Newspaper Page Text
May 5. 1967
THE MERCER CLUSTER
‘(Ebe JHen
May 5, 1967
:er Cluster
Volume XLVIII, No. 17
A
EDITOR-IN CHIEF CyG
S/A
Tom Cauthorn h/n
▼Jn
| S&
|TK. ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Wright Davis
business Managers
Barbara Gantt
Harry Moore
Becky Sims
Editor at I.arge
Clyde Hoover
Exchange Editor
Russ Drummond
Executive Editors
Bill Dayton, Bobby Phillips
Sports Editor
Art Hspner
Feature Staff
Claudia Young, Kim Kieburtz,
Reid Banks, Dan Newell
Staff Wardlyn Mills, Don Ripley, DiAnne
Bradford, Tad Mollenkampf, Pat Arm
strong, Grady Kirbo, Willard Clutchmyer
Faeulty Advisor
Prof. Anthony Stansfeld
By Tom Cauthorn
Last Wednesday, April 26, Representative John J. Flvnt
of Griffin announced that 42 colleges and universities in
Georgia would receive $1.1 million to finance work study
programs for 4,577 students. This outlay of cash comes under
the U. S. Office of Economic Opportunity and will allocate for
payment of ninety percent of the Economic Opportunity Act
during the summer and seventy-five percent during the fall
and winter months.
Unfortunately Mercer was not included in the list of
schools and this omission is quite distressing when one reviews
the announcement. $284,280 was listed for the program in nine
Atlanta-area schools which included Morehouse College, Morris
Brown University, Clark College, Georgia Institute of Tech
nology, DeKalh College, Spelman College, Georgia State Col
lege, and Emory University. These schools are representative
because the list includes University-System schools, private
institutions, and church affiliated universities.
West Georgia will receive $132,060 in funds for 400 stu
dents and among others in the list was Berry College getting
$50,700.
It would l>e quite easy to dismiss the list and the amounts
as irrevelant if the question of Mercer’s solvency was not a
constant topic among students. Of course one can say that
these funds are for only one isolated function of a university
and therefore are not really important.
Indeed, the amounts are important and so are the forty-
two institutions which will receive these amounts. Although
the appropriations are not large they are amounts which would
free a corresponding proportion of funds in the Mercer budget
for other facets of the university’s activity.
We are concerned with the number of faculty members
who leave Mercer each year to seek a better position or often
to receive a higher income. It is logical to suppose that the
more money incoming to Mercer would make possible a pro
portionate raise in standards and excellence in all the rami
fications of the university.
These figures are not antagonistic to Mercer’s current
policy on Federal money but are rather a suggestion or simply
meant for thought when next year begins. We should ponder
the advantages of extra funds against the disadvantages of a
modicum of outside controls. Mercer must not only provide
an ever improving atmosphere but also should lend a voice to
forces of change and improvement. These Federal dollars are
not gifts but rather returns on tax and the conservative trust
in the republican welfare state.
The Citi&n and the
. -
By Senator J. William Fulbriglit t
Second In A Series Of Four Articles From The Sena
tor’s Book “The Arrogance Of Power"
'•*
Freedom of thought and discusaion gives a
democracy two concrete advantages over a dicta
torship in the making of foreign policy: it dimish-
es the danger of an irretrievable mistake and it
introduces ideas and opportunities that otherwise
would not come to light.
The correction of errors in a nation's foreign
ixdicv is greatly assisted by the timely raising of
voices of criticism within the nation. When the
British launched their disastrous attack on Egypt,
the Labour Party raised a collective voice of in-
dignution while the military operation was still
under way; refusing to be deterred by calls for
national unity in a crisis. Labour began the long,
painful process of recovering Great Britain’s good
This is the second of four articles taken from the
chapter titled. "The Citizen and the University"
from THE ARROGANCE OF POWER” by
Senator J William Fulbright.
name at the very moment when the daipage was
still being done Similarly, the French intellectuals
who protested France’s colonial wars in Indochina
ami Algeria not only upheld the values of French
democracy but helped pave the way for the en
lightened policies of the Fifth Republic which
have made France the moat respected Western
nation in the underdeveloped world. It has been
in the hope of performing a similar service for
America on a very modest scale that I criticized
American intervention in the Dominican Republic
and that some of my colleagues and I have raised
questions about the wisdom of American military
involvement in Vietnam.
The second great advantage of free discussion
to democratic policy-makers is its bringing to light
of new ideas and the supplanting of old myths
with new realities. We Americans are much in
need of this benefit because we are severely, if
not uniquely, afflicted with a habit of policy
making by analogy: North Vietnam's involvement
in South Vietnam, for example, is equated with
Hitler's invasion of Poland and a parley with the
Viet Gong would represent "another Munich.’’ The
treatment of slight and superficial resemblances
as if they were full-blooded analogies — as in
stances. as it were, of history "repeating itaelf" —
is a substitute for thinking and a misuse of history.
