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Damn Yankee - Liberals "Just Think Some Day He Might Become All-American Quarterback'' In its sixty-eighth year of editorial freedom, unhampered by restrictions from either the adniftmtrationor the student body. " ' The Daily Tar' Heel" is the officiallstudent publication of the Publica tions Board of the University of North Carolina, Richard Orerstreet, Chairman. All editorials appearing IThe Daily Tar Heel are the personal expres sions of the editor, unless othertvise credited; they are not necessarily represen tative of feeling on the staff, and all reprint's or quotations viust specify thus. November 30, 1960 Volume LXIX, Number 61 The New President Gets To Work For the past three weeks the town of Washington, usually ac customed to almost any disturb ance and willing to accept it with blase condescension, has been al ternately stunned and exhilarated by the Kennedy storm which swept in on November ninth. It has been, thus far, a rather exciting storm, yet one character ized by uncertainty and doubt. While Senator Kennedy has been ardently pursuing the difficult task of filling the many jobs in and around the White House that the spoils system will leave emptied, the nation has been asking itself a great number of questions about the man and his methods. The most predominant question, however, has been a very simple one: Will Kennedy be a good, reliable and strong President? There are doubts that can and should be raised about the next President; they have been raised in the past and will continue to be raised for many a day. We and many others have long wondered whether his desire to be President supercedes his desire to be a good President; we have often won dered whether his brilliance also included tolerance and conscience. To a certain extent these ques tions were answered during the campaign, when it became ap parent to many Americans that there is a good deal more to the Senator than had originally been suspected. Enough people were im pressed with what appeared to be his sincerity and ability to vote him into the office he desired. We are faced now with the real ization of the hopes of the months that led to Kennedy's election; we are left only to wonder to what extent these hopes will be realized and to what extent we will be dis appointed. The new President has gone to work, however, and he has done so in a convincing and vital man ner. There have been no moments wasted in the complicated process of changing administrations, and there have been many encourag ing signs for the future. President John F. Kennedy, though he did not receive a popu lar "mandate," goes into office with the support of most Americans. We have faith in his ability to do the job as well or better than he prom ised he would. This is a time for national unity and strength. Out of this could grow a greater and better America. Goals For Americans When President Eisenhower an nounced his proposal to set up a commission on national goals, it appeared to be an exciting and at tractive idea. Such a" group, it seemed reasonable to hope, might sound a clarion call for a greater and better America and point the way toward achieving that brighter future. Such hopes were strengthened last February when the very dis tinguished composition of the com mission was announced, for the obvious high competence of the individuals named implied that their recommendations j would carry great weight. But the com mission's report published Monday disappoints these hopes. It is hard ly likely to excite many imagina tions or. to unloose any great wave of creative enthusiasm among our people. Of course we all want a United States in which the dignity of the individual is enhanced, prejudice of all kinds reduced, the demo cratic process prefected, knowledge and innovation advanced on every front, education and medical care improved, unemployment kept low, our independence preserved, and so on. But one would not think it re- - JONATHAN YARDLEY Editor Wayne King, Mary Stewart Baker Associate Editors Margaret Ann Rhymes Managing Editor Edward Neal Riner Assistant To The Editor Henry Ma yeb Lloyd Little " News Editors Sxjsan Lewis Feature Editor Frank Slusser.... Sports Editor Ken Friedman .Asst. Sports Editor John Justice, Davis Young Contributing Editors Tim Burnett Business Manager Richard Weineh Advertising Manager John Jester Circulation Manager Charles Whedbee. Subscript ion Manager The Daily Tar Heel is published daily except "Monday, examination periods and vacations. It is entered as second class matter in the post office in Chapel Hill. N. C, pursuant with the act of March 8. 1870. Subscription rates: $4 per; semester; $7 per, year. j.. k The Daily Tab Heel is a-subscriber to the United Press International and utilizes the services ot the News Bu- reau of the University of North Caro lina. - .: -r . Published by - the Colonial v Press, Chapel will, jm. c:. 