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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 16, 1970)
Five men to be praised A potentially explosive situation was de fused Sunday by negotiations which began in the afternoon and continued into Monday morn ing. Five senior and well respected faculty mem bers met with the Regents and proposed their own solution to the case of Stephen Rozman. Their approach called for delaying for 60 days the decision whether or not to rehire Rozman and setting up a fact-findng committee of senior faculty to investigate the matter and make rec ommendations to the Board. Until the Regents accepted the compromise it was fairly certain that they were committed to firing Rozman. Such an action would have been arbitrary and unjust because it would not have been based on any respectable investigation of the facts. Such an action might have prompted some form of demonstration from the 150 or more spectators who filled the meeting room and it would have sent ripples of discontent through the academic community. Fortunately, the work of professors Richard Gilbert, Desmond Wheeler, James Lake, Norman Rosenberg and John Moran made it possible to avoid such an unpleasant and destructive out come. These men should be commended for the initiative, intelligence and sense of responsibil ity they showed in the face of an impending crisis as should the Regents for the wisdom they showed in accepting this alternative. He who throws first Chancellor Varner and the Board of Regents took steps in the right direction Monday when the Board approved four recommendations of Varner's to curtail discrimination on campus. Varner's recommendations, in turn, are based on an excellent report on discrimination com piled by John W. Robinson, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Among the Board's decisions was one that required all student organizations to submit statements by Feb. 1 to the effect that their membership practices comply with the Regents' policy against discrimination. Any organization which fails to do this will cease to exist after the academic year. This firm requirement for student organiza tions is a proper and necessary one but there is an equally important moral commitment which falls on each individual in the academic com munity. Each person bears the responsibilty not to promote through his membership organiza tions that are discriminatory. Last Friday the Human Relations Insight League led a march of about 100 people to the Elks Club where they protested that group's re fusal to admit Black members. The League could have led (and might in the future) demonstra tions against the University Club, either of the country clubs, the Nebraska Club or others which claim support from members of the Uni versity community. Those who support the anti-discrimination requirement for student organizations must also make sure that the clubs they belong to do not discriminate. If they cannot change the mem bership requirements by (Feb. 1?) they should resign their membership for they will other wise be hypocrites. THE NEBRASKAN Telephones: Editor: 472-2588, Business: 472-2590, News: 472-258. Second class postage paid at Lincoln, Net). vmm Subscription rates are S5 per semester or S8.50 per year. Published Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday during the school year except during vaca tions and exam periods. Member of the Intercollegiate Press, National Educa tional Advertising Service. The Nebraskan is a student publication, Independent of the University of Neb raska's administration, faculty and student government. Address: The Nebraskan 34 Nebraska Union University of Nebraska Lincoln, Nebraska 68508 PAGE 4 1 gCN: ll tiinVFf fir uKS as ntov&i host f (Si,A4AwACMes . i fctfjffcn Cy,'-' Avl. v i fin I r I "Sai o tcssJSSBiBasJeESea? w allace in '72? verrry, verrry by FRANK MANKIEWICZ and TOM BRADEN "Of course he'll run. He has to run. I watched him the other day coming down through the crowd to the speaker's plat form. People were shoving money in his pockets. I said to him, 'George, I'll bet you made $1,700 just walking down that aisle." Such is the estimate of the George Wallace intent by a senator from the South who, because he explained intent in terms of the politically un mentionable, must here go nameless. The point, however, is not money. The point is in tent. . The point is that, after two full years of trying, Richard Nixon has not been able to knock the props out from under the George Wallace movement. Obviously, the point has enormous Implications for 1972. Moreover, there is when you consider it from Richard Nixon's viewpoint something rather wistful about all the ef fort wasted, the time lost, the prestige battered. The Presi dent, after all, is no racist. The chances are that in his heart he believes the 14th Amendment to the Constitution means what it says and what the courts now say It says. So it must have hurt him to instruct his HEW secretary to go slow on school desegrega tion, to Instruct his attorney general to oppose civil rights cases, to appoint a second-rater THE NEBRASKAN named Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, to see his old friend Robert Finch suffer physical pain from confronta tion with employees who only asked that he enforce the law. But whatever pangs of cons cience Mr. Nixon may have had, he put them aside in what he must