North Carolina Newspapers

FACE TWO THE DA'.LY TAR HEEL FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 195 The Big Issue One c .-lulicl.itc' iu the Spring elections has ome out stionly in s.uin 1I1.1t the most in.tjor issue lacing the Uimcisity at the pus tut time is the need lor money. While the editor apices with the candidate that the issue of money for this University is of eiy major com em, it is not the central issue before the I 'nivcisity. Indeed, as fundament;-.! as funds are to this t'niursity, it could well win every budget battle and still loe the main war the pieservation of its own integrity as a com munity of individuals committed to the pur suit of truth. I he bi'4 issue is on what basis is the tTni crsit asking lor money and what does the St;e conceive of the role of the University at Chapel Mill. One of the .basic underlying issues in this problem is the issue of growth increase in numbers of the student bod v. It may not be clear to some that if the Uni versity ;iows besond a certain number, it will cease to be and has no hope of ever bc in what it should be a community of per sons committed to the pursuit of truth. Abeady theie is a hoiiont;' fragmentation of the I'n'ueisitN community into the pro fession ll or nade sc hools on the undergrad uate and graduate level, and if this growth continues there will be further fragmentation dependin-; on which floor of which dormi toiv a student mav live. It is clear that the University is presently committed to this giowth. The University prospectus, "Pl.'ining lor The Future." uj)on which the majority of the budget re cpiest was sold is little more than a statistical piojectiou of enrollment and a rcjort of needs per student or thousand student in- lease. Surely, it contains such inteiestiug facts as thete are i 1 7 students on athletic scholarships totalling in revenue Si j-,.000, while there are v,o students on scholaiships that ate non-athletic- totalling appioximately Si2-.cmw. j contains ceitain new piograms the Univetsitv plans to undertake-, but still in all it contains vety little mote than r. giovvth projec lion. On the1 basis of this growth projection the University will have a student population of i-,.ooo in the year M170 (this figuie approxi mates the mean between fall enrollment and lower periods during the year). However, by the time the University climbs over the 10, 000 111.uk. the Univeisity will have .'"'heady radically changed in nattne. Many people have pointed out that this is a state university and has an obligation to serve the gradu.1 es of the state high schools. Yet, it these same people who fail to real ize that this state possesses a statewide system of education including several institutions of higher learning, and with proper planning the standards of the University could be bet tered at ;.'l levels while the othets could ptosper. There is much note included 11 this con cept than just limitation of enrollment. There are problems raised 'concerning other schools in the state system, and concerned with the struc ture of VSC at Chapel Mill, however, it is basic- to the future of the Uni versity for it to decide where its progress lies whether it is toward a community of individuals committed to the pursuit of truth or whether it is toward n high caliber under prr'luatc educational factory where the stu dent is to all intents and purposes a number rather than an individual. The country needs more of the former and less of the latter if it is going to make its brain power tell in the coming years. The Univetsitv is approaching the age of the eight-story dormitory. There is still time to change direction. Labor I iom lecent reports it seems thr't the vio lence in Henderson is now .1 two-way piojosi tion in that strikers are currently doing a little throwing of bottles and other miscel laneous objects around the vicinity of their emoloyer's establishment. Ilcfoie the situation gets any worse, it is time for state authorities to step in and set up some mediation. If not. this p.Ttinihr strike could get even further out of hand. The official studf Til publication of the Publication B"rd of the University of North Carolina, where It It U published daily , txcept Monday and examination period j na wmmer itTiin. Entered as second class matter In Lhe pent office in Chapel Hill. N. C. under the act of March 8 1870. Subscription rates: $4.50 per e mester. $8.50 per The Daily Tar Heel Is printed by the News Inc., Carrboro, N. C. Cditor - - CURTIS CANS Managing Editor" ZZ. CHUNK FLINNER STAN FISHER News Editor . ANNE FRYE Variations Gail Godwin "Words are not words except when they are said by someone to someone . . . Only then, functioning as concrete action, as living action of one human being, do they possess verbal reality." Senor Ortega y Gasset The art of conversation is dying. . It is getting more and more difficult to sit down with a group of people and TALK.. One of several things