North Carolina Newspapers

PAGE TWO W)tiB Managing Editor News Editor Business Manager Associate, Editor 1 a William T. Polk William T. Polk, Avliose death came Sun day in Washington, D. C, where he was at tending a conference of the National Editor ial Writers Association, was editor of the Tar Heel in its youth. His tenure came in an early, but unques tionably olden, age. Within a few years be- fore -and' after eWorld War I, .Polk, Thomas Wolfe and Jonathan Daniels, now editor of the Raleigh News and Observer, sat in the editor's chair. That was in the days when the editor often wrote the whole newspaper him self, and we recall that in one of our last conversations with Mr. Polk, he told us about his troubles with a picayunish shop-man .who'" periodically tore the whole paper up and; started again, just before press time. As -attorney, short-story wriier and essayist, but -particularly as a Witty, erudite, searching editorial writer for The Greensboro Daily News (which he served as Associate Editor for a decade and a half), his name will not soon be lost to memory. The thing we liked most about Mr. Polk was his fortunate, enlightening'combination of journalism and x scholarship. He knew classics, literature, history, and the lore of the South, which he dearly loved, and his native state, which he loved even more. He never saw passing events superficially; everything current was, for him, part of a continuum of history and the arts; and the fear (possessed by too - many journalists, it seems to. us)' of.', appearing over-erudite never bothered him. If he wanted to quote from Buddha or Luc retius lie quoted; and the line thing about it was that the quotation was never strained or far-fetched. He was never able to get far away from his love and understanding of the classics, ..At. our last visit in his office he hatl befen tju'imb ing through a- worn copy' of 'Thucydides. Senator Knowland's gyrations over the For mosa issue were disturbing him; like others, lie say a portentous iiistorical parallel be-' tween'Knowland and the Greek, Alcibiades, who finally led the Athenians to ruin in the Peloponnesian War. Mr. Polk liked to quote the great words;, but seldom did those great words Jiave any thing more pertinent than his own to add to a situation. lie gained nationwide attention as a scholar and'eritic of the South, particular ly of the Old South mcpnflict or complement with the New. His latest;! Hrd? .since 1954 per haps his biggest, lit(xriaE projer;t; bad been the Supreme Coin t Decision on public! school education. lie wrote soundly and lucidly,' sas!?: always, on that crisis; and it was not necess ary always to agree with what he said-to know that he nn;!c a staggering contribution to the moderate, cause In the great debate. No iih Carolina has reason to be proud of her newspapers and particularly of the en .: lightened and progressive attitudes which most of their editorial pages reflect. They are worthy mirrors of the best that is in her and " hoped for her; and Mr.; Polk's contribution to them Avas not a small one. Athletics & Integrity $ College athletics have not been overem phasized but rather overrun by catering to spectators. That's the. basic theme developed by Yale University President Whitney Griswold in, the Sports Illustrated article reprinted in the adjoining columns. And, it so happens, this is precisely what The Daily Tar. Heel has been pointing out about the Carolina , big-time athletic see ire. '" ' ; 5 , -. ' As the Yale President puts it: "To label it' 'overemphasis' barely: Jscfatcfies -its surface. Undue deference to spectators; has led the colleges to default to a certain extent their professional competence, to foifeit a measure-of their 'proper authority over their own affairs. This was tantamount to a surrender of academic freedom on the athletic field while this was being defended in the class room." Such a situation has developed here at the University, and if we are to 'maintain our academic integrity, it must cease. The official student publication of the Publi cations Board of the University of North Carolina. ' where - it . is published m daily excent. ' fMnndaw and .examination and JJ vacation periods and 1 1 1 juiuiiici icmis. rnier- A ed as second class 7 h u if matter in the post of fice in. Chapel Hill, C, under the Act of March 8, 1879. Sub- scription rates: mail 51 ed. S4 Tier vpsi o ki Iff a semester; delivered. , J.'O a year, $3.50 a se- Editors '": ; .... LOUIS KRAAR, ED YODER FRED POWLEDGE JACKIE GOODMAN BILL BOB PEEL J. A. C. DUNN ex."" in II 0 Keif u rn Whitney Griswofcl Sports Illustrated (Yale .University President Whitney Griswold is one of the nation's leading educators. In this article, reprinted in part from Sports Illustrated with permiss ion., Grisicold cites the hard facts about college . athletics today . that they have been professional ized by spectator pressure. After clearly drawing - this accurate picture of the college athletic scene, Griswold offers a solution to the problem. (The Daily Tar Heel feels that the Yale President has an answer to this University's big-time ath letic problem. And tlxat is ichy ice present this timely article. Edi tors ) In some such fashion the' ques tion of relationship between ath letics and education enters the lives of most American university and college presidents. How did it gain such proportions as it has? How did a handful 6f lib eral arts colleges, during the very time they were growing into universities