Thursdiiy.'Nofer&ber 7, 1968
Page 2
THE DAILY TAB HEEL
tig OJar
James K. Glassman
' it
76 Yeori 0 Editorial Freedom
Wayne Hurder, Editor
Bill Staton, Business Manager
Williford-McMurray BiU
Offers Better Drug Policy,
Despite Its Bad Principle
Student legislature will consider
two bills tonight seting up a drug
policy for students.
Both bills give student courts
jurisdiction over drug cases, a major
change from last year's drug policy
which gave a special
Faculty-Administrative-Student
Judicial Board jurisdiction over
drug cases involving students.
In this way both bills are a major
advancement in the handling of
drug cases since it puts the right to
discipline students in the hands of
students, and not in the hands of
faculty members or the
Administration.
THE TWO bills differ, however,
in delineating the type cases that
can be tried by the courts.
The first bill, introduced by
Johnny Williford and John
McMurray for student body
president Ken Day, makes "illicit
possession andor transfer of
drugs ... an offense against the
Student Body."
The second bill, introduced by
Charlie Jeffress, makes it an offense
against the student body to sell to
another student those drugs that
are illegal or ban be obtained by
prescription only; to solicit persons
to sell such drugs; or to administer'
to a student without his knowledge
such drugs.
Under Jeffress' bill students
cannot be punished by student
courts for possession of such drugs;
under the Williford-McMurray bill
they can be tried by student courts
for possession of illicit drugs.
OF THESE two bills that
student legislature will consider we
believe the Williford-McMyrray bill
the superior one and hope that
student legislators will pass it or
make sufficient amendments in
Jeffress' bill to make it better.
Considering the principles
involved we think the Jeffress bill is
the better one. We do not think the
University community should
punish students for drug possession
or transfer as long as their are civil
laws limiting such behavior.
The Williford-McMurray bill
states that "illegal possession and
transfer of drugs is of sufficient
detriment to the university
community to warrant special
social regulation." We cannot
subscribe to that statement at all.
We believe that the state and
federal government have adequate
regulations concerning possession
and transfer.
The Jeffress bill, unfortunately,
also violates the principle of double
jeopardy, "however, when it requires
that persons alleged to have been
involved in the transfer of drugs be
tried in student courts.
Thus, in the matter of principle
involved, the Jeffress bill is only a
'4
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Batting .667
For all you students who were
disenchanted with the three
presidential candidates, look at it
this way: two out of three lost, and
that's not a bad record in anyone's
league.
.W.V.'
v.v.v
Dale Gibson, Managing Editor
Rebel Good, News Editor
Joe Sanders, Features Editor
Owen Davis, Sports Editor
Scott Goodfellow, Associate Ed i to
Kermit Buckner, Jr., Advertising Manager
little better.
HOWEVER, where the
Williford-McMurray bill excels the
Jeffress one, is in its exactness and
its prescription of the role of the
advisor.
The Williford-McMurray bill
makes it clear what the student
court is to consider when trying a
student ("amount of drugs in
possession, the nature of drugs
involved, and the intent of the
individual concerned"); makes it
clear , what the maximum
punishment can be on the first
offense, and makes it clear what
rights the students have in the
student courts.
In addition, and very
importantly, the bill establishes
that resident advisors "should in no
way be transformed into an
investigative agency ferreting out
violations of the law, including
illicit drugs."
It specifies that "the advisory
function is oriented toward positive
relationships and constructive
advising and must 'riot 'be bither
encumbered or imperiled by a
police role."
The Jeffress bill, while exact in
delineating what is to be considered
an offense against the student body,
doesn't consider side issues like the
role of resident advisors or the
rights of the students in the court.
It is because of this superiority
in the clarity of the
Williford-McMurray bill that we
support it over the Jeffress bill.
It is in no way because we
subscribe to the principle' that
student courts should try students
for possession or transfer of drugs
even though federal and state laws
cover such instances.
IN FACT, we are disappointed
that the only bills legislature gets to
consider both put the student in a
position of double jeopardy at
some point, whether it be at the
point of possession, as with the
Williford bill, or at the ooint of
transfer, as with the Jeffress bill.
We agree with the American
Association of University
Professor's statement on the
"Rights and Freedoms of Students"
that states that "students who
violate the law may incur penalties
prescribed by civil authorities, but
institutional authority should never
be used merely to duplicate the
function of general laws."
Both these bills coming before
legislature "duplicate the function
of general laws." We think it is bad
that this should be allowed by
student legislature. However, if it is
to occur, we want that bill which
will afford students the most
protection through the specificity
of its wording. In this case it is the
Williford-McMurray bill.
Objectivity9 Is A Bandy
6
These are large thoughts Jura reporter to
hare. Reporters lire happily rcmored
from themselves. They hare eyes to see,
ears to hear, and fingers for the note in
their report. It was as if the drink he took
in now mored him millimeter from one
hat into another. He would be driven yet
to participate or keep the shame in his
liver the last place to store such
emotion!
Norman Mailer, "Miami Beach and Chicago'
These things happen to a reporter the
rage to participate in the events he is
writing about and in the writing itself is
sometimes hard to overcome. And when
it is overcome, the aftertaste often is
shame.
