Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1971)
by STEVE STRASSER Staff Writer BEATRICE - No matter how many times youVe driven south on Highway 77 through downtown Beatrice you've probably never noticed the old brick Axtell Drug Co. building at 119 N. 6th St. But the building might become one of the wonders of Nebraska before long, because Bill M earns is going to paint it with "like, you know, colors." What Mears wants to paint is the outside of Royalton College's Pershing School of "I was walking through the Nebraska Union the other day. I kept bumping into people and people kept bumping into me. All I could think of was that there will never be a mob like this in our new college." Arts and Sciences. Pershing School, no relation to defunct Pershing College, has existed for three weeks, now, incorporating last Wednesday. Classes began last Thursday. Bill Mearns..waiting for spring so he can start painting the outside of the building. But Mearns and the 19 other enrolled students will have a lot more to do than go to classes for the rest of the semester. They have started cleaning from the ground up in their three-story building, o the first floor is now a clean, if sparse, administrative office, THERE THE ONLY ad mintstrator, an . admissions officer, works at the only desk and answers the only telephone - whenever it rings. Uprtairs arc six classrooms, a kitchen, a photography lab, and an apartment for visiting professors. Right now only the classrooms arc furnished. I ach one has a tabic with six or seven chairs around it. The founder of the school "doesn't believe in desks," one student said. "He believes in tables." The third floor is divided into two big rooms. The art room is the brightest place in the building, with four large windows overlooking the street. It's floor is littered with generations of dead sparrows and pigeons who somehow pot in to the room but couldn't find a way out. THE THEATER, a former labor union meeting hall, will be the site for Pershing School's first big project, a contemporization of the Greek classic "Prometheus Bound." The students plan to produce the play through their multi-media productions class during the last three weeks of May. The resourceful students have even improvised a gym in their new home-a basketball hoop at the end of a long hall. But the new school is not exactly going to emphasize athletics, according to Mike Richardson, former NU student now at Pershing School. "Doria says if you want to play football join the Philadelphia Eagles," Anthony Notarnicola Doria decided to start Pershing School three weeks ago. DORIA IS PRESIDENT and founder of Royalton College in South Royalton Vermont. Royalton has existed since 1966, and offers three majors: international business and economics, international relations and world literatures. According to Royalton 's catalog, "education must be international in scope" today, and must lead the student beyond the confines of his own experience, his own society and his own country to an understanding of the common bonds of humanity." The catalog says Royalton is "attuned to the student as an individual whose values contribute to the formulation of its own. "It is 4a human college whose blood is t.Hat of its students and teachers." The college has study centers in Italy, Fast Africa, and Florida, and plans to establish centers in West Africa and Hong Kong this year. "THE WHOLE. COLLEGE is based on trying to solve world conflicts through international law," explained Alberta Poland, Royalton's admissions officer working in Beatrice to help set up Pershing School. Poland said Royalton's president Doria read about Pershing College's financial troubles in the New York Times and was concerned about students displaced when Pershing had to close. He sent a professor to visit Beatrice, then he came out himself. Pershing School of Arts and Sciences was the result. Pershing School incorporated in Nebraska, Poland said. But all credit hours for Pershing students this semester will come from Royalton. The admissions officer said she didn't know if Pershing School would evolve as an extension of Royalton College or if it would become totally independent. Most of the school's 20 students are Pershing College transfers, she said. The four full-time professors were all recruited from Pershing College. The school will also fx n a er siting dCfiooi J) h I V 1 l-r i Photo by John Hennings No computers or filing Poland, the admissions employ part-time teachers and tutors. TUITION at Pershing School is $600 per semester for full-time students, $40 per credit for part-time students. For right now the school operates solely on student tuition money. That's an important point to student Mike Richardson, who- came to Pershing School after his suspension from the University of Nebraska and arrest following a sit-in demonstration in Chancellor D. B. Varner's office Febr. 1 0. "We pay all the tuition here," Richardson said. "The state doesn't give us anything. Students and faculty run this school and academic freedom isn't even an issue. "YOU CANT START an alternate culture without living it," Richardson said. "That's what we're trying to do here, and it's up to us whether it works or not." Philadelphia-born Steve -Phillips came to Pershing College "when my draft board gave me three weeks to find a college." When Pershing shut down in January Phillips got into Pershing School. "I'm attached to Nebraska now," Phillips said. "I can keep the pace here." New Yorker Bill Mearns heard about Pershing College from a newspaper ad after he had flunked out of New York State University. "The ad said 'need another chance? Call Pershing collect.' I was out here two weeks later." Me3rns likes Beatrice too. "There were only two busts in Pershing's history," he said. "The people here aren't paranoid at all." All the students seem enthusiastic about the school's built-in freedom and also about its Vermont founder. "THERE'S NEVER been a man like Doria in Nebraska," Phillips said. "He looks like a Mafia hit man, and what he want done gets done." "He doesn't believe in professors and students," Mearns added. "He calls them senior students and junior students." "I've never seen classes like we have here," said Richardson. "They're students' classes, not professors' classes. The professors participate and uide" Turn to Page 8 r n cabinets ... in Pershing administration office. Alberta officer, talks with students. A MAJOR DOCUMENT OF OUR TIMES Tuesday, March 2nd 3,7 & 9 P.M. SHELDON ADMISSION $1 M M M Union rialilrr.s Committee j fIi ami Serving Lincoln Satt 1129 "0" SHEET MWJMO JEWILOS AMERICAN CBN iUCTV iwmm ii m "" """" i ffriim TJlOTin 190$ 1 MONDAY, MARCH 1, 1971 THE DAILY NEBRASKAN PAGE 3
