Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / April 2, 1968, edition 1 / Page 2
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Tu&Say; -April 23908 ' " ' ? IS x s J Page 2 f ? T- ? , - r Robin Brewer Wha Si out wrmu THE DAILY TAR HEEL Ab 7TTS 76 Years of Editorial Freedom' Bill Amlong, Editor Don Walton, Business Manager Lyndon B. lis Awesome Duties 'WITH AMERICA'S SONS in the field far away, with America's future under challenge here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopesfor peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office. "ACCORDINGLY, I shall not seek and will not accept the nomina tion of my party for another term as your president." Lyndon Baines Johnson, President of the United States President Johnson, long the target for just about every editorial brickbat we could lay our hands on, Sunday night made the greatest speech of his political career. In so doing, he also made possibly the greatest political speech of this century. It may not have been quite as articulate as John F. Kennedy's pitch about "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." And it definitely lacked the smooth, measured tones of a JFK speech. . But in his own drawling, folksy way, Lyndon Johnson Sunday said ppssibly more in a : single speech" (iian any other president to date. First, and most important, he announced he would not be a can didate for reelection. By this announcement, Presi dent Johnson assured himself of some sort of immortality among American politicans. He cinched his being remembered as one of the greatest presidents in American history: the statistics that historians will cite .will be those of Johnson's overwhelming victory over Sen. Barry Goldwater and not of his probable defeat in 1968. And truly, Johnson has been one of the greatest presidents this nation "has had. He definitely seems so when his record is viewed ob jectively. Johnson achieved more than any other president in terms of legislation pushed through Congress. He is generally regarded as the most adroit politician to ever occupy the White House BUT THERE ARE two things which have marred Lyndon Johnson's tenure as President of the United States : the Vietnam war and the festering racial crisis in our cities. Johnson's administration has failed to successfully meet either of these challenges. It has failed further to maintain the support of a large portion of this na tionespecially the youth and the Urban poor. All of these three things are interlinked: The Vietnam war has both drained funds from the nation, . funds which could have been used to combat urban poverty, and has been the rallying point for youths who are disenchanted with American foreign policy and with the draft. Ironically, it wasn't even Johnson's war to begin with. He escalated it to its present level, of course, but he did not start it . United States involvement in Vietnam began during the ad ministration of Republican Presi dent Dwight D. Eisenhower, became deeper during John F. Kennedy's short term of office and was dumped into Johnson's lap Pamela Hawkins, Associate Editor Terry Gingras, Managing Editor Rebel Good, News Editor Kermit Buckner, Advertising Manager Johnsons when he became President. , But even as Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek the presidency again, he also stated that he was making strong overtures towards . peace. He ordered a partial halt in the bom bing of North Vietnam, and invited North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh to the peace table. FURTHER, JOHNSON also noted in his announcement of non candidacy that he is gravely con cerned . with the domestic crisis, a crisis that threatens to flare into racial war this summer. Although this was discussed far less than the Vietnam question, President Johnson undoubtedly plans drastic measures to combat such conditions measures which will stem those conditions before combat becomes necessary. President Johnson now has nine months Jeft in which to do something about these two crisesnine months in which to assure that his term as president will have been a successful one. And Sunday night President Lyndon Baines Johnson whom we have never liked very much before went a long way towards fulfilling "the awesome duties of this office." Bus System Experiment Is Feasible All the talk about a South Cam pus transportation system has been a bill which will be presented to neatly bundled up in the form of the Student Legislature Thursday night. Assuming SL approval of the well researched and immediately practical bill, South Campus will get a chance to prove just how many dimes worth of want all the big talk really means. The bill proposes a 5-day trial run using two buses for six hours. The main obstacle to the success of the plan is the cost $350 per week per bus. Student Legislature, if the bill is passed, will finance the first week of the bus line. The Traffic and Safety Committee has said that it will finance a second week of the run. Both groups are expecting to come out even when the 10 cent fares are tallied. If the system proves to be self-liquidating, there is the good chance that it will become permanent. Local merchants' advertising in the bus could also help sustain the bus system. Jed Dietz, Bill Darrah and John McMurray, have done an enormous amount of work in the way of research and negotiations to bring the proposal to its present state. After a good bit of running around the barn they have hurdled the insurance problem and purchasing cost and have gotten the dissociated but involved groups to agree to a common plan. Even though