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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 27, 1970)
Amerika: love it or leave it by GEORGE KAUFMAN (Editor's Note: George Kauf man is a former University of Nebraska student and former Nebraskan writer and colum nist. He recently moved to Canada from the U.S. Army.) Never used to think I'd take advice of all the Yankee rednecks, but then a lot of things have changed, both in side me and to your country. Also, that was before I had to face the real Amerika; it is so easy to be against, easy to sell cut. Once drafted, I was faced with two alternatives run or stay to be part of the Army of the Empire. ? Joe College 'alive and well ' by PAUL WICKS Re-printed from the Williams Campus Newspaper After ZYi years at Williams College and at least that many years of reading articles in New York Times and magazines from Harpers to Look, I be lieved that I knew what was go ing on in American higher edu cation. A Williams student who goes home is always asked to ex plain, interpret and defend what college students are all about. I was sure that I knew the answers. Anyone from my grandfather to someone next to me on the airplane would get the same prepared speech ex plaining students on the war, on drugs, on the draft, on sex. I BELIEVED that college students, whatever mistakes they were making in rhetoric or in method, were much the same everywhere, that their heads at least had tendencies in the right direction. I was wrong. I have just spent the better part of a week at the Universi ty of Missouri at Columbia. I have seen a world that Is different from what we have come to accept as college life. ANYONE WHO has not visited someplace like Missouri can not imagine how isolated and different is the experience we are having at Williams from what I now believe must be the more typical college experience in the country. There is a large architecture school, and at night the Aggies drive around in green pick-up trucks and beat up people with long hair. One student that I met ex plained that the ones with long hair are generally freshmen who don't know how to use 'freedom." BY THE TIME they become upperclassmen and learn responsibility they get haircuts. Many get trims sooner, when they hear that their hair may be a barrier to fraternity membership. Almost everyone wants to Join a fraternity or sorority, although they "want" rather in the way one wants to eat each day. Not to join is a social NEVER THOUGHT I'd be a Nazi soldier, either, but I'm sad to say that I again opted for selling out, going along with it, protecting some vague sort of future "security" for my wife and I. It's also easy to sell yourself on the idea that you can be against it while being a part of it, "fight it from the in side." But, once they've taken your hair, your clothes and your constitutional rights, you realize they've also taken the only thing that really means a damn to you your self respect. I was part of the machine malady roughly equivalent to never brushing one's teeth. One is suspect if he shows evidence of being "anti Greek." Fraternity membership enables one to live on Greek Street, and subjects one to rules and regulations. : FOR EXAMPLE, the more senior brothers decide how much time the pledges must spend in the library, and how to ' help underclassmen mature socially. In one fraternity, the up perclassmen decide which pledges are probably virgins. One night their names are read out and they are instructed to remain after dinner. Without being told why they have been selected or w h e r e they are going, they are loaded into cars and driven half way to Kansas City to a black brothel where they are initiated into the rites of manhood. The student who related this story proudly indicated that his fraternity was "typical" in this respect. GIRLS WHO JOIN sororities have much the same regula tions as the requirements (but not, presumably, the visits to the brothels.) Despite the fact that Missouri is fully coeducational and has several different types of housing, relations between the sexes are not good at all. , One fraternity house adjoins a field that gets muddy when it rains, most of the spring. When the mud is at least two inches deep, any female who walks past the house is captured and dragged through the mud. If the supply of walkers Is low, a street is blocked and girls are pulled from passing cars. SOME GIRLS consider this one of the most effective ways to meet boys, particularly since the house is one of the more socially desirable fraternities. The "typical" Missouri male student seems to be the product of a strict upbringing, one who arrives at the university having heard glorious tales of wild sex in college. When he arrives and finds that it's not that easy, he is frustrated and resentful. The naturalness and ease which coeducation Is supoosed just long enough to hear "gook", "Charlie" and "slant eyed bastard" enough times to realize that Amerika's war is a racial one and not the anti Communist crusade Nixon talks about. WE'RE NOT really worried about a bunch of San-pans sailing into San Francisco harbor and unfurling the ham mer and sickle; we're worried about what's going to happen to all those overseas investments when the gooks figure out what the Great White Hunters have clone to their fathers. Contrary to what we were taught in what passes for to inspire evidence. is simply not in A COUNSELING- psychologist told me that the university's counseling services are terribly busy. To see a psychologist or psychiatrist, one fills out an application by checking little boxes marked "Academic," "Social (too much or too lit tle)". In the spring, panty raids occur regularly. The mob marches from Greek Street to a large quadrangle of high-rise girls' dorms, and remains there for hours. Sporadically the crowd takes up a chant, something like: "If you're a virgin, blink your lights." Any girl whose light is