and assuming the in tellectual and moral responsibili ties of that status become in volved, in an intercollegiate en terprise that today owns and manages -some 100 major foot ball stadiums, many of which would make their classical proto type, the. Roman Colosseum, look like a ! teacup, ; with a total sea son's paid attendance of 15 mil lion and aggregate y receipts of over $40 million not to mention basketball arenas with an at tendance of 8 million and base ball diamonds, track field and rowing facilities in proportion? College football attendance - is roughly equal to major league baseball's, and exceeds profes sional football's by five times. How did all this start? What is it doing to our colleges and uni versities' and what can they do about it? It started in the love of sport, which anthropology has traced to pearly every people and country in 'the world, and archaeologists have pushed far back into the pre-Christian era. As- modern team sports developed" in col leges of the undergraduates, which still occasionally spill over in campus riots, were channeled into organized athletics. English and American colleges, with their common attachment to the clas sics of ancient Greece, found in these specific sanction for phy sical training as part of the edu cation process. The very fact that the new sports were organized c02q i i c I J put a premium on organization to support them; and for this the colleges, with their highly or ganized and instinctively compet itive societies of young men in the prime of athletic age, were made to order. Living together as well as studying together provid ed a' well-nigh perfect environ ment for the growth of organized athletics as the monasteries once had done for religious medita ' tion. ... Football even more than baseball or rowing or other sports was a" college original, and re mains so notwithstanding the re cent advent of the professional game. The colleges defined, its rules, molded it into its modern form , and gave it its character. More accurately, it was not . the colleges that did these things, it was their undergraduates, . act ing largely upon their own initia tive as the record shows, with litttle awareness, much less con trol, on the part of their academic officers-. In this fashion by the turn of the century organized athletics had become a fixture in American higher education. WHAT RESULTS? What shall we say of the re sults? Organized athletics gave For Celle-giate Athfetics : -.,.ii,. rm F . mm I rf I i the colleges a new lease on life, and exciting, enjoyable and much more healthful alternative to previous forms of student rec reation. They released new en ergies, infused undergraduate life with new unity and zeal which, if not prima facie assets j to higher education, certainly strengthened the foundations of the colleges as residential com munities. As " long as organized athletics remained within the bounds of amateurism they im parted its object lessions and its values loathe whole community. In ihese ways they served the general interests of the colleges, educational as well as social. They have become so much a part of college life that it is hard to ' conceive of that life Without them, even harder to imagine what might' take their place. . 'Wherein lies the evil? For a time some of it stemmed from playing rules, particularly those of football (which once resem bled legalized mayhem); but these have been so much improved as " virtually to eliminate this source 6f trouble. The real evil, the one that has been, but scotched not yet killed, lay hot in the actual play ing or organized atkletic sports but in the managing of them. Managing them was a responsi bility that reached out much more widely into other areas than draft ing and supervising their playing rules did. Managing them meant, or soon came to mean, catering to spectators as well as to par ticipants. It meant not merely providing players with proper in struction .and equipment, sched uling trips and keeping the T)ooks on playing expenses, but calcu lating grand strategy, staging and producing contests that rapi ly asumed the character (and di mensions) of public spectacles, scouting, recruiting and fielding players equal to these public responsibilities and at the same time ensuring that the academic life of each particular institution continued to prosper. The sheer weight of this problem fell heav ily upon a group of institutions inexperienced in srjjch matters and on the whole ill-equipped to J 'de'ai.,with1.them. Most colleges and universities were conscientiously trying to improve their academic standards and many were suc ceeding in that effort. But as the standards rose, so did the demand for athletic victories and cham pionships, and the two were not always consistent. It was as though the major league baseball teams were suddenly put under levy to win not, only the pennants but also Rhodes Scholarships and Nobel Prizes. To the solution of the problem, more over, organized athletics brought not cool heads and col lected thoughts but the passions of tribal warfare. These were normal enough to the extent that they reflected the competitive spirit of players and their under graduate supporters. But there ws something that gave them an abnormal force. This was the growing interest of spectators and the tendency of the colleges to cater to and commercialize that interest. To the colleges this , meant a new source of revenue as well as (they hoped) a new focus of alumni loyalty and