happens. The people have nothing in com mon, find it out. and resort to further activities to keep from getting bored. They disperse, and there is no further conversation. Or the group finds its members mutually at tractive and the group keeps talking. (This group may be said to consist of any number of persons over one.) Now, what is happening is this: people are '.eeoming very adept at talking for hours with out saying anything. Many are the occasions when 'wo people can leave each other after a conversa tion and neither of them will have the faintest knowledge of the other's' personality. Or else, each will leave the other carrying away with him a totally distorted picture of his companion's real SELF. What is killing conversation? Clifton Fadiman says that overavailability of authority is one of the main culprits. Today, conversation is all too often an extended bout between two or more opponents who try to exceed each other in r"tjp- books, mngarines, newspapers, pamnhlets, TV programs, Broadway plays, and other roople; parrying and saying extremely clever thingr,; narrating personal travelogues of past trips to Uusikaupunki, Trans oxiana. or southern Alabama. Each person strives to stop or lop his conversational comrades. Last week I asked a friend of mine to have a cup of coffee with me. "I'd love to. but I can't, he replied. "I have to get ready for a party tonight." "Rut it's only two o'clock," I said. "Oh. but you don't understand," he said earnestly. "There's go ing to be some very intelligent people at this party and I've got to read up on things so I can talk with them." He shuffled off toward the bookshop with this apology. I can just imagine what brilliant bits of conversation my friend held out that night in his hot little hands for the others to pounce upon or to devour for their own later use. Ry starting his preparations so early in the day, I am sure that by party time he was able to quote the opinions of Norman Cousins, Erie Fromm. Jonathan Daniels, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Pascal. What is more, I am willing to bet that he did not preface all these conver sational offerings with "I just happened to read that . . ." More likely, he was prone to say: "I think that . . ." and continue an oral plagar ism. And after he left the party, only his conversation remained. Out of the things he said the others fashioned their estimate of him. How many at the party would ever guess that he eared- and cared desper ately what they thought cf him? Cared so much that he spent his whole afternoon snatching bits and pieces of information just so that he could talk to them? Who would guess that after the party he went home completely exhausted and fell asleep muttering "damn people." They probably all felt sure that he had gone right home and switched on a record by his favroite symphony (actually, he had just read about it that afternoon) and plunged enthusiastically into some erudite book. Who is the bettor conversationalist? The man who has just fin ished reading every available source on the Berlin situation and who snends his conversation time telling his listeners about the Berlin situation? Or, the man who. upon tasting his Scotch and finding it utterly satisfying, proceeds to tell those around him that he enjoys his Scotch? I think I would much prefer the man who liked his Scotch. Be cause he said something he felt when he said he enjoyed it. And I would be inclined to think that anything else no said would also be based on sincere and personal observation. Conversation is the translation of one's personality into words. If the personality fails to come through, then the words are lying. And if enough people say the wrong words, then we will all be talking to nonexistent personalities, to shells of people who don't like them selves the way they are and who compensate by dipping themselves in a supperficial shellac. ?""tV.W".'"M WMW.iltW.W' Visiting Repor t I PART II 4 "V n " V. 4 r . a -tr tk jr. ... ?: k ' j r - if V J- A i r . wv f : , fl -- t i The Real Issue A University Community Bill Bailey "University: An institution organized for teach ing and study in the higher branches of learning, and empowered to confer degrees in special depart ments." So says Webster. But sometimes this defini tion bothers me, for as I scrutinize my surroundings here, I find not only disagreement and wonder, but c'isgust The j University, better defined, is but a gear in the socuil machine, designed to crank out of its bowels an animal adjusted mentally and physical ly for . . . business, medicine, theology, and other such organized chicaneries. Everyone has his little slot; the University only lets him slip in more easily. Individualism is barked at us from the class room and the pulpit from the time we first enter school until senility pulls a veil over our intellect: hands grab you up 'intermittently through life, shake you and say, "Be