THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1969
University looks to ideals
PAGE. 2
Much has been written about the situation with
the Athletic Department. And there has been verbal
discussion, as in the Council on Student Life meeting
this week.
The discussion centers on the department as a seat
of overextended authority, especially in the recent
closing of a charity stand at a football game and a
negative attitude to Saturday Issues of the Nebraskan
distributed outside the stadium last fall
In his seven years at the University, Athletic Director,
and Head Football Coach Bob Devaney has had an
almost flawless record in coaching. With his overtly
cool, calm attitude, and his excellent ability, he has
been able to inspire even the average players and
teams to top-notch performances.
The point is, however, that the department should
not have a monopoly on concessions, programs or
anything else at the university. It is part of the
University and must follow the same rules of fair
play.
The Athletic Department most realize that it exists
fur the same reason as other departments in the
University: far the benefit of all students and to
further efficient function of the school. The Athletic
Department, however, seems to Indicate that the rest
of the University exists for its benefit.
When one looks beyond the narrow issues of con
cessions and programs, other inequities become ap
parent. One is the disproportionent number of
scholarships and amounts of scholarship money given
to the athletes. Another is the often talked about,
but probably impossible to prove, argument that
athletes receive favored treatment in class or are
aided in scheduling for "pud" courses because they
are "needed for the team." '
The CSL is to be congratulated for taking steps
to investigate this matter, and hopefully will suggest
positive steps for reform and correction, if needed,
to make the department more representative of the
ideals and goals of the University.
Nebraskan editorial
Demo vacuum needs McGovern
by Frank Mankiewicz and Tom Braden
Washington Committees will soon be formed
throughout the nation pledged to the candidacy of
Sen. George McGovern (D-S.D.) for the Presidency
in 1972. Whether he likes it or not and he will
say he doesn't McGovern is now being pushed
into the greatest leadership void the Democratic Party
has experienced since Woodrow Wilson left the White
House.
McGovern's backers Washington lawyers with
past and present influence, labor leaders, black
spokesmen, students and young faculty and antiwar
congressmen are convinced that someone has to
fill the leadership void. They are equally convinced
that three years before election the little-known
McGovern is the only potential leader around.
Hubert Humphrey, they argue, suffers from the
deep fissures in the party opened up by President
Johnson, the Chicago convention and the war. Sen.
Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has not been available
since Chappaquiddiek. Sen. Eugene McCarthy ID
Minn.) has withdrawn into the mists, lit only fitfully
by occasional caustic flashes. Sen. Edmund Muskie
(D-Me.), who must run for re-election next year,
is busy worrying about the size of his plurality in
Maine.
1 ft A
52 "
(4
Maybe by 1971 ... or 1972 . .
The result is that there is nobody to speak
and when President Nixon finished his televised ad
dress to the nation on Vietnam, it was Averell Har
riman, In Vice President Agnew's elegant phrase,
who was "trotted out." Agnew was lucky. In a previous
era it might have been Adlai Stevenson.
Since 1932, Democrats have either held the
Presidency or In the '50s had in Stevenson
and congressional leaders Lyndon Johnson and Sam
Ray burn spokesmen around whom the majority could
rally, whatever the issue. Today, even had the
networks offered equal time to the Democratic Party
after President Nixon's speech on Vietnam or Vice
President Agnew's on the press, Democrats would
have fallen upon each other savagely rather than
settle on a single spokesman.
They may well fall upon McGovern which
is one reason he is reluctant to be pushed. But
those of his own party who will attack him will
be forced to offer alternative leadership, and so the
necessary sorting out of men and issues will begin.
On the issues, McGovern will be difficult to criticize.
He has better credentials as a foe of the Viet
namese war than any other senator he first spoke
out against U.S. involvement in 1963, while John Ken
nedy was President and he is taking leading posi
tions on other issues as well.
For example, the convening this week of the White
House Conference on Hunger and Nutrition is largely
the result of McGovern's public needling of the Ad
ministration on the hunger issue over the past several
months. He spoke at length last week on tax reform,
trying to rekindle the national indignation of six months
ago which sparked the present legislation. And he
has in the works major analyses of such issues as
threats to the environment and crime and law enforce- J
ment.
These are, after all, issues that have involved
other senators and other party leaders. The fact that
there isn't anyone else to offer a rallying point affords
an example of how political vacuums are filled.
