THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1969
SCRIP
revieived by Greg Kuzma
It's no difficult job recommending a campus
literary magazine. We all agree we want them
to continue, to sell, to get better, or to be there
, . If they're not. Most everyone complains when the
magazine doesn't come out, and administrations
like to list them in their catalogues. It's a pleasant
and safe way, to show that there are many voices
(when really there are only a few) and that the
students, for all their nose grinding, for all their
mechanical response to mechanical instruction,
really want more.
Actually the average campus literary magazine
Is the work of one or two or three persons. And'
many of them contain the work of only one or
two or three persons. Yet this is inevitable and
often fair. Most independent "little" magazines
across the country exist only for their contributors
and would-be contributors.
Even with the complex system of checks and
balances through which an editor then selects his
contents (OK, I'll pick out five of yours if you
pick out five of mine) a lot of junk gets in. And
sometimes the editor is helpless against it; he
only gets what he gets, sometimes has own work
Is better than what he gets.
But what results Is that campus literary
magazines are choked with weak or pretentious
or sentimental poems (all by very nice people)
- r poems in new forms (but really like Cummlngs,
like- Williams, like the Beats), or very shocking
dirty poems (yet not so shocking anymore, and
. often written by very nice people too). Sometime
the, .stories are more bearable because there are
fewer stories since poems are easier and cheaper
to print). Sometimes they are even stories. But
- really who writes fiction anymore.
- Usually they don't even try to be stories. After
studying Faulkner or Fitzgerald or Hemingway all
month, and enjoying them, the student sits down
and writes like a monkey. Or has a monkey as
his central character, which doesn't come out until
the last sentence when he swings off Into the forest,
upsetting all the subtle significances. This, after
pages of jabber.
Photographs, if there are any, are usually of
old old wrinkled people, or people with warts, or
people walking around in the night. Sometimes
there is a beautiful girl without her clothes. If
there are drawings or paintings they are reduced
in size or two tone only so that one really can't
feel them. Whenever there is an attempt at in
tegrating text and graphics one comes away
puzzled: haven't they got it wrong? Doesn't this
take place in a different century? and so on.
The problem with most campus literary
magazines is that they are too indulgent. The
editors indulge the contributors, the contributors
the editors, the editors each other, and the whole
magazine laid at the feet of the man with the
money or snuck out the back door and banned.
Which Is probably worse because a lot of people
get excited for the wrong reasons and the thing
becomes an 'issue" and hardly anybody reads
the magazine finally anyway, but Instead sit around
the Union arguing about free speech and "what
Is obscenity."
. As a campus literary magazine,' SCRIP, which
goes on sale this week, is sometimes like my
generalization. But I recommend it be bought and
read because of course I am one who wants campus
literary magazines to continue and because I think
SCRIP is interesting. Who knows how SCRIP got
made; anyway, it is finally only the work that
matters.
And for all the expected stuff, the pretentious,
the sentimental, the merely confusing, the naive,
the forgivable, the noisy, there are some things
that reach above the average.
Although the first story seems to want to Ignore
its meanings, it is well written. The first poem,
simply "Poem," suffers from excessive alliteration
and too much other merely mechanical arrange
ment. It is either too long or in chains, but it
isn't spoiled by noise or sentiment or pretense,
and could improve with work.
Carta Gibson's scary erotic poem Is both scary
and erotic after the first few throwaway lines.
"Flshln", though thin, is fun. And "The Fireflies",
the most ambitious piece in the magazine, is a
fairly good treatment of the familiar subject of
contemporary alienation. Although most of the
photographs seem posed, there's a good one of
Yogi Berra as a baby and a last page life Magazine
type shot from under a park bench.
Don Mahoney's "One Night Games" is very
strong In parts, and along with his Chinese poems
he has some of the best poems In the Issue. Ills
haiku about "A pumpkin" Is very pretty. So often
beginning poets seek out the deceptively easy brief
Chinese forms not realizing how little room they're
getting to work in. But most of the short poems
are modest and good.
Patrick II. Fulmer has some good lines la
"Quite Unlike the Rain" ("Perhaps I am one given
to speculation and typical moods"), but the poem
as a whole is obscure to me.