public sup port. To the spectators it meant excitement, thrills, broken rec ords and victories. THE PRESSURE MOUNTS The bargain seemed like a nat ural one at the time it was struck, mutually profitable and benefic ial. Yet it soon imposed on the colleges hidden costs and un foreseen conseqUences. To keep up revenue and, presumably, alumni loyalty, winning teams were necessary; to be sure of winning teams competent players had to be recruited. If such play- -crs required financial induce ments, the inducements had to be provided. If academic or amateur standards stood in thef way, standards had to be com promised. Bit by bit. as the possibilities of revenue-producing, sports were exploited, other sports, which meant virtually all save basket ball, were budgeted against foot ball. Each budgetary item thus added increased the pressure on coaches, players, athletic direc tions, presidents and governing boards to maintain the winning teams that ensured the gate re ceipts. As the game grew more specialized and the market for players more competitive, the col leges and universities found themselves in a managerial com THE DAILY TAR HEEL petition as intensive as their rivalry on the field and differing from professional basebll only in its pretensions of amateurism Competitive methods varied from outright awards of room, board, tuition and other prerequisites, such as' automobiles and spend ing allowances, to disguised sub sidies by alumni; from artificial majors in physical education and even false enrollments in college to individual favors and dispensa tions by boards of, admission, and eligibility and" scholarship committees. This, I think, is the real evil organized athletics inflicted upon our colleges and universities. To label it "over-emphasis" barely scratches its surface. Undue de ference to spectators has led the colleges to default to a certain extent on their professional com petence, to forfeit a measure of their proper authority over their own affairs. This was tantamount to a surrender of academic free dom on the athletic field while this was. being defended in the classroom. For some this - caused no more than a time-consuming distraction. For others it created a satellite that became: a sun. A WATERSHED WHERE? From the standpoint of educa tion the fact had logical conse quences. The' main purpose of an educational institution -is educa tion. The main purposes of or ,ganized athletics are recreation and exercise. Both of these are essential to good work in educa tion as in every other calling. . Neither is a substitute for such work, much less its equal or its master. This suggests a line of demarcation, ja watershed, on one side of which organized athletics serve the cause of education while on the other they hurt it; and it further suggests that it is the duty of each educational insti tution to draw that line and de fend it. This, after all, is asking no more of educational institu tions than the Pure Food and Drug Act requires of the manu facturers of those products or, for that matter than a major '. league manager might ask of his players if they keep skipping bat ting practice to study history From the standpoint of ath letics as well as' education the fact has logical consequences. The aspiration of most American colleges has been to achieve the standing if not the shape and size of universities, and the as piration of most American uni versities has been to do full jus tice to that status. In its original and proper meaning the word university signifies standards the highest standards of integrity - and quality pertaining to their ac tivities anywhere in society. Any trifling with those standards, however slight or for whatever expedient reason, is a contradic tion in terms. Since these standards can ap ply to everything a university does, they apply to athletics as well as to education. The appli cation of the standards to college and university athletics was two fold. In the first place, they were to be amateur athletics, a prin ciple early laid down by the col leges and periodically reaffirmed by their presidents, governing boards, athletic directors, coach es and team captains, as well as by their various rules'committees and intercollegiate associations. The principle was first and last a players' concept. It said noth ing about the entertainment of spectators or the raising of col lege revenue, and it expressly for bade participation for financial or other material remuneration. The second standard is suc cinctly stated in the preamble to the revised Ivy Group Agreement of 1954 for organized athletic programs: r In the total life of the cmpus fWk rx emphasis upon intercollegiate competition must be kept in harmony with the essential ed ucational purposes of the in-, stitution. This was no more than the ap plication to intercollegiate com petition of the line of demarca tion or watershed that the col- ,. Jeges had adopted lor .all athlet- . ics.. It is worth noticing how con- . genial the first principle, i.e., the , amateur, is to the second so con genial as to suggest that if it were lived up to 100, the sec-' 5 cond would be superfluous. For as we have seen, it was precisely in the terms and values' of ama teurism that organized athletics, ' discovered their most congenial relationship and' made their most direct and constructive con tributions to "the'essential educa tional purposes in the institu tion." In more ways than one the amateur principle in athletics was the corollary