The final test, of course, will not come on issues
alone. In an electronic age, politicians looking for
leadership rather than argument do not ask "What
else?" but "Who else?" Democratic politicians, con
fronted with the stark possibility of the loss of federal
patronage for a generation, ask that question most
urgently.
They can no longer rely on Mr. Dooley's prediction
"The Democratic Party is never so good as when
it's broke, when respectable people speak of it in
whispers and when it has no leaders and only one
principle to go in and take it away from the
ether fellows."
Lot Angolas Timn
Dear Editor:
In a Wednesday Dec. 3
editorial, there appeurs the
statement:
The draft is immoral because
It supplies men to fight In war.
The fighting and killing of war
Is a foremost atrocity of socie
ty. This Is an error In judgment.
The "foremost atrocity" being
committed by the draft is
simply its trait of being com
pulsory. No one, but no one,
has the right to use force on
anyone for any reason,
especially to make someone kill
or risk his own precious life.
Carol Bi t
Dear Editor:
In reading your Nov. 24 drug
issue I noticed that, in the In
terview, current users brought
out only the shallow, apparent
and seemingly positive aspecls
of the LSD experience. 1 feel
that they overlooked or failed
to recognize the more subtle,
long range and negative ef
fects. Are testimonies of this sort
useful in developing an un
derstanding as to the nature of
LSD? I maintain that people
holding and spreading such at
titudes only becloud the Issue,
causing great harm to many
people by encouraging drug
experiences that nobody in the
world is qualified to handle.
To the everyday person with
ll'lle or no contact with drug
the stories spread of the ur
realistic world In whirl
Open Forum
buildings fold and fuces melt,
cannot help but sound appeal
ing. The other side of the drug
life Is apparent only to the
person who has experienced
drugs on the whole, over a
period of time in which the
fantastic becomes Insignificant
In the face of a complete
disruption of a sense of purpose
In life.
To Illustrate the widespread
misinterpretation of the nature
of the drug experience an
analogy can be drawn. People
realize that driving a n
automobile 100 miles per hour
down the highway can have
dire consequences. Therefore to
their best interest, they refrain
from doing so. Occasionally
some do try it. They suffer the
adverse consequences. These
foolish people serve a s
reminders to the population of
the dangers of such action.
Similarly, a number of people
have experienced the long
range negative qualities of the
drug experience people who
should serve as the example for
the undecided and inex
perienced. The sad fact Is, however, that
this rarely seems to be the
case. The vouth of today, in
attempts to be open-minded,
completely repudiate all
evidence that Is In reality
logically grounded, by main
taining that they must ex
perience everything first hund
More deckling.
By the time they have ex
perienced it, it is often too lute,
due to the deceptive nature of
drugs. Does it really seem
logical to see at first hand if
speeding will result In death?
Along the same line, does it
seem logical to toy with
powerful drugs?
This perspective of youth
makes them seem very foolish.
I do not believe this to be the
major contributing factor to the
increasing use of LSD. The ef
fect is produced only when this
willingness to experiment is
coupled with misinterpretation
by people who encourage and
play up the use of drugs, not
realizing the bad effects the
mental incoherence, the loss of
ability to express oneself, the
loss of all purpose and the
agony of of continual running,
by way of drugs, from reali
ty. 1 feel that people who are
firmly entrenched in the drug
way of life, in encouraging
others to join them by expoun
ding on great and beautiful ex
periences to be had, unknow
ingly, are more responsible for
the misery and possible ruin of
more people than are the full
time pushers who sell to con
firmed users.
It is the first step that is tlie
most fatal. Without taking the
first step many lives proceed
normally. After taking that
first step Induced by the pro
fessors of eutopia, the road
back is often long and hard for
those same people who could
have been spared.
Duug lloi d
ha
"Does that mean we get to live on a houseboat. .
4 Wake from nightmare, U.S.'
by Whitney M. Young Jr.
Among the grimmest pictures yet painted of
America's future is that set forth by the National
Commission on Causes and Prevention of Violence
in a report issued last week.
Just look at what the Commission predicts In
"a few more years:"
Central business districts in the midst of decaying
areas heavily guarded by police patrols, deserted at
night.
Guarded luxury buildings in the city will be
"fortified cells" for higher income groups.
