Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / May 12, 1967, edition 1 / Page 2
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AsWe See li Personally Speaking Two Ways Of Looking At Voting Age BilPs Defeat There are two ways to look at the House of Representative's re jection of the constitutional amend ment to lower the voting age to 18. Both are valid. Viewpoint Number 1 shows that there was a lot of behind - the -scenes politicking going on with that aimed against the bill being a lot more effective then the lob bying for the bill. It shows that, in one way or another, about a dozen legislators were convinced to switch their votes, thus pre venting changing the 74 vote score which gave the amendment its needed two-thirds majority on second reading Tuesday to a not quite enough total of 63 votes on its final reading. From this viewpoint it seems that maybe there were a lot of ir rational arguments listened to and much political nasty word, "po litical' pressure put on those rep resentatives to change .horses mid-stream. And this viewpoint is the one a lot of people are going to have. It will make many of them angry and bitter over the defeat. But fat lot of good it does to be bitter in this case, anyway. A better viewpoint is from the Number 2 position. This viewpoint shows that the amendment failed to pass not only because a dozen or so legislators changed sides overnight, but also because they had a lot of com- w . -it S3 Passable I I 1 Failure i The passage of the pass - fail proposal marks a badly-needed step toward University progress. -With" its" introduction into t b el University curriculum, students will feel able to better broaden their realm of knowledge without running the risk of receiving poor grades for their efforts. Many is the time in the past when a student has had genuine concern in a certain field or sub ject, but has felt that to take a course in it might jeopardize his quality point average. But with the present "two year experiment," hopefully, students will take on that philosophy or language course which they are interested in but at the same time apprehensive of. It is also a good point in the idea that the student within a couple of weeks of classes starting be al lowed to choose from any non-required course in his schedule that course he wants to go onto the pass-fail basis. The only thing which bothers us is me timing of the administra tion's passage of the proposal. Fall pre-registration is already over. For next semester, then, t h e pass-fail system could be less than the success possible, because those wary of courses probably didn't pre-register for them since they had no way of knowing they could be put under a pass-fail basis. In light of this, it seems that to make the new idea as meaningful as possible, students should have time to get into courses they'd like to take. Therefore, as much as we hate it, an extension of drop add days in the fall would be in order. Thanks To Gen. Hershey It is with real relief that we note how General Lewis B. Hershey said Wednesday he is discontinu ing the college qualifications test. What with all the worry and consternation about the draft go ing on now, it sure is nice to know that no one has to sweat about doing well on the test anymore to avoid induction. pany in opposing it the company of around 50 representatives who either voted againts the bill, ab stained during the voting or con veniently left the chamber to smoke a cigarette while the roll call was going on. And it is not all these men who can be blamed for irrationa lity or dirty politics, because many of them voted against the bill the first time and strongly feel that there are legitimate arguments for keeping the vote in the hands of those 21 and over. In many cases though, these legislators who oppose the bill did so not so much on the basis of arguments against the amend ment, as on the basis of a lack of arguments in favor of it. '.-.." As one young representative ex plained to a UNC student lobby ing for the amendment, "I just haven't seen any overwhelming reason why the voting age should be lowered to 18." Another representative stood on the floor to tell his colleagues that there obviously had not been a "mandate from the: people" for the proposed constitutional change. And since Viewpoint No. 1 leads persons to merely sit around and gripe about the situation, it is logi cal that only by taking "Viewpoint No. 2 can discontent with the pres ent 21-year-old voting age and the amendment's defeat be translated into something tangible. And the way to do this is to show the legislators and the North Carolina community as a whole that there are more ar guments for lowering the voting age than for keeping it where it is. That youth believes there are these arguments is d really no' significance, because before the reasons for granting suffrage