somebody! . . . Think!"; then they gently lay you back on the conveyer belt, turning the switch that feeds you into the machine. The University, then, is merely a finishing school for human uniformity ... a little scaled-down re public to blind the schoolboy, through its own petti ness, to the obsenities that follow. Meticulously the fellows with the Christian-democratic qualifications are picked to rule. Next comes the faculty, who are patriarchly looked up to, and selected for their Learning and Integrity. The Ivies follow: frat men, campus queens, politicians, and similar lice . . . these are the Accepted that step only in their lead er's shallow footsteps. Then the Playmakers; the odd birds who are the Unaccepted and step only in their leader's shallow footsteps. Now we turn to the last catageory: the do-nuts and black coffee set that take their work seriously and strive for the heights of knowledge, pouring over tomes and freq uenting the neighborhood library . . . who question everything1 but their own opinion. And as soon as these yearlings have been weaned and carefully groomed, they are sent to pasture with the human herd, each goirg to his separate group to munch upon the crabgrass of his particu lar environmental ego. The human is the most do mesticated of all animals, and he never fails to in vent a new gear in his social machine to print a finer pattern with rounder corners and smoother surfaces. And the chance of rejects are lessened each day. Yet the real paradox of the whole affair is that the human secretly realizes this, but pacifies himself by suckling at the teat of free will, in sisting that he can change at any time. This, I feel, is the height of boobery . . . and the trademark of civilization. It is this that contributes most to his doltishness; and it is this that most disgusts me. But ... no fear. Society is not in danger, for it has successfully stuffed rags into every escape crack in its framework. It actually makes one ner vous to contemplate fleeing. I suppose then, I can but wave a handkerchief as I disappear into the mouth of the machine, shouting, "I forgive thee, 'Breakfast At Tiffany's': A Worthwhile Book Sporta Editor ItUSTY HAMMOND Anthony Wolff BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. By Truman Capute. 179pp. New York: Random House. $3.50 In a recent televised discussion on Beat Generation literature or the lack therof - Mr. Capote found himself without words to express his feeling on the subject. He struggled for a few moments, and finally came out with the most apt remark to date on the subject of this new writing (Kerouac, Holmes, et al: "It Lsn't writing . . . ( agonized pause t ... It sim ply is not writing . . . (pause again) . . . It's just typing!" In this classic one-sentence critique, Truman Capote identifies his own allegiance by implication: he is one of those all-too-rare modern writers who has a healthy respect for the rudiments of sixth grade English prose, combined with a sure sense of the altogeth er magical uses to which such prose can be put (by union-magicians only). If all art involves magic in the sense that something is "created" which has a very special relation ship to "reality" as we common ly experience it, then Mr. Capote's art is remarkable for the tenuous ncss of that relationship. Not only does he enjoy creating a reality of his own: his reality lacks that privileged quality in relation to universal experience which is the hallmark of great art. In BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S, Mr. Capote flaunts his shortcom ing with unforgivable sass: he gets away with it by the skillfull charm with which he is associated even in his mast inconsequential work. The title novella in this book is an excellent example of Mr. Ca pote's entertaining specialty. An unembroidered review of the plot serves only to damn the whole thing: a teen-ager from Texas comes to the big city and sets her self up a? a high-class prostitute, her one steady job being that of a well-paid visitor to a lonely old man at Sing-Sing; in which capa city. rather than her more steady employment, she gets in trouble with the law and skips town; this whole tale being told as a nostalgic bit of gossip by a writer who lived in the same New York brownstone with this heroine (whose improbable name, by the way, is Holly Golightly - Lolita's big sister of sorts) during her heyday. There are of course complica tions: Miss Golightly has run out on an unbelievable hick of a hus band, who shows up in New York looking for her; and more of same. The point is not, however, that this brief bit of chicanery fails, but that jt succeeds in spite of its transparency. Miss Golightly and her cooky crowd may have only curiosity value, and the read er may completely break his ac quaintance with them upon closing the book, but for the time that the book is open the whole motley crew is most ingratiating. Along with the title story go three short