Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / March 5, 1970, edition 1 / Page 2
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Page Two (1 Jp&ilg (Mr t 7S Years nf Editorial Freedom John Amir o Answers. More one Press ileph JL r ree Visitation Policy Retarded By Administrative Power The visitation question epitomizes the one-sided power struggle within the University. Last week, the Student Legislature passed a bill asking for a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week . policy. On Tuesday, Student . Body President Alan Albright called for a student referendum, to be held in March, on "the type of visitation policy needed next year." And also on Tuesday, Dean of Men James O. Cansler termed the legislature's policy, "only a recommendation or a request," and said he has "no sympathy for those requesting 2 4-hour , seven-day-a-week visitation." In addition, on Monday the Committee on University Residential Life rejected a proposal that : they recommend to the chancellor a liberalized open house policy for Project Hinton. What is involved is a matter of power. The students want visitation on a realistic basis which resembles the real world out there. They want to be able to decide, for themselves, how they are going to run their lives. The Student Legislature feels that each house or college should be able to determine its own policy. Th-if irlnri i m 1nr-Httpr thsrrr the - .t , . , J7, o permit each student to decide tor- 111 I S III -TS: Itll I II Mill W Ktaiitiii aum. himself, which would be the ideal way to do things. But , significantly. Student Legislature and the student body president have responded to the needs and desires of the students. But, and it's an important "but," neither party has any real power. The administration does have the power, and the administration hasn't responded to the needs and desires of the students. The administration has to deal with the trustees and the state, and neither New Thought On Advisors Crosses Cansler Doctrine It is the time of year when the Dean of Men's Office entertains applications for the resident advisor program. Consequently, the question is again raised as to the role of the RA. Earlier in the year. Dean of Men James O. Cansler established the controversial Cansler Doctrine which held the RA's must be disciplinarians as well as advisors. Cansler established the policy after he had fired an RA for not enforcing the visitation policy. Both events-the firing of the RA and the establishment of the Cansler Doctrine-raised questions amont the RA's and the students as to what exactly the role of the RA ought to be. Cansler, however, stuck to his belief that the RA should be the long . arm of the administration. On Tuesday Associate Dean of Men Fred Schroeder said, "It is not the job of the RA to be a policeman: He is there to be an advisor." That is an interesting statement, for two reasons. First, Schroeder is Cansler's assistant. And that he has made this statement creates an inconsistency as to . the policy of the Dean of Men's Office. Second, Schroeder made the: statement at a time when the Dean of Men's Office is looking for applicants for the RA program for next year. It is not realistic, to expect that because Schroeder says he feels one Todd Co Ken Editor Hsrry Bryan Lsura White Bobby Newell Mary Burch Art Charisky f.'aagg Editor ?-ie.r5 Ed?or Associate Editor Arts Editor Sports Editor Bob Wilson Frank Stewart Business Manager Advertising Manager Sandra Saunders Night Editor this issue of those groups can be counted on for very liberal, progressive ideas. Consequently, the administration bends to the desires of the trustees and the state. Cansler's statement Tuesday is a good example. He does not think that because the students want something, it is necessarily a good idea. That is the case especially when the feelings of the students is in conflict with the feelings of the powers that be. Cansler is not necessarily a puppet of the trustees or the state. Which is nevertheless unfortunate. He is merely a rather conservative administrator in a position which calls for creative, progressive ideas and policies. ' . The Committee on University Residential Life (CURL), comprised of faculty members and administrators, behaves in basically the same way as Cansler. Although CURL has submitted some .liberal recommendations in the past, its recent refusal to accept Project Hinton's visitation request, as well as its now infamous decision to require students to live on campus an extra year; bespeak its basically cpnsecvativevay of bending to the. of" the administration. TTfOstecs, and' "state rather than to' , - , - the'students: What is involved in the whole visitation question, then, is power. The students have little or no power. The administration, t ru stees, and state do. Consequently,- the students are going to have a hard time establishing the kind of life at the University which reflects the world as it is outside South Building and Steele Building and all those other retarded bastions of university administration. way about the RA program, Cansler is going to change his mind. Consequently, any applicant for the position of Resident Advisor ought to think twice about whether he wants to be a disciplinarian. It is of course possible that precisely those students who enjoy the role of disciplinarian are going to apply for the jobs anyway. But we hope that the students who take