Exclusion of males from poetry class reprehensible
"The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is a
public university committed to providing a
quality education for as many students as pos
sible. Admission to UNL is based on academic
qualifications without regard to race, age, color
religion, sex. marital status, veterans status,
national or ethnic origin or disability.'
In light of this commitment by the university,
the action taken recently to exclude two UNL
men from a poetry class is reprehensible.
On Aug. 29 during an evening class of English
253A entitled Women and Poetry, the women of
the class, voted to exclude those men from active
I was appalled to read the article concerning the male
students who were voted out of Ms. Johnson's Women
and Poetry class (Sept. 27). The kind of mentality under
lying this action is as reprehensible in this case as the same
mentality was in the not-too-distant past when women
were excluded from "men's classes deemed inappropriate
for women. Such thinking sets the feminist movement
back years.
The main fear voiced by the other members of the class
seemed to be that, as men, Mr. Wright and the other man
would be insensitive and not understanding of other
women's feelings and thoughts. The very fact that these
two men wanted to take the class indicates a sensitivity or
a desire for greater sensitivity on their part. That some of
the women were uncomfortable reading their poems in
front of a sexually integrated class is just a cop-out.
Ms. Johnson acted in a very questionable manner and
such action must not be allowed to occur again, especially
within a university setting. A sexually integrated diss
might have been the catalyst for a unique learning and
sharing experience-one that will obviously not occur
now.
Nina Cuellar
Graduate
Anthropology
SALT treaty
I must agree with Randy Essex (editorial, Sept. 25)
that the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty before the
Senate has become a political football. The presence or
absence of a combat brigade would seem at the present to
have little bearing on the SALT treaty. It does, perhaps,
make one uneasy that the same intelligence agencies
charged with verification were apparently caught by sur
prise in the appearance of Soviet combat troops only a
short distance from all those military facilities in southern
Florida that undoubtedly monitor Cuba. Still, the removal
of the troops in question will not make the treaty better
or worse. The treaty should be rejected or approved on its
merits.
But I take issue with Mr. Essex about his statement
"Ground troops are obsolete in terms of relations between
the superpowers. Surely if the superpowers are
in restraining nuclear saber rattling and relegating the
nuclear arsenals to the background, then the conventional
components of military power will increase in importance.
Since military power is the ore sphere that the Soviets can
effectively compete with the West, that is where they will
do so.
As for mutual distrust, I submit that the United States
at least, had good reason to distrust the Soviet Union.
Yhcn President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger negotiated SALT
I, it was to be a cornerstone of the detente process: relax
ing tensions, lowering barriers between the superpowers,
and most of all, beginning the first steps to capping the
arms race. By hindsight we see Cuban. troops backed by
Soviet arms in Angola and Ethiopia, refusal of the Soviet
Union to abide by the Helsinki Agreements, and the
development and deployment of a new generation of
iclmx.
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participation. . . .
Whether the instructor or the class members
suggested the vote is unclear, but it was explained
that some members said they would be uncom
fortable reading their poetry in front of men. The
situation, according to the professor of the class,
wasn't that of "not wanting men, it is wanting all
women." , , , "
That appears to be discrimination. Excluding a
man because he is a man is discrimination. And it
is apparently a violation of UNL bylaws which
state that no one can be discriminated against on
the basis of race, age or sex. It is also a violation
of the commitment to provide quality education
to as many students as possible. When ones
access to a class is limited, that person's educa
tional experiences are limited .
This action apparently taken by one profes
sor and the members of one class reflects, in the
end, the entire university. And it will be the
entire university which will be subject to penalty
far a nmsible violation of Title IX. the federal hw
which prohibits discrimination based on sex.
But it is not only a legal concern. It is an ethi
cal matter as well. If a class decides that it does
not like men, another class can choose to exclude
the handicapped, the next class may not like
Jewish members and another, in a perfect irony,
may choose to exclude women!
And what about the feelings of men involved?
'They (women class members) made me feel
worthless. They were telling me I didn't think and
that I didn't have any emotions," said one of the
men.
One would think that women who are sensitive
to discrimination against themselves, would be
just as sensitive to the feelings of others subjected
to the same treatment. Apparently this is not so.
This is a public university, an institution of
higher learning. We should have learned long ago
that discrimination is wrong, no matter who it is
against.
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Contraception proponent remembered
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Bosto'n-The Margaret Sanger Centennial year has
begun rather quietly, especially for as catalytic an agent of
change as the woman who invented the term, Birth Con
trol. As H.G. Wells once wrote, "When the history of our
civilization is written, it will be a biological history, and
Margaret Sanger will be its heroine.
It was her intense commitment and energy which
almost single-handedly promoted contraception in this
country-something which wasn't fuSy legalized until
1972,
Sanger was bom one of 1 1 children to an Irish immi
grant freethinker who sculpted gravestone angels. She
began her career as a public health nurse on Manhattan's
lower east side, where she became convinced that the solu
tion to poverty was birth control.
In 1914, when Sanger was on the lam in London-she
hid broken the pornography laws by distributing birth
control information-she became an admirer of Havelock
Ellis. EBis was one of the more prominent eugenkists of
the period who applied (or misapplied) Darwinian notions
to a creepy philosophy of selective breeding.
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UNDER HIS INFLUENCE, Sanger penned one of her
early and least attractive slogans, "Birth control-to create
a race of thoroughbreds.' Shades of the Third Reich. In
fairness, Sanger didn't advocate birth control out of a
desire to breed a super race, but made an alliance with
eugenics out of a desire to push birth control. It was her
one and only cause.
She came to believe contraception was a panacea. It
would not only control poverty, end child labor and
improve health but also give women "the key to the tem
ple of liberty." :
Despite her own support of what she saw as women's
liberty, Sanger was hardly a favorite with the feminists of
her era. Most of them looked at her rather ecstatic views
on sex-a "psychic and spiritual avenue of expression"
with a jaundiced eye.
STILL OTHERS, including many of the progressives,
were sure that Sanger had the whole thing backwards.
She thought the large families were responsible for the
evils of the system and that a wife could control the
entire organization of society with a diaphragm. But the
progressives thought the birth-control issue came in sec
ond at best to the issue of social reform.
By 1920s and 1930s, birth control was overwhelmingly
adopted by the middle class, not the poor. It was not
accepted as a solution to economic injustice, but as part
of the "sexual revolution" of the post-World War I period.
At that time the ideal of middle -class womanhood
switched to the vision of a wife primarily as a companion
and sexual partner, not mother
But the most profound effect of the availability of
birth control has been on' the ability to separate sex from
reproduction. This simple and revolutionary fact has been
accepted by most of us with relief or Joy or unease. The
way we feel about the separation often underlies the
attitudes we have toward the second sexual revohition
from extra-marital sex to The Joy of Sex" to the avail
ability of abortion.
In that sense, this most fanatic and controersial wo
man was prophetic when she cid-lhit birth control
demands "the frankest and most unflinching re-exaxnina-tioa
of sex in relation to human nature and the bases of
Inmoan society , x ,r
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