THE DAILY TAB HEEL
Vednesdsy, April 22, 1973
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Opinions of The Daily Tar Heel are expressed on its editorial page. All
unsigned editorials are the opinions of the editor and the staff. Letters and
columns-represent only the opinions of the individual contributors.
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Tom Gooding, Editor
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"A student should have the same
basic freedom in University housing
as he would have in a commercial
apartment." Matt Forstadt,
Housemaster of Granville South.
"I would like someone to
explain the rationale behind the
University's policy of regulating
students' lives within their own
rooms." Professor Fred B. Wright,
Department of Mathematics.
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elf-Determiiied Policy
Necessary Improvement
.For University Li vim
Chancellor Sitterson has in
effect removed himself from a
position of responsibility
concerning the decision von "next
year's visitation policy.
Sitterson told the Consultative
Forum Tuesday the decision will be
made by the Board of Trustees of
the Consolidated University if the
recommendations of the
Administrative Board of Student
Affairs are outside the limitations
already set by the trustees.
"Sitterson created and appointed
the membership to the Committee
on University Residential Life
(CURL). This committee has
approved a policy under which the
individual living units would be free
to determine the rules for holding
open house.
When Sitterson received this
report he sent it to the
Administrative Board of Student
Affairs, saying that asking the
advice of the board was the normal
process since any changes would
affect this segment -of the
University administration.
Dean of Student Affairs CO.
Cathey, chairman of the
administrative board, has
announced that he will make his
recommendation today.
If those recommendations are
beyond the guidelines established
by the Board of Trustees Sitterson
will have to forward the report to a
committee of all six university
chancellors who will then make a
recommendation to President
rriday.
It would then become the
responsibility of President Friday
to carry the policy
recommendation to the trustees.
Many students believe that the
current Open House Agreement is
stretched as far as the Trustee
guidelines will allow.
Therefore if students are to
expect an improved visitation
policy for next year they may have
to plan on going through the Board
of Trustees.
However, we feel it isn't only
the students who have to be
responsible for the decision. Two
advisory committees to the
Chancellor will have to rule on the
policy. Therefore, the Chancellor,
we feel, will have a certain degree
of responsibility for the final
recommendation.
Also discussed at the forum
meeting was the "quality of
University life". In an introduction
to this discussion it was noted that
in 1967 there was more students
wanting housing than the
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"There is probably some
rationale for the system but I don't
know what it is." Miss Katherine
Kennedy Carmichael, Dean of
Women.
v.
University could accommodate. As
of this spring, there are
approximately 1,000 vacancies in
camrAis housing. " -: -
Those in the administration who
are concerned with increasing the
number of students living on
campus should take note of the
above fact when deciding on rules
for University housing.
Student Body President Tommy
Bello said, "It is no surprise at all to
me that students want to live
off-campus. If the University is
going to expect students to live on
campus it is going to have to make
housing more livable."
We completely agree. v
Students are not going to want
to live in a square cubical, painted a
dirty landlady green, where they
can't decorate their room or
entertain guests without
permission.
The University has already been
forced to require sophomore men
and first year transfer students to
live in University housing. If the
administration doesn't begin to
improve the quality of University
life they can expect more vancies in
housing.
We firmly believe that if the
University is going to force students
to live in dorms against their will
they have an obligation to improve
the dormitories.
And we can't think of a better
place to begin than a
self-determining visitation policy.
c Dn or Tfct
78 Years of Editorial Freedom
Tom Gooding, Editor
Rod Waldorf Managing Ed.
Harry Bryan . . . . News Editor
Rick Gray Associate Ed.
Laura White ... Associate Ed.
Chris Cobbs ....... Sports Editor
Mary Burch .... .Arts Editor
Mike McGowan Photo Editor
Bob Wilson Business Mgr.
Frank Stewart Adv.Mr.
Sandra Saunders .Night Editor
or
Yea, for my sin I had
k great store of bliss:
Rise up, make answer for
me, let thy kiss
Seal my lips hard
from speaking of my sin.
Lest one go mad to hear
how sweet it is.
Last week, I was writing about the
rather distasteful presentation of sex in
American cinema, when another thought
crossed my mind: strange that America
doesn't seem to have one able
pornographer, that I know of, either in
art or literature.
OK YES fiELVUJ, THOSE 150,000 AJ"V
ntTW) 7fcvi
The American public was informed
Sunday that the U.S. military has been
conducting a secret war in Laos since
1964.
The war was kept a secret, according
to the newspaper stories, because high
governmental officials were afraid of
being accused of violating the 1962
Geneva Accords.
From here, that seems to be an
exceedingly flimsy excuse for expanding
the mass murder which is war.
For any government, especially one
which proclaims itself to be of, by and
for the people, to contend that it has a
right to keep secret a military action of
the scope of the one disclosed Sunday, is
for it to totally deny the right of the
public to know what government is
, doing.