On the other side Don Mahoney owes apologies
to Theodore Roethke for the famous and beautiful
line he's lifted entact from "The Waking."
"Sun Dried" might have been better as a haiku,
maybe. And I object to Carla Gibson's caption
for tha picture of the policeman. It's too easy,
and hints at snobbishness.
Stan Schulz's sestlna Isn't a great sestlna, but
a sestlna is a very difficult form to make a poem
In. Of all the poems this one at least sets up
a formal limitation to try to work within and
against. So this one holds down the page better
than most of the others.
Steve Huntley's poem using Hitler is very In
tcrestlng; it studies both event and language as
language.
There are other things here worth noting, and,
of course, a good deal more to be said about
the merits of the Individual pieces. And I apologize
for those good things I've overlooked in my haste.
For the student of writing even the less good things
aro useful.
Unfortunately for the contributors, publication
In Scrip may not teach them much, Perhaps the
hardest thing to do Is to learn from publication.
For the writer, print finalizes, and often the
story or poem printed Is forever untouchable; bad
If it's bud, promising as It may be. We should
be grateful for Scrip, however, for collecting these
things for us and for giving us the chance to
read and reread them and talk about them.
Although writing is an obscure and private
gesture done on one's own time, its presentation
Is what Justifies it and illuminates it. Scrip will
be out again and will get better as tt Is gore
ever and as It acquires a readership and as its
contributors, whoever and wherever they art, listen
In and risk exposing their best work there.
Is the real Angela Davis a New Left hoax?
by Frank Manklewtcs
and Tom Braden
Los Angeles What may have been conceived
as the most elaborate political put-on since Hearst
Invented the Spanish-American War is unfolding
here as a major test of Gov. Ronald Reagan's
theory that constant and violent confrontation
with students Is the best policy.
At Issue is the status of Angela Davis, an
attractive, 25-year-old, black Ph.D. who was ap
pointed earlier this year as an assistant professor
of philosophy at UCLA and who has now been
fired by the Board of Regents, at the Insistence
of the governor, because it appears the is a member
of all things the Communist Party.
Miss Davis' membership In the party was leaked
this spring in a letter to the college newspaper
by an alleged FBI informant. She readily admitted
membership in something called the Che-Lumumba
Chapter of the Communist Party, and her firing
came soon after. The Issue has mobilized opinion
among the faculty, administration and student body
throughout the statewide campus of the University
of California, almost all of it against the governor.
But it has also mobilized most of the nonstudent,
nonacademic public opinion in the state, mostly
on Reagan's side.
What is curious in the whole episode, according
to some faculty members who know Miss Davis
and more important know something about
the American Radical movement, is why no effort
has been made to discover if Miss Davis is telling
the truth when she says she is a Communist.
These people are laying, in effect, that the
regents, the university and, above all, Gov. Reagan
are quite likely being victimized by a giant
perhaps even llghthearted hoax, promoted by
the New Left, designed to provoke Just the confron
tation which both Reagan and the militants
want.
If there is one thing young radicals In our
society today share, whether they are nonviolent,
blracial pacifists or violent Maoist separatist
militants, it is contempt for the Communist Party.
The party Itself is bourgeois, bureaucratic, in the
view of youth timid and in the view of Intellectuals
turgid and irrelevant. The New Left ridicules the
Old Left.
No longer, as through much of the Thirties
and Forties, is Communist Party membership In
any way heroic or even chic in left and Intellectual
circles. Indeed, it is regularly derided as irrelevant
to "the struggle." If it were not for the enrolled
memJbers of the FBI and subscribers to Communist
publications among public and private Institutions,
It could hardly survive.
Consequently, it is highly unlikely that Miss
Davis, admittedly an activist, admittedly a militant
radical, a student of Herbert Marcuse and of consi
derable intellectual attainment, would join the par-
c mm,.mmt vHtti a date In the name,
perhaps - SDS or one of its sp1ner. ne-'-ans
but the Communist Party? David Eisenhower is
as likely a member.