part in this program are going to" be sure that someone in the Dean's office makes it quite clear exactly what a resident advisor is supposed to be-advisor, or cop. Voice Forum Three rather articulate writer activists will take part today and tomorrow in the Village Voice Forum, sponsored by the Y. the Union, and the campus ministers. Jack Newfield, Paul Cowan and Geoffrey Cowan, three writers for the Voice, are going to hold a panel discussion tonight at 8 in the Great Hail of the Union and talk about "American Politics and Journalism in the '70s." The three writers have seen politics from the viewpoint of the journalist, and they should have some interesting, although perhaps depressing, things to say about that rather repulsive but sometimes obsessive American pastime. The Comrr.itte for a Free Press finallv fourd j! voice. For a while it looked like thev were going to try and wait things out. but two articles and the threat of a third apparently convinced them otherwise. The Committee had good reason for its reluctance to appear in print. Haw embarrassing to accept space in a paper .which if-we trust the Committee's most recent letters to the editor stifles a!! views but its ovn. More significantly, admission that an attack in the Tar Heel must be answered is also a tacit admission of the paper's eentrality to campus life. But my "store of invective" was a powerful persuader, and we're talking to one another. I'm glad of that, and glad, too, ihat the Committee managed to find enough rational argument concealed in that terrible invective "as took a tolerably .long, well thought-out, collective effort to consider. The student body deserves nothing less. The Committee was admirable in its restraint and conviction: but neither of these qualities replaces cogent organization. I'm going to consider each of the Committee's arguments in the framework of a rational debate. If the Free Press objects and offers an alternate organization, I'll hear them out. Only, now that we've agreed to argue issues, let's give the reader a chance to strip off the. blatant appeals to emotion and prejudice let him evaluate the merit of the logic without hindrance. Early last semester Free Press started lodging its "fundamental objection to the status quo" the Tar Heel's funding. Let us recognize that the "status quo" resembles a man on trial: innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. In debate terms, the status quo has the convenience of existing. One who contends for a fundamental change in the status quo must argue conclusively on four points he must prove: 1. That there is an evil inherent in the status quo which a fundamental change, and no mere reformation, of the status quo can alter; ' 2. That this evil is unquestionably worth the trouble of altering the nature of the status quo; 3. That he has a plan which does alter the status quo and which satisfactorily abolishes the evil in question; and, 4. Tlwt his plan does not entail new evils as bad as the old. If a debater fails to prove each of these contentions, his case is lost. If your father gave yout,Volkswagon and you complain that it hasn't enough luggage space, and yet it can pull a small frailer 'which will carry all you need or you never go any place and have no luggage or you want your new car to be a Triumph-or neither you nor your father can possibly pay for a new car then you might as well learn to be happy in a Volks. Each of the Free Press's objections meanders over so broad a terrain that classification is by no means easy. I'll start with the main thrust of the Bobby iVowell Save Project Hinton The Hope For We hear a lot of gripes today about the lack of alternatives to the traditional educational process. Certainly we have all had to take courses at this university, When we had ?st in those courses. We have also entered courses with a great deal of enthusiasm for the subject only to have our J expectations gunned Jdown by the rigidity of the course structure, which allowrs for little free-lancing. Outside the academic community, life is also staid and restrictive for the dormitory student. He is forced to live in an atmpshpere virtually lifeless of activities a major failure of the residence college system. He has to endure social regulations insulting to both his mental and physical maturity (much more so for women than men). These misfortunes are the consequences of a solidly centralized educational approach. The traditional mass education concept has too long gone unchallenged. Now it is time for change. The administration does not have to look very far for some answers. Right under its nose (or its foot, as it were), the Hinton James-based Project Hinton has this year provided a viable 9et of alternatives to the presently stifling universal living-learning environment. Yet too few people know what is going on in Project Hinton. And the fate of this innovative experiment has not yet been determined. The project was bom last April, swathed in anonymity. The university, originally reluctant to allow the experiment, left to a handful of students the job of publicizing the project. It was a difficult task, and the response to the school's first coeducational arrangement was less than anticipated. However, the project has made a "substantial" gain in enrollment this semester after the successes of the fall term. (There are now 85 men and 60 women, occupying the ninth and tenth floors of James.) What