Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / April 10, 1969, edition 1 / Page 2
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i '1 Thursday, April 10, 19G9 Page 2 the daily tar heel f I s 'I i Utlj? laxly 77 Years of Editorial Freedom Todd Cohen Chairman J. 0. Wilkinson Bobby Nowell Rick Gray Harvey Elliot Art Chansky Steve Enfield Arlene Jacobson Mike Cozza John Kelly Bill Staton Kermit Buckner, Jr. David Clark A Public Servant A new editorial administration assumes control of this newspaper today. We feel it apropos to assert as basic our feeling that The Daily Tar Heel is a professional newspaper serving principally an academic community. As such, the DTH must operate as a public servant, maintaining as high a degree of professionalism as is humanly possible. We see a professional newspaper as having two functions. First, the newspaper must present the news as objectively as. possible. It must report as many sides of the news, of the community which it serves, as it can, without injecting personal bias. Secondly, the newspaper must present opinion -opinion which includes its own logical defense. Rather than merely painting an abstract picture of its thought, the paper must strive to communicate the rationale behind that thought. Finally, a newspaper must attempt to divorce news from opinion. Man, by virtue of his very nature as a subjective animal, can never be totally objective in attempting to communicate. However, there arc degrees of objectivity, and we, as journalists, must try to reach as high degree in that respect as we can. ri The Daily i Tar Heel has a many-sided readership which includes the students, faculty, administration and alumni of this university, as well as the citizens of this state. An effort must be made to appeal to our entire readership. And there is a great difference between appealing to a readership and appeasing a readership. We will make no effort to accomplish the latter. We have no sacred cows. The editorial policy of this newspaper is determined by an editorial board, and the members of that board will tender no opinions to their readers. We merely suggest that any opinion presented in these columns must be based on rationale. There is bound to be dissent on the part of the readers. The place to voice that dissent is in the opinion columns of this newspaper. We welcome clear, logical response, assenting or dissenting, in the form of letters or opinion columns. If a reader's opinion has something to offer, if it is in good taste and contains no offensive statements, and if there is space on the editorial page, that opinion will be printed. But tell us, don't merely tell your neighbor. We have intended to prophesy nothing, merely to present some basic assumptions. The Daily Tar Heel is not an elite entity; its doors are open to all that would enter. Hello, Goodbye Wednesday marked the inauguration of a new student body President, but also saw the resignation of a dedicated campus leader. Alan Albright was sworn in late in the afternoon as the young man who will succeed Ken Day in the leadership of the studentry of this University. Mr. Albright pledged at that time to represent the position of his office on campus issues in a loud and clear voice, a voice which he implied has been lacking in the past at times when it was needed most. -What Mr. Albright's specific policies will be are not known at this time. But his sentiments offer an encouraging beginning. He sees If! Star Ifl Executive Editor Managing Editor News Editor Arts Editor Sports Editor Associate Editor Copy Editor Editorialists Business Manager Advertising Manager Night Editor the need for a clear voice ringing from the President's office. We welcome such a voice, awaiting with anticipation the tone of that voice. We wish Mr. Albright courage in carrying the burdens which are implicit in his office. At the same time, we bow in respect to the exit of Supreme Court Chief Justice George Krichbaum, who tendered his resignation minutes after administering the oath of office to Mr. Albright. The former Chie f J ustice gave four reasons for his decision to resign, the most important being his feeling that the Chief Justice ought to be a student in Jhe University who is able to keep "closely in tune" with the everyday activities of the university community. He felt that his role as a law student next year would jeopardize the office of Chief Justice, were he to continue as Chief Justice. Mr. Krichbaum has served four years in the chambers of. student government in many capacities. He is a young man who is sensitive to the yearnings of students and whp has worked diligently witliin a given system to satisfy those yearnings. He feels perhaps that the system has failed him, but regardless of the failings of that system, we thank him for his efforts Campus Cfcfest The UNC Campus Chest begins its annual drive for funds this week as competition gets underway in the 1969 Ugly Man on Campus contest. For freshmen who may be unfamiliar with the Campus Chest, we would like to assure them that it is a most worthy cause and deserves all the support you can give it. For students who have seen the drive in the past, we are sure no urging is needed. Upperclassmen know the Ugly Man contest, the Campus Chest Auction and the Campus Carnival are fun for all in addition to aiding a variety of charities on campus and in nearby communities. In past years the Campus Chest drive has been organized by a Student Government committee, with the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity handling the Ugly Man contest. This year, however, APO is organizing the entire operation. APO President Worth Baldwin, Campus Chest Chairman Vince Townsend and all the APO members have done a lot of hard work to make this year's Campus Chest the