About The Red and Black (Athens, Ga.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 7, 1975)
Page 4A The REd and Black, Thursday. August 7, 1175 THE OPINIONS OF THE RED AND BLACK Words of wisdom for our newcomers MARION MONTGOMERY On weeding the garden To My Son. Going away to School Dear Marion: Is it possible? A week ago we sat on the tailgate of our truck, eating the first cantaloupe from the garden Now we are separated by ah ocean and several countries, and you are struggling with what must seem a barbarous language A long way from crab grass and coffee weed and bull nettle in Oglethorpe County. And so I encourage you to believe that your wide change will be worth the shock. And I suggest that our summer garden work is closer to you still than you suppose and will hold us together. You will be returning sooner than you think for college and a new shock. Very quickly you will find yourself moved out o( our high school climate, which a British critic describes as “organized amnesia,” into one where mind is widely assumed an instrument to be callibrated for its technical service to a machine called society. I put it starkly, but only to assure you that, given its worst, you will survive the educational factory our age has devised If you learn to discriminate, to distinguish Hence an advantage of this radical experience abroad. I don't think you'll hear as many of your classmates there ask. “What use is history, philosophy, algebra, literature?" It is a common question here, as you know. For how does one explain the "use" of a cantaloupe to those who have, been given a stone for bread? The question of the "use" of humanistic studies is asked most destructively, not by the questioning student in whom it is proper, but by our political and intellec tual leaders, who assume the question rhetorical, its answer “NONE" Unless, of course, those ripening disciplines called the humanities may be convincing ly shown to keep us ahead of the Russians in some technological way. or help multiply gross national product. It was difficult enough to distinguish pea vine and coffee weed without getting some distance, remember We leaned back a little to look at leaves and blossom And it is no doubt early for you to worry about fighting back rank jungle growth that closes upon the campus But you ought to be aware of it What I mean is that I hope you will resist the predominant assumption in American higher education that the primary justifi cation for training the young mind ti e., spending tax money on education) is that it assures a supply of better * 1 air conditioners or cheaper cantaloupe, or more intricately engineered social and political structures to impose upon that beast "society.” There is a distinction to be made between social and economic mechanics and community life. Hence the necessity of my answer to that indiscriminating rhetorical question, which intends to negate the human dimension whatever pretty words deny the intent. Because man is what he is. it is better to know than not to know. There are many lifetimes of thought in those words. One’s particular life, even its “useful”- dimension. flows best from this educa tional principle and bears with it all manner of healthful, helpful, and pleasing things, visible and invisible. Let the "uses" of knowledge wait then, at least the duration of your educational retreat. When you are a "rising junior" (which locally means when you pass sixth grade grammar), we will talk of uses. Not "What use is history?” but "What is history?" That question first. Thoughtful, you will find history an active part of your continuing present. As one knowingly participates in it, he bears lively witness to the best of the past, as aid to the present and hope for the future. That is to say, one becomes a patron of civilization Your mind informed by active discrimination, you become a substantial support of a community larger than that touched by the present date on your calendar or on my letter. History is not simply an aggregate of ^*ktppensv«re-iDM eaonrfiCoU 'ilfllfiMj - //// m ///// W/ j /// / f/tt i ///. ///////m 4/t n / / htu Hi f j ‘t > I /1111 M. LOUISE McBEE Opportunity offered here Since today’s edition of The Red and Black is being mailed out to all incoming freshmen, we designed our editorial pages, and a good portion of the rest of the paper, to provide something of an introduction to what many- wili initially find a huge, com plex, and bewildering University. In the final analysis, newcom ers will just have to be around awhile before they can master the campus, but we hope they will enter a little less cold as a result of the information and commentary in today’s Red and Black. But enough of this; let us introduce our guest columnists. Our lead column is by Marion Montgomery, a professor of Eng lish who for a number of years has been one of the more intrepid critics of the University administration and its policies. In today’s column, Montgomery admonishes his son to resist the cluttered and confused mental habits which he is likely to encounter in a modern univer sity. Also on this page, M. Louise McBee challenges new students to make