to liberal education in the classroom. These principles were not foisted upon our colleges and un iversities. They grew put of their intrinsic character, Through them the colleges, in addition to devising and refining the techni ques of so many of our athletic sports, contributed largely to their moral value to us" as a na tion. Moreover, the collegiate in fluence transcended 'its own sp here to make itself strongly felt through its code of sportsmanship in professional athletics. These, too, have a stake in its survival. When a professional team over comes a handicap or comes from behind to win against seemingly impossible odds, sportswriters of-1 ten call it "a Frank Merriwell finish" or "the old college try." This is more than sentimental or satiric metaphor. It is pro fessionalism at its best, earning its highest professional praise in , the language and image of ama teurism. The colleges have been seduced away from these prin ciples. by spectators who as-par-ents and citizens are their ulti mate beneficiaries. ' Do I exaggerate the evil? I do not think so. Standards that should be pure have been com promised and corrupted, fand this..;i is common knowledge among our college students and their fa culties. Deliberate departures from principle of this sort cannot fail to domage the reputation of an institution consecrated to truth and excellence by its very charter. Upholding one ideal of truth as applied to education and another as applied to athletics has already caused woeful moral and intellectual confusion in the .r minds of young men who found themselves subjected to such double standards, not to mention cynicism and disgust in the minds and hearts of their fellow students'. Th,is-is meager fare from higher education, scaroe worth its salt on any pfetext. It is hardly consistant with the mottoes of light and truth em blazoned in the arms of our col leges. It is disillusioning and da maging to their good name and to the integrity of their profes sion J;f Are these defects not mitigated by the educational redemption of young men who would not other wise have come to college? It is possible in individual cases.- Yet these can be matched by whole- . sale departures from college upon the close of their last football season by young men who had ab sorbed so little of the college's essential purposes and held its educational opportunities in such low esteem that they did not care to complete "their courses and graduate; and by other dases, probably more numerous, of bi zarre studies that enabled their pursuers to qualify for football or basketball but are slim colla teral for claims of educational redemption. AN UNFAIR DISGUISE But could the colleges and uni versities afford to take the loss, the diminution of gate receipts that it is assumed would follow their universal adoption and en forcement of "the amateur prin ciple? I am not so sure-that their student bodies could not produce teams of sufficient caliber, and , that within their various leagues .and conferences those teams could not engage in sufficiently keen and exciting competition to retain the interest of most of their present spectators. Teams of roughly equal size and strength playing according to the same amateur rules have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to thrill spectators, making up in drama all that they lack in tech nical finesse. But suppose worse came to worst and a major refinancing of college athletics became neces sary? I doubt that the cost would exceed or even equal the price the colleges ar now paying in the x corruption of amateur and edu cational standards and the harm this is doing to. both. Why, in any case, should football be taxed with the support of nearly all the other sports? Charging everything to football puts j an egregiously unfair pressure upon that game to do just as it has done, to go pro- : Sessional in disguise: and whose fault was this, football's or the colleges'? - : . . ' The whole concept of farming athletics out to pay for them selves is difficult to reconcile with the meaning and principles of a university. According to these, as we have seen, a single set of standard's applied not only to education but to everything a university did, including ath letics. The administrative corol lary is that athletics and educa tion belong on the same budget and under the same administra tive direction; and the stronger the educational claims put ' for ward by athletics, the greater the force of this corollary. The total annual expenditures of all Amer ican institutidns of higher educa tion is somewhere in the neigh- borhWd of $2.5 billion: -Their total gross receipts from football, with a paid attendance of 15 mil- . lion at an average charge of from $2.50 to $3.00 per ticket wOuld be between $37 million and $45 mil lion. Taking the larger figure for the sake of argument, it repre sents just about 2 of the in come available for these expend itures not, I should think, a sum so great that it could not be re budgeted and administered in ac cordance with these principles. What prospects are there that the step will be taken? The ans wer is beyond my province. I merely wish to record my belief that it can be done. For this be lief I have two basic reasons. The first is that there is nothing in herent in organized athletics themselves to prevent it. I have said they brought the colleges some evil and I have identified the worst of that evil as the sep aration of academic responsibility under spectator