This government, the one in
Washington, D.C., has since 1776 claimed
to be a government of the people. It has
thumped its chest and shouted at
the world, "Look how good I am. See
how I tell all of the people everything I
am doing. What a good boy am I."
Well, Richard Nixon and Lyndon
Johnson seem to have more than plums
on their thumbs now. Sunday's
announcement pretty well fries the egg in
their faces.
And it does more to undermine the
high status which this government has
held than even the 1968 Democratic
Convention and the resulting Conspiracy
Trails. 3
Any government which, basing its
power on the conset of the people,
refuses to inform the public or allow the'
press to inform the people, ceases to have
a legitimate claim to power.
People will tolerate a lot in
governments simply because it takes a lot
of effort and personal involvement to
change a government's course.
Following the disclosure made Sunday
and the previous statements made by
Nixon and Laird on Laos, there seems to
be little honesty left in Washington.
The time has come for the American
people to let their feelings be known. If
they sit back and remain silent, as they
did from 1960 until now, then they will
be counted as among those supporting
the trend of the federal government to
repress any questioning of governmental
policy.
For too many years now, the
American public has allowed itself to be
treated like a five-year-old child. It has
listened and given assent when someone
told them, "I have a plan and a policy,
but it will not work if I tell you about
it."
Any plan which would be rendered
inoperative by public "disclosure is not the
type of plan which should be put into
effect by a government based on the
ideals of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew
Jackson, et al.
For this government to be a
u
We have plenty of junk, in which sex is
the basic ingredient-but apparently a
rather bland one, since it always needs
seasoning with guilt, perversion, shame,
or "pornography's" staple, super-human,
idiotic excess. And we have Hollywood's
current wave of candor. That usually
consists of vast expanses of flesh used to
elicit laughter because it's funny if
someone else's pants fall down; or to
provoke admiration for the isolated,
passive beauty of the subject (Romeo end
Juliet); or to depict "reality" people do
get dressed and undressed once in & while,
and why not on film? Peekaboo!
But we have little good eroticism.
Apparently, it's a subject which doesn't
oyey. o csifAhODiA
Rick Gray
democracy, or even a true republic, there
cannot be any secrecy in governmental
circles.
The people have the right to know
what government is doing. If the people
do not know what the government is
doing, then they cannot intelligently vote
on who is to be the government.
The basis of this present government is
one of intelligent selection of leaders by
the populace. Those who claim to be
leaders in the government will not
hesitate to say that they believe in the
electoral process. Yet, they will be among
the first to defend the right of the
government to keep such operations as
the one in Laos secret.
To do so is to deny all that is pledged
in the oaths of office.
There is only one solution to the
situation in Vietnam, to the
sitaution which, more than any other
situation in American history, threatens
the future of government.
That solution is total, immediate and
unilateral withdrawal of American forces
from Southeast Asia.
Until such time as Nixon, John
Mitchell and Mel Laird have withdrawn
all U.S. forces from Asia, they have no
legitimate base of power.
. TTfo
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emmemoeiriiu
What is a "general college?" Or, to be
more specific, what is the General
College? -
British psychiatrist R.D. Laing
described it when he wrote, "We are
driving our children mad more effectively
than we are genuinely educating them.
Perhaps it is our very way of educating
them that is driving them mad."
Professional "outside agitator" Jerry
Rubin described it when he w-rote, "I lost
my interest in books in literature class. I
lost my interest in foreign languages in
language class. I lost my interest in
biology in biology class."
But "Introduction to Physical
Geography" described it best of all in
Chapter 9. "In the annual rainfall range
between 40 in (100 cm) and 100 in (250
cm) the Am climate can exist with
progressively lower values of driest-month
rainfall, beginning with 2.4 in (6 cm) and
declining to zero."
AH these statements concern, however
indirectly, that soon-to-be-extinct
Carolina phenomenon, the General
College. Sure, it will limp along for a few
interest our popular artists, or which
can't come to terms with in their art.
they
We can all get copies of Fanny Hill acdi
similar girbaet of it so bad and so
juvenile that only a mind incapacitated
for anything but sexual fantasizing can
begin to appreciate it. Or "Playboy,"
which, after years and years of breasty
women, seems demeniedly insensitive to
both its repetitiveness and its sterility.
Or you can buy a wall poster depicting
a man and a woman walking hand -in -hand
by the sea. Somewhere on the poster is
the word "Love," in case you didnt
know (which isn't likely) that in the
current parlance, the couple's isolation
rox
Their power has been founded on lies
to the American people, and therefore it
is not legitimate power.
Legitimacy of power is a vague thing
in the history of American politics, but
there can be no doubt that the present
administration has less legitimate power
than any other since 1789.
Richard Nixon is a minority president,
elected by less than half of the American
people, supported by less than half of
Congress and a member of a party with
less than half of the people as members.