selections which have appeared elsewhere but are col lected together for the first time in this volume; included among them is "II o u s e of Flowers," which Mr. Capote developed into a successful Broadway musicr.l about five years ago. It is the oW story of the prostitute with a pure heart, who finally finds true love and lives happily ever after. But told in the delicate style of a Hai tian folk-tale, the old story takes on a new, refreshing sweetness: again, Mr. Capote works magic. . The second short story, "A Dia mond Guitar," is the least of the three. It concerns the friendship between two convicts, and the death of one in an attempted es cape. The story turns on the rela tionship between the two: a rela tionship which has the aura of homosexuality, albeit latent. While the feelings of the older con vict for. the younger, pretty one are tenderly described, and the un deniable attractiveness of freedom shines forth like freedom pure from the printed page, it is still difficult to get past the effete" and pitiable romance to the idea of freedom which is the mainspring of the piece. After these three stories, - each more-or-less exquisite in its prose but lacking in substance, comes "A Christmas Memory," whose eighteen pages are worth the price of the whole book and the attention of repeated readings. It is a first person narrative, written from the point of view of a young child whose constant and beloved com panion is an ancient distant cou , sin who is herself in a second childhood. Through the clear eyes of the little boy and his cousin, f Mr. Capote describes the sights and smells of Christmas. The boy. and his ancient female relative perform the elaborate annual ri tual of baking thirty Christmas pies for people who live far away and are almost strangers, and yet who seem to be their best friends; they Jo to the woods to gather holly and cut a tree, which they decors.te. All this takes place against the briefly sketched back ground of a family which isolates the two children - young and old and leaves them to their own de vices. Mr. Capote describes the rela tionship between the two, and the event'- of their partnership against aloneness without sentimentality: by using the bdy as the narrator, and registering the story on the boy's sensibility, Mr. Capote re produces first-hand the love and the underlying sadness of the two. Obviously, Mr. Capote's relation ship to childhood is problematical; likewise his relationship to sexual ity: this much may be inferred from this slim volume alone, even without the memory of Truman Capote as the recumbent enfant terrible of delicate features and silken blond bangs. Without treas passing the proper bounds of criti cism, it may be said that Mr. Ca pote's writing is confused about - sex, clear about childhood. Per haps these qualities do not promise great art, and certainly Mr. Ca pote has produced no art of any 'great pretensions, despite his promising debut in 1943 with OTH- ER, VOICES, OTHER ROOMS. What he has produced is a small body of work in a day when writers seem to weigh their worth by the pound; and he has proven himself an ejequisite craftsman in a day when craft is held in low estate by the sex and sadism writ ers who predominate, as well as by the Beat writers, the realists, naturalists, etc. Given time, Mr. Capote may produce a "major" work of fiction; certainly he has as great a gift for English prose as any living American writer. All too often, however, the sub stance of art is lacking. For the time being, however, this little volume needs no de fense: for sheer reading pleasure and as an example of the possibil ities of English prose, BREAK FAST AT TIFFANY'S is properly cherished. "A Christmas Memory" is a perfect short story, just to add to the delight. Students are keenly aware and rightfully concern ed over this situation, and over what will surely occur at Chapel Hill if the problem is not soon remedied. They selflessly give to high faculty sal aries an even higher priority than to those of their own important needs. For such a spirit we are in deed proud, as it augues well for the kind of young people we are educating at the University today. The Administration is gravely concerned with the situation, and places higher faculty salaries as the number one item on its agenda. It has defended its position before both the Board of Higher Edu cation and the Advisory Budget Commission with re sourcefulness and vigor. It plans every effort to per suade the current General Assembly of the urgency of this need. ' We are persuaded that no more improtant prob lem than faculty salaries faces the Board of Trustees. II. THE STUDENT BODY At the close of registration on September 24, 1958, the number of students at Chapel Kill was 7, 513. Of this number 5,979 are men and 1,534 are wemen; 20.12 per cent of the men and 3.10 per cent of the women are married, as against 23.02 per cent of the student body married in 1957-58. The