at 18 can mean anything except theo retically, which doesn't count at the polls they must be articulate ly presented. ; Already there are many who have heard tfrese arguments and have listened attentively to them the 63 representatives who voted for the bill Wednesday, for example. B u t to get a constitutional amendment is going to require a majority vote of the state, top. So, look on the bright side: now there are two more years in which to snow the entire state into mak ing 18 the voting age and snow ing the entire state is exactly what's going to be needed. Wcp iBattij or tjrel Bill Amlong, Editor Tom Clark, Business Manager Lytt Stamps, Managing Editor John Askew ..... Ad. Mgr. Peter Harris, Steve Knowlton Associate Editors Don Campbell News Editor Carol Wonsayage . : Feature Ed. Jim Fields .. . . Sports Editor Owen Davis Asst. Spts. Ed. Wayne Hurder ... .... Copy Editor Jock Lauterer ........ Photo Editor Bruce Strauch .. . ...... Cartoonist Mike McGowan, Steve Adams Photographer? Steve Knowlton, Hunter George, Karen Freeman, Donna Reifsni- der, Sandy Lord, Joe Ritok, Joe Coltrane, Penny Raynor, Jot Sanders, Julie Parker, M a r .v Lyn Field, Ernest Robl, Penny Satisky. The Dallv Tar Heel is the official news publication of the University pf North Carolina and is published by students daily except Mondays, ex amination periods and vacations. , Second class postage paid at the Post Office in Chapel Hill, N. C. Subscription rates: $4.50 per semes ter; $3 per year. Printed by the Chapel Hill Publishing Co.. Inc. 501 W. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, N. C. " ocial In the April 25th issue oi the DTH, there appeared a letter, signed by K. L. Leininger, in support of retain ing the death, penalty in North Caro linaand attacking a recent DTH edi torial on the subject. There are two arguments made by that writer that seem to almost cry out for rebuttal. This is particularly so since Leininger seems willing to as sume the probable accuracy of one of the main arguments of contemporary foes of the death penalty: that the de terrent effect of capital punishment is nil. Having done this, however, he re verts to justifying capital punishment, on grounds that seem even more sim-f plistic and fallacious than is the de terrent argument. The first of these arguments he de- rives from an analogy to medical prac tice which he develops into what one might best describe as an "efficiency As Soon As We Get All The Boys' Dorms Separated From All The Girls' Dorms, We'll Build A Barbed Wire Fence Around Each Of Them. $,mk www Ire The Mail aBanese Women To The Editor: , Some of us in the Women's Inter national League for Peace and Freedom have received copies of an appeal from Japanese women, urging an end to the Vietnamese war. The letter comes from various organizations in Japan includ ing the Federation of Women's Organ izations, the Japanese Women's Chris tian Temperance Union, and the Ja panese Section of the Women's Inter national League for Peace and Free dom. Here it is: Yes, we nave come through the same ordeal. We sent our sons and husbands to war, To fight communism and defend our land, To liberate Asia. . ., so we were told. We did not know, we refused to believe our arms were killing innocent babes. Nor did it ever occur to our minds That we were hardening people's hearts against us, There, in the , lands which' we were to save. We tried so hard to convince ourselves That we lost our boys for a noble cause. Is it true that their deaths were use less? No! If we can tell other mothers that their deaths were useless, If we can spare other women the tears we have shed, Then, we can say with deep conviction, and with relief, "Their deaths have served the cause of humanity." Deviants in removal" argument as applied to dangerous elements in society. But the road he takes here is a rather torturous one. He begins by drawing a somewhat simplified analogy to the problem of a surgeon " 'unsympathcti cally' removing a cancer." Clearly, those people to whom the death penal ty has been meted out are to be con sidered "social cancers". He doesn't consider that there may be many dif fering definitions as to what consti tutes such a "cancer", with few of them even being as precise as the medical definition of that medical term. The fact that there are some twenty odd different offenses that leg ally merit the death penalty within the U.S., and that there is wide varia tion from state to state as to which are therein included, does not seem to alter his analogy for him. One might re spond here that not all physiological Now, in Vietnam we see the tragedy being repeated. You send your sons and husbands to war, To kill and be killed so far away from from home, To safeguard Free Asia. . ., so you are told. We appeal to you, we want you to remember You have the right to ask whether Freedom can