Nixon was elected because Johnson
had blatantly lied to the people, and the
voters thought Nixon offered change.
We have found that Nixon is not
change.
He is not progress.
He is the status quo.
He is regression to an era which most
Americans would like to forget an era
when a demogogue took the floor of the
UJS. Senate and whipped the public into
a violent furor with lies.
Now the lies are beginning to come
again.
Maybe this time, the American people
will not believe them. Maybe this time
there will be a victory for humanity.
Maybe, but we don't really believe it.
Howie Carr
more years, to ge given the final coup de
grace by a new generation of fed-up
students, but the Merzbacher reforms
guaranteed its eventual doom.
Since the old GC will soon be gone,
maybe we should think about what it
rcseant to us, the last group to really know
it.
One thing to remember is its
omnipotence. Perhaps the only effective
way to deal with it would have been to
levitate the South Building (as the
Yippies tried to do to the Pentagon in
1987) to a height of 300 feet and then
watch all the evil spirits depart.
The other alternative to this would
have been, as Professor X writes in "The
Sociology of the Absurd," "to intimidate
the faculty with guns and knives." But,
contrary to the belief of the Trustees, few
students had the bowie knives, dirks,
daggers, sword canes, machetes, repeating'
rifles or pump guns necessary to
implement their desires.
So the General College couldn't be
stopped, but I Aldxi'i have to tell you Bud
was tire King of Beers either. You know
that.
from everyone c!; is supo-cd to i.T.p'y
their closeness to one another.
Or, if you're really poorly off, you can
go to the Yorktowne's Saturday r.i-ht
that if a child gets into the theaUr. the
manager will be arrested. It a!so rre-s
youU see the seething, steam.:.-',
blisteringly naked truth aby:
man-woman love. Yawn.
Skin-flicks, Konfo end Juliet, "Love."
these would all be funny if they were j
unconnected or extravagant instances cf
what I'm talking about. But they're
representative of an attitude wh;;h
pervades our society: illicit sex, pen err
sex, bestial, brutal, violent sex; x
period: it s bad, it sundsgnined-le: s r.ct
talk about it.
As I said last week, the roots go da p,
and not only in the presentation of ihy
one subject. Our society seems to sub;:,:
on myths, unable to digest much that u
frank or honest. A perfect illustration cf
this is a movie lik MAS, which 111
talk about next week. So is a recer.:
exchange of letters in the DTH
concerning Project Hinton.
In an article about Hinton, one g.ri
was quoted as delighted that she could
get to know boys just as people, and not
members of the opposite sex. A letter
writer promptly cut Hinton to pieces on
this account, pointing out that for the
college student, sex is natural, essentia!,
and sometimes urgent. So why talk
babytalk about it?
It was good to see even a glimmer of
intelligence on this subject, in a college
paper. But it was only a glimmer. Because
how can you treat sex honestly in Project
Hinton, or in any closly supenised
situation?
The proximity of the sexes adds
inducements for for what? For
relationships which most of the
participants have been brought up to
consider immoral, or "justified" only by
terribly deep feeling; and which, in the
context of the college itself, are taboo.
In a column before the presidential
election, I asked if any candidate would
defend students caught living together in
a coed dorm. No one replied.
In a recent column about visitation,
the closest President Bello could come
even to mentioning the tabu subject was
to call up the spectre of a "female peeping
torn," who might upset more stolid souls.
He ended the passage with a wistful "Ah,
virginity!" and if you can detect an
attitude beneath the sophisticated
confusion, you must be psychic.
But it's no wonder that Bello makes
hash of the subject when he talks about
it, or that anyone is mixed-up about sex.
We live in a mixed-up, guilt-ridden
society, and our awareness of the
problem, by itself, is not enough to cure
it even in ourselves alone.
And that the hesitation when faced
with something undeniably real is why,
when you read the Tar Heel's columns
(mine included), when you read most
anything, you see so much posturing,
circumlocution, and stupidity.
We're still puritans, you see, and we
still prefer almost anything to being
honest.
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CMe&
To me, what the General College re
is, is a third cut In p.e.; it's five eight
o'clock classes; it's running an exam; it's
trying to rationalize dropping a course.
The General College is an instructor
who gives tests every Friday afternoon;
it's waking up on a rainy morning or.
South Campus; it's a course that runs on
a five-point scale; it's finding out how
worthless quiz files are; it's leaving Dey
Hall for the last time.
The General College is an advisor
whose voice sounds like a pre-recorded
message, and the needle is stuck; it's an
advisor who says, "I know it's ridiculous,
but what can I do?"; it's an advisor who
says, "Don't blame me if you can't
graduate with your class."
The General College is an advisor who
doesn't say, "I'm only a dumb
bureaucrat, and I couldn't care less about
you. I only work here."
Nobody can really describe the
General College, but it does seem safe to
jay that, like a movie released a few years
back, "it has something to offend
everybody."
H