There is a kind of voodoo about American
foreign policy. Certain drums have to be beaten
regularly to ward off evil spirits — for example,
the maledictions regularly uttered against North
Vietnamese aggression, the “wild men” in Peking,
communism in general, and President de Gaulle
Certain pledges must be repeated every day lest
the whole free world go to rack and ruin — for
example, we will never go back on a commitment
no matter how unwise; we regard this alliance or
that as absolutely “vital" to the free world; and
of course we will stand stalwart in Berlin from
now until Judgment Day. Certain words must
never be uttered except in derision — the word
"appeasement,” for example, comes as near as any
word can to summarizing everything that is re
garded by American policy-makers as stupid,
wicked, and disastrous.
Free and open criticism has a third, more ab
stract but no less important function in a democ
racy: it is therapy and catharsis for those who
are troubled by something their country is doing:
it helps to reassert traditional values, to clear the
air when it is full of tension and mistrust. TherK^
are times in public life as in private life when one
must protest, not solely or even primarily because
one’s protest will be politic or materially produc
tive, but because one's sense of decency is offend
ed. because one is fed up with political craft and
public images, or simply because something goes
against the grain. The catharsis thus provided
may indeed be the most valuable of freedom's uses.
The Vietnam Protest Movement
While not unprecedented, protests against a war
in the middle of the war are a rare experience ft
Americans. I see it aa a mark of strength an
maturity that an articulate minority have raias
their voices against the Vietnamese war and tlvtf
the majority of Americana are enduring this dif
sent, not without anxiety, to be sure, but for tkl
moment at least with better grace and under
standing than would have been the case in any
other war of the twentieth century.
It is by no means certain that the relative!;
healthy atmosphere in which the debate has beea
taking place will not give way to a new era of
McCarthyism. Critics of the Vietnamese war an
being accused of a lack of patriotism, and thess
accusations are coming not only from irresponm-
ble columnists but. with increasing frequency,
from the highest levels of government. This situa
tion is likely to become worse. The longer the
Vietnamese war goes on without prospect of vic
tory or negotiated peace, the higher the war fever
will rise; hopes will give way to fears, and toler
ance and freedom of discussion will give way to i
false and strident patriotism.
In Mark Twain's novel The Mysterious Strang
er a benevolent and clairvoyant Satan said the
following about war and its corrosive effects on a
society:
“There has never been a just one, never an
honorable one — on the part of the instigator of
the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this
rule will never change in so many as half a dozen
instances. The loud handful — as usual — will
shout for the war. The pulpit will — warily and
cautiously — object — at first; the great, big. dull
hulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try ■
to make out why there should be a war. and will
say. earnestly and indignantly, ‘It is unjust and
dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it'
Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair
men on the other side will argue and reason ,
against the war with speech and pen, and at first
will have a hearing and be applauded: but it will j
not last long; those others will outshout them, and f
presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and i
lose popularity. Before long you will see this curi- |
ous thing: the speakers stoned from the platform. |
and free speech strangled by hordes of furious I
men who in their secret hearts are still at one with |
those stoned speakers — as earlier — but do not <
dare to say so. And now the whole nation — pulpit
and all — will take up the war-cry, and shout i
itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ven- (
tures to open his mouth: and presently such I
mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will l
invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the 1
nation that is attacked, and every man will be I'
glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and
will diligently study them and refuse to examine
any refutations of them: and thus he will by and I
by convince himself that the war is just, and will f
thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after
this process of grotesque self-deception.”
Past experience provides littld basis for coufi y
dence that reason can prevail in an atmosphere
of mounting war fever. We must try nonethelea w
to bring reason and restraint into the emotionally p
charged'atmosphere in which the Vietnamese war jj
is now being discussed. Instead of trading epithet*
about who is and is not giving “aid and comfort" , r
to the enemy, we would do well to focus calmly f
and deliberately on the issue itself, recognizini ti
that all of us make mistakes and that mistakM u,
can be corrected only if they are acknowledged K
and discussed further that war is not its ows p
justification, that it can and must be discussed
unless we are prepared to sacrifice our traditional m
democratic processes to a false image of national E
unanimity. g (
(Excerpted by permission of Random House. Inc.
from "THE ARROGANCE OF POWER, by
Senator J. William Fulbright, Copyright. 1966 by
J. William Fulbright.)
Daylight Saving Time, Or Date-Night Wasted Time
Consider these two axioms: (1)
The number of hours in a day are
constant, if the number of daylight
hours are increased, the number of
dark hours are decreased. (2) In
the dating situation, "the hours
spent in daylight receive consider
ably leas emphasis than those spent
in the dark" (this axiom is con
by Dan Newell
Anyone who managed to set his or her clock ahead (instead of hack)
last Saturday night, and has secy red his or her date for this coming
Friday night, is in an ideal position to make the observation that day
light saving time is really date-night wasted time.
siderably older than the first and
probably better known). Combined
with the fact that the number of
hours a male may spend with a
-ed is limited to so many light
and so many dark, these two
axioms lead to the conclusion that
daylight saving time is the worst
thing that's happened to Friday
nights at Mercer since the W9GA
handbook
Some simple mathematical cal
culations will support this conclu
sion. Suppose you pick up your
date and she signs out to go bowl
ing at the creek- If it is 7:00 P*
EST, yon will arrive at the
before the dark hour of 8:00
you will be able to start bowli
right away. You will.be bowling
total darkness from 7:46 till ll
I*, tyr and aw quarter ho«
But.. . we ate on dayfidht sa«'
(Continued on pageS)