Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Feb. 15, 1955, edition 1 / Page 2
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PAGE TWO THE DAILY TAK MIL TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1955 The University's Man Friday Carolina Front a man The University's new secretary is Avitli his work, cut out for him. When the. Trustees Executive Committee created the position of secretary yesterday and named William C. Friday to the job, they scooped together all the work of the school outside the domain of the other of ficersand it is much, and vital and laid it on Mr. Friday's willing shoulders. Here's a job schematic for you: Mr. Fri day is to serve as staff officer to President Gray "on student affairs and development programs, and .shall be the service officer of the Poard-of Trustees, its officers and com mittees" and shall "assist the President in maintaining effective liaison with members of the Legislature. University, councils and committees, University officials,, alumni and students." lint this is not all. He shall also, in the trustees' words, assist the- president by per forming "special assignments which are out side the regular jurisdiction of other Uni versitv officials, and by acting as the presi dent's personal representative when ''so des ign: .cel." II that sounds like a job for four or five men. it should be remembered that Bill Fri dav has been performing these very tasks with skill for four years as President Gray's assistant. Out of his lefve and concern for the University (and that includes State Col lege and the Woman's College) he has be come loved" himself, by students, facility, trustees, alumni and all those who know him and his part in. this school. We know of no one whose devotion to the University is greater or for whom admiration is so uni versal. " The trustees are to be congratulated on their appointment of Mr. Friday. And stu dents, particularly, for whom he has bridged the student-administration gap so well, will be pleased to hear of his new honor and new job. Honor To The Teachers There are more teachers than researchers among tlu Kenan professors created yester day by the trustees. We are not. of course, running down the (riiiiai in ti i DCu tin iiieii ill .i sity, but it has always seemed to us that pro lessors whose first love is the classroom were not getting their proper honors. A glance a-the list of ten outstanding fac ulty members named Kenan professors yes terday will demonstrate that things are (hanging a majority of them have won their greatest esteem through years of standing at maps and blackboards and teaching students the truths of the world. It is gratifying to see this base for the judgment of a professor's value emerge; the recommendation of these ten by the presi lent and the chancellor may help usher in a new dav of honor for the teacher. Weekend Like Those Of The Good Old Days The Death Of Halfway To Heaven Louis Kraar Caro- , WHAT IT" WAS, was a lina weekend. That's about the only way to describe the past weekend, which remind ed me more of the days before Saturday class es than any other. During those clays of no Saturday classes and the quarter system, Germans festivities would begin unoffici ally Thursday afternoon. By Fri day morning, classes were spar sely populated. And by late Sat urday night, the campus had pleasantly partied itself into ex haustion. With Louis Armstrong on Thursday night, the weekend seemed to get off to a prema ture, but potent, start. Sunday morning at about 1 a.m., the Mouza Cafe only eating place opened bustled with more stu dents than appeared in most Sat urday classes. Joseph Alsop NORTH TACHEN ISLAN D One of the casualties of the latest free world retreat in Asia is a place called Halfway to Heaven. Halfway to eHaven perches, or rather used to be perched, on the cratered summit of the high est peak of North Tachen Island, some 1,500 feet above the sur- , rounding, nourishing sea. It began a little more than a century ago, when the first har'sh impact of the modern world on ancient China produced the Tai ping rebellion, which in turn produced a fearful famine in Chekiang province. Fleeing the famine, a handiul of inhabitants of the Chekiang town of Wan Ling found a" safe refuge on this island crag and stayed to build a village, or rather two villages, for the lesser oi" the two adjoin ing craters contain Little Half way to Heaven, and the larger, Big Halfway to Heaven. For five generations, sons suc ceeded fathers, gradually clawing new terraces from the crater walls and naked mountainside for their plots of vegetables and sweet potatoes, gradually