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Wednesday, October 22, 19H6
THE RED AND BLACK
Established 1893 — Incorporated 1980
Mickey Higginbotham, Editor-in-Chief
Tami Dennis, Managing Editor
Frank Steele, Opinions Editor
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An independent newspaper not affiliated with the University of Georgia
Dctwg fight
Okay, so you’re one of the lucky 5,000 students who won a
ticket in the lottery for the Georgia-Florida game. Well, be
fore you start packing your red and black boxer shorts with
bulldogs on them, there area few things you might want to
consider.
Those drunk, obnoxious Georgia fans might not be the
only dogs barking at this year's World’s Largest Cocktail
Party. And being drunk and obnoxious (no matter what
colors you're wearing) might not be taken so kindly by law
enforcement officials in Jacksonville.
In the past, the game has been marred by unsportsman
like behavior, both on our part and the University of Flor
ida’s. After Florida's 27-0 win in 1984, Gator fans trampled
the fence and stormed the field. Their antics weren’t com
plete until they had torn down the goalpost and marched it
into the stands.
But who’s to talk? Georgia fans have been guilty of the
same thing. After last year’s 24-3 rout, hundreds of our fans
flooded the field, got down on their knees and proved they
were real Bulldogs by chewing up hunks of turf.
Well, it seems officials who run Jacksonville’s Gator
Bowl stadium think enough is enough. The contract to hold
the annual event there expires after the Nov. 8 game, and
officials of the stadium and both schools say if the past re
peats itself, this may be the iast Georgia-Florida game in
Jacksonville.
Stadium officials said Tuesday they will beef up the
number of police by 100 percent at this year’s game, and
they will use police dogs and horses to keep over-excited
fans from charging the field.
Sure, it’s fun to frolic in the heat of the moment after an
important game. Sure, we should be able to celebrate. But
what’s wrong with celebrating without destroying property
and endangering the safety of others?
Student leaders will meet next week in Gainesville to dis
cuss ways to help improve student conduct at the game. The
Gator Bowl authorities are doing their part by using police
dogs and horses to ensure that fans stay in their place. But
unless all fans do their part, the game may turn into a real
dawg fight.
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Editorial: 543-1809
Advertising: 543-1791
Editor in Chief Mickey Higginbotham
Managing Editor Tami DflWlil
Opinion* Editor Frank Steele
Chief Copy Editor Sherne Gnffin
Front Page Copy Editor Julie Carey
Copy Editor Jerry Ashworth
New* Editor Andy Smith
Spot U Editor Jim Callis
Entertainment Editor Raymond Valley
UGA Today and Librarian Jay Wallace
Photography Editor Warren Kolbert
A tractate New* Editor* Hector Vargas,
l-auran Neergaard
A Mutant Sport* Editor Lon Clark
A Mutant Photo Editor Nat Gurley
Senior Reporter> Bill Kent, Mike Krensa
vage. Polly A Manely, Keith Phillips,
Christy Richards. Tony Wilson. David
Winfrey
Advertising Director Bill Wolgast
Advertising Sale* Manager Lori Heed
Advertising Representative* Mali Curl,
John Colvard. Bonnie Drobnya. Jon
Johnson. Amy Lindblom. Keith Nimitz.
Mark Smith, Gary Thacker. Michelle
Brown, Tiffany Kurtz, Steve Slotin. Michael
Welli, Tracy Williams
Classified Ad Sale* Lori Morris
Advertising Artut/Photugrapher Ben
Nilei
Advertising Production Manager Brenda
Cleveland
Editorial Production Manager Michelle
Manic
Production Staff Pamela Burns. Sarah
Gallant. Tonya Keed. Julie Ann Rowland.
L'rew Wilson, Lisa Isygue Mary Catharine
Ginn
General Manager Harry Montevideo
Office Manager Mary Straub
Assistant Office Manager Teresa O’Hara
Receptionist Lon Morns
THE RED AND BLACK is published Tuesday through Friday with the exception of holi
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Athens. Georgia 30601
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to space limitations and legal considerations, all letters are subyect to standard editing for
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North Jackson Street Athens Georgia 30601 Letter* can also be delivered in person to the
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Opinions expressed in The Red and Black other than unsigned editorials are the opinions
of the writers of signed columns and are not necessarily those of The Red and Black Pub
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Opinion
I A Guide t? the, diverse Lebanese*
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* PK**BI.Y YOUR LAST CHANCE
TO SET A FIRM SRlP OH WUO'S
WHO IN THIS TROUWESFOT.
SOVIET-BACKED
mXSTIHlAN
MOSLEM REBEL
IRANIAN-BACKED
anti-Government
REBEL MILITIAMAN
ISRAELI-BACKED
Riant-vfu*a
CHRISTIAN
SUNNI MOSLEM-
BACKED SYRIAN DRUSE
SHI ITE MILITIAMAN
LEFTIST SHITCE-BACKED
SYRIAN ANTI-GOVERNMENT
DRUSE CHRISTIAN REBEL
Feeling autumn’s wanderlust
There is no denying the impulse. Call it wan
derlust.
