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Tuesday. February 10. 973 Page Two THE DAILY TAR HEEL Bobby Noivell OfSf if! i 77 Yer c EdZcrtd Sandra University's Head In Sand The Annual Report of the Committee on the Status of Minorities and the Disadvantaged, released Friday, suggests that the policies of the University toward Blacks specifically, and toward that committee, do not contribute to the well-being of the blacks or the efforts of the committee. The University not only does not provide adequate funds and, personnel for the committee, or some kind of "ombudsman" to carry out the recommendations of the committee, the report said, but the University also dbes not consult the committee on matters which are relevant to it. On June 6, 1969, the committee informed Chancellor Sitterson that "until there is appointed ; an administrative officer who can . implement recommendations and who is responsible to you, or until an ombudsman is appointed, or until the two positions are combined and an able, trusted person is appointed to fill them, your committee is unaware of any course that is open'to it." . On Aug. 5, 1969, Provost Charles Morrow reported that as far as the ombudsman position was' concerned, the Chancellor was out of the country and no decision could be made until his return. The Chancellor was here in the fall, and he is '.here now. There is still no ombudsman. S The committee pointed out some other obstacles. When various decisions were made concerning the controversial Upward Bound program, such as Morrow's refusal to hire as counselors for the program certain members of the Black Student Movement, the committee "unanimously believed his (Morrow's) decision to be both unwise and unjustified." Morrow, however, neither . consulted nor informed the committee about the The Faculty Council's Underbelly The Chancellor's Advisory Committee and the Faculty Council Friday demonstrated a seldom recognized or acknowledged u nderbelly of inadequacy and hypocrisy. The committee turned in some recommendations for amendments to both the trustees' disruptions policy and the procedures to implement that policy. The recommendations sought to insure that neither the rights nor the integrity of any faculty member be , abridged by either of the trustees' documents. In so far as the Advisory Committee addressed itself to correcting apparent ills in the trustees' documents, it was on the .. right track. But the significant point about most of the recommendations was that they dealt with improving the lot and rights solely of the faculty. No mention was made, no consideration given, to the students. ' The committee recommended that "the accused person (appearing before the Hearings Committee), if a faculty member, shall, be entitled upon written demand served prior to the hearing to have his case determined solely by faculty members and the University Hearings Committee." Another recommendation stated that "evidence regarding the general competence and professional and moral fitness OF THE FACULTY MEMBER shall be considered relevant." (our caps) A third recommendation (this one to the disruption policy), sought to guarantee the political, social and economic objectivity of the consideration of the case of "any faculty member." Wresd, Tcdi Cchca Editor Managing Editor Nevrt Editor Associatt Editor Arts Editor Sports Editor Lcura-Whitt M&ry Burch. Art ChnsScy Bob Wilson Frank Stewart Business Manager Advertising Manager Saunders Night Editor this issu matter. During the fall," 'Morrow undertook a detailed evaluation of Upward Bound to determine whether or not the University should continue to support it, the committee reported. But "at no point in this evaluation and decisional process did the administration solicits the committee's opinion and judgment." The committee concluded the following: "For understandable and legitimate reasons, the black students have concluded that our committee lacks authority, influence, and power ... We therefore believe that we cannot continue to function unless we receive firm assurance from the administration that it intends to incorporate the opinion and judgments of this committee in all decisions which are of concern to black students." In addition, the committee made recommendations for the appointment of "qualified personnel" to direct the Afro-American studies program and to oversee the interests of minorities students; to make available "adequate" funding to support black candidates for admission to expand programs like Upward-lfeound and similar programs; and to keep the committee informed of ; what t is -relevant to 'itsrifun&ionyiaslja1 ) committee, I which seeks :; to accomplish something. The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Thursday told the University its attitude toward blacks was not bad, but that its practices were pretty bad. On Friday the Minorities Committee reported. The University might take its head out of the sand. These three recommendations, then, dealt solely yith the rights of the faculty. The Chancellor's Advisory Committee did not seem to care much about insuring students the same rights. But the double standard which the Advisory Committee apparently seeks to maintain is not solely the ; possession of that 1 committee. , The