1, i-", 1 .V.V.V.V..V.V quired a formal Presidential com mission with 100 experts advising it to state such obvious conclusions. Unfortunately, the commission, in most sections, went but little beyond such generalities. Its em phasis upon compromise at a low est common denominator of agree ment is evident. The report does not even include a specific recom mendation for repeal of the Con nally Amendment, limiting the World Court's jurisdiction, though a concluding note makes clear that eight of the ten members, includ ing the chairman and vice chair man favor such repeal. Even so, however, the commis sion's report on what obviously needs to be done in our nation over the period ahead will require for realization, as Crawford H. Green wait points out in a note, "unpre cedented increases in Government expenditures over the next dec ade." This makes the rate of growth of our economy a central issue, since only by achieving great growth can the required tax load be made supportable. Yet the section on economic growth goes little beyond some general remarks that appropriate policies, not very clearly defined, might give us an .annual growth rate of 3.4 per cent. And unfortu nately, as Frank Pace Jr. notes, the commission apparently agreed it "could not enter into the more dif ficult and detailed problems of priorities and paying for goals achievement." Perhaps the chief lesson to be learned from this experience is the irreplaceable role of creative, elect ed political leadership in our de mocracy. No unofficial committee of distinguished leaders having differing views can do the job of articulating and implementing na tional goals. That responsibility falls most heavily upon the Presi dent of the United States. In a few weeks we shall begin to observe how a new President plans to rise to the challenge which the voters' decision and our pressing national problems pose. From the ' New York Times: s !i, A Villain Steals DTH Dear Editor: f Somewhere, at Carolina, an in dividual lurks in the shadows, in tent on little else than destroy ing the American , tradition of free speech. This man, if we can call him a man, glories in destroying the issues of the DTH before we stu dents can- clutch them in our hot little hands to gaze at its infor mative pages to glean from them the wisdom that daily falls forth from the presses. Sadness! Sorrow! Lackaday and dammit. Who's fouling up the works? It has been so long since I've seen an issue of that wonderful paper tant I don't know who is president. My mind is a vacant chamber waiting to be filled with the ebb and flow of today's news such as it is, after you get through with it. We must find this blackguard, this infinitely horrible fiend who dares to steal the issues of the Voice of the Campus before k I can leap jubilantly from my bed, trip over the pot that sits near it, and run outside my room to scoop lip the latest offering and hustle to the john to make use of it. Read it, I mean. . r Wherein; does this foul villain gain such pleasures) in destroying the DTH before I can pore over its . fact-filled pages "to find Mil ton's, ad? : ; , ; ; ' ; - . '.' He must be stopped. Or perhaps it would be better if you just delivered the paper in the first place instead of leav ing it on the presses every day, or whatever you do with it. Give man, like, give. I'm getting illit erate. : i ' A Once-Upon-a-Time-Reader EXECRABLY EDUCATED, READER STATES : To fThe Editor:' I (don't see how you damn Yankee liberals can come down here to the Sunny South and ex pect to run all of - our . business like you owned everything and didn't have any feelings or cares about how we want to do things. I am a segregationist and I am proud of it and furthermore I voted for Nixon and have two copies of "Conscience of a Con servative" and think it is the greatest book ever written. I don't think you should be in this University or in Chapel Hill or in North Carolina or in the United States or anywhere that you might bother other people with your obnoxious view's. I am for slavery and think that aparteid is great and have a lot of faith in John Kaspar who is one of the great men of the cen tury, and just because I think these things that is no reason for you to get snotty and refer to me in such a lousy way. I think the South will rise again because fate is on our side and progress must be made, even if people like you do stand in its way. I have a lot of faith in the ability of Jimmie Davis to straighten out some of the mess that radicals like Eisenhower and Taft got us into. I hope you go home and never come back. I hope you fall over your own stupid words and hurt yourself badly. I hope you swal low your tongue. A Fighier For Truth Gentlemen, Remove Those Velvet Glovesi I Editor Jonathan Yardley and Associate Edilor Wayne King, THE DAILY TAR HEEL, Colonial Press, Chapel Hill, North 'Carolina, t cc: ' Hon. A....:. . M............. h New York City ('14 alumnus of The Phillips Exeter Academy and '18 out of Amherst College). Gentlemen: ; " 1 Ja' " " I This Thanksgiving a distant rel ative came to visit bearing copies of the famous The Daily Tar Heel for November 19 and 20 with your arrestingly thoughtful edi torials (before and after) on the football game with "Dook," won by "Carolina," the score 7-6. Those were bold statements, gentlemen: iron-views-in-velvet-glove-words sort of thing. Well, this letter invites you to remove your gloves: I am responding. Clearly, you don't like what you see, sportswise, on your own delightful campus year after year, do you? Observing grown men and women behaving worse than ill-mannered children over a mere game: "only a game." These spectacles do not increase your regard for your elders, even your teachers, even your nation: that provides these in the hundreds, thousands, year after year? If the truth be told, the reverse of increased respect for your elders occurs. 