adding vessel to vessel in Halfway to Heaven's fleet of fishing sampans until there were 130 sampais owned among :he hundred fami lies of peak dwellers. - l! The bitter poverty of the 'origi nal refugees thus slowly gave way to a kind of crude prosperi ty. Long low houses of chinked stone, with finely carved, bold ly curved ridgepoles were BuO.t to cling to the crater sides. A little temple to the Taoist earth godlings gave the villagers ome one to pray to when, times were hard. The young men fished ail year. The elders, the children and the women tilled the ter races. Only One Wept With salt and cloth from th? Ug settlement on South Tachen Island, with the:r fish and sweei potatoes and vegetables, with a rare treat of meat from the pigs, chickens, rabbits and goats the also kept, the people of Halfvay to Heaven were not ill-content. But for a hundred years no out sider ever saw Halfway to Hea ven, except the people from Door cf the Wind Hill, the village on the other side of the crag, and the huge, superbly winged fish eagle that had his nest on tiie cliff below the village graves. Then President Eisenhower "unleashed Chiang Kai-shek" and the American government pres sured the Chinese Nationalist government into occupying the Tachens in force. So the soldiers Heaven. A score of men, young and old, stood around the table, their faces work hardened, their bl2ck peasants clothes worn, mak ing a picture fit to be painted by a Chinese Breughel in the yellow light of a guttering tallow candle came, baJ.-acks were built, and Hung read the mcvement order in halfwav to Heaven briefly tasted a brisk sing-song. Blast! Books: Why So Dear? A New Look An hour spent talking about student gov ernments with a visiting university admini strator yesterday reminded ns anew that Car olina students are practically unique in the extent ol their intelligent self-government. Here, we should take time now and then to remember, there is no hazing of fresh men, no beanies, no clipped hair. Here, there is no administration control over the student budget or censorship of stu dent publications or interference with the student courts. Here, no faculty member presides over dormitories or proc tors quizzes or counts the beers you drink in Rathskellar. Von can live where you please (if you're a male); you can drive a err; you can do, within reasonable limirs. anything you want to do." It is not so at all schools, or even at most schools, where writing, studying, beer drink nig, speaker-sponsoring, legislating, money spending, exam-prot toring and housing are under control of universitv officials. We are likely to take these hard-won ireedoms for granted. And that's the point'of this wandering little homily: Take a look at the comparative state of affairs in student government in other schools, and campus jxlitic.s and politicians, the preservers of this unusual liberty, -will begin to look better to VOtl. H1GHSPOT OF the Earl Bos tic concert Saturday afternoon was the boy who opened a Me morial H'll window from the outside, set his paper cup on the window sill, and climbed-into the auditorium. Wind rushed across the hall, and everyone shivered. The stu dent who had climbed in through the window turned to someone beside him and muttered: "Hey, shut that window. Do you want me to catch cold?" THE STUDENT Legislature, which last week so generously granted the campus two class free Saturdays each semester, fell into an old pitfall. The legislators passed their legislation then checked on its feasibility with the adminis tration. Class scheduling is strictly an academic matter. Thus, if stu dent politicians want to dole out free days, they should check with the proper academic au thorities first. Chances of .the campus actual ly getting the free days that the Legislature has called for are slim. The University has a cer tain quota of class days to meet, and the calendar is prepared far in advance to provide for holi days. But so near election time, it's not surprising for campus poli ticians to start granting the improbable. Paul T. Chase - The distribution of text books at this institution is a racket. It has long been a racket in the publishing world, where new editions overtake each other be fore their ink is dry for the sole purpose of killing the used book market. But publishing houses have never pretended to be education al or philanthropic agencies. Our University has, on occasion, made such pretence. This has not pre vented it from making the sale of texts to students a lucrative commercial enterprise. Where ever the profits go football, scholarships, dormitories they come from