Paae Six
THE DAILY TAR HEEL
November 19, 1970
3
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Bob Chapman
Carolina SEiomldl ICeep E
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Opinions of The Daily Tar Heel are expressed on its editorial page. All
imsigned editorials are the opinions of the editor and the staff. Letters and
columns represent only the opinions of the individual contributors.
O
Tom Gooding, Editor
UNC
All L
The General Assembly will get a
chance January to do something to
get the .University out of the
utilities business and back to the
business of education.
The University has been
operating the water, electric and
telephone companies in Chapel Hill
ever since the first need for the
utilities arose.
When the University first began
operating the companies, there was
a good reason for the University to
wander from purely academic
pursuits. It was the University, not
the town, that needed telephone,
electric and water service, and it
was the University that had the
money to develop the system.
But now the University has
grown 'to such a degree that, with
all of the responsibilities of the
business staff, there is simply not
enough time or personnel for the
University to operate any of the
utilities efficiently.
The town of Chapel Hill, in an
increasing effort to break up the
stranglehold the University has on
the town and its economy, has been
pressing for control of the utilities
ever since Howard Lee was elected
mayor.
The town of Carrboro has
recently taken strong action against
the University by refusing to pay its
78 Years of Editorial Freedom
Tom Gooding, Editor
Rod Waldorf Managing Ed.
MikeParnell News Editor
Rick Gray Associate Ed.
Harry Bryan Associate Ed.
Chris Cobbs Sports Editor
Frank Parrish Feature Editor
Ken Ripley National News Ed.
Terry Cheek Night Editor
Doug Jewell Business Mgr.
Frank Stewart Adv. Mgr. ,
Harry Bryan
I mi de nts Mm st Have Voice In Classroom
The instructors of Political Science
95A are, as everyone knows,
experimenting with student control of
course structure and material.
And they are showing that despite the
OFRC
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V r Y-..
.hoiild Sell.
ocal Utilities
water bill, saying that the 140 per
cent increase in water rates is out of
line. The University has filed suit to
collect that unpaid bill.
But while the University lawyers
argue their case against Carrboro in
court, University administrators
have asked the General Assembly to
approve the establishment of a
commission to study the
practicality of selling the utilities
companies to Chapel Hill and
Carrboro.
The General Assembly of this
state, granted, does not have an
impressive record of doing things to
help the University, but the
appointment of this commission
could be the first step toward
getting the University out of the
business of making money and back
into the business of providing
students with an education.
And, as Chancellor J. Carlyle
Sitterson said at the first of the
year, "the purpose of the
University is to educate" not to
control the economy of Chapel
Hill.
Welcome
The Daily Tar Heel welcomes
the guests of the Toronto Exchange
Program, which gets underway on
campus today with the arrival of 31
Canadian students for a five day
tour of UNC and Chapel Hill.
While here, our Canadian visitors
will attend seminars, hear Join
Sebastian, and watch the
UNC-Duke football game.
Campus organizers Bill Sowers
and Judy Hippler have called the
exchange a "meaningful
educational experience in its effort
toward international peace and
understanding."
Carolina students will have an
opportunity to become acquainted
with their Canadian counterparts.
We hope UNC students will take
the time to welcome their guests,
either at the International Student
Center (Carr Dorm) after the
Sebastian concert Friday, or
Saturday at 10 a.m. at a reception
in the Union.
. We suspect the experience will
be mutually rewarding.
huge size ot their class and the problems
that go along with it, the experiment is
going to work.
Not only has the course maintained
student interest to the point that a
WHAT PARKING
PROBLEM
"As Harvard goes, so goes the Army
ROTC program," said Col. Robert H.
Pell, commanding officer of the Harvard
unit. He implied that as the old Ivy
League school goes down the drain, the
Army ROTC goes down too.
Harvard did not abolish ROTC; they
did remove academic credit. ROTC left
the Harvard campus because of the lack
of credit for the students and because of
a decline in enrollment.