pressure. But it was the spectators who drove the wedge, riot the athletics. And the spectators are we ourselves, as a nation, as college alumni and as sports lovers. What we have done we can undo. The second reason for my faith is that I happen to belong to a group of colleges among which these things are happening. These are not unrepresentative institu tions. Most of them have run the whole gamut of experience re corded in these pages. All, includ ing my own, have plenty of un finished business on their hands ' that must take precedence orer any claims to. perfection. Yet all have set their course in this di rection, as charted in the Ivy Group Agreement. I can think of no better fate for amateur ath letics and higher education than that the members of the Ivy Group live up to those provisions . and prove by so doing their uni versal practicability. To assist them in this they may count on strong allies from education. They will draw inner strength from thriving intramural programs, "X and their task will be lightened by the continued progress of pro fessional athletics. But their strongest ally now as always will be the courage of their own convictions. TUESDAY. c-' CAROLINA FRONT The Maddk CrowdNotf Far From J.r THERE SEEMS to have beta -sometime over the weekend, a ru has been flying indiscriminately ments, and since we are a sulfib . believe it. "k THE FIRST indication of an i-. game we noticed was the sudden ' cars. Everywhere we turned, some -figure out what to do with a ccrT. know, ourself included as a matter desperation, considering hanging tC on a wall and leaving it there. Anyway, there were a lot 0f ca-; going at top speed where there wu at top speed. Furthermore, everyorV the gills and prancing around bright-e- -tailed. They pranced up and down F stared in the shop windows, ent rants to the leaking point, crowd' j , the sidewalk, and bought. My God, .V We overheard one middle-aged . to an equally middle-aged father t little Olde World shop the sweete.-t -he sure that ash tray he bought won the living room drapes but wasn't it t what time did he say the game sta Johnny said to meet him at his dorm:' icas his dormitory anyicay? ELSEWHERE ON campus the ir.r: mad swirling pace. Down by the ne.i Government building the cars were ! both sides of both intersecting str(,v Scouts, carloads of parents, carload, Li their pre-college children, carloads children without their parents, a c;: gas, a carload of souvenirs to be d; ious selling points, six people incL: eating lunch off the hood of a comer: pel including two under-twelves ea:i:. of the trunk of a sedan. And the police. Do lawd, chile,;' absolutely squirming with the cons'.ab corner of Cameron Avenue and Co', alone there were four of the blih:: their white gloves and showing off. E went there was a state policeman : corner. We went to Glen Lennox Lr clean shirts from the laundry and ;h state policemen on the road to Ckn . Chapel Hill police were out in force, pr and looking as if they were earning : knew it. Even the Orange County She had the ir uniforms on. This is some: LATER IN the evening, the st: fill up again. Immediately after the everyone took his car out on the $:: turned off the motor and sat still ur.;.i As it grew darker, Chapel Hill night sparkle somewhat. The bistros filled,'; ed, the wine flowed, the cash fluvu;: House filled as fast as it emptied, same as saying that in order to ct ; one practically had to hack up a door: arid nail together a stool on tht sp.t. orange crate. The fraternities bounced up and : and down and (hie) up and thud... V big fraternity court at one of the inr.;: hours through which it staggered dun' of the evening, and heard the following : held magna voce between two rather ', tlemen who had nothing between In ternal brotherhood and Columbia S:r "I haven't got anything to drink!" "Whatl" .'T haven't got anything el?e to dr: "Oh, no!" "Oh, yes" One Round Tc Stevenson A political discussion of the fan being inevitable, we wish we could ' more speeches like Adlai E. Steven " sin, and fewer statements like S'cre:.' reply. Former Gov. Stevenson, addrc-.-:'.2 sin state Democratic convention. :'' ministration's farm policy of flexible r It is not working, he said, and shnui: ; He then warned the Democrats of we will advocate only the things th.r vocated before, such as 90 per ex ports." He urged them: "Let us r. f-T we cannot perform." He called for an t various ways of supplementing prife ' eluding production payments or d-s''-" farmers. This was not a fire-eating p h' was moderate, temperate and c r Stevenson tried to grapple with the : instead of merely exploiting it. F r retary Benson's reply, issued thr;-". lican National Committee, was os ing. Secretary Benson charged t hat C has "flatly" rejected flexible price true and has called for rc-exam r discredited Brannon plan with 'r mentation." Is "Brannan plan," then, t he smear word? Is it impossible for ? to discuss rationally why it is n "t of certain farm products to pay a '! : the grower than to pay an indirect price supports which allow ur;-'--' ' " in Government hands? Why is Mr. Benson applying th v to wool, if it is so evil? Why ti' ' - : it would involve more "strangli:'..4" trols than do price supports? Former Gov. Stevenson, in '':r off far ahead in thii exchange. ; once again his unique talent f r ' discussion abeve the plane of t-:vh: hope he can prod both the Repub':i: some of his Democratic C0ileogu' ': on the fari issue.St. Louis I'u-' '" !