Reporters, for the most part, live very
clean lives. Their job is to perceive but
not to feel, to write but not to exist in
the writing. It is only a severe trauma that
makes them break the cast.
For me that trauma came a year ago
this month when I went to Washington to
cover the Pentagon March for this paper
and another. My sympathy was with the
demonstrators that was well-established
in my mind long before I went, and I felt
no guilt about it. I was sure that I could
still report the story accurately simply by
making myself into a reporter a quick
metamorphosis from man to journalist,
done every day. I had also established a
rationale for covering the march but not
marching it was the role I could play
best in this revoluntionary movement.
But I was caught in the rush of events,
pulled along by the strength of those
people and what they were talking about,
and finally moved to anger by what the
soldiers were doing with their tear gas and
clubs. At one point, I started screaming,
nearly hysterical, at the soldiers to stop
what they were doing. I wanted to rip off
my press badge and join the
demonstrators, but I didn't. I felt sick
TUVA) P.'
Sc. lioar 1 1
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The resV us
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Mike Cozza
Sew D:
In their efforts to establish a drug
policy which will not precipitate a
confrontation with the university
administration, several student
representatives may be throwing the best
interests of their constituents to the
wolves.
The representatives are Student Body
President Ken Day and student legislators
John McMurray and John Williford. The
case-in-point is the drug policy
introduced by the trio in Student
Legislature last Thursday night.
If that bill passes through committee
and is approved by the legislature tonight,
the possession and transfer of any illegal
drugs will constitute an offense against
the student body, and the offenders will
be tried in both student and civil courts.
Drugs defined as offensive are any and all
now illegal under state and federal law.
Although Day, McMurray and
Williford have good intentions, their bill
is one of unwarranted harshness and
represents a step in the wrong direction
for student rights.
The most frequently voiced criticism
of the proposed bill is its functional
double jeopardy.
The bill's supporters counter this
charge with the assertion that double
jeopardy being tried twice by the same
court or by two courts with equal
jurisdiction does not apply here because
student and civil courts have separate
jurisdictions.
and useless, watching and not acting. I
did not know why 1 could not act. It was
probably fear. I thought, and then I
realized that I was coming face-to-face for
the first time with some of the same
conflicts that my friends were feeling,
conflicts I had been sheltered ftom by my
role as reporter.
It seemed almost as a purging action
that the next week 1 sat in against Dow in
Mallinckrodt, making it clear to my
editor (and myself) before I went in that
I was no longer a journalist that day.
Chicago Began
For most of the press the trauma of
self-discovery that I felt at the Pentagon
happened last summer in Chicago.
Journalists got angry when they saw the
cops beating kids (and beating other
journalists). Some of them were moved to
action, but nearly all must have felt the
same uselessness at their inaction as 1 did
in Washington.
The most important thing reporters
learned at Chicago was simply that they
had these feelings, even in the line of
duty. It was this realization that was the
real trauma for them. They realized that
their dispatches from Chicago " were
somehow tainted by their anger at the
Chicago cops.
From there the possibilities were
staggering. "If I feel anger," the reporter
says, "perhaps I also feel other emotions
when I am writing a story, perhaps I am
actually involved in the stories 1 am
writing, perhaps I am not objective!"
Objectivity has always been a strange
idea. It demands the separation of the
man from the event, even though the man
is writing about the event from his own
head with his own hands. Objectivity
means that the reporter writes an event
"the way it happened" not the way the
reporter saw and smelled and felt it
picture
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Murray
Pro
Reeks Strongly
WThile this is technically correct, the
bill does, however, violate the spirit of
the concept. That spirit takes into
consideration the unfairness of going
through two trials and being given
separate penalties by each court.
Far from discouraging this practice,
the Day-McMurray-Williford policy sets
up the mechanism for imposing it.
Second, there is a glaring ambiguity in
the bill which leaves far too much
punitive discretion to the student courts.
The bill urges that the courts "give
consideration" to the amount and nature
of the drugs and to the intent of the user,
but it does not establish any guidelines to
guarantee this consideration.
This is not adequate. Too often
student courts do not act with the true
interests of the accused at heart. This is
the result of several inherent flaws in the
system:
1) Trials are held behind closed doors
and all records are kept secret. 2) Defense
counsels work for the staff of the
prosecutor. 3) An elected panel of
politicoes which hears all- cases is not a
court of peers. 4) Court members may
n0t possess sufficient interest or
knowledge to make fair judgements in
complex cases such as those involving
drugs.
Day, McMurray, and Williford hope
the courts will transcend these limitations
and rule with equity, but cases in the past
leave much room for doubt.
Third, there is a basic question of
philosophy in initiating an anti-drug
policy which, by almost unanimous
3pf
rag
happen. But because the reporter is one
man writing, not a machine spewing data,
"the way it happened" and the way the
reporter perceived it happening must be
the same thing.
Journalism has invented conventions
to protect this myth of objectivity.
Things like pyramid style, the absence of
modifiers, the elimination of the
first-person are used to separate the
reporter from the story he is writing in
much the same way as he is separated by
his role from the event itself.
