Newspapers / University of North Carolina … / Feb. 15, 1967, edition 1 / Page 2
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Rinky-Dink And You Draft Dodgers Find Refuge “This is a rinky-dink school.” You often hear that said around campus. Student body members say it all the time. Mostly they say it when things go wrong. After all, the blame must be placed somewhere. So, you hear students say, “Well, we’ve got such a rinky-dink this,” or The so-and-so here is awfully hicky,” depending on what went wrong. Saturday night something went wrong again but in a different way. The Dukes of Dixieland played a concert for our students at Oven’s Auditorium and they were quite good. Seventy-five students here will vouch for that. That’s how many of our people showed up for our concert. That’s what went wrong. Outsiders out numbered us two-to-one in the tiny aggregation of 250 which greeted the Dukes. The Dukes were visibly disappointed by the small crowd but they didn’t let that stop them from putting on a fine show. They played every thing from “Basin Street Blues” and “St. James Infirmary” to the Broadway hit, “Marne” and played them all well. If you don’t believe it and you can’t find anyone on campus • who was there, ask some of the many Davidson and Queens students who were in attendance. Without them, the concert could have been held in a phone booth. The aspect that is different about this thing that went wrong is that students here have no one to blame for it but themhselves. They’re the one’s who stayed away in huge nurnbers. Numbers up in the 1500’s. They’re the ones who convincingly showed that this student body is strictly bush-league. Why they did this is a mystery. Maybe they couldn’t toar themselves away from the hockey game or the golden gloves or from doing the one-step, the two-step, the box step, the hippy- dippy-jerk, or the belly-roll at the Cellar or the Box. But it really doesn’t matter why they didn’t come; it matters only that they didn’t come. The cold hard fact is that there is no excuse for me pitiful showing made by this student body. The blame for this fiasco must be placedupon the shoulders of its individual members. We hope the next time a student is tempted to term this school “rinky-dink”, he will stop and ask himself if that label shouldn’t actually be applied to him. THE CAROLINA JOURNAL Published weekly on Wednesday except during holidays. ELLISON CLARY, JR., Editor Frank Crooks Business Manager Libby Holshouser Feature Editor Donna Hughes Sports Editor Geraldine Ledford Cartoonist Nancy Kohler, Fred Jordan Photographers Staff: SaUy Hagood, Paul Boswell, Earleen Mabry, Corny Stilwell, Frank Catai, Jan Ballard, Patrick McNeeiy, Bobbe Berry, Carol Haywood, Sandy Caudle, Rosemary Lands, John Lafferty, Gayle Watts, Kay Watson, Carol Durham, Louise NapoUtano, and Larry Keith. BY ROGER RAPOPORT The Coilegiate Press Service (First of a two - part series) TORONTO — This month 49,200 men wili be inducted into the U, S. armed forces. Expatriate Bob Thomas wiU not be among them. It’s not that Bob isn’t eligible— he’s been 1-A for the past five months. Rather, he has left his native Indiana to live here in Canada where U. S. draft laws do not apply. Bob (not his real name) is one of a growing number of Americans emigrating to Canada to escape the drafL An estimated 2,000 U. S. citizens have moved to Canada in the past two years for the same reason. About 400 to 500 have settled in this modern Ontario provincial capital of nearly 2 mil lion. Bob, a soft - spoken 22-year- old, introduces himself as “your friendly neighborhood draft dod ger’’ to preserve anonymity. A cum laude English graduate of a top Ivy League school last June, he returned home to fine 1-A greeting from his local draft board. Bob had no intention of following in the footsteps of his 18-year- old brother who joined the Air Force in April. (“My brother and I gave up discussing Viet Nam, it’s useless.”) He carefully weighted the alter native methods of avoiding the draft. To begin with. Bob is not a pacifist or conscientious objec tor. “Besides,” he explains, “I wouldn’t take C. 0. status because it’s demeaning. I have no inten tion of co-operating with the mili tary system in any way.” The other route was j£iil — up to five years and $10,000 for fail ing to report for induction. “But that wouldn’t do anyone any good. And I see no reason to make a martyr of myself.” So he decided the only way out was North. He told his father who was dismayed and his mother who “cried a lot.” When he arrived here in June, Tony Hyde of the Student Union for Peace Action, a Canadian affiliate of Students for a Democratic Society, found him a place to stay. To qualify for land ed immigrant status and legally remain in Canada he took a job at the University of Toronto lib rary. Bob finds Canada “far more re laxed and less hysterical” than the U. S. Canada has no draft. “Any government that tried to start the draft again would get thrown out of office,” explains Tony Hyde. He says his fellow employes un animously support his reasons for moving to Canada. In his spare time he reads, writes poetry, does watercolors, and generally leads a tranquil existence. Except for the fact that he can never return to the United States again (where