Com mittee visited with and interviewed representative student leaders on several occasions. We were both pleased and impressed with their maturity and sin cerity of purpose. They evidenced a keen interest in and appreciation of the more crucial problems now confronting the University. We found a strong and well-functioning student government and many other allied campus activities. This sphere of col lege life is to be encouraged as a necessary ad junct to the academic in the finishing of well-round ed citizens. For a case in point, it may he recalled that twenty-eight of the forty-five governors of North Carolina have studied at Chapel Hill. The invaluable experience which they and countless other statesmen gained there by participation in campus affairs is re flected in the sound leadership which has always been ours in this state. Transition from the sheltered and supervised life of home and high school to the vastness and free dom of a great university is not easy. Much is need ed at Chapel Hill to help the early undergraduate, and particularly the incoming freshman, bridge this gap. That such a gao exists is evidenced by the large number of underclassmen who fail to main tain the basic academic standards of the Universi ty. These student casualties, it should be remember ed, were admitted on the basis of College Board Examinations which supposedly reflected adequate inherent ability and preparation. Reasonable meas ures should be taken to prevent these casualties. Failure to do so is not only tragic to those youths concerned, but is patently costly to the people of North Carolina. An environment conducive to reasonable comfort, studv and minimum recreational and social needs would contribute much to the general welfare of the student body at Chapel Hill, and, we believe, would be reflected in better academic performance of the student. Crowded and bleak men's dormitories deny students adequate facilities beyond those re quired for existence. Study halls, typing rooms, rec reational and reception rooms for familv and friends are all lacking. Some of the newer dormitories are better eouipped: however, the $2,500 per capita state rectriction placed upon the construction of new dormitories will not nrovide what we believe to be the desirable aceounterments. We feel it is tim that more emphasis be placed unon making the resi dence hall a positive factor in the educational pro gram rather than a mere place of lodging. If the facilities listed in this section are not to be found in the dormitories, it would be logical to ask where on the campus they might be found. Li brary space allows only a maximum of 500 students, or 8 per cent of the student body, to study there at any one time: therefore, much study must be done n the dormitorv room. And it should be remembered that manv of these rooms are crowded by housing three students! It would seem appropriate here to consider the status of housing for the myriad student activities which we believe to be such an important part of university life. Graham Memorial, the present stu dent activity center, was built 27 years ago. It was built entirely by private subscription, without cost to the state, to accommodate a student body of 2,600. Due to a scarity of funds, only cne-third of the building proposed was completed. This woefully inadequate structure must house all student publi cation (including a daily newspaper), student gov ernment and every like activity, including a host of committees. Added to these uses it is the sole build ing on the campus for social and recreational pur suits. Its deficiency is further accentuated by its geographical location on the northernmost perimeter of the campus, almost a mile distant from the new dormitories south of Kenan Stadium. The majority of students do not. belong to fraternities and are thus denied virtually any healthful social or rec reational outlet! From the basic facts of this Report may be seen the great need for a modern, physical adequate and centrally located student union. On the brighter side of student welfare we are pleased to report that the adminisration introduced a special counseling program in five dormitories in the fall of 1958: The program is intended primarily for freshmen and sophomores. To quote from the report of the Dean of Student Affairs: "The aim of the program is to reduce the number of academic failures by assisting students to make a sound be ginning of their college careers. The Resident Coun selors may contribute to this aim by promoting a generally better atmosphere in the dormitories . . Counselors are graduate students, and each is responsible for thirty students. It is believed that this program constiutes a forward step in fulfilling a real need. We anxiously await a report on its progress. Should it prove fruitful, every effort should be made toward its expansion, to the end that every underclassman might avail himself of its benefits. .1