the most of the oppor tunities the University offers. Currently assistant vice presi dent for instruction, McBee last: week left the position of dean of student affairs, where she has been in the thick of student-ad ministration relations during re cent years. Robert Friedman, a graduate student in political science and a former editor of The Red and Black, portrays campus life for ROBERT FRIEDMAN I've been asked to comment on the state of the University for the benefit of this fall's incoming freshmen. Frankly, this is not my cup of meat. I'm content to leave that kind of work to Athens’ daily news papers, which not only gear their writ ing to grammar- school dropouts but also endorse them for governor Beyond this. I’ve been on this campus longer than anyone except Dean Tate, and everything about this place has long since ceased being worth writing about The Ked and Black makes a valiant effort, but let’s face it — it's written by. for and about turkeys A staff meeting looks like a Thanksgiving feast for the Prussian army. And this year’s freshman class pro mises to be every bit as much Tom Turkeys and Honeysuckle Whites as their predecessors — a legion of pimply-faced prospective lawyers and pimply-faced prospective lawyers' wives They won't know which way is up all fall quarter, and by spring you'd swear they'd lived here since Effie was born God. what drudgery writing this pap! The stomach fairly lurches at the thought of another fall, but, like Evel Knievel, I'm a man of my word, and I'll stick it out until I've composed a column of reasonable length What to say? What to say? Well, I suppose I could fill you in on the CIA-funded LSD experiments being car ried out by the agriculture school. They've been administering massive doses to unsuspecting students and cattle and analyzing the results The most unusual effects noted so far can be seen during registration, when the students huddle up and chew grass in the stalls outside the Coliseum while the cattle go through the registration proce dure. "Far out!” one hereford told me after signing up for Chaucer, two chemistry courses and ballroom dancing Some other interesting government- funded work is taking place in the psychology department, where research ers are releasing groups of mice and students on the building’s top floor and determining which group of animals can moat quickly negotiate the maze to the snack bar. Sc far. the students are holding their own. thanks to a sparkling performance by the school's 440-yard relay team, but us from the world-weary point of view of a longtime resident. One warning: Friedman is exagger ating when he says he has been here longer than anyone except Dean Tate.. On the opposite page, a couple of active campus politicians of contrasting persuasions have their say. Ed Green, a member of the Student Senate and of the left-wing political party Coali tion, excoriates the University administration for its “paternal istic" attitude toward students. Meanwhile Ed Parker, who be longs to the conservative Union of American People party, con tends that the “majority element student” is not taken seriously enough at the University. Green and Parker are both Journalism students. On page five, Jimmy Waller takes a stab at the administra tion and its candor, or lack of same, in a cartoon which the newcomer may not appreciate until he is no longer a newcomer. On this page, veteran Red and Black cartoonist and campus institution Brad McColl makes yet another contribution. All we nave to say about this particular caUoon is, “Who, us?” And last, but far from least, we hear from our readers in the letters section on page five. So to those who will be entering the University this fall we extend our greetings. We hope they will profit from read ing our humble offering, and we also hope they know what they’re getting into. no longer if the mice can stay close until fall quarter, the influx of freshmen should catapult them into the lead. Another highlight awaiting the incom ing freshmen will be the annual Dean Rusk Memorial Henry Kissinger Speak- Alike Contest, sponsored by the Univer sity Union Several members of the University administration have left them rolling in the aisle in this competition in past years Among other events you freshmen will be certain to witness during the next four years (assuming you master the grueling curriculum well enough to stay here that long): —At least three concert appearances by the Fifth Dimension —The formation of a half-dozen new campus political parties per year, with at least one person you loathed in high school running for one or another of the mickey-mouse offices up for grabs —Attendance at, on the average, 711 keg parties —A ceremonial burning of every Pan dora the irate student body can get its hands on —The mysterious burning to the ground of a local night spot, and the untimely closing of six others —At least one student per class who believes that his professor and class mates exist for the sole purpose of listening to him make an ass of himself —The printing in The Red and Black of at least one column per day as bad as or worse than this one A sobering