the 10 cent fare might seem a little stiff and a little prohibitive for multiple daily trips, the plan seems otherwise feasible. At least this will be a concrete start after too many years of only words. This month's interview is with Oscar Ripple, UNC Traffic Director and head Stop Light Regulator in Chapel Hill. A controversial figure prominent in the news lately, Mr. Ripple was asked about the traffic problem. DTH: What about the traffic pro blem? RIPPLE: Could you be more specific? DTH: In your opinion, has the parking problem on campus reached the critical stage? RIPPLE: Not at all. We have no problem whatsoever with parking on campus. It's in the parking lots we have our greatest difficulty. We haven't had a car parked on the campus per' se" since, Let's see, 1922. And that was a gypsy caravan. ". ; v .. DTH: I see your point. But didn't you suggest that the parking facilities should be made larger, to accommodate ' -ma Letters To The Editor Ail "r rr 6 o Dear Sir: I attended for two reasons the recent trial in Chapel Hill of the students charg ed with interference with the Dow Chemical recruitment: first, some of the defendant are personal friends at least two of whom have in the past worshiped from time to time in our church, and second, because of my in terest in the larger issue posed and dramatized by the questionable use of , educational facilities for such pruposes. I wish to- pay tribute to Judge Luther J. Phipps for the tone and fairness and judicial competence with which he presided over the trial. I was also impressed favorably with the pro secutor and with the counsel for the defendants. The verdict pronounced by, the Judge indicated something of the ; lenience and understanding, perhaps even! compassion, of the court. Under the circumstance I can hardly see h o w; the students could have hoped for more' But the point I wish to make is that in my judgment the case should have never reached the court, that it might easily have been prevented, and that, even after the occurrence, the University authorities might have handl Horse Era To the Editor: Occasionally the aberrant members of this university deem it necessary to expefee the rest of us to their idiosyn cracies. Many times we of the masses can' find some aspect of our forced exposure to appreciate. But in a few rare instances our sensibilities are so Outraged that we not only fail completely to appreciate the spectacle presented to us but also are publicly movad to The Daily Tar Heel is pub lished by the University of North Carolina Student Publi cations Board, daily except Mondays, examinations periods and vacations. Offices are on the second floor of Graham Memorial. Telephone numbers: editorial, sports, news 933-1011; bus iness, circulation, advertising 933-1163. Address: Box 1080, Chapel Hill, N. C., 27514. Second class postage paid at VJS. Post Office in Chapel Hill, N. C. Subscription rates: $3 year; $5 per semester. per more cars? RD?PLE: What I said was that care should be made smaller. Or course the net result is the same in either case. DTH: Of course. But wouldn't small cars be inconvenient for mast people? RD7PLE: Nonsense. Some of my best friends are midgets. DTH: What about' the basketball team? RIPPLE: I believe they are rated number two. DTH: Very alert of you, indeed. RD7PLE: Yes, I'm quite perceptive. DTH: You must make an awful lot of money on parking fines. RD7PLE: I don't make the first pen ny. God, wish I did, but no, the money collected from fines goest straight to the City Council. DTH: What do they do with it? RD7PLE: Build monuments on park ing lots. - I oo W oar ip Oeiemidls Dow Fro ed it within the bosom of the family. I had the uneasy feeling throughout the proceedings that it was the Universi ty, and not the students, that was on trial. As a churchman I have several times encountered the charge that the con science of American today is found in the minority of young men and women who see clearly and act bravely rather than in our traditional eccelesiastical structures and educational institutions. I "am painfully aware of the justice of this charge as regards the church. The trial in Chapel Hill, coming so soon after a recent similar incident at Duke University which ought to have forewarned the University authorities, convinces me further that the charge is equally true as regards educational institutions! In his summing up the defense at torney gave .the court a rather vivid . description of what a napalm bomb is and does. The court was visibly moved. I wish he had exhibited a few pictures of the bodies of children and old people burned by this weapon of defense and freedom and thereby had arraigned all universities for their implied col- Pollution condemn vehemently the perpetrators. Last Saturday I had such an ex perience. There on Franklin Street were three meticulously bearded youths dress ed in garb that only a charlatan, would sell and riding three of the most dilapidated sway-backs I have seen. After much contemplation I decided they were probably a mock-up of the pride of the Union or of the Confderacy. They lacked, as most aberrants do, that common decency, that hallmark of urban civilization, consideration of others. Strewed behind them as they plodded along were those memorable benchmarks of the horse era which in itially offend those on foot and, in the end, after being ground up by the modern -motorized society which most of us ap preciate and to which most of us belong, . assail the nostrils of all citizens. (What I am trying to say is that their cavalier disregard for others polluted the air and disgusted