us. Whenever you buy a text you are giving a handout to some unknown recipient. Does it make you feel all warm inside? . At most otheri educational in stitutions a student can buy any book (not only texts) at a dis- count of from ten to forty per cent. How do we rate the privi lege of paying the full publish er's list price? The assignment of texts for classes 'is either a racket or gross stupidity Most classes require a deluxe, slick paper edition of a text costing from five to ten dollars. Many demand six or seven separate volumes for a single course. The existence of identical or comparable books in inexpensive paper format, or the possibility of slight alterations in course material in order to take advantage of such cheap ed itions, seems not to have been considered. Many professors are authors of the texts they assign; . this is fine. Most or these texts are ex pensive; this is not fine. The fate of used texts is a mystery. At the end of each se mester thousands of ; slightly worn texts are sold by relieved students for a fraction (never more than half) of their value. At the beginning of each semes ter these texts are V markedly conspicious by their absence from the shelves of the local book dis pensary. After the4' initial rush is over some of these bashful tomes make a : hesitant appear ance at prices higher thafi those we should be paying for new books. Ou sonti les livres "d'autre fo'lS? . -V:..V The plight "of the student who cannot afford to spend twenty or thirty dollars each semester for texts is a sad one indeed. It is of no apparent consequence to anyone but himself. He is the victim- of an economic conspir acy witting i or unwitting on the part of publishers, distribu tors, administrators, and profes sors. He cannot do a lot- to fight it. Those who can have refused to do so. Dept. of safe predictions: No thing will be done to extirpate the textbook racket at this University. an unfamiliar uneasy prosperity. And then again. President Eisen hower releashed Chiang Kai shek, and the American govern ment pressured the Chinese Na t:onalists into abandoning the Tachens;. and that was the end of Halfway to Heaven. In the Chinese way, the end came without undue lamentation The villagers talked it oevr and decided that what they had heard of communism from their fellow fisherfolk from the mainland as . ugly enough to justify a move. The governmenf said it would help. And so, on the afternoon before the move was to be made, ho one was weeping except the wife of the elder of the Leng -family. She was deaf and, could not read, and she wept because she had grasped that a move im pended but no one could tell her why or where. The elder of Leng, a little, old gnarled, toothless man like a weathered root, with what must really be the last queue on any Chinese head, was ignoring h:s weeping wife. He and the elder of Chu and the young men and boys of Little Halfway to Heaven were sitting in the pale, watery sun in the village center, while the women finished their packing. Yes, they said, they were leaving. Yes, it was hard to go, but they did not want to stay. They d swept the graves one last time, and now they were ready. It was the same in Big Halfway to Heaven, where is found the house of the place's richest man, Cheng who owned three whole sampans in the fleet that set to sail from the foot of Knife Black Mountain. He had enough capital stored up to open a rest aurant when the soldiers came, and his Chinese crullers and h t soya bean milk brought him in the magnificent cash profit of two dollars a day. But Cheng too was leaving without reluctance. As dusk fell, the village head man, Lo The Clever, came back from organizing the evaculation of all North Tachen Island Kwan Yins Village, Bare Rock, the East Village and the res which were all to be led by Lo. He had his aged mother to calm and his household to organize, for Lo The Clever is a widower. So he let his deputy, Hung Give the movement oiders to the chiefs of the "Sections" of fifty or sixty people into which the village, by immemorial Chinese custom, Is administratively divided. The meeting took place in tne uper room of the house of Liang, a big house, for the Liang clan, was the largest in Halfway to 'Atomic Energy? Sure, Just A Minute Now' Cfje ail) t2urc ftttl The official student publication of the Publi cations Board of the University of North Carolina, where It u published daily except Sunday, .... .In .sac u? ymvrrvy s ? f - X Monday and examina- X, 3 tion rnd vacation per- j ioas ana summer term?. Entered .s second class matter at the- post office in Chapel HU1. N. C, un der the Act of March 8, 