biggest success ever. They divided the Ugly Man contest into two divisions to eliminate unfair competition between small fraternities and large residence colleges; they amassed a fine variety of items for the April 15 auction (including basketballs autographed by the ACC champion Tar Heels, cases of beer and scores of sorority girls); they lined-up at least 40 game booths for the April 24 carnival; and they have expanded the carnival into an afternoon-evening event which will include a combo party mixer as well as the traditional games and contests. All this has been done while APO continued the other services it provides during the year-the Lost and Found in Smith Building, the used book co-op and campus tours for prospective UNC students. We think APO deserves a hearty handshake and strong congratulations for the fine job it is doing. We urge all students and faculty members to show their appreciation for a job well done and their support for the Campus Chest. Vietnam Table-Talk: Musical By J. D. WILKINSON Remember the good old days when you would pick up your municipal daily newspaper every morning and get hit in the eyeballs with a big headline telling you how many Charlies our boys in Vietnam had wiped out the previous day? It was always very exciting and very encouraging, especially at the end of the week when casualty totals for the previous seven-day period were released. They (the enemy) were losing hundreds and even thousands every week, but we never lost more than two or three hundred in any given week. Of course, there were a lot of people who were upset about the fact that two or three hundred American men were being killed in an overgrown jungle halfway around the planet, but back in the good old days you could still read about it every morning on the front page of the newspaper no matter what side of the issue you were on. The good old days started to turn bad just a little over a year ago when then-President Lyndon Baines Johnson stepped before network television cameras on a never-to-be-forgotten March night and told American people that he had decided not to run for re-election. That announcement came at the end of his address and actually took up a very small part of the speech. Most of the speech was about how he had ordered a partial halt in the bombing of North Vietnamese territory in order to exhibit to the people of the world, and the Roller Skates: The Answer To (Editor's note: Scott Goodfellow, a UNC senior, is a former DTH editor and associate editor. His column, which has appeared regularly on the editorial page for the last year, will be printed three times a week during the remainder of the semester.) By SCOTT GOODFELLOW Nearly everyone has felt for some time that while parking is easily the most evident major problem on campus, nothing is being done about it. This, I found out to my surprise recently, is untrue. I don't think I'm violating any confidences by announcing that a solution to the parking problem has been found. Roller skates. I got my first hint of the new solution when 1 noticed that an electric door was put in the snack bar' to the new Student Unions Why else vyoul'd the University pay for such an expensive door if it wasn't to Letter: Writer Attacks Sitterson's Response To BSM Demands To the Editor: Our Chancellor has given his "response" to the demands of the Blac k Student Movement and that, so far as most of us are concerned, is that. Trouble has been averted. Now we can forget about that unpleasant subject and the unpleasant people who brought it up. Chancellor Sitterson's whole response was based, in his own words, on the overriding premise that there would be "no favored treatment" for any particular minority groups at the University. Concerning that point, which seems to be the central one, I would like to quote from the defense by Clarence Darrow of the Negro, Henry Sweet, in a trial in Detroit in 1926. The language may seem a bit patronizing to the proud black man of the 1960's. For that I can only ask his Creativity And Prof essionalism By J. D. WILKINSON DTH Executive Editor If you stick around Chapel Hill for the next year and if you keep reading the Daily Tar Heel, you are probably going to notice a few changes in the newspaper's editorial page. The proposed changes now under consideration are the result of two different directions of thought. The first concerns journalistic Letters, Columns, Cartoons The Daily Tar Heel is in need of columnists and cartoonists for the remainder of the spring semester. Students who are interested in working for the editorial staff in either capacity should contact the executive editor by calling 933-101 1 or 933-1012. Columns by permanent columnists will appear on the editorial page on a regular basis. In addition, special columns will be printed several times each week. All columns should be double-spaced and typed on 5 0-space lines. Letters-to-thc-editor should also be double-spaced and typed on s 50-space lines. All columns and letters must be submitted to the $ executive editor for approval. The works of various cartoonists will be printed during the remainder of the semester with a regular cartoonists being chosen by next fall. Anyone interested in working as a cartoonist is asked to contact the executive editor by the end of next week. people of North Vietnam especially, this nation's willingness to take the issue to the conference table in the hope of solving the protracted conflict in a peaceful manner. Within a few days the North Vietnamese government had made an affirmative response of sorts; and the war began to take a back-seat on the front page of newspapers across the country because people were excited about Mr. Johnson not running again, and there were people like Kennedy and McCarthy and .Humphrey who were