Newspaper Page Text
Pane 4
The Red and Black, Tuesday. March 7, 1972
THE OPINIONS OF THE RED AND BLACK
Hurrah!
Hurrah!
The Board of Directors of the
Athletic Association, after months
of negotiation, have agreed to
allow a voting student member
among their numbers.
Now University students will
have representation in an
organization that both taxes and
entertains them. For your $4 a
quarter, the AA has brought you
football, basketball, and other SEC
sports and just this year chipped
in $40,000 for your very own
tennis courts in Peoples' Park.
Now that they have agreed to
choose the student member
annually, we wonder who they
will pick. For protection against a
possible radical student body
president, the Board has reserved
the right to choose either the
student body President or Vice
President, Student Senate
President or Vice president, or the
minister to athletics, appointed by
the President of the student body.
Pat Swindall, present student
body President, tells us it is his
hope that the Board will set a
precedent by choosing him and his
successors. If they were to choose
just one representative — as will be
the case — the president of the
student body, elected bv popular
vote, would be the logical choice.
But we wonder if he will have
time to spend. Also, we think it
preferable to appoint someone
who can spend a couple of years
FRANKLY SPEAKING
by Phil Frank
ewwcLystems*/ box iszs / e. lAusm. mioh.
JON HAM
KEN WILLIS
Now I can be a liberal
on the Board, so that the student
can spend at least part ot his time
representing the students rather
than spending it all learning the
ropes of the organization. Maybe
the minister to athletics, who
could easily be a responsible
sophomore, would have the time
to spend.
Whoever it is, he will have to be
diplomatic but forceful in the
17 member organization. Although
the action of the Board is deeply
appreciated, we believe it is just
one small step for student
representation, although it is one
giant leap for the Board.
This is not a call for more
student representation right now,
understand Let's see how one
works out and then maybe the
Board will appoint more.
For now, the Board and
Athletic Director Joel Eaves have
shown an openmindedness toward
students that warrants their
cooperation and support. And the
new stance taken by the Board
shows that months of quiet hard
work by student government
leaders can be effective. Talk of
placing a student on the Athletic
Association board began during
the last school year. This year,
student body leaders Swindall,
Bubba Fowler and others picked
up the ball and kept it moving.
Ken Willis is editor of The Red and
Black.
"It seems like you have to be a liberal
hippie to be editor of The Red and
Black," someone cursed in a meeting the
other week.
He was, of course, referring to Robert
Friedman, my long-haired, balding
predecessor who had just criticized
Jesus' second cousin ,
(Bill Graham) in !
one of his columns.
* ‘Gosh, he’s
right,” I said to
myself about
Friedman's critic.
And then I began
my transformation.
Last week it became
complete when
was elected Editor for the spring quarter
Red and Black.
I could tell everybody I was a liberal
as managing editor this quarter. I told
them I had long hair and they believed
me. I told them I was a pot smoker and
they knew one day I was going to be a
liberal. I told them I liked Marx, Lenin,
Mao, Nixon and LBJ and they knew 1
was even closer to that Liberal Nirvana.
But until I became editor of The Red
and Black, all this talk about my being
liberal was just a bunch of malarky.
Being liberal without being Editor of the
R&B is like drinking chocolate milk
without chocolate - it just can't be.
So now that I am a liberal, 1 guess I'll
have to shed my conservative views and
play the role. But being liberal isn’t the
only role I’ll have to play as Editor. An
editor has to be objective, but take a
stiong editorial position; he has to be a
thinker and a politician; he has to be a
progressive and a representative of the
common reader; he has to be
humanitarian but tough; he has to
communicate with administrators and
student leaders, but risk his footing in
controversy by taking what he thinks.is
the right stand, he has to share the
interests of all his readers while trying
to maintain some identity of his own;
he has to politic for money from
advertisers and student government
without compromising.
It's a tough shoe to fill full of
contradictions.
But others have done it before me
and gone down in local history. Do you
remember Becky Leet? No? How about
Dub Taft? No again. Well, try Rex
Granum. Now, that's one some of you
will never forget, or so you think.