Faculty Council as a body, is considering, the Advisory Committee's report, did not pass the specific recommendations which applied the double standard. But the Council did discuss those recommendations and that discussion was marked by a hypocrisy rarely attributed to such scholars as those which compose the Faculty Council. The argument on those matters seemed to suggest that if only faculty members should hear the cases of other faculty members, then the students would feel that the faculty had copped out on them. "Tut, tut. Wouldn't want our young proteges to think we had bugged out. Tut, tut." No one seemed to suggest that what was really lacking" in the recommendation concerning the ... Hearings Committee, for example, was a clause to guarantee that students be given the right to hear the cases of other students. And that, after all, would have been the consistent thing for both the Advisory Committee to recommend and for the Faculty Council to discuss. But the eminent men of letters who comprise both bodies are not always as consistent as we would have them be. Tut, tut. 1 op w Siiatioiig The other day, fiddling with the car radio on the way to campus, I happened to pick up WTIK, Durham's country music station. Some dude was ehordpicking a guitar, the pronounclatiorxs dribbling down his chin. But wait; what was he" singing: "If you don't love it, leave it " I don't remember the rest of the words. The gist was, of course, if you don't obey the rules, get the hell out of MY America, "the land of the free." I don't even remember the singer.. One of those CW cats with the beautiful names, like J I Ferlin Tubb or vv I Faron Sonne. You know, the guys with g 1 e a m i n g mmmmmmmmm pearl-button, shirts to match the golden glitter in their smiles. Feeling my temperature rapidly rising, I switched to WSSB, another Durham station. It is at best a second-rate hit parader, but sadly. enough, it is the best this reception area has to offer. The first song the deejay played was "Je T'Aime," prefaced by a force cheerfulness: "Well, folks, in spite of your calls, here it is again." In case you haven't heard it (or heard about it), "Je T'Aime" is not so much music as it is the erotic gasping of two' lovers who are mumbling la langue de Vamour in French. The "song" is obviously directed to the prurient interests of those who don't get to hear such things very often. It is to the credit of WSSB that it has the courage to play the song in spite of public opposition. One Charlotte radio station was brave enough to spin "Je T'Aime" for a while that is, until someone translated the words of the song. After that, the station was inundated by so many phone calls from outraged adults that it was forced to drop "Je T'Aime" from the airwaves. Reaction to the tune has been similar when other North Carolina stations dared play it. And what is the significance of all this, you ask? Well, not too long ago Deputy Premier Spiro T. Agnew had something to say about the "liberal" broadcast industry letting the public know only one side of the issues. However, upon a closer examination of the industry, you may find that Agnew was berating in his -widesweeping generalization one of the best tools of repression used by the status quo. ' ; ; ' What, for example, would happen to' the WTIK jockey if he should follow up "if ;You Doa't Love It, Leave It" with "Feel-Like-I'm-Fbcin'-to-Die-Rag" by Country Joe and the Fish? For playing a record critical of that thoroughly red-blooded American involvement in Vietnam, he probably have to start looking for another job. Remember 1967 and Barry McGuire's Jim Eldridge es Parents ( And ChlHreni Flm Why would she treat us so thoughtlessly How could she do this to me: She (We never thought of ourselves) , is leaving (Never a thought for ourselves) home (We struggled hard all our lives to get by) LennonMcCartney Going home for the weekend is like falling asleep in a chair; it feels so good ' until you wake up, Until all the ghosts of reality come back to haunt you. My parents and I have a relationship which is indicative of the true generation gap: the desperate anxiety of having deep mutual love and respect but being unable to express it because of our separate pride and self-defensiveness. We have for too 1 long not spoken honestly to each other, and now our attempts are moot. We reach for true dialogue, but can only grasp straws of self-deception. This past weekend was no exception. The verbal boxing match began soon after we were home. It started with a simple question or statement about something that happened in Chapel HUT or something someone said about this or that. I can't remember. But before long, we were entrenched in a tangent battle over ourselves, with the world's issues as our weapons. THEM.. The HEW ruling will lower the standards of the University. The Daily Tar Heel is -published by the University of North Carolina Student Publication's Board, daily j except Monday, examination ;f periods and vacations and during ; summer periods. Offices are at the Student Union Bldg., Univ. of North Carolina, $ Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514. Telephone f numbers: editorial, sports,:! neTvs 933.-101 1; business, circulation, advertising 9 33-118 3, Address: Box 1030, Chspel HD, $ N.C. 27514. g Subscription rates:S Q per year; $5 per semester.'