the eye.) Hopefully Saturday was the only time the rest of us will have to endure them. Or failing this .most desirable state, let us hope that they can be encouraged at least to clean up im mediately after themselves in the future. Stephen S. Skjei DTH: Doesn't that represent an apt example of the economic principle un derlying the law of diminishing returns? RIPPLE: I wish you'd speak in English. DTH: Let me put it this way. Will Chapel Hill remain relatively backward in comparison with our sister university towns, and deign not to initiate traffic reforms? An deign not to initiate traffic the times and seek to provide vehicle accomodation to alleviate the problem? RIPPLE: Yes. DTH: Admirable sentiments. Hasn't your staff offered some 'solutions to the parking problem? RIPPLE: Oh, goodness yes. Unfortunately most of them were for the parking problem in New York City, which we forwarded post haste to the proper authorities. -Kdrviple laboration with the chief manufacturer of this horrendous instrument of massive human destruction. The court, and the wider community too, might then have shared something of the moral revulsion of young people who are driven to spon taneous excesses in the fervor of their protest. What they did at Chapel Hill might well have been seen more as an act of discourtesy, or bad manners, than an infraction of the law. certainly, in my view, such excess of emotion, such displays of bad manners, are in finitely to be preferred to the silence and apathy and compliance of our universities in what has come to be known as the military-industrial-educational complex. The handwriting on the wall is clear. Our universities must reconsider their policies regarding recruitment and place ment. To fail to do this is to invite similar incidents in the future. The university is primarily a learning com munity. The students indicated their awareness of this when they sought to have the Dow Chemical recruiter debate with them and, later, to level with them about its products, and also to reason with administrative officials, but ap paretly hey were reputsed in all of thete endeavors. As I . understand, it was the denial of reason and debate the very essence of the education process that drove the students to what may be regarded as acts of desperation. The Protestant Reformation, DTH: To be sure. What about the problem in Chapel Hill? RIPPLE: At one timewe were con sidering the football stadium in the off season. The nice thing about it was it was already sectioned off. We would have given out registration bumper stickers for this and that yard line. DTH: What happened? RD7PLE: The Administration wouldn't issue athletic passes to Volfcswagons. "Something about out-of-state quotas, it seems. DTH: What did you do then? RIPPLE: Well, there was a rumor, going round that the new student Union was to be'an indoor parking lot. DTH: Oh, heaveSs! RIPPLE: There was a rumor to that effect too. Fortunately neither of them is correct. DTH: Well, that's a relief. I thought we weren't going to have our new union.' RD7PLE: Oh, we aren't. It turns out it's really a new Danziger restaurant. Kind of a homey touch, don't you thinkoO DTH: .'At any rate that still leaves about 12,000 cars and only 6,000 parking places. What do you intend doing with; the other 5,000 cars? RD7PLE: I'm glad you asked that. I don't want to spoil any surprises, but we have discovered a way to solve the problem. Now, 5,000 cars at 15 feet apiece is about 15 miles of cars. And although we do not have enough parking places for those cars we do have plenty of open roads. DTH: So? RD7PLE: We envision a traffic circle with a circumference of 15 miles. We use a totation system whereby each driver must spend so much time driving on this loop instead of parking, so, ipso ergo, magna key largo, no problem. Isn't it just genius? DTH: I have a better idea. RIPPLE: What's that? DTH: Fifteen miles jitst about gets to Durham, doesn't it? RD7PLE: Yes, why? DTK: O. K. Make all roads from Chapel Hill there one way, and make it Duke's problem. . . RD7PLE: Hey. . . it will be remembered, began with the petting on a door of the university campus some famous these which were simply an open invitation to debate and to reason. The universities are undei no mandate to act as employment agen cies, to serve as recruitment centers for the military or the C.I.A., to offei their facilities to Dow Chemical or anj other weapon manufacturer whose pro ducts are so morally abhorrent to s growing number of students. The govern ment can set up its military recruitmen centers at pott offices and elsewhere The Dow Chemical Corporation is ap parently financially able to rent a hal of the campus. Meanwhile in default of such policie reoarding recrsitment and in the absena of an official conscience of the universit; in such practices, the University of Nort Carolina can thank whatever academi gods there may be for being the kin of hatitution that attracts the kind c young people who are nourished by th kind of men on its faculty and th kind of books in its 'library to spea from their consciences and to act o their conviction, in loco nniversitatis. With the payment of fines of $25.( and costs of court by the defedan! the ' trial of the students is over. Tfc University remains on trial. Rev. W. W. Finlator, Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, Raleigh, N.C 'This must have been the one with p! 01(01010!' . -
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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April 2, 1968, edition 1
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