Actually, I have no plans to be liberal
for the sake cf being liberal. In fact,
Thanks to the Board, and
congratulations to the student
leaders.
some irate letter writers think I’m a
little too conservative. Look at today’s
Letters to the Editor. But stereotypers
beware. I’ll not be conservative for the
sake of being conservative either.
In the rest of our editorial coverage,
we will continue to consider the
editorial page the public’s and try for
more intellectual stimulation and
discussion.
In other departments of the paper,
you can expect to see a continued
improvement in the sports and news
coverage as more experienced staffs
return. We established ourselves as the
leader in Georgia collegiate journalism
by sweeping the honors at the Georgia
Press Institute recently and now we
hope to become a national leader soon.
We undertook what some considered
to be a doubtful adventure when we
began to publish four papers a week
instead of two. Journalistically, the pros
think that improved the paper 100 per
cent. Financially, we've lost money so
far, but anticipate a good spring that
ought to pull us out of the hole.
Whatever we do, we’ll always be
interested in hearing what our readers
are thinking.
So drop by or call us for a brief chat.
Even if you are a conservative.
Don't give us no hassle in council, hear?'
Letters policy
Letters to the editor should:
• Be typed, double spaced,
on a 60-space line.
• Be brief, to the point.
• Include name, address and
phone number of contributor.
Names will be withheld for
good reason upon request, but
must bear the above
information. Letters are
subject to editing for style and
libel laws as well as for space
limitations.
Mail letters to The Red and
Black, 130 Journalism
building. University of
Georgia, Athens, Ga. 30601,
orbring by 130 Journalism
building.
Grant all resisters amnesty
TO THE EDITOR:
Ken Willis apparently wants to
impress us as unsentimental and
tough-minded in his column arguing
against amnesty for Thomas Jolley and
other war resisters. But his argument,
such as it is, does nothing more than
repeat the fatuous sort of wartime
dogmas for which General Hershey is
laughingly remembered.
According to Willis the draft is legal
because the Constitutional amendment
prohibiting involuntary servitude was
intended to mean “servitude of one
individual to another.” The draft, it
seems, is the servitude of one individual
to a group.
Now Mr. Willis does not tell us how
he can reach back into the minds of the
long-deceased writers of this
amendment, but 1 suspect that if their
intention were to prohibit only one
form of involuntary servitude, then
there is no reason why they could not
have made their amendment more
specific. As it stands now, the 13th
Amendment outlaws involuntary
servitude except as punishment for
crime - period.
What would it mean to prohibit
individual ownership of slaves but to
permit group ownership of slaves? It
would mean that enslaving men to pick
cotton is wrong, but enslaving men to
kill other men in a war is a fine thing;
that slavery is right as long as it’s
sanctioned by the nation.
Of course, in point of fact, there is
only one form of slavery and that is the
slavery of one man to another. The
nation as a whole is no more responsible
for the draft than it is for My Lai. The
only people answerable for crimes are
the criminals themselves. In this case
guilt must rest squarely on the shoulders
of the President and his minions.
Mr. Willis wonders if amnesty granted
to past draft evaders might not
encourage future draft evaders. I can
only hope that it will. The electoral
process, which gave us a President who
promised to end the draft, has obviously
failed. Civil disobedience is the
appropriate response to any government
which refuses to be bound by its own
constitution. Why must we wait, while
men are dying, for an honest President
before we correct this injustice?
The final absurdity in Willis’ article is
the following statement: “I believe the
draft is unfair, but I believe I have the
ability as a citizen to try to change it. If
I cannot change it, I must abide by that
law as all others.” By what perverse
logic can he conclude that the law is
bad, but obedience to the law is good?
Mr. Willis is in effect saying that we
must have order, no matter how
unnecessary, insane and tyrannical that
order may be!
Without a doubt, an incalculable
wrong has been done to those who were
drafted and forced to serve. But we will
not right that injustice by extending it
to those who have successfully evaded
it. (We cannot say murder is unfair, but
genocide is fair.) The only moral and
consistent solution is immediate and
unconditional amnesty for Tom Jolley
and all other war resisters.