.We regr? t that w& can' accept "only prepaid l H (JSC LtKiJiv Second ctess posted paid st US. .Post Office in Chsnsl Hilk N.C. :x 'A ' Eve of Destruction?" He croaked: "You re old enough to kill. But not for voting; You don't believe in war, But what's that gun youYe toting? And even the Jordan River Has bodies floating. .. " - Radio stations across the country rebelled against the song . and had it banned. But in thesame year, the jockeys made S. Sgt. Barry Sadler a national hero with his No. 1 hit parade recording, 'The Ballad of the Green Berets. How many times have you heard "Give Peace a Chance" on the radio? Yet tune in WTIK again and you'll soon hear "God Bless America Again" by Jimmy Lee Overman or somebody like that. It is easier to understand why radio stations didn't play "(Goddamn the) Pusher" by Steppenwolf. It is an obvious threat to childhood innocence and to the moral integrity of adult America (although not necessarily in that order). However, Mr. Middle Class, is your child going to learn about life by digging "Goody-Goody Gum Drops" by the Ohio Express? John Agar Blemms Caught Im Trend To Right David Blevins! conviction is no surprise but still disappointing. It adds steam to the tendency which always lurks just under the surface of discipline and order in America; and which, in the last bad days of Lyndon Johnson and the' first bad days of the Nixon regime, has been making another of its perennial comebacks into the open the tendency, that is, toward suppression of minority dissent and free speech. The conviction very nearly brings us to the kind of crisis which the Speaker Ban precipitated. The major difference, perhaps, between then and now is that now the entire country is moving far far to the right. The hatred and suspicion which Nixon banks on to solidify his .Republican coalition is nationwide, and the significance of events here is lost in the general turbulence of conspiracy trials, "Southern strategy," and the like. Still, just in this academic year, there is no mistaking the trend. v ; r- .. The year opened with Howard Lee being deprived of a job here for verbal indiscretions. The "double jeopardy" controversy was, in essence, the University's assumption of the Silent Majority's moral fear "of marijuana as official policy. And the SAGA strike well, just the blacks getting the shiv. Nothing new there. US. Yes, perhaps; but are a couple of hundred black students out of 16,000 really indicative of the society? THEM. But those poor colored kids won't even know what the professors are " talking about. US. Okay, let's kiss off this generation, then, and start improving the black, schools at grade one. THEM. But what about those kids who don't even know what a fork is? (local example from teacher at integrated school supplied) - US. I know it's more than just an educational problem; it's sociological . , . it's economic . . . it's THEM. Well, they're promoting a lot of them now and giving them a certificate when they finish a certain grade US. Oh, that's really nice! What a beautifully bigoted way of looking at it! You want to promote the whole black race and give them . certificates? Why don't you just put them on a boat and send them back to Africa? THEM. You're too steeped in theory! Theory's nice but you've got to look at reality. Things don't always work out 3 you'd like them. And so goes the battle on into the night. I am too addicted to sleep and can no longer intelligently debate after midnight. Thus, I begin to concede thinp I'm don't really believe in after a certain length of time. And this adds but another deception to the whole game of "not-communicating." Not only do we speak to each other with grazing arrows which never reach their mark; we play the game only for momentary victory, for transient benefits, for escape from tha responsibility of resolving the true issues. My parents are not bigoted Southern rednecks; their concern for blacks and thf other oppressed peoples of the earth Is probably as great as their generation arj environment will allow. They are very concerned" that, ' with ..a Marxist distribuisfn of everything equally, we wO destroy something perhaps very capitalistic but still very dear incentive. Incentive which leads to creativity. I am not always the flami3 -liberal radical I often ascribe to being, i am ambivalent toward many things, anil : this game of "not-communicating" or The real victims of this repressive tragedy are thtr primary audience of the Top 40 statioas-the nation's adolescents and the beSow-16 teens. It is no accident that there are very few stations which will play anything but l4buhhle-gum music" or other insipid, musically depraved songs with no political or moral controversy. The idea is to protect young minds from such dangerous knowledge as sex, agnosticism, communism, drugs, or anything else deviant from the American absolute of Truth. It is as Lenny Bruce once said: it's all right for kids to watch killing on TV, but not sexual acts'Because they might grow up and do it some day." Thus, the kids get a steady diet of such trash as "I Just Cant Stop Dancing" or "Hey little Woman" or "Last Train to Clarksville." However, look again and you can detect that even some