have been able to persuade himself was a larger cause. After all, he may have argued to himself, if he could eliminate George Wallace, who was the real bad guy on race relations, he would virtually insure his own re-election. Any damage he himself had done to race relations in the process he could repair in his second term. 4 But here he is more than halfway toward a second-term election, and George Wallace is as strong. as ever. The most remarkable phenomenon in ithe current polls is that Wallace maintains 10 to 12 points about the same rating today as he won, in his real polls (Of 1968. , Moreover, he barely disguises his candidacy. ; "I made a mistake in 1968," he says. "I said there wasn't a dime's worth of between the two parties. I should have said there wasn't two cents' worth of dif ference." Has Spiro Agnew hurt him? "Agnew talks pretty well," says Wallace. "I wish I'd put a copyright on my 1968 speeches. But he doesn't act." Does he intend to run? "I'll have to wait and see. If the economy is good, the war is over, the bureaucrats have stopped pushing people around and everybody's happy, I won't have to run." He does not sound like a difference potential Nixon backer, and the conclusion is inescapable that the' President vastly misjudged his man. Looking back now, it must appear to Mr. Nixon that there was nothing he could have done to eliminate Wallace. The man is one of nature's spoilers, a leader but also a captive not only of his followers but of his impulses which tell him irresistibly to get in there and scrap. It all adds up to a bitter disappointment for the Presi dent and his party who cannot with Wallace in the race likely count upon a Southern sweep and who may lose some in dustrial states, for Wallace will take conservative votes. Perhaps that is why the men who work in the White House are so hopeful that Sen. Eugene McCarthy or some other dissi dent Democrat will lead a fourth party in 1972. Having gambled on a Southern strategy and lost, the President and his men are reduced to hoping that some crusader comes along to balance George Wallace and to plague the other side. Snake-Snake-Tree Pyramid by ARTHUR HOPPE The age-old mystery of who built the huge "Snake-Snake-Tree Pyramid" at Eersoar has at last been solved by the noted archeologist, Dr. R. Moscowitz. He has also discovered why. The ancient monument was named for the first three hieroglyphics in the inscription on its bae and is generally referred to in archeological circles as "The S-S-T Pyramid." It was this lengthy inscription that Dr. Moscowitz. after 20 years of research, finally decoded. It well tells the story. The text follows. It was in the third year of the reign of the great Tut-Tut-Ang-Hup, Pharoah of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Amur. An exhausted messenger reached Eersoar and falling to his knees cried, "Oh, Great Pharoah, thine sworn enemies, the Sovietes, are building a Snake-Snake-Tree Pyramid one thousand cubits high to please the gods and outshine thy glory! " The Pharoah summoned his high priests to divine the meaning of this. "Sire," said they, "the gods will indeed smile cpon the Sovites. Their fields will flourish, their nation will prosper, their armies will defeat thee, and thy glory will be dimmed." "Then by the gods," swore the Great Pharoah, "I shall build a Snake-Snake-Tree Pyramid two thousand cubits high!" Work began. One hundred thousand men dragged huge blocks of stone fifty miles to Eersoar and levered them into place. The whole nation groan ed under the burden of new and heavy taxes. Three years passed. The Pyramid reached but one hun dred cubits high. The Wizards of E-Kol made so bold as to appear befote Ang-Huu). "Oh, Great Pharoah," said they, "we have spoken unto the Great God E-Kol. He pro phesies that the top of thy Snake-Snake Tree Pyramid shall puncture the clouds, br inging drought and famine to thine fertile lands. The winds howling on its side shall drive strong men mad. And the heavy taxes shall bring ruin to rich and poor alike." At this, Ang-Hup grew angry. "What! Would thou have me waste the labor of three long years? What! Would thou have me yield unto mine enemies the leadership in international Pyramid building?" "Aye, Sire," said they. Let the Sovites build this useless and destructive thing. It shall destroy them." The Great Pharoah frowned. Then he smiled. "Nay! Oh, ye of little faith, dost thou forget the Snake-Snake-Tree Pyramid provides honest toil for one hundred thousand men. Would thou wickedly deprive them of their livelihood? For shame!" And he chopped off the heads of the Wizards of E-Kol. Thus the wisdom of Ang-Hup triumphed. And in the 20th year of Ms reign this great Snake-Snake-Tree Pyramid was completed, insuring forever the greatness of Eerosoar, ' the fertility of its valleys and the glory of Ang-Hup. Look on his works, ye Mighty, and despair! This ends the incription on the Pyramid. "Nothing beside remains," reports Dr. Moscowitz, poetically. "Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the . lone and level sands stretch away." Dr. Mosccwitz has named the concept of building useless and destructive things in order to provide employment "The Ang Hup Hang-Up." He says it can be found in several early civilizations. "However," he writes, "mankind has made great strides in reasoning ability during the past five thousand years. Fortunately, no national