Ironically, Harvard students went on
strike in 1916 to have Army ROTC
brought onto the campus.
The Navy is pulling out of other
northern schools including Columbia,
Brown, Dartmouth, Stanford and Tufts
for the same reasons. The Navy rejected
the schools; they were not booted out.
ROTC is by no means coming to an
end. In the last two years there have been
over 35 requests from major universities
for a Navy ROTC unit.
A midshipman is a student first at
UNC. He does not claim to be a military
man and enjoys the same freedoms that
other students enjoy.
As with other departments at UNC,
the Naval Science department comes
under the College of Arts and Sciences
and is subject to University rules and
regulations. Before a professor of naval .
science (the commanding officer) is
appointed to his post, he must first" get
the approval of a faculty committee
which can remove him at any time.
Instructors, too, have their records
reviewed by members of the faculty
They also have academic rank and voting
privileges like other instructors on
campus. ,
It has been the policy to have all
courses taught by civilian instructors if
possible.
Dean Raymond Dawson, for example,
teaches national security affairs (political
science 1 49), Dr. James Leutzie instructs
American military history (history 77),
bother are required of midshipmen.
Other requirements such as computer .
science, mathematics and sciences are
civilian taught. ROTC courses are only
taught by military personnel when a
civilian will not teach the course.
Naval engineering and navigation, for
example, are not offered by ! other
departments and must therefore be
taught by naval officers. All of these
courses, including the Navyrtaught
courses are open to non-ROTC students
with permission from the department
head. Several students not in ROTC are
now taking courses with the midshipmen.
One course which is not taught
here -or in any ROTC unit -is Killing
101. The thought of teaching the "art of
killing" is absurd. A sextant and
navigation chart, typical classroom tools,
are hardly a threat.
The commanding officer of the Navy
ROTC unit has made suggestions both to
the political science department and to
the business department to have a naval
management course taught by civilian
instructors. There has been no favorable
response yet. '!
Enrollment in ROTC is going down.
The "U.S. News and World Report" said
increasing harassment from anti-ROTC
groups is the major cause for the decline.
While the protests have not gone unheard,
surprisingly large number of students are
attending classes and seminars, they are
"also getting something out of the course.
One student might , not be getting the
same thing as the person who sits beside
70C0 S PACX5oTr5fe
their efforts are not as significant as other
prime factors, especially the de-escalation
of all military forces due to the
withdrawal from Vietnam.
The demand for junior officers is
simply not as great as it was several years
ago. At UNC the freshman class is smaller
than it has been for years, even though
the number of students applying for
admission has increased.
Students wanting to join are not
looking to action in Vietnam. The war
( will be over before they graduate. Fringe
benefits including good pay, free travel,
free ttmHw1 service and a responsible
Letters
ROTC Should Stay Here
To the Editor:
Here we go again with the annual
protest against ROTC. Starting with the
"annual reason, this year's fire-breathing
editorial has added a few more criticisms.
First the specific points. The author is
upset that "ROTC is under external
control rather than being on an equal
level with other academic departments." I
believe the Taylor committee
recommended that a "curriculum on
War and Defense" be established on
equal footing with the other departments.
This action the DTH opposed when it was
recommended? now, the paper advocates
it. At any rate the problem will be solved.
As for "external control," you have never
said why ' the Defense . Department's
supplying teachers rather than the
University (though the University can
approve or disapprove these teachers) is
bad. What is the harm?
You further claim that "instructors are
bound to maintain the strict ideological
line of the United States military." I can't
get too upset over this statement; you are
only displaying your ignorance. Come to
a ROTC class sometime. You will see that
what you said is simply, absolutely,
completely untrue.
Finally you advocate that the courses
be taught by civilians. In that part of the
courses deal specifically with what an
officer has learned r in his military
experience (such as regulations, tradition,
etc.), civilian teachers would appear to be
an inefficient way to teach such courses.
