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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 1972)
editorial imfeim oqq ROTC rolls on After a preliminary inspection, it is apparent that ROTC has changed. In quality of instruction, financial benefits and removal of severe restrictions, the UNL department of Military Science has improved immensely in the past few years. While still well below accepted standards for faculty experience, the ROTC level of faculty education has increased greatly in recent years. Currently, only a bachelor's degree is required for instructors in the department. But within four years, all teaching personnel will be required to have masters degrees. The instruction itself has changed as well. In the past, a good deal more drilling was standard procedure for ROTC students. Currently, only freshmen Army ROTC cadets have marching sessions. In place of drilling, students now take applied physical fitness courses, including swimming and aerobics. In the past ROTC was a required course, taking the place of physical education. When the ROTC requirement was dropped, the Military Science Department retreated within its own walls, keeping itself apart from other instructional pursuits. This too has changed. The department currently is co-teaching interdepartmental courses with the departments of history, geography, projected law and political science in the College of Arts and Sciences. It also shares a leadership and management course with the College of Business Administration. The current ROTC course grants 19 credit hours, which often can be applied directly to college requirements. The College of Engineering will apply six ROTC credits to graduation, while the College of Arts and Sciences will accept 10. This reduces the course load students involved in the ROTC department, must take to graduate. In terms of financial benefits to students, ROTC stacks up better than in the past as Army ROTC scholarships at UNL include free tuition, fees and books, with $100 per month spending money as an added benefit. In order' to qualify for the scholarships, students are judged on their grades, scholarship, extracurricular activities and Scholastic Achievement Test scores. Thirty-nine UNL students . are currently on ROTC scholarships. The fringe benefits of ROTC training have increased considerably. Salaries for officers graduating from ROTC have nearly tripled in the past few years. At the University, ROTC has seen to it that cadets are given greater opportunities to take flight training at government expense, receive government loans and take travel to widespread areas of the United States. Increased benefits, however, have not been enought to buoy flagging national ROTC enrollments. The Associated Press reoorted that total ROTC enrollment dropped from 177,422 to 50,234 between 1966 and 1972. At UNL, the trend is the same. With the pressure of the draft subsiding and emphasis turning away from war, total enrollment has decreased greatly. The decrease in enrollment will probably not cause large problems in the ROTC program. As the American war effort lessens, fewer and fewer officers are needed. And the benefits will probably keep suff t numbers involved in ROTC. So ROTC is basically secure. This security leads one to wonder why it is not possible to separate ROTC from the University. The program is not in financial difficulty, nor is its enrollment abnormally low. Such separation would most likely not damage ROTC to a great extent. And the reasons for such a separation are many. Currently, the University provides the Military Science Department with a building, a secretary, a storeroom keeper and gives it an administrative budget of $1,050. If ROTC were disaffiliated from the University, UNL would receive at least a small amount of budgetary relief, gaining a classroom and activities building as well. Now substantial, however, would be the gains in correcting inequities in academic crediting caused by ROTC credit. Currently, the credits earned in ROTC classes are not on the level of most academic hours. Taught by instructors with inferior academic qualifications, the classes do not generally interrelate with other classroom curriculum. The few exceptions in which inter-departmental credit is given could probably be better handled by the cooperating department, under proven academic instructors. All of this, avoids the moral question involved in whether the University should be teaching the art of war. Institutions of higher learningrgenerally address themselves to humanitarian causes-We management . and understanding of the homo sejbSn. To instruct students in the destruction of man irt'this atmosphere seems contradictory. There is no question that there' 1$ a ' riqht and perhaps a need for ROTC to exist. But there is no need for it to exist and be granted academic credit within institutions of higher learnings : Jim Gray Hi Leslies Of America! I'm I Mrs.PresidenV Nixon, and o "N. myhusbUiid'JSiaie is Lp fmm Cleaner Ihan Clean!! y How do you smear clean Dick Nixon? . arthur m hoppe The Democrat! are growing Increasingly desperate and who can blame them? Take this transcript of a top-level conference at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate Towers picked up the other day by an overlooked bug. The participants are identified in the tape only as Larry, Gary and Frank. Larry: I've been giving our plight a great deal of thought, gentlemen, and there is but one way to defeat Tricky Dick, elect Honest George and restore integrity and honor to our country. Frank: What's that, Larry? Larry: A massive, nationwide, all-out smear campaign. Gary: Great thinking, Larry I Now if we could just dig up something like The Teapot Dome Scandal. You know, we say Nixon's cronies have been peddling favors to some huge conglomerate in return for millions of dollars. The public would rise up from their television sets in righteous wrath I Frank: Have you forgotten the ITT affair already? The public rose up, yawned and went to bed. Gary: What about the secret $ 1 8,000 Nixon slush fund in '52? it annual LU5i nun uic viic pi oiuei iiy , ivuw 11 we buuiu JUSl somehow come up with an even bigger secret slush fund . . . Larry: What's wrong with that $350,000 in Maurice Stans' safe? The Mexican checks? The Miami bank accounts? I'll tell you what's wrong, nobody cared. Gary: Maybe we need something along international lines, I've got it! Nixon negotiates a secret deal to sell rice to the Chinese Communists. Tipped off, his broker friends make a killing. The farmers go broke, the price of rice shoots up and you know what happens to Nixon. Frank: Yeah, after the Russian grain deal he went up another five points in the polls. Larry: Frank's right. These big financial scandals only seem to hurt us. Let's think of something else. Gary: Well, there was Grover Cleveland. What if we start a whispering campaign that Nixon bought his secretary a Republican cloth coat in return for her favors? Frank: Nixon and sex; Who'd believe it? Gary: Kissinger, then, We catch him and this starlet at this motel, see , , . Frank: That would win the vote of every male over 40-for the Republicans. Besides, I think Kissinger rents them from a dating service. Gary: Waitl Remember LBJ and the beagles? We get a picture of Nixon picking up King Timahoe by the ears and . . . Frank: The damned dog's bigger than he is. Gary: (desperately): Pat's wash isn't whiter than white? Trish suffers from ring around the collar? Or what about accusing the White House of dirty politics? Spies? Double agents? Buggings? Frank: Now you've even forgotten where you are. No, it's no good. The trouble is that the public expects businessmen to buy favors and politicians to sell them. After all, they wheel and deal themselves. That's probably why Nixon does so well every time we hit him with a scandal: they identify with him. Gary: That's itl The perfect smear campaignl To win votes for George we start a rumor he's sold Nevada to Howard Hughes for $500 million in unmarked bills. Frank: With the debts we still owe? Who'd believe it? Larry (after a long silence): Well, gentlemen, at least we've proved one thing in this campaign. Gary: What's that? Larry (gloomily): There's no way on earth to smear Dick Nixon. Copyright Chronic! Publiihlna Co. 1972 pSg3 4 daily nebraskan friday, October 13, 1972