October, here in Georgia, was burning like
ugly August; and my childish thrill for the new
schoolyear had been displaced by the chunky
reality of dull and daily classroom staccato.
My mind choked and stammered through my
every day. My thoughts were scuffed like a Mike
Scott forkball.
The only solution: roadtrip. (Reagan and Gor
bachev were tooling off towards Iceland; why
not me?)
I drove north towards home. Not Iceland, hut
New York.
Cruising through the Virginian mountains in
the crisp air pf a new morning. I became aware
of the season. The Shenandoah Valley was busy
becoming autumn; its splendid countryside was
busy dying.
Think about it. And think about it.
October: To every thing there is a season. ..
There is a message on every chilling breeze. The
waning sun explodes with a different brightness,
it is qualified sunshine. The trees dance with a
colorful and furious final fire. And the ancient
Alleghenies, earth’s first mountains, gather and
swell like eventide across the distant horizon.
There is an answer within this majesty. It is an
abiding message, and saying only one thing.
What gives, Virginia? What are your moun
tains’ secrets?
Forever man and similar beasts have sought
to understand autumn's paradox It has never
been an easy search. And. in spite of our so
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called progress, it remains difficult today
The mesmerizing autumnal splendor dazzles
the eye. It’s difficult to extend the travelling and
homeward-bound thoughts beyond this surface
beauty. Autumn’s paradox is encountered
through a windshield, accepted as an answer.
Rut, by its very nature, it is not an answer, not
at all.
There is a harrier the body builds and the rest
less mind mislabels as pain. The barrier is re
inforced day upon day, and this barrier sees the
dying countryside as l>eauty enough.
But the highway stretches on, and New York is
a distant exit w hen you drive only 60 m.p.h.
There are the long miles, when the car is full
of gas and the cruise-control is on, when it seems
as if Virginia will never become Maryland and
then become Pennsylvania and then become
New York and then home. There is a long time of Journalism.
and it dissolves the hard body’s passive barriers
and the mind is soothed by the travelling sounds,
and the answer within autumn’s majesty is re
vealed.
I felt its answer, and feel it.
(It is translating it into words that confounds
me. I
The unmanned mountains contain an indif
ferent power and grace. Far away from man’s
mad camp, these silent and tired mountains rise
with a weathered indifference, saying it does not
matter, nothing does, nor ever will....
I arrived in New York, still chewing on this
queer truth, home at last.
I visited my tired father in his hospital bed and
1 saw the Alleghenies in his eyes, full of autumn,
busy dying. And I heard a cold, indifferent voice
saying it does not matter...nothing does...nor
ever will....
It was a fast, sad weekend.
I was driving southbound again, through Vir
ginia’s wet countryside. The cleansing rain fell
only for me: it was baptismal, and wonderful.
Spinoza was said to have the Northern hunger
for knowledge rather than the Southern lust for
beauty; this fine distinction has not pronounced
itself in me, but has remained blurred in its
struggle. It blends like the thousand sights seen
and unseen along an October highway, neither a
Northern hunger nor a Southern lust, but some
thing indistinct and strange. Call it wanderlust.
Rick Stewart is a graduate student in the School
Mankind needs accountability
Throughout history, prominent men have
placed undying faith and confidence in the in
herent potentialities present in the human race.
George Gaylord Simpson, retired Vertebrate
Paleontologist of Harvard University, said."Man
stands alone in the universe, a unique product of
a long, unconscious, impersonal material
process with unique understanding and potentia
lities. These he owes to no one hut himself, and it
is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the
creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable
forces, but his own master. He can and must de
cide and manage his own destiny.”
Simpson's philosophy is a modern-day re
working of the ideas of Plato; Ralph Waldo
Emerson, the nineteenth-century Transcenden
talism Charles Darwin; and John Dewey, the fa
ther of the modern American education system.
Plato believed that through education and ob
servation of the world in which we live, a person
can come to the ultimate realization. This expe
rience would give an investigator a full knowl
edge of "The Good" which embodies all wisdom
and virtue in the universe.
This philosophy sounds exciting and applicable
to human experience, hut doesn't really have
much practical application. Plato continued his
search for "truth" until he died, but never
reached the ultimate realization he so despera
tely strained to achieve
Emerson integrated Confucian and Buddhist
philosophy into Transcendentalism. It says that
man is naturally good Evil is just the absence of
good and if a person acts badly, it is because of
the hostile environment in which he lives.
This system of beliefs is thought-provoking hut
unrealistic in its assumptions The poet Robert
MAm
Penn Warren said, "1 admire Emerson's ide
alism, hut it does not agree with experience."
