such predictions have always been popular, probably because nobody real ly believes them even though they might wish they could.