outlook, no? But I’ll bet you freshmen are still looking forward to it as much as you did your first Junior-Senior Prom. After all. it beats four more years in Hazlehurst or Sylvania. right? So be it. One final word of caution — be sure to pick up a rat cap that fits. Spending all your waking and sleeping hours in a beanie that's too tight or too loose can be uncomfortable and embar rassing Okey-dokey. that’s it Be seeing you in the fall. Letters Policy Letters to the editor should: tBe typed, double spaced, on a 60-space line (Be brief, to the poini (Include name, address and phone number of conli ibutor I would like to extend greetings to our returning students and a warm welcome to our new students We look forward to the return of familiar faces and antici pate a finer universi contributions of the new students For some of you, four years of college stretch before you and fears and ques tions are intermin gled with feelings of hope and certainty. In addition to the concerns for getting settled, meeting new friends, registering, buying books, finding your way around, there are broader concerns: Will I make it? Will I find a group that is for me? Will I be prepared for something four years from now? What kind of a person do I really want to become’’ Someone once asked Robert Hutchins what a university was He gave this reply: "It is not a kindergarten, it is not a club, it is not a reform school, it is net a political party, it is not an agency for propaganda A university is a community of scholars " We welcome you into the association that this definition implies. People have labored for almost 200 years to build and strengthen this University for one primary purpose — to provide the best education for its students You have engaged in some labors of your own or you would not have qualified for admis sion We hope that you will have sufficient wisdom to use your talents to profit from this opportunity for a good education. For opportunity is all that you will find here We cannot give you an education as much as we would like to do so. nor can you buy it by paying the tuition Opportunity is all you can purchase and all we can offer The University of Georgia, like all colleges and universities, is first and foremost an intellectual agency Our admissions office has done its best to admit only those students who have the ability to succeed in our academic programs Nevertheless, some ef you despite your ability will let your mental engine remain in neutral most of the lime and coast. Some of you will coast out! Some of you, despite anything that happens, are headed for high success, surpassing by your accomplishments all of us who are here as teachers and administrators, solving more problems for mankind than you create and leaving the world and this institution grateful because you have been a part of it. But for most of you the die is not yet cast You will experience the pull in both directions — to be here for a joyride on the one hand and on the other to respond to the exciting challenge of using your mind to its capacity. I hope you will ask yourselves from time to time why you are here I especially hope you will ask_ yourselves that question as you ariT beginning a new year In addition to ^eing a "think commu-. nity," a university is also a social community In the social setting which a university affords you can learn to live in harmony with other human beings. If we are unable to achieve that harmony on a campus of 20.000. how can we really believe there is hope for achieving it in the whole nation or the whole world Many of you will get involved in student government and in various clubs and organizations In these and in other ways you will. I hope, change this university community and make it a better place to live and study College years are years in which you make many of the major decisions of your life: your decision about a career, your choice of a mate, and the like Your university days will present a variety of smaller choices including what friends you will make, what religious and moral values w ill be right for you. the degree of academic integrity you will maintain These choices, big and small, are all ones which set the direction and quality of your development and consequently your life. So. September will mean for you not only summer's end but a new beginning 1 wish the best for each of you and hope you will have a good time achieving it. I welcome you to the University of Georgia with all of its opportunities and chal lenges. the past, anymore than philosophy is a catalogue of ideas. To become educated through the humanities is to enjoy the # company of faithful minds. And it is to bring to that company your own private times and places and things, into that timeless place your mind, wherethrough m you are sustained in the world and the world through you. Let me give example of what I mean. You will hear Shake speare’s Hotspur say in a heated mo ment, in Henry IV, "Out of this nettle danger we pluck this flower safety." Now last week we weeded butterbeans by hand, you and I, and you learned first hand, you might say, what bull nettle is. Action and knowledge