But these intellectual musings are surely not
for Ronald Reagan. Elected as a foe of "The
University," he has fulfilled his campaign promises
and thrived, though the student bodv at TICJ A,
when polled this week, favored by more than 80
the proposition that Reagan had lowered the quality
of the state's education.
Reagan's most likely foe, former Assembly
Speaker Jesse Unruh, has been hammering on this
issue, mostly without visible success. Unruh is tell,
ing whoever cares to listen that it Is the governor,
not the students, who has provoked the confronta
tions as with the Peoples' Park in Berkeley
which have led to violence and a paralysis
of education.
Thus, the case of Miss Davis looks more and
more like a radical-left fraud. After all, she is
almost the only accused Communist in recent
memory who has broken the story first and then
not denied it. The suspicion is strong that, by
providing a real live Communist on the faculty,
Reagan could be provoked into another confronta
tion which might accomplish the goals of both
the governor and the New Left. So far, it's worked.
Nebraskan editorial page
i
L
missler's mrm
Ya gotta
have a gimmick
. . . Kelley Baker
Last Summer Is a film story of the easy seduc
Hon of youth by adults ... a seduction by lack
of caring.
Sandy, Peter, Dan and Rhoda teenage vic
tims of broken homes and Inattention are spen
ding the summer with their parent(s) on Fire
Island.
The tone for Sandy's relationship with Dan
and Peter is set by her attitude toward a seagull
that the three of them have saved.
She fashions a leather harness for the gull
and tells it, "I'm boss, bird. I'm absolute master
of your world and what I say goes." When the
bird bites her for pestering it, she crushes its
head with a rock.
In an embarrassingly funny scene with beer
as truth serum and false voices for added courage,
the trio vows always to be always with one another
and finds some of the affection that their parents
have failed to give them.
Enter Rhoda, a square chick with braces who
denounces their bird training as "torture" and
claims that they've made the gull a schlzo. Rhoda
has a de facto acceptance in their company as
receptacle for all the abuse and frustration they
feel for their parents and the world. She gains
greater acceptance into the group only by telling
"something horrible about herself" an Initiation
rite that proves to be deeply revealing.
Rhoda draws out a sensitive side in Peter that
Is glaring contrasted with the callousness of Sandy
and Dan. Sandy and Rhoda conduct a low key
battle for control of Peter who Is an Individual
when alone with Rhoda but falls too easily into
the cruelty of the group.
The frustration and resentment that the three
feel for Rhoda erupts In the final scene and places
Peter in an extremely difficult position of deciding
for Rhoda and the individual or of going along
with the group. It is a terrifying, ugly experience
which shatters Peter and leads all of them from
the last summer of their innocence.
Last Summer, directed by Frank Perry (David
and Lisa, The Swimmer), Is a powerful, excellent
film which shows us the thin line that separate
us from violence.
Merits of ROTC justify its existence on U.S. campuses
This article is reprinted from the "Apprise
and Dissent" column In the Lincoln Evening
Journal, Sept. 2, 1969.
by Walter II. Brunlng
Associate Professor of Chemistry,
Assistant Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
University of Nebraska
The American people have recently heard a
great deal from a small group of vocal critics
concerning the presence of military science pro
grams on the campuses, but very llttlt from the
rank and file middle-ground majority. I believe
this unfortunate.
The Morrill Act of 1862 offered grants of land
to statej or territories if they would establish col
leglate schools which would provide, among other
things, training in agriculture, military tactics,
mechanical arts, science, and classical studies. The
state of Nebraska accepted the provisions of this
act and The University of Nebraska was created.
This University still functions under these general
provisions.
Therefore, there Is at the outset a distinction
between the concept of a private university, and
the courses of study they offer, and the land-grant
institution.
In my opinion, R.O.T.C. Is a valid option for
the student who chooses It at a supplementary
area of study from the wide range of programs
offered by the public university.
Arguments rage about the offering of academic
credit for such courses, for it is alleged that
R.O.T.C. Is merely a rote activity allowing no
flexibility to the military Instructor or Intellectual
challenge to the student. R.O.T.C. opponents further
argue that It conflicts with the Ideals of the
university community and that military Instructors
are not academically fit to teach in the environment
of higher education.