of the bubble-gum "artists" occasionally manage to slip a faux pas onto the air. No one is fooled by Tommy Roe's ambiguity when, in "Jam Up and Jelly Tight" he croons. "Come on, now, and gimme some of it. " We seemed to have reached a kind of . ironical climax in . the proto-fascist "free-speech" movement, which has tried to gag the "Tar Heel," first through heavy-handed threats of legal action, now through an appeal to the silent majority's inherent distaste for freedom. But the real climax, of course, is the Blevins trial, with the official University clamping down on a professor who took a day off to fulfill a moral obligation. Blevins' one day, his big day, his gigantic fling well, it disrupted the University. It's symptomatic of officialdom that it is incapable of sensibly weighing issues and challenges and letting the petty annoyances go by. Blevins' challenge was not a case of a professor taking half a semester off to work in someone's campaign, or of a classroom injury caused by his intentional, malicious negligence. Blevins merely took a day off to support a cause he believes in.' Other professors have taken time off for conferences, minor illnesses, conventions, personal matters, whatnot. But because Blevins asserted that his absence was motivated by scruples, the University officialdom found it impossible to dismiss the incident. The formula is that indiscretions of confounds my dilemma. My parents believe that their generation owes our generation nothing but food and shelter. We feel they owe us more, yet we feel we owe them less. This second game, this game of paying one's debts, is equally farcical and equally tragic Each generation says it will give its children more than they themselves ever had, and each generation usually renigs on its promise. ' We are the generation which has been quick to criticize; let us also be the one which is able and ready to understand. Able and ready to communicate, truly communicate. We must throw away our own facades before they will throw away theirs. Then, and only then, can we honestly be beautiful peopb. KNOCK, A' l.r ha -run -jrA r: TO Tlut's all riht,, though. There is r.o mistaking the immoral message of mj T'Aime," so damned if youVe goir.r to play it for my kids to hear. Besides, -jir Up and Jelly Tijht" has a r iM nice beat to it. So, take a letter Maria-to the Vice President. - "Dear Ted: Don't knock the music' radio stations of this great Lard cf ours, They are one of the best things yc-j have to insure that the Silent Majority will remain silent because if they heV.'e everything they hear on the radio, they won't know about the problems of ;S REAL world. After all, ignorance is blss." Incidentally, not long after playing "Je T'Aime" on WSSB, the same disc "jock brazenly played one of the songs from the move "Putney Swope." But this time the censor's beep showed that even WSSB$ boldness was limited. See if you can find the two words which were "beeped" out cf the following: "You gave me a soul kiss, It reclly was grand. You gave me a dry hunp. Behind the hot-dog stand. Mmrr Hmmm . . . " 3 least import are equal to the greatest effrontery in the eyes of someone or something which is in the process of becoming totalitarian. Where a sensible employer would have called Blevins' absence a sick day, and where a petty employer might have docked him for missed work, the University slaps down hard. But, for this, the University got its message across, and did it cheaply. Dissent, as always, is sacred, provided you keep it to yourself. To make its point, the University had to spend not a full professor a part-time instructor. The timidity of thousands of faculty members across an entire state made it an economy operation. Where we go from here no one can really say. It must be admitted, for one thing, that throughout this year the University has acted to forestall popular indignation in the state. For us, and even for the faculty (whatever illusions it may have of . being a junior partner in the governance of the University) it's been a case of the prevention being as bad as the disease. The net effect of the juggling so far is that the University has maintained its autonomy at, the price of subservience. Perhaps our administrators really are high-minded men trying their darnedest to hold back the tides of darkness. Perhaps they're secretly hoping that the courts find for Blevins. WThatever the case, the judicial system is the last alternative. Throughout the Warren years, the courts were the bulwark of freedom in this country. The question now, for the University and for the entire nation, is whether the growing power of the silent majority has eroded the judiciary's confidence in itself and in the Bill of Rights it has hitherto upheld. If it has, we're in for a long siege of it. Letters to the editor must be typed on a fifty-space line arrd 'double-spaced. All letters miist be signed. Ail letters to the editor are welcomed by the editorial staff, regardless of the opinions and ideas, presented within them. , Letters should be addressed to the associate editor, care of the Daily Tar Heel. . Cyp K i "lgpdi-- I 1 r- 1 f i 1 r f if
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Feb. 10, 1970, edition 1
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