seemingly far removed from any attempt to overthrow a king. Still, you know the shock of encounter with that prickly, poisonous * weed. How quickly you learned caution, digging down a bit to grasp a smooth root. Remembering all this, you will know * Hotspur alive in his bravado and compare him to his cautious, wily Uncle Worces ter. You will value a difference between Hospur's pluck and its distortion of the * heroic and your first innocent grabbing of a Georgia weed. You will no doubt conclude that Hotspur's character leaves something to be desired, even as you * learn that words reveal not only actions in nature, but the character of the mind that acts in nature. You will begin to discover that all • labors go together where there is a discriminating mind to govern them. Any practical use of such knowledge is implicit, the largesse of knowing. As for • instance when you listen next year to political rhetoric your first voting year, or when you encounter patent medicine or deodorant ads on television • I have much more to say. but naming "labor" reminds me that those potatoes down by the lake are now ready to dig, before Dog Day rain rots them. You arc • not here to help — and yet you are. Next letter I'll say something about a phrase out of St. Paul — "each in his nature " So then you will have: It is better to know < than not to know , rach in his own nature Through which guide we become mem bers one of another, parts of a body, not of a machine. « I remind you once more to remember that, whether the word be German. English, algebraic. "To use the wrong word is to bear false witness.” Distin- . guish. Discriminate You recall th» newspaper story we read, the murdered man called an “alleged victim" by a cautious reporter? Last night's paper „ bore a headline, “Zoning Loopholes Glare." Enough to put even surrealist poets out of business. One might smile at such, if "higher education" were less the . source of such contamination of the instrument of education, language Here, from an official publication of your state university, very seriously put: “It is true that, in general, air space is coming to a * screeching halt in this country.” You must remember that such home-grown and disseminated weed is the great enemy of the mind's garden, out of heads * gone to seed. They’re blown constantly into our minds and take root when we don’t think. Welcome, then, to the labor of weeding * the mind. But be careful not to mistake pea vine for coffee weed and pull it. You know the difference between the coffee weed quoted above and the careful * garden we talked about last week, eating our cantaloupe at dusk. We were dirty, hot, tired of fighting the army of the encroaching weeds Looking over the ‘ garden, trying words in tribute to the bounty we shared, even before full harvest — shared not only with each other, but with the soil and seed and, as < always, the weeds The beginning of Dog Days, between old and new seasons for you and me. I So we talked the garden's promise. The watermelon vines had grown so fast they'd dragged most of the little melons off. and the corn ears were threatening to , run out the shuck ends We knew whaT we were saying. If you must sometime speak of space coming to a screching halt, know what you are saying in the light of Ptolomy, Newton, Einstein, of Dante, Shakespeare. Milton Not just in the light of Walt Disney. Words defend them selves; a man's metaphors are a judge-, ment upon him, whether he knows or cares or nbt. Don't put your foot in your mouth without good cause. And above all, remember that I and a host of those you know and do not as yet know send you and yours our love and encouragement. THE RED AND BLACK Victor Hall, editor Rick Ricks, Mike Millions, Executive editor Business manager John Habich and Pat McGee, news editors; Joyia Anthony, assistant news editor; Helen Hege, copy editor, Raad Cawthon, feature editor; Carol Costen associate feature editor, Hoke Carter, photography editor; Rick Franzman, sports editor; Brad McColl, art director; Michele Stevens, production manager; Louise West, production equipment operator. The Ked mid Black student newt paper af Um lahenk) af (ienrfia i* published weekly aad ACC Mid elate postage it paid at Ike Athens Real (Hike. Athens. <*eorgta MMI i>pinters expressed kt The Red aad Black, other than the unsigned editorials. are the opinions af the writer* af signed roiomnt ar »artomUti and are net neceaaarily (hate af the t nKertM> administration. the Board af Re gents or The Red aad Black, state national aad internatieaal news la The Red aad Black Is from the wkes of tatted Press International News contributions will he accepted by “Iota. IMUM 11 M Ik* rdllori.l aflla* in Ik* Joarnallam Bolldlnl lnlvar.il, ot l.aoril. Inanlrl*. lonrrralaa nS.ml.in> .hoold k* made al Ik* knkw numb** iio-uid. A« aarra.paadr.tr ikdd k* iddmud In Ik. appraprtat* adltor at in. J„ u ,n.li.m Huildln* I nlvar.Ui *1 Uaargia. \tk*n> (.*.» da MR Ik* R*d aad Black’. national ad.*rll.ln> rapraaaalaUv* la Naliaaal educational vdvml ala> Smrlc. la*., Ida Laatadoa Nan Yank. N.v. laaw ■ HnkaartpUoa raid la IIS par ,*ar. Campus is worth writing about