be preached with nap alms, and gasses. You aren't forbidden to reason why You pay so much to create enemies, To support a government unpopular with the people. You are citizens entitled to demand: Is all this really worth the sacrifice? So! You have power to let your dear ones come back to you. You have power for building a home land of the free. How, we yearn to hear you say, for the whole world to hear, "Peace, not war, will save our de mocracy." Many of us have written our re presentatives in Congress and the Pre sident including the points made here. Sincerely, Charlotte Adams Probably Not To the Editor: I have read with interest the editorial fe; I Fill I Not Cancerous cancers are surgically removed either, especially where there is promise of a cure through less drastic means. Leininger goes on to note that most cancers do not merit sympathy; that, awarded sympathy, they will proceed to destroy its source unalterably; that the cancers in society are "clearly not the product of the failures of society in broad terms"; and, that society's only possible failure here is "to allow its cancer to grow and spread." Is response to this analogy, one might make the rather low-level ob servation that physiological cancers are qualitatively different from what one might call "social cancers". The latter involve people, who, being hu mans, are on the whole at least capa ble of being sympathesized with. On the other hand, we do not often think of sympathethizing with the tooth that we have just had pulled, not, I might submit, with the physiological cancer that has just been removed from our body. People deserve at least the pos sibility of sympathetic behavior to ward them simply because they are people. If I were simply to reduce my understanding of rM. Leininger to a description of his organic, or cellular, make-up, perhaps then he, too, would not merit sympathy in any course of his behavior. Secondly, one need not equate grant ing sympathy with a situation, or to those involved in it, with necessarily providing resources for its continua tion or promotion. To ask that society punish its criminals in these categor ies with some penalty less than the capital one is not the same as sailing that it should return those people to society in the same condition in which they were taken from it so that they might prey upon us again. There are several alternative punishments that could be used that would not return Mr. Leininger's "cancer" back into the streets. One might at least ask that we give some decided and meaningful consideration to such alternatives. The extent to which these fail is evidence only that we have not taken the nec essary precautions to insure their suc cess. And, this is. where the "efficien cy" element seems to enter Leinin ger's argument. Surely, in a trivial sense, it is more "efficient" to execute a criminal ( than to provide, elaborate meansof in- suring that he will not again threaleri r. society's, , jnembers i if 'left to Hi&aii?' alive. Yet, even if we do not consider the moral implication of this kind of "dollars and cents" reasoning, in a more important way, capital punish ment is inefficient. For it destroys one of the most important sources of in- formation about the kind of factors that cause a person to commit such very serious , crimes. Indeed, it is large ly on these grounds that such peno logists as Warden Jack Johnson of Cook County Jail and the former ward en of San Quentin have both opposed the death penalty. Of course, if one is convinced, as Leininger seems to be, that "most 'deviants' " are cancers and at the same time "clearly not the prod uct of the failures of society", then I suspect that one is left with only innate personality characteristics to study in these individuals, if even that. But, then, that view seems to go against the grain of most of our know- that appeared in The Daily Tar Heel concerning students interest in labor disputes concerning the textile mill workers and mill management. I wonder how much business" ex perience the writer has had and what outside income he has earned in the business world. Does he have any concept regard ing the effect the textile industry has on the Nation as well as the South and how much money this industry has spent on education through scholar ships? Why doesn't the writer investigate the importation of cloth and yarn equi valent to 1,450,000 bales of cotton and affecting 200,000 textile jobs? It is my opinion he was just looking for something to write about and he picked a subject he doesn't know any thing about or attempted to find out. Very truly yours, John O. Baker Class of '43 B. S. in Commerce Shape Up, Bob To The Editor: I recently noticed an article appear ing in a Greensboro newspaper de scribing a movement lead by a UNC graduate to organize college students in an effort to promote public senti