are the inducraents for participation in Project Hinton? . Project members are aglow with what thev call "the most exciting courses in committee's column of March 3. "It is wrong." we hear, "to force people to pay for a new spaper with which thev disagree or whose services they do not desire." This objection falls in the first and second categories I established above. It's called a "moral" objection, as -if the designation somehow raised it above the everyday problems of student democracy. But let us consider the Committee's consistency: "If the Tar Heel claims our compulsory fees because it is a campus service, fine let it regress to just that: a bulletin board for campus news. There is no moral injustice in that." Strange, that campus services must be regressive! But still, what of the student who's not interested in campus news doesn't even want a bulletin? Even if there's only one student, is this objection any less moral for being his alone? Fortunately, Gary Fagg helps out of our dilemma. He asserts. Feb. 21. that "funds received (from SG) by ... groups or projects should be proportional to the size of the group and its value to the entire student body." Student government has no business, he added, funding anything which "doesn't directly benefit the student body." Concerning visitation, Fagg and his runningmate Phil Rast concurred: a popular vote on each dorm floor to . determine the policy. Yet, no one is forced to read the DTH or hindered from buying another paper. How different your position if your floor votes no visitation and you disagree! This "moral" assertion is backed by the contention that the Tar Heel is exactly analogous to the Wall Street Journal a point to be proved. It would be one thing if the Journal were subsidized by the federal government. But to compare the federal government with student government is rather flippant. The student body its constitution shot full of holes by the University administration, camp used an extra year, lacking adequate parking, soon to be without a food service the student body ought to be well aware of its position even if the Committee is not. As a kind of addendum, Free Press adds two instances of the evils of the status quo: the Tar Heel's "lackadaisical attitude toward the Campus Calendar" and its news distortion. The first was a heinous oversight, and I join with the Committee in demanding , that Todd Cohen apologize for it and guarantee that it will hot happen again during the last month of his editorship. As for news distortion this must be proved, and not just on one occasion and not just during the present editorship. It must be shown as characteristic of the current method of funding the Tar Heel. And while the Committee is at it, it ought also to prove that a paper "financed by the free choice of its readership" will "broaden its coverage" and not, rather, the university," taught by Hinton faculty fellows in the dorm. The students decided last fall what courses they wished to take, who they wanted as instructors, what books to use, and what direction the course would take. Among the "experimental" courses offered which received full university credits as electives have been education, political science, sociology course on sex relations, and English courses in "Alienation" and "The Utopian Community." Students react favorably to the informality of the class situation they find it stimulating to have a course taught where they live, rather than having "to go to campus and sit in a sterile classroom." "You get to know your profs and fellow students like never before," explains one Project Hinton member. "You know them first as people; the student-teacher relationship takes a back seat." T Hintonians report they feel more at Letter to the Editor Z What To Be To the Editor: Contrary to Mr. Teasley's review of "Z" in the DTH February' 24, most people leaving the theater did not depart "with a 'well-that's-the-way-it-goes smirk." This was one of several unacceptable assertions in what was basicly a very good analysis. Had it been "fantasy disguised as truth" as Mr. Teasley said, I doubt if the film would have provoked the comment it has. If the film had been subersive, as the reviewer said it should have been, it probably would have attracted only a few sympathizers to Murphy Hall. As it was, thousands are seeing it all over America and asking questions. They are asking questions about the nature of the Greek regime and America's role in fostering its existence and continued political oppression. Moreover, the similarities between the events in the film and recent American history is also disturbing. Mr. Teasley's analysis of this aspect of the film was excellent. contract k u suit the whm: of it constant supporters or advertisers. What ui be Committee can not pane that the evils ot the Tar Heel are significant enough to merit its dissolution, or that they are in any real way connected with the papers funding. A new editor could cure a". As for the mora! issue, the Committer seems unable to come to crips with it. The Committee states the issue, but soon contradicts itself; Phi! Rast and Gary Fagg contradict it; and finally, the Committee's persistence in seeing the Tar Heel as a paper just like the Wall Street Journal convicts it of a species of intellectual silliness requiring little comment. But it's when we get to the Committee's solution for its nonexistent problem that we get to the heart