Chicago should have been the coup de
grace to the myth of objectivity, but
unfortunately, instead of being liberated
by their discovery, many journalists felt
pushed in just the opposite direction.
Joseph Kraft wrote in his syndicated
column the week after the convention:
". . . What about those of us in the
press and other media? Are we merely
neutral observers, seekers after truth in
the public interest? Or do we, as the
supporters of Mayor Richard Daley and
his Chicago police have charged, have a
prejudice of our own?"
Kraft believes the press is out of touch
with what he calls "Middle America," the
mass of citizens who believed that Daley
was right in ordering the demonstrators
beaten. He concludes by questioning the
privileges that the press has always
assumed:
". . . those of us in the media would be
wise to exercise a certain caution, a
prudent restraint in pressing for a plenary
indulgence to be in all places at all times
as the agents of the sovereign public."
Kraft is willing to admit that he has
feelings on violence, but he is so scared
that they are out of touch with those of
Middle America that he dare not show
them on paper. To Kraft, the legitimacy
of reporting has become a function of the
opinions of Middle America. Showing
.
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Of No Thought
admission, will be little more than
anti-marijuana in practice.
The whole policy is built around the
stated assumption that possession and
transfer of any illegal drug in any amount
is "of sufficient detriment to the
university community to warrant special
social regulation by the members of that
community." And interpretation has
been given that use, because it constitutes
possession in most cases, will also
constitute an offense if a student
caught in the act.
The whole line of reasoning
is
is
questionable at best. One guv sitting in
his room puffing one joint of marijuana is
not a detriment to the community.
Supporters of the bill defend against
this argument by saying they agree with
it, that the policy is really aimed at
pushers and dealers, not against that one
guy with a joint.
Yet the defenders have doggedly
refused to write adequate safeguards into
the legislation. Their refusal to move in
that direction must leave their defense
open to a large amount of skepticism.
And finally there 'is the over-riding
question of the university's place in
society.
Supposedly we on this campus are
better education and more receptive to
new evidence and changing viewpoints
than society as a whole. As such we
should be willing to encourage social
progress, not stand in its way.
Slogan
your feelings is all right, he seems to say,
so long as those feelings are consensus
feelings too.
Kraft's reaction to the yttss's anger in
Chicago is shame. As a journalist schooled
in the myth of objectivity, he seems to
feel guilty after showing his feelings. And
justifies "his action by turning to still
another meaningless journalistic
cliche that the reporter is the "agent of
the sovereign public."
Justifications like that are
unnecessary'- A journalist is a man writing
about events. He does not have to
develop medians of fairness; he only has
to convince himself that what he is
writing is true. That is a very hard thing
to do, and that is enough.
Mailer At Ease
No journalist seems to be more at ease
in justifying his writing than Norman
Mailer. Mailer shows us the event by
showing us how he reacts to the event.
This style of personal reporting cannot be
applied to all journalism, of course, but it
is at least the direction that journalism
should move now that objectivity has
been exposed at Chicago.
There is an important prerequisite for
any journalist who is showing us his
feelings about an event-he must
understand those feelings sufficiently to
tell us where they come from and where
they are going.
In the current (November) issue of
Harper's Mailer deals with himself and
with politics brilliantly in a 90-page piece
on the conventions, Miami Beach and
Chicago, which could serve as a model for
journalists who are wondering where to
go now that the protection of objectivity
has been stripped away.
What Mailer feels most of all is fear,
simply fear of being arrested or beaten
and not being able to write his story to
meet Harper's deadline. Then another
layer is peeled off:
"And then with another fear,
conservative was this fear, he (Mailer)
looked into his reluctance to lose even
the . America he had had, that insane
war-mo ngering technology with its smog,
its superhighways, its experts and its
profound dishonesty he was tired of
hearing of Negro rights and Black
Power every Black riot was washing him
loose with the. rest, pushing him to that
point where he would have to throw his
vote in with revolution wrhat a tedious
perspective of prisons and law courts and
worse . . . No, exile would be better. Yet
he loathed the thought of living anywhere
but America he was too American by
now; he did not wish to walk down
foreign streets and think with imperfect
nostalgia of dirty grease on groovy
hamburgers, not when he didn't even eat
them here."
Like the university and most othtr
non-governmental institutions in this
country, the press is undergoing the
turmoil of self-analysis. The result can be
the hopelessness of Kraft or the joy of
Mailer. In the prying loose, something
very fine may appear but only if the
journalist remembers that he is a man
with feelings (all the time, even on duty),
and that those feelings are some of the
most important things he can write
about.
If state and federal laws on marijuana
are too harsh-and most of us admit they
are-we should initiate a forward-looking
policy, not one which accepts" society's
conservative standards and subjects
students to further penalties than those
now in effect.
If the Day-McMurray-Williford policy
si,n?finf KUt f ""nmittee vvitLut
significant changes (and its chances are
ComminlCaT WiUiford is dicial
Committee chairman and McMurray is
sSfdpnM wSt influential members),
Student Legislature should strike it down!
The time has come to take a lone hard
look at student rights and consider new
diction for the future. The bUl
discussed in this column does neither.
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