DAVID ROSINGER
Tune in
TO THE EDITOR
In the March 2 edition of The Red
and Black I was indeed entertained by
the Ken Willis article, Don’t Grant
Jolley Amnesty.
Willis, your ideas on draft evaders,
however subservient in advice, you are
entitled to. But you must be joking as
to your attitude toward Vietnam as a
“so-called” war. 1 suppose it’s a picnic or
Boy Scout summer camp that happens
to run all year long. To say that
Vietnam is not a war simply because
there has been no declaration is utter
folly of the greatest magnitude. In fact
it’s almost as colossal a misnomer as to
think that you’re any type of
open-minded objective journalist.
Tens of thousands of human beings
have died as a result of a perpetual
struggle of the last 20 years plus. Where
have you been? Perhaps a little more
time in the teletype room would serve a
greatly needed purpose of tuning you in.
KEITH MELTON
Another 2 years of the dead beat?
Jon Ham u an associate news editor of
The Red and Black.
That popular music is in trouble
should come as no surprise to anyone
who listens to a radio with any
frequency. Since the Beatles decided to
call it a day, the music scene has drifted
back into the doldrums from which they
rescued it in 1964.
Hard rock tried ,
to dominate music I
and did for a while. I
But it was alreadyl
dying from oversell I
when its practical
boners began dying|
from overdoae.
Then the quiet.
singer (Taylor,*
King. Stevens, John) sent some good
stuff our way for s while but the
dimate somehow wasn't conducive to
leir lasting success, possibly because
iun
stul
dir
ie
theu sound, with the possible exception
of Carol King, was too limited.
In the void left in the wake of acid
rock and the quiet singers we find
comfortably ensconced The Jackson
Five and The Osmond Brothers. With
this type of pop saturating the airwaves
what choice did anyone over nine years
of age have but to turn off his radio
until the thing passed*’
For those who could not bear to turn
their radios off. there has been one
thing that has kept them sane this long
the liberal sprinkling of Golden Oldies
which deciays tend to lavish upon us in
these periods of musical drought.
Your big brothers and sisters went
through the same thing ten years ago
when all they had were the Philly Dillies
(Fabian. Avalon. Rydell) and a
seemingly never ending string of groups
with names that sounded like they were
taken from a list of DuPont synthetic
fibers.
But. not wanting to make the same
mistake they did ten years ago, music
moguls have launched upon a plan
which threatens to destroy these small
oases of unspoiled rock. “Why." they
say. “play these old songs for the hell of
it when we could be making a fortune
from them?”
So the managers of the pre pubescent
groups have told their charges to sing
things like “Puppy Love” and “Rockin’
Robin.” They have even used the same
arrangements. After all. the rock public
is too young to remember these tunes so
they'll never know the difference. Even
the Jackson Five and the Osmonds arc
too young to remember them.
An arrangement you can fake. A
voice you can’t. What Donny Osmond
does to "Puppy Love” would make a
’59-’60 teenager’s chinos curl and his
white socks droop. But what could have
been more appropriate than having the
runt of a litter record it?
The Jackson Five, following suit, have
just recently released “Rockin’ Robin,”
a former favorite of mine. Another
carbon copy of the original except for
voices, this ditty would have cleared out
a sock hop faster than a box of tacks.
During the void between Presley and
the Beatles we had the grand old songs
from the Fifties. And until recently,
those same oldies have kept us afloat in
the void between the Beatles and
whatever comes next.
They say it happens every ten years.
Presley in ’54, the Beatles in ’64. 3ut
with our oldies taken from us, can we
radio listeners survive the next two
years?
IHm RED AND BLACK
Ken Willis, editor
Joe Belew
Business manager
Carol Roberts
Managing editor
Mike Foran, advertising director; Claudia Townsend, news-feature editor; Jon
Ham and Mark Nickelson, associate news editors; Cindy Luke and Susan
Parker, associate feature editors; Bob Gillette, sports editor; Allyn Roland,
copy editor; Ann Hutchinson, wire editor; Steve Woodford, production
manager; Tom Hill, photographic editor; Andrew Hamilton, art editor.
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Athena, is published on Tuesday.
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