of the contradictions. The Committee claims that it "does not seek to end (the) DTH. This (assertion) has been a scare tactic." But. let's be candid. Go back a little and you hear the Committee pointing out that "the argument analogizing Student Fees to taxes is specious . . . the Tar Heel can be purchased on a per-user basis." We've already considered the "moral" issue involved. But another side of the reasoning here is that admission to the Union can be purchased on a per-user basis, too just like a toll-road. But even if the Union were open by admission, it needed capital to be built. Materials and labor are not to be ease in discussions with familiar people, and that they regard the instructor as a fellow student as well as a source of knowledge. They would like to see further liberalization of courses the control of credits, for example, should be with the Project Hinton Fellows for the courses they teach. Such a method would help break the "absolute power" of academic departments, removing the limitations within which a course may operate (i.e., not exclusively English, History, or Sociology, but a combination of the three if the students desired it). In addition, the Project members have been delving into the educational units of the future encounter groups and mini-"sensitivity labs." There are weekly rap sessions with noted university faculty (Dr. Sam Hill of Religion, And Dr. Lewis Lipsitz of Political Science) and special guests (Village Voice Assistant Editor Jack Newfield). In many other ways, Project Hinton Is Done ? The essentials of the film were true. The assination, the blow on the head, the police complicty, the secret right wing group, the indictment of leading officers and their rehabilitation is all true. Indeed the Film was a virtual reenactment of history. While many European governments have put strong pressure on the regime to reform, the Nixon administration has doubled their military aid to almost S3 million a month. Urged on by this increased confidence the junta continues to extend its grip over the people, especially students. Liberties are not 1 systematically eroded. As such, the question we face is not whether "Z" represented truth of fantasy, for that question has already been answered and is unimportant anyway. Rather the question we face is what is to be done? Dan Moss, Jr. 203 East Rosemary ( nl i if- V0"tre i uxin. - ..... , Ofr.y xl i The Tar Hev! nr a "-.ohir.rardy supr rt.d" par probably rxed i:s own print m: more paid reporters, some haex:;-, firs: few rocky months. Where come from? When van transplant a h someone, you don't take n: t the Cot and then wait an hour to hell do. If Free Press had rea concerned about news on thrs c. O.'f x e fert v doubtless could have o! constructive proposal. Instead. a in the Referendum wilt bo ru ths absolute, final relative. Passage of the Referendum u ,:; probably cut off the Tar Heel for ; . The Committee's pious ast:rame v., ;u revive it. One of the members of the Free IV-v Committee perhaps unwittingly put f ! problem, as they see it, in its real ! h: Bitterly, in a letter to the editor. -!. exclaimed that the editorial pa:e of !h, Tar Heel leaned "left, far left, neu kn. and radical left." If you believe this and believe that the only way to correct the situation is to snuff out the paper entirely, then sure'v you must join with the Committee :n voting Yes. , Despair could not be more certain. 1 !iG.U. You OfWA i Innovation offers more than the usual dorm fare. It boasts its own library and kitchen suite. There are regularly planned activities: the members dine together once a week and recently enjoyed a "work- play" retreat in Reidsville. Then, too, there is the attraction of closer contact between the sexes. The administration recently balked, however, at granting Project Hinton a 24-hour visitation policy an indication that the university does not consider the experiment to be that unique. As previously stated, no announcement has been made about the future of Project Hinton next year. There have been questions about the cost of maintaining the experiment. Morrison Dorm will likely be coeducational next year a social stride forward for UN C but it will have none of the educational innovation of Project Hinton. "Big Mo" will continue to be only a living unit. The university should recognize the values of Project Hinton, which has demonstrated the advantages of pluralism in course studies. It has a responsibility to offer students alternatives both to the traditional educational processes and to the dehumanizing dormitory existence. The universal approach to education simply won't work for everyone. Project Hinton should be applauded and continued. Ifanything.it should be expanded. A. The Daily' Tar He?l is published by the University of North Carolina Student Publication's Board, daily except Monday, examination periods and vacations and during summer periods. Offices are at the Studant Union B?dg.. Univ. of Nrth Caoli-ia. Chapel Hil!. N.C. 27514. Telephone numbers: editorial, sports, new s-9 3 3-1 Oil; business, circulation, advertising-933-llG3. Address: Carolina Union. Char,! IKII.N.C. 27514. S -cord class post: 'e p.. id : t U.S. Poit Office in Chap. f Hill, N.C. urchjM d w i:h ) ; . !
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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March 5, 1970, edition 1
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