"Almost universal" gun ownership in fear-ridden
suburbs, with armed vigilante groups and extremists
with "tremendous armories of weapons which could
be brought into play with or without any provoca
tion." '
"Armed guards will 'ride shotgun' on all forms
of public transportation."
There will be "intensifying hatred and deepening
division. Violence will increase further and the
defensive response of the affluent will become more
elaborate."
What a future!
Like other groups that have warned the nation
about the dangers of the direction in which we're
headed, the Commission is made up of reasonable,
conservative men. It is headed by Dr. Milton
Eisenhower.
The Report also explodes many myths about crime
and its victims. Like other studies in the past, It
finds that the national obsession with a "crime wave"
is exaggerated.
Crime, the Report says, is primarily a big city
phenomena, and is especially concentrated among the
15-20-year-old age group, and repeaters constitute the
bulk of criminals. Victims of crimes tend to be poor
and black people, indicating that slums are getting
less protection than middle-class neighborhoods that
scream loudest about "crime in the streets."
And violent crimes such as murder, rape, and
assault, are most often committed by friends and
relatives of the victim, and often in the home, not
in the street.
What the factual part of the Report indicates
is that while crime remains a problem, it is nowhere
near the levels that justify the hysterical response
of all too many people. The "law and order" crowd
would have us believe that crime is rampant and
none is safe and the only way to cut down on crime
is in arming cities to the teeth and Instituting
repressive measures against the poor and the
minorities.
The result of such actions will be the nightmare
America the Commission warns against, an America
in which cities are armed fortresses in which the
rich are defended from the poor.
"We are closing ourselves Into fortresses," says
the Commission, "when collectively we should be
building the great, open humane city-societies of which
we are capable."
And like the Keener Commission, and other major
national studies, the Commission says the answer
to the problems of crime and violence lies in launching
"full-scale war on domestic ills, especially urban
ills."
How many more such studies are needed? Back
in 1919, the commission investigating the causes of
the Chicago riot said essentially the same thing. Since
then every such study has called on the natiou to
take massive steps to end poverty and racism.
Instead, we've poured our energies and resources
into war in Vietnam, into moon shots and the space
race into almost everything except what is essential
to muke our own country a better place in which
to live.
Leaders of our federal, state, and local
governments should seize the opportunity offered by
publication of the Eisenhower Report, and act to
implement the massive national commitment needed
to make ours an open society. This means providing
leadership, and not following some vague "silent ma
jority," whoso indifference could let us sink slowly
into disaster.
by June Wagoner
One common criticism of the Moratorium program
is that it is basically a mass activity. That kind
of participation in the anti-war movement requires
little in the way of personal commitment other than
the wearing of an arm band or button. And though
most of the individuals I know who work in the
peace campaign are sincerely motivated for personal
reasons, this criticism has some validity.
What Is needed, then, is an opportunity for all
true anti-war believers to express their personal con
cern. An opportunity for them to give in a personul
way that no other can give.
And this opportunity is especially needed this
month, in the Christmas season, to reaffirm a belief
in the standard of "No more War." Especially it
is needed so there is no chance for any American,
any human to forget, even for a holiday minute,
how we are failing the challenge of "Peace on Earth,
Goodwill to men.
One way to personally give, to personally reaffirm
Dismiss Dee. 19
The resolution passed in student senate this week
to ask the faculty senate to encourage professors
either to dismiss classes or not require attendance
on Dec. 19 deserves scilous consideration.
With possibly as many as 3,000 or more students
heading for the Sun Bowl, and with at least an
equal number probably leaving early for Christmas
vacation, it would be rather ridiculous to have classes
that day, with only about half the students on cam
pus. Hopefully, the faculty senate wdl act logically
and pass the resolution.
our responsiblily to our humun family might be through
the gift of blood.
What if the more than one million participants
in the fall marches were to organize through the
Intenialioiml Red Cross massive programs of blood
donations? Blood to be used for the victims of all
wars. A gift of self that no other could give. A
gift from one human to another human to reaffirm
the universal brotherhood of man, with the wish that
never again would such an act be necessary.
if we would all have to 'bleed' for our mistakes
perhaps we would not repeat them so easily. And
somehow, I have a feeling that even the blood of
"effete snobs" might start the healing work we all
face.
DAILY NEBRASKAN
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