running. In addition, there was an old face on the Republican side that was beginning to make a lot of noise after several years of semi-obscurity. After that, news of the war seemed to degenerate to stories about arguments between the two sides in the conflict as to where they should get together to try to talk things over. Each side made countless proposals; and each government faithfully declined the other's offer until, after months of bickering, the American government and the Vietnamese governments agreed on a place that somebody had suggested back when it all started. There was a slight falling-off in the casualty totals at this point, but what contributed most to the decreased play which the actual fighting began to suffer in the newspapers was the issue to end all issues: the table. Now you'd pick up the paper every morning and read about tables: round help people who couldn't stop lor a door such as people on roller skates? A good friend of mine who had been working on the parking problem for some time explained how the decision had been reached: "There simply was no more space for automobiles. We were building buildings and getting rid of spaces faster than we could find new ones. What we needed was some new method of getting people around that didn't use up space." "Why didn't you start a bus system?" I asked. "Because then it would look like Student Government had solved the problem, and that would be a disaster. So instead we looked into a giant underground lot in Polk Place, or simply concreting over McCorkle Place. "Dean Cathey, however, pointed out the expense of the first idea, and suggested that the second idea might tend to destroy some of the scenic charm of the campus." forgiveness. "Gentlemen, I feel deeply on this subject; I cannot help it. Let us take a little glance at the history of the Negro race. It only needs a minute. It seems to me that the story would melt hearts of stone. I was born in America. I could have, left it if I had wanted to go away. Some other men, reading about this land of freedom that we brag about on the Fourth of July, came voluntarily to America. These men, the defendants, are here because they could not help it. Their ancestors were captured in the jungles and on the plains of Africa, captured as you capture wild beasts, torn from their homes and their kindred; loaded into slave ships, packed like sardines in a box, half of them dying on the ocean passage; professionalism. Professionalism is the watchword of the new DTH regime, and it is felt that the editorial staff should strive for as high a degree of professionalism as will be sought by the news staff. It is, of course, of utmost importance that the front page be as professional and objective as possible since it is the means by which the bulk of the news is conveyed to the students and other readers. Just as important, however, is the Chairs In The City tables, square tables, rectangular tables, triangular tables, and who sat where, and who could sit and who couldn't sit, and when the Americans could be excused to go to the bathroom, and when the other people could be excused to go to the bathroom. You had to know that times was bad when that started. Well, they talked about tables for months; and how they ever get such a throny issue resolved we'll never really know, but over in Paris they do sit down at some sort of table every once in a while just to prove that they could and did do it. But things had to get won before they could get better. For weeks there were big stories about the preliminary peace negotiations, and the television networks had thirty-minute specials after every session so they could tell the American people what Averill Harriman and Cyrus Vance had for lunch. Hardly anybody knew what the negotiators were actually talking about; but a lot of people suspected that they just sat there and admired that table and tried not to spill coffee on it. Most Americans weren't really sure about what shape the table was, but they knew it couldn't really be round because that was too easy for such clever men. Finally the situation seemed tc stabilize. There was a table of some sort and there were Americans and North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese and Viet Cong sitting at it. There was a new President, which was hardly exciting, and then a new chief negotiator, which wasn't Campus Parking "That's pretty sharp," I said. "But why roller skates?" "They have a tremendous number of advantages. They're cheap, smaJI and easy to park. Furthermore, roller skates are very easy to tow away. "The police force is very excited about the new plan. First of all, they won't have to walk all over campus, peering at parking stickers. A roller skate lot is really a very small area, you know. Second, police used to create a good deal of bad will when they marched up to a car as the owner approached and relentlessly continued writing the ticket. Who can get upset over a ticketed roller skate?" "This project sounds brilliant," I said. "We're particularly excited about the new sticker system we will install." "Sticker system?" "Yes. We'll use a clip-on sticker that fits onto the leather .strap, of the .skateu. They'll be different colors to show if the "', owner is a student, faculty member, some jumping into the sea in their frenzy, when they had a chance to choose death in place of slavery. They were captured and brought here. They could not help it. They were bought and sold as slaves, to work without pay because they were black. They were subject to all of this for generations, until finally they were given their liberty, so far as the law goes and that is only a little way, because, after all, every human being's life in this world is inevitably mixed with every other life and, no matter what laws we