In addition, military rules demand that a
ROTC instructor be a current member of
the Armed Forces. v
But these are petty arguments. The
only points that come up consistantly are
that ROTC teaches people to kill, and
that the abolition of ROTC is a nifty way
to break the "partnership" between the
military and the university.
A quick look through the Record of
the University reveals such frightening
courses as, Principles of Naval
Organization and Management,
Navigation and Naval Operations, and
World Military Systems (a survey of the
nature and deployment of the . U.S.
military forces). Terrible aren't they? But
even ignoring this point, the fact is that
ROTC teaches people how to serve in
him in Memorial Hall, but he is getting
something better. He is getting what he
feels he wants out of the course.
Something that few courses at UNC
can offer, but something they are going
to have to offer in the future.
For too long many instructors and
professors have given quizzes and exams
two to four times a semester without any
thought to what the student should get
out of the course but merely concerned
with finding out whether or not the
student had read all the assignments.
One of the first courses I took here as
a freshman was Math 31.1 was unlucky
enough to barely qualify for advanced
placement and was taking the course as a
first semester freshman.
I walked into the classroom the first
day of class to find not the 20 to 30
people I expected, but almost 150
students crammed into one room.
The math was not what I expected
either, and I soon found it to be over my
head. I was also in the precarious position
of getting a professor who refused to
answer questions in class.
"I can't afford to waste the entire
class's time on answering a question for
one student," he would say. "Ask one of
the graders at the 'problem-solving
session.' "
And I would religiously go to the
sessions only to find that the graders
advanced in math to the point that they
could not explain the problems to use.
I came out of the course with a "C"
'and the preparation for, three and a half
more years of almost the same classroom
situation.
Since then I have not run into a
situation as bad as the above but some
almost as bad, particularly in the large
position seem very attractive with a
continuing recession in which good jobs
are extremely hard to find.
A ROTC graduate can pick his type of
duty and can expect to earn $10,000 a
year within three years after his
commissioning. Few other graduating
seniors can make the same claim.
By law the University must provide
classroom space for ROTC on this
campus with the Navy paying for the
instructors, supplies, etc. But the UNC
campus has received sizeable
contributions from the Navy. These
would include the Naval Armory, Tin
forces which will defend the United
States. You do not criticize karate
courses for teaching people to maim and
cripple. Their purpose is defensive.
There is a necessity to maintain a
military force. I think it would be a lot
better if the officers in this force had a
liberal college education than for them
never to be exposed to such influences.
Look at ROTC as a whole and you will
see that it greatly benefits the United
States. This point is the answer to your
last comment on the relationship between
the military and the university. You
haven't shown that ROTC harms the
school, and I have shown you that it
helps the United States. I think ROTC
should stay at UNC.
A. Hewitt Rose
1306 Granville W.
ROTC Better Than
Military Academies
To the Editor:
ROTC is a delicate subject. Its
abolition or maintenance at UNC has
most recently been discussed by the
editor of the Daily Tar Heel. The subject
in question appears to have fallen into
disfavor with Mr. Gooding. ROTC
accounts for a goodly majority of the
military's officers, it is true, with the
remainder being obtained from the
military academies or from integration
programs such as OCS within the military
service.
If ROTC were discontinued, all of the
nation's officer corps would come from
these last two sources. A military
academy is not an institution of higher
learning. It is a training center, an officer
factory turning out American chauvinists
dedicated to duty and the completion of
assigned orders regardless of their
morality. As to the efficiency of
in-service programs, ask an ex-Marine how
effectively the military can direct your
mind to a "primary function," such as
killing gooks.
On the other hand, ROTC students
attend a university such as this,
developing opinions of their own in an
lecture sections in courses such as Modern
Civilization, Political Science 41 and
others.
The problem was undoubtedly created
by professors who either didn't really
know what students wanted out of the
course or who really didn't care whether
the student felt he was learning anything
useful or not.