on or is seen looking out from behind her drawn shades is liable to disciplinary action, but often a brave one throws a crumpled paper bag out of a window. Lights blink in a ocuple of rooms. Everyone laughs. In one class I visited there was a major disruption because I disrupted the seating chart. The professor spent 10 minutes taking attendance and making sure everyone was in the pro per seat. Editor: In a tax-supported institution how can you explain why you bring such characters to speak to our students as Rep. Powell? Are your student leaders ig norant of his Crimes? Fraud? Falsely-taking lax money? De fying courts and leaving the country to avoid punishment? Aren't many students, particularly Blacks, receiving free tuition and housing plus, yet they use that money to help pay the enormous price Powell demands to yell his praise of Black Panthers and sub versives and denounce his country. Almost $2,000 for a Public Crook. Your youth shout loudly of your superior intellect, yet can Bu prove it by your actions? ave you brought in one laudable speaker in the past two or three years? Speakers to mold public opinion of youth American History in public schools, the U.S. is not unique in all the world, is not a great force of freedom in a world beset by meanies, is not even a very . nice place to live anymore. Listen to Steppenwolf, they're telling you where you are Amerika. You're a "Monster". You're getting dirty, overcrowded, polarized and special-committeed to death. IF YOU THINK only deserters and dodgers are "forced" away from the great light of democracy and are leaving the country, think again. Those who seek what we AT THE UNIVERSITY of Missouri, students view college not as a way to learn about themselves or their world, but as a means of upward social mobility. "Relevance" at M i s s o u means accounting; "disad vantaged" means you didn't make it to Miami to the Orange Bowl; the "Establishment" is a goal; an "urban crisis" means closing the brothels in St. Louis. There is a certain amount of separate housing for black students, but that is primarily because the fraternities don't want them. MISSOU STUDENTS are, by and large, for the war and they support their local police. Grass is replacing beer at parties, apparently because it is believed to be a more potent aphrodisiac. Anyone who believes that this country is going to change as the present generation moves from college into citizenship is in for a rude surprise. Students at Missouri, and presumably other large universities, are not very dif ferent from the generations before them. Joe College is alive and well in the Midwest. RAPPING who are to rule our fair nation in a few years? Are you naive or are you all addicts of drugs or completely indoctrinated in Communism? Do you think you are having fun arousing your parents and instructors? If so you are in deed adolescents. Don't you think at ell? Prove that you are capable, qualified, to graduate and to vote at 21. Surely not at 18 or 19. You show so little responsibility, common sense, will you ever be an adult, a worthy citizen. Just read one of your late issues. Could you have written it in Russia? Traitors! Front page for a public Crook! Almost $2,000 for a Hot Crook! H. R. Everett Editor: I congratulate you on the re cent foresight shown by yourself and your colleagues. I once thought you had to offer are leaving of free will. AND MOST of those of us who were "forced" to leave have no desire to return. You can talk of amnesty all you want I don't give a damn what you decide. The one good thing the Army did for me was to "force" me to do something I should have done a long time ago. Amerika, you're on a bum trip, with no light at the end of the tunnel. No hope for a nation that sees My Lai as an unavoidable part of war, no hope for people that don't care that its government is supporting corrupt dic tatorships while destroying others because of economics, no hope for an electorate which enthrones a man who is proud that a democracy is dominated by a "silent majority." THAT A MAJORITY of friends and teachers and friends' parents and old Boy Scout leaders and ministers are silent in Amerika today is not a source of pride for me it is a cause of shame. You can go to all the love rock festivals in the country, and you can do your thing, and you can even go all the way and carry signs and "be against it". But, sooner or later, you have to face the fact that your country is killing people. And then you know that all the sign carrying and moratoriurning and card-burning in the world is not going to stop it. IF THAT were true, the war would have ended a long time ago. The man in the White House simply is not listening this one isn't even pretending to. And he's sending out Spiro the Facist Mouth to tell you what's coming; listen to Spiro, man, he Is the voice of the future William Fulbright is a Commie. And its easy to listen to the simple answer: Amerika is falling apart because of the Commies. Don't laugh at Spiro; just know he's telling you the truth. And then decide whether or not you can be a part of it. Because you're not going to change it. refer to your preface of an article written by Brent Skin ner in the February 16 Daily Nebraskan with the statement: This column reflects the views of the author, and not necessarily tios f the Daily Nebraskan. It would certainly not be in good taste for the Daily Nebraskan to hold any views that might cause personal in trospection on the part of its editors and readers. Possibly the national media might have avoided their con frontation with Spiro T., had they prefaced their comments with similar remarks. Right On, baby ... with Silent Majority morality. Don't become controversial, because controversy Invariably leads to change, and aren't we living in a society that has no need of change. Robert Klrwin, Jr. PAGE 5 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1970 THE DAILY NEBRASKAN