pass, no matter what precautions we take, unless the people we meet are kindly and decent and human and liberty-loving, then there is no liberty. Freedom comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions. On The DTH Editorial Page necessity for maintaining an equal degree of professionalism on the second page where we are dealing, to a large extent, not in objective facts but subjective opinions. An. editorial page must, in order to maintain the respect and interest of its readers, attain as high a degree of professionalism as is humanly and journalistically possible. Therefore, opinions must be submitted to the readers in a manner which makes them worthy of the readers' efforts. The second line of thought involves creativity. The editorial staff does not believe that the quest for professionalism precludes the guest for creative originality. Rather, it feels that each quest can enhance the other if both are' handled in a thoughtful manner. As such, it is hoped that the editorial page will provide space for various creative endeavors which have gone largely -unnoticed by Daily Tar Heel staffs in the past. The DTH editorial page during the next year may not be designed in such a way as to satisfy every reader. The new editorial staff realizes that the newspaper's second page has not had universal readership in the past, but it does not believe that such readership is necessarily an impossibility. The staff hopes, by making the page more interesting and more professional, to better satisfy those who to take a serious interest in the editorial page and to better Of Limits exciting at all; and people began to forget about the war because there were mere interesting things to get excited about, like the way the kids were burning down the schools and things like that. Meanwhile, the casualty rates began to climb again, back to where they were in the good old days. The Vietnam conflict had set a record for this nation's longest war, and when the total number of Americans killed soared past the 35,003 mark it left the Korean War of our younger days behind. Now people are beginning to take interest in the fighting again, and it's about time. Thousands of them marched in New York and San Francisco and Atlanta and several other cities on Holy Saturday, and the newspaper people are beginning to play up those casualty figures again. The government's trying to fight the trend, of course. All sorts of big peop e have started leaking stories about secret talks in Paris and how things may be moving now at last oh boy. They may te having secret talks about the table or the ham sandwiches or the bathroom situation, but who cares as long as they're secret? The big people are trying to calm -us down by letting us in on the secret that all those negotiators in Paris are having secret talks, but they can't stop the trend. Hang on and sit tight, America, because the good old days are coming back and good times is just around the corner. Problems? whether he subscribes to the new meal-card system we're installing at Chase, whether he's an activist, whether he's paid his telephone bill regularly it'll be quite all-encompassing. In fact we snatched the university's interior decorator away from working on the new Student Union to help decide what colors to use. That's why the snack bar isn't finished." "This is quite remarkable," I ssid. "But won't you have to install a lot of innovations around campus to provide for the skates?" "Yes. Well have to get rid of those brick paths, and we'll have to install numerous boxes around campus where you can get a new skate key if you lose yours. Oh yes, and we'll have to put a rope tow in on that hill by the Rams Head parking lot." I thanked him for the conversation .and left, happy toknow that progressive thinking is still very much alive in South Building. "Now, that is their history. These people are the children of slavery. If the race that we belong to owes anything to any human being, or to any power in the universe, they owe it to these black men. Above all other men, they owe an obligation and a duty to these black men that can never be repaid. I never see one of them that I do not feel I ought to pay part of the debt of my race-and if you gentlemen feel as you should feel in this case, your emotions will be like mine." What about you, J. Carlyle Sittenion? What are your emotions like? How can you speak of "no favored treatment" and not hang your head in shame? Gary D. Martin Grad. Student Economics interest those who have heretofore largely ignored the editorial page. Regular columns by DTH columnists will appear every day. In addition, special columns will be carried frequently; and letters-to-the-editor will constitute a regular feature. It is also hoped that regular cartoons can be published, since the staff feels the cartoon to be one of the more valuable mediums for journalistic communication. The Daily Tar Heel is published ; by the University of North Carolina Student Publication's Board, dairy except Monday, examination periods and vacations and during summer periods. Offices are at the Student Union Bldg., Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514. Telephone numbers: editorial, spoils, news-933-1011; business, circulation, advertising 933-1163, Address: Box 1080, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514 Subscription rates: $9 per year; $5 per semester. We regret that we can accept only prepaid subscriptions. Classified ads are S1.00 per day prepaid. Display rate is $1.25 per column inch. Second class postage paid at U.S. Post Office in Chapel Hill, N.C. t .v-. p.- - In I
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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April 10, 1969, edition 1
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