1879. Subscription rates: mailed, $4 per fear, $2.50 a semester; delivered, $6 a year, $3.50 a semester. : .' v he h first (nvnicd ill rtowri ' ,i ttmutt y . S J t Editer CHARLES KURALT THE WEEKLY political col umns submitted by both campus parties should be interesting propaganda. So far I notice that the Stu dent Party has "thrown open the windows of the smoke-filled rooms in Graham Memorial." I hope none of them catch cold. IF CAROLINA males are any thing like those at Denver Uni versity, coeds should be wary of ever stealing a fraternity sym bol. A bunch of Alpha Chi Omega sorority girls from Denver were suspected with stealing the Kap pa Sigma emblem at that school. The fraternity held a "kangaroo court" and found the girls guil ty. The sentence was that e-ach girl had the symbol of the fra ternity painted on her forehead. After the "sentence had been car ried out on several of the girls, the stenciling got out of hand. Then an unidentified coed was stood on her head, and the sym bol was stenciled on her panties. AS A possible fee raise looms over University students heads, word comes from Texas that the legislature in the oil state is con sidering raising tuition at the University of Texas from $25 per semester to $50. Tuition for North Carolinians attending the University is $150 a semester, not including other fees and dorm rent. What Price Peace In The Far East? Ed Yoder ' In the not so ftfr-seeing view of U. S. warper -J has come when we rr.u-d f,,, runners, we .1 ock. Departure would be at nine the next morning. Each section lead er would be re-ponsible for his section. Each person would be al lowed to carry 100 pounds of personal belongings if he could manage that much. There were quick questions; How about bad weather at sea. from a weathsrwise fisherman: how about pregnant women, would they get medical care on the ships, from a young father roon to-be; and so on. Hung deit with the questions intelligently. And then everyone went home for a great feast of all the food thaf. could not be sold to the soldiers, was not worth carrying, and was no longer worth scrimping again st a poor season. Before dawn the nxt morning the young men of the village set off down the mountain de, each balancing two enormous packs on his back. At first L hed a little trouble forming Inc line to his taste ! Then the last shout was given. Little Liang marched proudly forward. Children shouldered the babies. Men and women, young cr old, hoisted up their heavy packs,. Even the old boundfeet grannies carried something. But none complained. And so the slow ly moving line wound its way up over the crater lip and down the long miles of fearfully curving fearfully mud slimed road to Yel low One Beach where the trans ports awaited them. An old nanny goat and her two kids, which had somehow escaped the pot, was being chased by two soldiers when the last of those who had made Halfway to Heaven s living breathing place of habita tion cast his last backward glance into the familiar hollow on the mountain summit. The greatfish eagle still magnificiently volpanet in the cloudy sky above. But the doorways of the houses were dark and deserted. The muddy lanes were strewn with the rubbish ol departure. Halfway to Heave a was dead killed by forces it did not understnd, utterly destroyed because it had been briefly swept, by what strange processes and changes, into vhe fearful vortex of great events Humanities And Human Understanding Dr. Harold W. Dodds (Dr. Dodds is president of Princeton University. The fol lowing assessment by him of the value of liberal arts in educa tion is reprinted from The Daily Pen nsy I vanian. Editor ) It is perspective the ability to see men and events, to see oneself in relationship to the ; sum of human experience which gives balance to a man and leads to his maturity. His maturity may lead to wisdom. Whether or not he is the rare one who does reach that serene plateau, it is clear that the first stage of the long journey is the gaining of perspective. Close study of history, philos ophy, religion, literature arid the arts expands and deepens a man's understanding of human nature in a way that individual experience alone cannot do. Ev ery man's personal experience is necessarily limited, by the cir cle of his personal friends, by the mentality of his vocation or pro fession, by the prejujdices of his class, his nation, his religion, by the climate of opinion of his par ticular historcal era. But through .human studies, anyone with intelligence and imagination is able to make his own the most- penetrating in sights of generations of thought ful and sensitive observers of man. The result is usually a startling sense of the range of human possibilities. One can not have become aware of a great novelist, a great painter, a great philosopher, scientist, mu sician or great statesman, wifti out an increased feeling for t.e potentialities of human nature. A realistic, deep-driving, but uncynical knowledge of the pos sibilities of human 'nature, both for good and for evil, is a rec ognized advantage in leadership of any sort ... It is in the Hu- ' majiities that thoughtful men have found reservoirs of com prehension and strength for a good many centuries. either, of two things in the F r East: We must continue to f. -. die dangerously close to .