he would face that $10,00 fine and five years in jail) his life is free of restrictions. A long-standing pact between the U. S. and Canadian governments pro hibits his extradition. “From up here,” says Bob, “America really looks like it’s going nuts.” In fact he goes so far as to claim that the United States is “on its way to a collect ive nervous breakdown.” An armchair analyst, he gives half a dozen reasons for pro jecting a national crackup. “For one thing, the right-wing mili taristic mentality that got us into Viet Nam is going to take con trol of the country. Sheer race hatred will result in constant pre LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS mediated violence between the races within three years. Viet Nam is going to get worse, and in three or four years we wiU be doing the same thing some place else — there are four or five major candidates. Inflation will rock the economic structure. “The psychedelic thing has al ready wm. As Timothy Leary says, too many people have al ready tried it and liked it. And the gap between the generations will widen. The oid people won’t be able to understand our gener ation at aU.” Bob articulates his dire pro phecy with a great deal of pride and was somewhat miffed to dis cover that Newsweek reduced it ali to one sentence in a recent article on draft dodgers. “That reporter just didn’t understand. The Newsweek guy kept asking me if I would have fought in World War II. I probably would have but it’s a totally irrelevant question. I’m not concerned about history. I’m just against the American role in Viet Nam.” Bob has high hopes of organizing his fellow Americans. He is curr ently starting an expatriate news letter. But there may be some difficulty writing editorials, forthe draft dodgers are far from a like- minded lot. According to Tony Hyde, “Bob is not a typical draft dodger. In fact, I don’t think there is any such thing. We’re finding a lot of political types but for many people, coming up here is their first poli tical act. We even had a right- wing type from Arizona come up recently. He was sort of a Jeffer sonian - type Democrat who didn’t want to fight in Viet Nam. His parents even agreed.,” Indeed Bob and his draft-dodg ing friends disagree strongly on some matters. For example, one agrument flared in a discussion between Bob and his fellow ex patriate Allan, a political science doctoral candidate at the Univer sity of Toronto. “If I were North Vietnamese, I wouldn’t fight for Ho Chi Minh,” said Allan. “I don’t think he is a lot better than General Ky. The whole war is a meaningless cause on both sides.” But Bob disagrees. “I think if I was in North Viet Nam I might join up. Ho is far superior to Ky.” Still, Bob contends that his de cision to move to Canada was not political. “Personal freedom is the reason I came up here. I want to have the right to say no to people. I’ve got better things to do than be used like a robot-like killer dog in the Army. No one has the right tel tell me to go drop napalm on people. I want the right to run my own life.” “vVell pip -or Pf^PT take Y(Pa,fiENLHY,PK J HWE TO PUT UP WlT>^ VPU TW OF TH'TEP'V\? BUJEI'RINT The cards you hold in the game of life mean little—it’s the way you play them that really counts. Eating Bananas From Bottom Up Peels Frames BY PATRICK MCNEELY This Column may look a little blurry. Just before sitting down to type it, I broke the frames on my contact lenses while trying to eat a banana from the bottom up. Well, it is quite evident that this article is going to deal with far-reaching and serious concepts so I would advise all you shallow, fun-seeking readers not to venture any farther than these first two sentences (which you more than likely already regret). I thought I’d just kiU a little of your time by relating to you a few of the current events on our campus and around the world. I see our fun-loving administration has scheduled the fencing class for 8:30 in the morning withnoshower facilities available, in order to give the members of this class the distinction which they rightly deserve. Gazing into the game room, I notice a sharp decline in popula tion (I suppose the “regulars” decided that an education and a draft evasion are more important than pool and ping-pong). Now let’s look at the big pic ture, the world...hmmm... Yes, I’m happy to report that it’s still round; a little out of shape may be—but still round. I understand there is talk about peace in Viet Nam and I know this is true, for just the other day I heard just such a talk (actually it was prayer I overheard in the lib rary, made by a trembling 1-A student). There is still a controversy about Red China’s admittance to the United Nations. There is a general fear that China would over exercise their veto power and a poll which I took myself showed that 9 out of 10 diplomats do not care for Mao-nays. President Johnson has released the past year’s figures for the war on poverty; 34,195 dead-beats, 6,872 wounded - prides, and 4 guys got filty-rich. Good-night Sweetheart; Good night Darling And good-night for UNC-C News.
University of North Carolina at Charlotte Student Newspaper
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Feb. 15, 1967, edition 1
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