4 That is, you are , increasingly dismayed by the ridiculous puer ility of it all? "Men who will never see again the sunny side of forty prance around like star struck freshmen" you note, sar donically. While students display "com pletely malicious intentions" to wards their own friends-inrplay. "A faint note of shame," one in sists he feels, recalling the vic tory: ". . . the same hands that pummeled the back of Coach Hickey (in praise) . . . had been clenched in righteous indigna tion": in anger at the same man weeks before. In "righteous indignation" at an employed professor of sport for team losses: as if the coach were the intended architect of both defeat and victory: as if he were the team captain, on the field of play. . . Seldom does one come upon such candor in modern Ameri can college students concerning the errors of their" elders espec ially concerning the conduct of sports! on campus and off. This is all to the good, as far as it goes: about halfway to first base: just the kickoff of what is now due from such editors, . For this reader sees more than your questioning young minds seeking reason in collegiate ridic ulosity. He sees profound con fusion in student minds. He sees students desperately; sometimes even despicably, misled: even ex ecrably taught. Not only abys mally neglecting the first, simple, kindergarten principles of good sportsmanship, but students in American universities everywhere -r-betrayed, betrayed, betrayed: by their own Almae Matrae. : He sees this pedagogical treason-to-truth repeated from coast to coast, year after year: indeed, decade after decade. So repeated through the Carne gie Foundation for the Advance ment of Teaching's President Pritchett called all this "immoral to the last degree": this appeared THIRTY-ONE YEARS AGO . And " conditions today are im measurably worse than in, 1929: believe you me The upshot today? Our entire nation of men and women grad uates of schools and colleges teaching what they have, now, in creasingly, since , about 1920 openly cynical. ' Knowing that college and uni versity authorities up to chan cellors, presidents and trustees permit far worse than the most lamentable bad - sportsmanship. Even in teaching football players to lie, cheat, circumvent rules. For what is our nation thus be trayed, betrayed, betrayed? For bubbles ;. . . For caps and bells . . . Bought with whole souls' taskings . . . ; "Two magical digits on a score board," you noted with a maturity of judgment rare as hens' teeth in mid-twentieth-century Ameri can "higher education." Thus "shame" if not quite ... "ulti mate degradation that must cor rupt the . . . loyalty and support we owe the . . . men on the field . . ." is the price , paid for those "two magical digits." And this sort of thing repeated thousands of times, before millions of "fans," annually. - To begin with, there is more than one stance to take in dealing with error. One is to blame one's teachers: as you may the Physi cal Education saff and Athletic Director in your own university: they should, long ago, have pro foundly revised their policies and teachings. r , . , Or, to be more charitable or more scientific: the bell tolls for all of us for any man's evil, and the results, thereof continue to the end of Time. ... It were bet ter to blame the teachers of those who presently determine athletic policies at your university? Just as, if you should find, in the Congo, witch-doctors treating pa tients without , anesthetics, it would hardly be rational to hold them responsible, would it? And, of a. surety, today's Am erican physical educators, ath letic directors and intercollegiate sports coaches are very like those hypothetical Congo physicians of today: simply and abysmally ig norant of what they ought to be teaching and doing? Now, gentlemen. your editorials cast aspersions on no persons: they but noted a ridiculous, not to say vicious, condition of af fairs still dominating the campus and the minds of yourselves and your fellow-students. Indeed, the question arises whether you would have been published had you fixed the ' blame on any per sonalities, or even on any official offices. For that matter, I have not, above, named any Carolina officials as responsible for the manifest social as weir as educa tional viciousness of what is still permitted, nay encouraged, on your campus for the sake of caps-and-bells and bubbles: "for two magical digits on a scoreboard." For your chancellor, president and trustees are busy men; more over, up to now nobody has so much as indicated to them what ought to be done. And in modern U.S.A. higher education, igno rance is still considered a good excuse for up to manifest despi cality. But what ought to be done? A GOOD QUESTION: I shall an swer it herein as briefly as pos sible; some of it I provided in a little book published in 1929, then rather highly praised in no less than a full column on the edi torial page of THE WALL. STREET JOURNAL, among others: titled THE AMATEUR SPIRIT IN SCHOLASTIC GAMES AND SPORTS. Moreover, now you have this insight in hand and mind, (or will, shortly, if you dare ... to persist) you seem honor-bound to act, somehow. As follows, then: To begin with the elementary, kindergarten principles of good sportsmanship, what? Consider that, at very least, one does not kick an opponent when he is down: this has been Anglo American . sports policy i since when?; Very . well. But this is a negative statement: let's, change it, to