ment against the war in Viet Nam. Oppose ledge about social psychology, socio logy, anthropology, and politics, not to mention psychology in general. Usual ly we find that the environment an in dividual lives in has much to do with conditioning that person's attitudes, val ues, and behavior. And, often we find that environmental factors are as help ful in understanding "deviant" behavior as they are in dealing with the more conforming varieties of behavior. This finding seems also to be true oi many medical phenomena as well. Thus, it might seem that the analogy Leininger draws would not even support bis con clusions on his point even if they were restricted solely to purely medical or physiological phenomena. Indeed, whh such a view, it is puzzling why he is studying public health, since many of the problems in that area might also be seen as social cancers. What is left then of Mr. Leininger's arguments? I suspect all that is left is his second line of reasoning whkh is contained largely in his statement that "I for one fail to be haunted by the 'ghoulishness' of Richard Speck's sentencing, just as I'm sure-, the editor fails to be haunted by his kind of deed to humanity." Now, it is not at all clear that the latter assertion is true. But, even if it were, we still would not have gotten to the core point that needs to be made: the failure of both, individuals (or any of us) to be haunted by both situations. Here, Mr. Leininger falls short of what we would ask of him, both as a humane individual and as a concerned member of society. One cannot hide the tragedy of the one situation behind the viciousness of the other. Indeed, perhaps if more people were haunted both by the conditions that lead to the commission of sucli a crime and by those under which sck ciety takes it upon itself to justify a legalized "return in kind", then maybe we could make some headway in solv ing the problems involved in removing both situations from the context of humane, social life. If one removes the element of ignorant unconcern for the relatedness of both of these problems, then all one is left with which to defend capital punishment is the primordial sense of vengeance that has always un dergirded this barbaric practice. And, it would seem that any rational "pro gressive", would reject that form of ir rationality as a valid basic for argu-v.ient.-: - - . . . 3 tin &oijc4u$ion, Jet me say that thefe are many significant arguments against capital punishmnet that I have not men tioned because they were not specifi cally relevant to Leininger's position. However, fallacious reasoning, inappro priate analogies, deadening apathy, and the irrationality that masquerades as "tough-minded realism" have all ser ved to keep the death penalty in exist ence long after most of its antiquated cousins have been relegated to museums and - historical graveyards. Similarly, they also underlie the perpetuation of conditions leading to the "social can cers" Leininger deplores. It is my feel ing that the Leininger letter serves only to illustrate some of these very char acteristics. (Editor's note: Personally Speaking Is Open FOR GUEST COLUMNS AND LONG LETTERS. GUEST COLUMNS SHOULD RE TYPED AND SIGNED. Sunday's column was written By Chuck Schunior). HJiiiSiiill This article refers to a letter writ ten by student body presidents of about 100 colleges and universities to Presi dent Johnson although I believe it was really Dean Rusk) expressing opposi tion to the government policy in Viet Nam on behalf of the majority of the student body. As I recall the president of the student body at UNC was one of those writing such a letter. If the president of the student body or any one else purporting to act as an official representative of the UNC student body in voicing an opinion on this fee seeks to represent the majority of the student body as opposing the Viet Nam war, then he is doing the Univers2y a grave injustice. : When I graduated from UNC in Jsn 1966, the vast majority of the students openingly voicing opposition to the war were the society rejects or camjws beatniks. This fact was evidenced" by overwhelming student reaction against these "peace movements" in Y - Court debates. I seriously doubt that the ma jority of the student body has come over to the "peace movement" side during the year since I graduated. Therefore, I feel that it is the duty of the student body officials responsi ble for this misrepresentation of gen eral student feelings to correct their error and in the future to refrain from stating that their personal Pinion!T fleet those of the whole student body as well when the facts simply arent so. Joseph M. Brantley III Class of 1855 .
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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May 12, 1967, edition 1
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