Newspaper Page Text
THE MAROON TIGER
Page 5
STUDENT GOATS
(From Syracuse Daily Orange)
A hundred football men, wearing Oglethorpe Univer
sity uniforms, recently yanked a visiting lecturer from
the platform and shoved him on a street car back to
Emory University. The speaker was scheduled to dis
cuss communism before the International Relations Club
of Oglethorpe.
This revolting play of intolerance and suppression of
speech was not enough.
“It was a most refreshing exhibition of good, old-
fashioned Americanism,’ said the university president,
Thornwell Jacobs, giving his approval to the action of
the “muscle men” called in to stop a speaker whose
topic was not in accordance with the administration’s
views.
Within the past few months, Louisiana State, City
College of New York, the University of California at Los
Angeles, Denver. Columbia, and Santa Clara have been
among those who have not hesitated to show that they
will control student opinion by force if necessary—not
unlike the control of speech and press under European
dictatorship.
The danger to education is apparent. The threat to
personal liberty is more appalling. Faculty domination
is but a. step from governmental domination. Already
Wisconsin, Massachusetts and New York have considered
bills which, if passed, would have proven valuable weap
ons against freedom of speech.
Students, goaded on by yellow journalists behind the
“red scare,” have been led toward fascism in their en
deavors to be “real Americans.” They have been the
willing goats for those who would suppress dissenting
opinion for their personal gains. At Oglethorpe, as at
U. C. L. A., they have been taught to use force to break
up intelligent discussions with which they might disagree
—shades of storm troops.
Do the students, acting for the administration, realize
that under the guise of ‘Americanism,” they are actually
bringing us close to fascism and away from the real
principles which form the basis of American democ
racy?”
-—N. S. F. A. News.
ET TU, HOWARD?
Fifty-one ballots were cast at the voting Wednesday.
Fifty-one out of eleven hundred students saw enough
that was interesting in the resignation of a president of
the Student Council to come to a meeting and vote on the
acceptance or rejection of that resignation. Fifty-one
students were there.
No more need be said about the “why” of the various
situations on Howard’s campus. All the discouraging
failures in student activities on Howard’s campus may
be traced to this same spirit. There is little need of
condemning the thirteen student council members, the
club presidents, the heads of other organizations who
seem merely to be marking time. The blame lies with
the 1,000 who were missing at the meeting Wednesday.
A mass meeting with fifty-one votes cast. Why not
laugh heartily and decide that Howard students have
neither the right to nor the capacity for student govern
ment?
—From The Hilltop.
A RUSTY NAIL
It seems a pity to me that you should meet such a
fate. You, who are no respector of persons, but who
serve with equal tenacity and equal pleasure the rich
man, the poor man, and the beggar and thief.
Nothing can take your place. Nothing can make up
to you the romance that is now gone forever. And as
you peacefully lie before me, I am cognizant of the fact
that nothing can take away the memories with which you
are embodied.
You must have enjoyed life in your early days when
you were sent forth into the world to do your part, for
you, like a butterily, flitted here, there, and everywhere.
You weren’t content in the wife’s boudoir, the child’s
nursery, or the husband’s den. You went content in the
farmer’s barn, or the merchant’s store. Neither the Em
pire State Building nor the Wrigley Building satisfied
you. You seemed to realize that you were not made to
serve a few, but to serve many, and in what way could
you better serve that many than by helping to span the
waters; the rivers on their way to the sea!
Here and there—no matter where I gaze—I am re
minded of the time when you willingly gave up your
strength to the usefulness and happiness of man.
In the village where I was born there is a picturesque,
old-fashioned, beautiful walk that is covered by a trellis.
On the summer noons it is used as a haven of rest by
the tired pedestrians. At evening it becomes a lover’s
lane, lighted only by the moon as it peeps through the
trellis that you so dutifully held together, and the fire
flies as they flickered here and there. How you must
have enjoyed peeping in on these scenes of superb hap
piness! And how you must wish for a happy return of
the day!
But alas, you are age worn! The earth is claiming
you for her own. You are, now, devoid of your strength,
your penetrability, your resistance—all that meant use
fulness to you. You are shorn of trust and security.
But such is life. For aren’t we all traveling in the
direction of Oblivion? And aren’t we all losing some of
the qualities that we possessed in our youth? The shadow
is omnipresent, and is always ready to claim us whether
or not we are ourselves, or, like you—just a rusty nail.
-—Emma Weathers.
POEM
I am too young to live without desire.
If this night strikes naught in you,
Let us walk away and into bright lights
Until you have learned to feel and sing.
For it is sweeter far to feel than know—-
Listen! The echoes of the sea drag like falling tears
into the silence.
All the April dark is washed with gold,
And the pulse of passion beats into flame, youth’s fiery
glow.
Shall we only speak. Look! the captive evening,
Soon to die, flings her beauty over the night.
This flame with which our bodies burn
Will make some meadow blaze with flower.
Have we not lips to kiss, hearts to love!
My dear, I am too young to live without desire.
Let us leave these verdant meadows to their awakening—
Until you, too, have learned to feel and sing.
—Helen.