However, the problem .which could
have been solved long ago has been kept
alive not by a huge university that doesn't
care about the individual student, but by
the students themselves.
If students are not willing to stand up
and ask (or demand) a voice in choosing
the goals of courses and the materials to
be used to reach those goals, professors
have no alternative but to teach what
they feel is best.
If students are not willing to question
the reasons for seemingly irrelevant
questions on quizzes, they must accept
their grades without complaining.
And if students are not willing to
question the whole academic process
they will leave this university with
whatever small bits of knowledge the
university chose to give them and not
what they came here looking for.
Political Science 95A is showing that
students can responsibly help run their
courses and that when they are allowed
to do so, they will become more
interested in the course, attend it more
often and probably get more out of it
than courses in which they have no voice.
It has shown that the experiment will
work.
Now it is time for the students
themselves to go out and work to get a
voice in the classrooms or forever be
silent.
Can, student infirmary, faculty drb.
Scuttlebutt and the Navy fields.
Carolina should maintain ROTC on
campus.
Civilian-minded officers in the
American military is vital to let new ideas
be heard.
As one general commented to the
news magazine: "We really need these
people-for our sake and the country's- If
we have to take all our officer from the
ranks, from West Point and
officer-candidate schools, the Army is
liable to become ingrown and stagnant.
We need fresh ideas and a few
mavericks."
atmosphere of academic freedom. They
participate in military activities from one
to two hours a day twice a week. As an
ex-ROTC member I can state that I was
never taught anything pertaining to the
act of killing. I was instructed in military
customs- and courtesy, naval ships
structure and ships propulsion systems.
Mr. Gooding's remark as to an officer's
forceable strict adherence to the military
ideology is incorrect. As long as a
personal opinion cannot be construed to
represent the opinion of the military, an
officer is free to criticize and to form that
opinion as he wishes.
My point is this: if ROTC dies, the
officer corps will become a legion of
coldly efficient soldiers without
conscience whose only motivation is
duty. We have the most powerful military
force on earth. I would rather that the
men who control it be men who think.
Jim Magill
407 E. Rosemary St.
ROTC Editorial
Faulty, Illogical
To the Editor:
In defense of NROTC at UNC, I'd like
to reply to the editorial appearing in
yesterday's Daily Tar Heel entitled "As
Goes Harvard, So Should UNC." This
editorial tried to argue for the
abolishment of ROTC from UNC, but
was backed by nothing but faulty
reasoning and illogical statements.
The first foolish statement of the
editorial occurred when the editorial
called Naval Science "classes in the art of
killing." The editors have obviously never
attended a naval science class. I, myself,
am a Midshipman and know that I'm
being taught naval history, shipboard
procedures, navigation, ship design, naval,
engineering and some chemistry and
physics, not "the art of killing."
Next, the' editorial says that "the
University must agree to provide
classroom and office facilities." At UNC,
the University and the Navy provided the
Naval Armory. The Navy, by the way,
gave the University buildings such 'as the
Monogram Club, the Scuttlebutt, and the
Infirmary.
ine editorial then gives the main
reason for the abolishment of ROTC,
which is that there were 400 anti-ROTC
incidents last year. This is no valid reason.
The editorial also says that "the
program lacks academic freedom,."
"Academic freedom" is not defined, but
if it means the way most of UNC's classes
are set up, I am glad Naval Science
doesn't have it.
The final ridiculous argument this
editorial makes is that "if there is
academic merit to courses in the ROTC
curriculum, they should be taught as'
everything else at fUNC, by civilian'
professors, not by military officers." The
only thing wrong with this proposal is
that I don't know civilian professors who
are authorities on naval shipboard
procedures, etc. I wouldn't expect the
naval science instructors to teach
anthropology if they had no experience
in that subject.
John Victor Grainger IV
633 Ehringhaus
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