The Tar Heel Thursday. July 17, 19861
Aspiring Schweitzeirs beware
Students approach college with the highest
of ambitions set against a knawing insecurity
over their ability to compete socially and
academically once they arrive. Ambition and
insecurity should be simply set aside by new
students now it's party time.
Freshman should note that their first semester
will be the worst, and in some cases, the last
of their academic careers. Students thrust into
the cornucopia of of unbridled drink, drugs, sex
and raucous and riotous behavior with no
parental, or any other, restraint will learn more
in that semester than in all their previous years.
College is the place where the secrets of the
universe are taught while we learn how to party.
What is learned outside the classroom, especially
about ourselves, is probably more relevant, but
like all life's lessons, we have to fail in order
to succeed. Chapel Hill is a proving ground for
ourselves, and some of the lessons come hard.
Lesson one is how to study for the first quiz,
and still go to the pledge meeting, to He's Not
to meet Muffy and Buffy before the late-night
someone told -you about during your 10 a.mT
class (the lesson about the 8 a.m. class has
already been learned drop it). The answer
is clear; nobody else is studying for the quiz
they're all downtown. The quiz is a moot
point anyway, when it comes down to tabulating
the final grades the professor, being a reasonable
person, will simply fail the bottom 5 percent
the people who lacked the party stamina to
even take the quiz, let alone study for it. Then
if you beat out the remaining bottom 10 percent,
your party compatriates, probably Muffy and
Buffy, then you are a shoe-in for a C. Any
ambition for a higher grade should have been
cancelled when you entered this den of iniquity.
Don't worry about Mom and Dad. They went
to college, they're reasonable people. "Mom, it's
a readjustment period" is enough to explain
away a 2.0 average. Any parent is happy enough
not to see their worst fears realized ("Student
embarrasses university and state in naked hazing
incident") to accept an inaugural performance
slightly below standard.
One must bear in mind that the real excuse
for your grades is that you were having the time
of your life with 20,000 of your closest friends,
and absolutly no one missed Biffs party. The
hardest lesson that can be learned at UNC is
also the most final. Imagine yourself waking up
after a 12-week binge, and going home to find
a note from the registrar telling you are not
invited to Biffs next party, or anyone else's. You
have been disinvited to UNC. If you thought
it was hard to get in, youH be amazed at how
skeptically Admissions treats your readmittance.
Nobody will take a roll in any of your classes,
no one will ask where you were, no one will
call your mom, no one will ever see your
homework; nobody cares, you are an adult
it's up to you.
Someone will ask you to smoke a joint with
them, or to drink gallons of beer with them,
or invite you up to herhis place, or invite you
to blow off the next month of classes to follow
Lthe GratefulXead. But if you accept all of these
invitations, there is a strong likelihood that you
won't get the invite that counts. A 2.0 from the
registrar and an RSVP in the form of your
tuition bill that entitles you to accept or decline
all the invitations for the next four years.
If your ambition to be the next Albert
Schweitzer isn't dashed on your first night here,
great you are to be commended. Keep it up,
but don't strain yourself, just look around at
who you are competing against. There is much
to be learned here, you will learn from some
great minds. v .
The greatest thing about coming to college
is you are new to everybody you meet; you have
no history so you can become a totally new
person. If the folks back at the old school
regarded you as a brain, a geek, a druggie or
didn't think much about you at all, it makes
no difference now. The way you present yourself
from the first day on is who you will be from
then on, so that, too, is entirely up to you.
'rjzKflzff''K JUSTICE - pt - O
Otyr afar Mnl
Jo Fleischer, Jill Gerber co-editors
John deVille photography editor
Scott Greig city editor
Tracy Hill news editor
Eddy Landreth sports editor
Michelle Tenhengel arts editor
Staff
Christopher Baroudi, Mike Berardino, Chip Beverung, Bonnie
Bishop, James Burnis, Catherine Cowan, Ruth Davis, Jean Dobbs,
David Foster, Nancy Harrington, Bill Logan, Matt Long, Dwight
Martin, Terri Norman, Randall Patterson, Sally Pearsall, Wendy
Stringfellow, Julia White and Katie White.
Rogers sees world through
"Red menace -shaded glasses
To the editors:
The struggle against apartheid
started in South Africa because the
millions of exploited and oppressed
blacks there want to free themselves.
Contrary to Dan Rogers' mistaken
opinion, ("Apartheid protesters
underestimate Red menace," The Tar
Heel, July 10, 1986) no one in this
country "freely and unanimously
decided" to start a movement agaist
apartheid. That did happen, but in
South Africa. The anti-apartheid
movement exists because the over
whelming majority of South Africans
have created and sustained it, not
because of the actions of anyone in
this country.
But why is Rogers blind to this
glaringly obvious fact? Because he
wears red-tinted glasses, which force
him to see everything in the distorting
light of rabid anti-communism.
Rogers' letter is typical example of
myopic reactionism fumbling about
in the darkness of what it can never
understand, and lashing out with the
same old hackneyed red-baiting we
have come to expect from those who
always oppose popular struggles for
national liberation and human
dignity.
Rogers' logic and sense of history
are pitiful. He tries to brand Amer
icans who oppose apartheid as soft
on communism because, according
to him, they do not oppose the Soviet
system. This is a classic example of
red-baiting tactics. But we must not
take the bait. Rogers wants to shift
the focus away from South African
apartheid and onto Soviet commu
nism. Why? Because even Rogers is
unwilling (so far) to stoop so low as
to defend apartheid; because it is
indefensible.
The issue is South African apar
theid, not Soviet communism. Amer
icans have joined the worldwide anti
apartheid movement because the
people of South Africa have called
upon them to do so. Out of their
hopes and dreams for a better life
and a just world, black South ,
Africans have created a revolutionary ,
movement, and they have sustained
this movement with their tears, their
sweat and their blood.
Make no mistake about it: there
is a revolution going on in South
Africa today, and those who are not
with it are against it.
But revolutions do not happen of
their own accord, They require
devotion, sacrifice and struggle.
Rogers could not be more absurdly
wrong when he assumes that apar
theid will fall of its "own weight."
What does this mean? When does a
system become obese, and how does
it do so? Apartheid has fed itself on
the exploitation of the black majority
for years, and when it falls it will be
because it has been toppled by their
revolutionary struggles. History
happens because people make it
happen.
What role, then, can non-South
Africans throughout the world play?
We can do what black South African
activists askis to do. Divestment did
not start on American college cam
puses. Like the South African revo
lution, it has its origins in South
Africa. Economic sanctions, too,
were called for first by South
Africans.
These strategies, in fact, are work
ing. According to a recent report in
the Wall Street Journal (July 11,
1986) many U.S. companies are
planning to pull out of South Africa.
The revolutionary struggle there,
coupled with pressure here, has
rendered South African investment
questionable. Executives now admit
that "the U.S. presence had failed to
improve conditions beyond the
workplace."
Those of us who are participationg
in the anti-apartheid movement do
so not to get outselves "on the right
side of history," but to participate in
a popular struggle for national
liberation and human dignity. We
shall not be dissuaded or deceived
by those who hide behind hysterical
red-baiting and fear so greatly the
libratory struggles of oppressed
people throughout the world that
they would seek to crush them.
Matthew S. Bewig
graduate
American labor and political theory