leader could ever propose such1 a preposterous, irrational con cept today." Editor's note: the following letter is incorrect in its allega tion that Dean Robinson violated a "confidence" and released the Discrimination Report to the press. Someone on the World Herald obtained a copy of the report and publish ed parts of it but the source from whom he received the report is unknown. Dear Editor, This letter is being written in regards to the mentioning of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity in an article published Dec. 11, 1970 by the ; Omaha World Herald on the prejudices of the N . U . f r a t e rnity-sorority system. In this article Dr. Robinson, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences has revealed a - "confidential report" for the Regents to the paper before presenting to the Regents. While violating this confidence, the article also un justly presented Phi Kappa Psi as the focal point of blatant racism on the N.U. campus, m conjunction with four other fraternities and one sorority. The article rightly states that the "vast number of students on campus are gentle people of prejudice," however Dr. - Robinson points to Phi Kappa Psi and the other four houses as the only "deliberate and concerted racial discrimination in student social organiza tions." I, as a member of Phi Kappa Psi, feel we have been slandered by a man who knows little, if anything concerning our policies. Dr." Robinson's research of "objective and subjective con siderations for evaluation of the system is based on three key areas: 1) the method of selec ting members, 2) the general level of prejudice in the house, and 3) the degree of the house's attempt to contact potential black members and become aware of de-facto segregation problems. In all 3 areas Dr. Robinson has completely wronged Phi Kappa Psi by his insufficient evidence, caused by his lack of insight and investigation.which results in his general lack of knowledge on the issue.' Concerning the first point, our method of selecting members in no way bars Negro members, neither locally or nationally. This year we reaf firmed our position by agreeing not to bar a "rushee" on ac count of the color of his skin. This was also approved by our fraternity's national secretary two days ago. This would also seem to refute Dr. Robinson's second contention that there is a high level of prejudice in our house. My black friends on campus were amazed to learn that this accusation was leveled on the fraternity and questioned the validity of Dr. Robinson's report. The third charge would cer tainly surprise Veron Banks, a Negro we attempted to pledge last year before he decided to attend a different university and a current N.U. freshman who has frequented our house and social functions many times. Our attempts to obtain black speakers, Our members active interest in the Human Relation Insight League, and Our active support of PACE would also indicate that Dr. THE NEBRASKAN Letters Robinson's report was un founded regarding Phi Kappa Psi. I speak only for my fraterni ty, pointing out the failings of Dr. Robinson's report. Something is certainly wrong if his "lengthy research and 125 interviews" failed to discover those fraternities that are founded to restrict their membership for such reasons as religion, specific college pursuit, and a c e d e m i c achievement. I abhor the naming of Phi Kappa Psi in this article because of the obvious lack of research and investigation done by Dr. Robinson. I question his knowledge of the subject and his evaluation because of the erroneous conclusion he reaches on the Phi Kappa Psi policies. There is no one in our house that would "black' a person because he is black. It appears like we are in a position to ac cept black members into our organization. We have and are continuing to contact prospec tive black members. The idea of a reprimand is ridiculous because we can find no foundations .for Dr. Robinson's unjustice accusa tions nameing Phi Kappa Psi as endorsing deliberate and concerted discrimination. He is dearly discriminating against us. Jack Rathburn John Wingender Dear Editor, What did Professor Rozman say in May of 1970? If he was condemning U.S. aggression, condemning a racist, colonialist imperialist country that is moving more and more toward the type of tyranny seen in fascist Germany and present day Greece . . . then he was only speaking the truth. If he is going to be punished for his politics or speaking the truth, then his executioners are tyrants. When it is dangerous to a political science instructor to speak or to say what he believes to be valid opinion or factual information . . . then how much more dangerous is it for a mere student or any honest citizen to state his or her viewpoint. The fact is that as yet no one knows what Rozman actually did say. I would like to know. We would all like to know something beyond the report that his statements, "were highly inappropriate for a teacher". We would like to hear what actually was said and decide for ourselves' what ex actly is highly appropriate or highly inappropriate for a political science instructor to say about the rotten politics of this country, which serve the interests of special classes and not the people as a whole. C. M. Dalrymple r. I; h WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1970 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1970 PAGE 5 VV