positive? Thus:. THE MORE NEARLY EQUAL ARE OPPONENTS IN SPORTS, THE FAIRER THE GAME? Ob viously. One does not ,pit kinder gartners against college players, does one? One does if one is any kind of a , good sportsman seek one's equals? Indubitably: that is, if one is ; a good sportsman? In dubitably! - . Therefore the better the sports man, the more eagerly does he seek his equals? And the better the teacher of good sportsman ship the more does he insist on his pupils playing with their vir tual equals? That is obvious, too. Then the best, teacher of good sportsmanship uses the best tech niques to assure . that his pupils do meet j their " equals? Neces sarily! Theh-f in such a. milieu we come upon the following sur prising but incontrovertible basic sportsman's code: IN GAMES BETWEEN FRIENDS, A TIE SCORE IS THE IDEAL SCORE. And do I hear you retort that, "This is precisely the score nobody wants in modern American interschool and inter collegiate sports!" Do I? Even you must, up to now, have so , felt: why was it "two magical points" , you hailed, not "one magical point"?. Because even you have not yet so much as heard of this Ideal Formula for good sportsman? But it is old, old: I, recall hearing it first spoken in - the great Assembly Hall of the Massachusetts State House in Boston, sometime - in 1929, if" memory serves. After which reporters put it on the AP wires, headed "Queer Ideas." But if ascdre'is not ideal, WHAT IS? For that matter, this idea of "equality" is the very essence of Democracy isn't it? While if you go higher up, you will dis cover it "expresses one essence of Christianity,, eh, .what? Then those who practice the opposite (Example is ever the best of teachers) are enemies of both Democracy and Christianity? It figures." I know, this thesis raises a host of questions. At the same time rest assured: the an swers, are yell .in hand: have been for thirty years. The trouble is that, up to now, nobody has wanted to face up to either ques tions or answers. - (The nation has become poltroonish? ) I didn't say that at all: only terribly misguided and execrably educated. Repeat: EXECRABLY EDUCATED (in most-important phases of education, too.) . , And who most assiduously practice the opposite of . "initial equality between opponents in sports"? No less than the sports coaches, surely: and the "physi cal educators": those who most vociferously preach that they are "character " educators,: forgive the tautology: the phrase is theirs . .. . So that last Saturday you were witness to far worse than the childishness you saw on the campus: by men who will "never again see the sunny side of forty." . More: when opposing teams are approximately equal in initial abilities, it is far easier to teach them the virtues of courage, co operativeness, courtesy, leader ship, strength, perseverance, even reason and certainly justice, than when they are not so adjusted. Indeed, one might well fashion the formula: THE MORE NEARLY EQUAL ARE OPPONENTS THE BETTER, MORE PERMA NENTLY, AND MORE QUICK LY CAN" THEY BE TAUGHT MANY SOCIAL VIRTUES, AS WELL AS MORE SIMPLY MANLY. Thus, those physical educators -who neglect to "equalize" oppo nents under their supervision, are very like surgeons who neglect to avail themselves of the re sults of X-rays. In the Congo, once more, this would be at least excusable: for either native witch doctors or even for grossly un trained or poverty-stricken West ern, civilization surgeons. But in America of mid-twentieth-century days? What shall be-' said of such surgeons: EITHER OF BODIES OR OF MINDS: - FOR TEACHERS ARE MIND SURGEONS, EVEN BRAIN SURGEONS . . . - Are you beginning to get the message, gentlemen? That, by the exercise of perhaps a bit more than a modicum of courage: vir tue: manhood! you can initiate a complete revolution in the sports policies of your famous univer sity: FOR THE GOOD OF ALL ALL! Simply begin to state some of the concepts herein set forth AS YOUR OWN: WHAT DO I CARE: THEY ARE THE INVEN TIONS OF MANY: THEY ARE THE DISTILLED WISDOM OF THE RACE: ALAS, UNTIL NOW CURIOU.SLY NEGLECTED EVEN ATTEMPTED TO BE GARROTED, BY whatever "phy sical , educators": even since about 1930 .-. Nor is this more than a bare beginning of what ought to be done in both the University of North Carolina and The Phillips Exeter Academy: simply to render " the teaching of sports kindergartenly well done. (No wonder the nation now behaves like boys in short pants? Or worse: like natives in darkest Congo, or worse?) What else is there? What more that will make the ideal of a tie score look like child's-play? Patience, gentlemen! One thing at a time! Get a start on this easy one, then ask for more! For I know the "techniques" of "the educators" as well as the next person: one is to ask for more and more, until the source of wis dom is exhausted. Then the replj' is: "We will consider these, dis cuss them with others, appoint committees ..." For of this, too, I am confi dent: you will be hard put to it, locally, to find a single professor of sociology or education, let alone, of philosophy or religion and not a. one in such as physical education or athletics, enough to so much as challenge any of the above over his signature. So, on ward! '.'t T 7 ' Frederick nand Rogers i ... , ..,,.... J , f '..!. '"t,., '"" "...'lrW'.!'
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Nov. 30, 1960, edition 1
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