Many such Instructors not all by any means
have only a B.S. degree; the charge Is made
that their presence on the campus Is by dictate
of the Defense Department, with the university
having no control over the appointment or dismissal
of the man.
In fart, the public university fosters a multitude
of valuable programs that, at least In part, rely
on more or less rote learning exercises of a prac
tical skill. Academic credit Is given for such ac
tivities, because they are Judged to be useful and
desirable to the overall degree programs of many
students.
Some of these areas, such as physical educa
tion, actually constitute a major in which a degree
can be earned. Other major areas of university
study, such as those In agriculture and horn
economics, include significant components of ap
plied (or practical) learning experiences.
Public universities have had to adjust to larger
numbers of students presenting themselves for
enrollment each year. This has forced a very large
proportion of the undergraduate Instruction pro
gram into the hands of men and women who possess
little more than a B.A. or B.S. degree, i.e., the
teaching assistants.
Therefore, when arguments are made concern
ing the rote nature of R.O.T.C, the supposed lack
of intellectual stimulation for the student, and the
lark of academic degrees as qualifications of the
military Instructor, such arguments might also be
applied against a large portion of the university's
academic activities. R.O.T.C, only one of a number
of "applied" land grant programs, hardly deserves
to be singled out and cut with one edge of what
Is In reality, a two-edged academic scalpel.
The appointment and dismissal of military in
structors Is controlled In the final analysis by the
university. The contracts between the various
branches of the armed services and universities
always carry the provision that administrative veto
for cause Is all that Is necessary to terminate
the appointment of an officer In an R.O.T.C. unit.
Thus, universities control the type of officer
assigned to teaching duty as closely as they control
the type of teaching assistant in academic pro
grams, and in a sense, more closely than they
control the appointment and dismissal of more
senior academic staff, who may have achieved
tenure.
The major objection of student demonstrators
to R.O.T.C. seems to be moral. They argue that
war is immoral and that the presence of R.O.T.C.
on campus is a visible and constant reminder of
the threat of the establishment to the purity of
DAILY NEBRASKAN
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Wrltart John Pvarak, lilt tmllharman, lara acrmladaf. ary
taacrait, Itava llnclalr, wachitlar tlnak, Linda McCiwra. Mlka
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the university and a symptom of decay In ear
society.
Their position may have some merit, but I
believe It Is Incredibly naive. Questions of morality
aside, the history of nation-states illustrates that
all of them rely on a military deterrent as an
Instrument of defense and foreign policy. (Some,
of course, use the military as an instrument of
offense and aggressive domination.)
In our real world, In which we must live,
the self Interests of the United States are important.
The mess In Vietnam may not be in the best
Interests of the United States. Nevertheless, we
are there because of decisions made by elected
representatives of the people; our military power
has been created as an Instrument of foreign policy.
The moral questions behind this national
political activity will not be solved by forcing
R.O.T.C. off campus. One reason why this nation
has never turned into a military dictatorship, ruled
by a Junta of colonels or whatever, is that the
concept of the citizen soldier, the Clnclnnatus
tradition, pervades our political system. The
liberalizing Influence of the civilian campus does
affect the student-cadet and materially strengthens
this idea.
I believe It would be tragic if the training
of officers were relegated to military Institutes
totally divorced from the universities. The far.
reaching consequences of such an action would
be detrimental to our political system. (At this
time over half the officers entering military service
today are produced by R.O.T.C. programs.)
It is naive to think that If this source of trained
leadership is denied by removing it.O.T.C. from
the campus that it will cripple t:.e mllltary-ln-dustrial
complex. The men will be trained, away
from the civilian arena, away from Ks more or
less compassionate, liberalizing atmosphere.
Therefore, unless the public majority decides
that the character of the land-grant university
should be changed, R.O.T.C. seems to be a highly
Important purely voluntary option that ought
to be available for those students who wish it.
As long as the compulsory phase of military service
exists, the student ought to have as many options
open to him as possible for discharging this obliga
tion. Much of what it stressed In the R.O.T.C
training programs It concert ed with developing
leadership, tmall group communication, ad
ministration, and management, etc. Also, an In
creasing number of credits are being taught by
academic personnel In related areas; military
history taught by professional historians it an example.