-.,. borders of Communist Chin:, :., run the risk of war; or we nu ; null stakes altogether, blow r; i whisle on the Seventh Fleet. 4 out, and "lose face." The warpath-runners, whr. . .-, -not limited to any partieuLr "V- SruP except the China L;.'- believe that the first choice is the only choic But the greatest threat of all is not burning ; that quarter of the woods. The greatest threat indeed, a warpath-running threat, but it is loc:.:.. : right at the flank of the nation where it could : . spontaneous harm: Not since peace came to !v- has war sentiment among the rank and file people been so sensitive to sudden change as r now. The reason is simple. Although the advent of ;b "total" nuclear weapons, the guided missiles changed the attitude of wise statesmen and sci entists towards war (and have even converted the fading old soldier. General MacArthur, to the be lief that war must be outlawed), the full imp; rt of the new attitude toward was has not reached the populace. The new concept of the values f war and peace contain a new ethical ingrident th,:! many do not understand. (In fact, you could be lieve from the present policy in China that m;ir.y national leaders do not understand.) The fickle shiffs in Communist policy never have soothed any nerves. Now Formosa and the sur rounding situation are seen as an old and iamiiiur show by the Moscow-Peiping Puppet theatre. s, the question arises: Why don't we throw i into the broad and hateful morass of Red China, show them once and for all what's what? Why kt the Chinese play with us again to their advan tage? So runs the sentiment of the warpath-runner-. Yet their questions run into one solid wall tlu; has existed since the first Khan got the idea oi Chinese conquest: How do you conquer a nation that lives a narrow existence on the land, crowded thousands to a square mile in some areas? Ilo.v do you conquer a nation that has so many m n under arms that slaughter becomes a matter of in difference? Why do you conquer a nation con trolled by your real enemy and inhabited only h.. people who were the forgivable victims of then own hunger and of the abuse of a regime of grat ers? All which boils down to this question: Why any war at all? If the United States must ow n a a obligation anywhere in the crucial area, it can only rightly be within the "j5.idical" boundaries outlined for the Fccmosan government .by the Japanese Peace Treaty. That area does not include islands off the Chinese mainland that a;-e no more distant from it than Wrightsville Beach is irie,i Wilmington, N. C. If we have geographical com mitments they are limited to Formosa itself and to the Pescadores. Our moral obligations, too. ste:vi first of all not to Chiang Kai-Shek but to the 3u -000 or so Chinese soldiers who refused to go -, ' to the Red government and are now garrisoned o:i Formosa. The broad truth behind the warpath-runnir.-r , scuiuiicut, jade ujl dii, jciutiis tu uuc luea .. lua uiai. t'cai.c 13 vuiupictc mil Vdild, Lilt? paWL-v peak from which no further excursion be vaMv;. The tenuous balance between Capitalism and ( on - S7 - mumsm, th peace that has included the furv Berlin air-lift, a Korean police action and rV Germany, is not real peace, sav the u..:. runners, o, they ask, why not begin to thr bombs and make it real peace? The fallarv ;5 4V.-, lliat peace never has be peace under terms of the warpath-runner ... rV'-'clme term, and it certainlv !.: been Nirvana at any time. In current language, peace ls the ah.tr. a global war that would demolish em!;-..:: Hobbes, the English philosopher, had a v unpopular phrase for it-Pcace at anv ; That maxim, scoffed at for centuries may" c, apply one of these days with a new'senou.. Reasonable action in the Formosa criM the warpath-runners call it what thev will price that can be paid
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Feb. 15, 1955, edition 1
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