Furthermore, if you say man is a product of his
environment, his surroundings are made up of
people At least a large percentage of these
people would have to he imperfect in order to
sustain all of the problems in the world.
Third. Darwin believed that humans are prod
ucts of a long, continuous, progressive, mech
anistic process in which a hydrogen atom
developed into a man. Over time, men become
more adept in dealing with their environment
and their methods of survival will always suf
fice, without any type of divine intervention
Interestingly, he said the fossil record was the
most serious contradiction to the evolutionary
theory that could be proposed. After 40 years of
research attempting to prove the theory of evolu
tion, Douglas Dewar, a British naturalist, said,
"the theory of evolution ought to be entirely
abandoned; it is a serious obstruction to biolog
ical research.” Darwin knew that scientific evi
dence didn't support his theory. And slavery and
war in his era were evidence against inherent
good in men and women.
Fourth, Dewey said, "There are no permanent
moral absolutes; there is no God and there is no
soul." In addition, he agreed with the other
men’s assumption of the goodness of men and
women. He wrote the 1933 Humanist Manifesto,
where he proposed the idea of persons being
"largely molded to their culture" and denied any
chance of divine intervention to change people.
The United States is 49th in the world in lit
eracy because Dewey’s philosophy failed. This
fact is strong evidence for the paucity of our
Dewey-originated education svstem and his be
lief.
After exteasive study, 1 came to the conclusion
that these men did not attain their ultimate pur
pose because they started with the wrong set of
assumptions. Even though these men were great
in their respective fields, they didn’t have a solid
foundation on which to build their belief systems.
If a builder assumes that he can build a house
without a foundation, the building will fall.
In the same way, if any of us attempt to be
morally good without the proper foundation, we
will eventually fail. Many of us attempt to attain
perfection through our own efforts, hut we can’t.
The main reason that men have raised them
selves up in such a fashion is because they are
rebelling against the authority of God If we are
not sinful as the Bible says and are just a
product of our environment, then we are no
longer accountable to God. That’s a terribly con
venient belief system for someone who insists on
rejecting God.
Even so. it would improve all of us to accept
the alternative plan of allowing the only wise and
true God (Jesus) to have full control of our lives.
Bill Kent ,
Black.
a senior reporter for The Red and
Letters
Contras no patriots
TO THE EDITOR :
1 take exception to Lauran Neer
gaard referring to the contras
fighting to overthrow the elected
government of Nicaragua as
“freedom fighters" in her column of
Oct 14, 1986
In the Nicaraguan elections of
1984, the FSLN (Sandinistas) re
ceived about 60 percent of the votes
cast. Most independent observers of
the elections gave the Nicaraguan
elections generally higher marks
for fairness than the elections in El
Salvador and Guatemala. The voter
turnout was higher than in U S.
elections. The balloting was secret
and the vote count was legitimate.
All candidates had access to the
media The length of the campaign
was seven months Though this'
length of time justifiably could he
criticized as too short, I believe it
compares favorably to the length of
the campaign in the recent Phil
ippine elections.
Lest anyone get the impression
that the 40 percent of the vote of the
votes cast for parties other than the
FSLN went to parties to the right of
the FSLN, note that some of the
votes went to parties to the political
left of the the FSLN
Arturo Cruz, a member of the
first government formed after the
revolution and now a political
leader of the contras, had the oppor
tunity to participate in the elections
He declined to do so, claiming
that the length of the campaign was
too short Considering that he al
ready was a nationally known
figure, one wonders if Cruz felt the
time was too short to present his po
sitions to the people, or if he simply
felt he couldn't convince enough
people to vote for him in that time
period
I suggest that Cruz could have
done more for democracy in his
country had he participated in its
system and taken on his rightful
role as head of the loyal opposition
than he can do now by trying to vio
lently overthrow its government.
If, as I have tried to show, the
current government of Nicaragua is
an elected government, can we con
tinue to categorize people that are
willing to kill civilians to overthrow
it as "freedom fighters?"
Robert Franklin
Graduate. Agricultural Economics
Letters Policy
The Red and Black welcomes let
ters to the editor and prints them as
space permits Because of space
limitations and legal considerations,'
all letters are subject to standard
editing for libelous material and
length Short letters are preferred
and stand a* better chance of run
ning.
To be considered for publication,
letters must be double-spaced on a
60-space line They must also in
clude the name, address and tele
phone number of the writer. Please
include student classification and
major or other appropriate identifi
cation (professor, Union officer,
etc ). We can omit your name in
print for a valid reason upon re
quest
To be considered for publication
the following day, letters must be
received by 1 p.m. the day prior to
publication
Letters can be sent by U S. mail
or brought in person to The Red and
Black offices at 123 North Jackson
St., Athens, Ga 30601.
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