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Letters to the editor in our Mgiriativt syatem. It it view the arthritis m impulsive, ■M many persons who eon- idealistic people who want to D. G police use gas guns An open letter At this time you an Marine completion of another success ful milestone in your (young?) Ihns. As always you an faced with decisions ay to how you can best utilise your vacation time. As a Brother and Mend let me make a suggestion: Join us in our efforts to make the South a decent place to live for your Black brethren. Ham in Georgia a new poli tical frontier ia taking form. Through your efforts in full- scale political education and voter registration a Black man will possibly be the next Governor of this state and Btack men from Georgia will hopefully move into the na tional political arena via the U. S. House of Representatives. Thsm am ao many happenings ia Georgia now! Would you like to help make history? Would you like to help your fallow man? Would you like to join us in 9COPE *70? Think about K ... can you really find something more re warding to do!! Your Soul Brother, Hoses L. Williams, Director Voter Registration & Political Education Southern Christian Leadership Conference FOR APPLICATION & INFORMATION: S.C.O.P.E. Southern Christian Leadership Conference 384 Auburn Avenue, N.E. Atlanta, Georgia 30303 Phone: (404) 522-1420 Dear editor thing, or that pact of aodoty which acta Indifferently or lethargicaBy and shows little or no concern or opinion — whether one ia felt or not” If this ia ao, then for a moment the jeOy fish raised a tentacle to post signs around campus claiming the silent majority would be heard. Funny, I haven’t heard anything since The definition encompessed political committment and In volvement Kathy Hindman wrote, “1 would say that the only requirement for member ship In the silent majority is that you nod respectfully to Mr. Nixon after every press confeaence and every troop withdrawal.” , Another coed writes, “according to Nixon, the silent majority are those people who don’t express their opinion but are in favor of his Viet Nam policy, Indochina, etc. (lower and middle daas).” Is it that Nixon relies on the lower daffies because their sup port is tacit, and untainted by the mind-bending philosophical arguments upon which univer sity students and intellectuals in each class base their belief? If so, why are the lower dames claimed to be in revolt against discriminatory clam systems which feed the rich and starve the poor? Ambiguity besides every side. One coed claims that not only is the majority those who don’t care, but “the ones that sit around and gripe about the way the government is being run but make no effort to con tact their congressmen.” She advocates personal involvement tinue to believe in the Repub lic’s processes, that going through the proper channels’ is the only way. Bertie Wilkie be lieve they are both “intel lectual and concerned people who have thought out pro blems and have workable solu tions either in the form of revi sion through long-term politics or innovation through non violent means, but who feel they have no power to change things.” Those who have given the system a try, such as In change at Mercer, can tell you frustration results from inac tion at (he other end. Exertion perpetually deed ends. This major downfall tends to ex plain Young America’s resort to violence in the footsteps of the dvil rights and labor move ments. Ineffectiveness leads eventually to violent activism as was unfortunately seen at Kent State. It has been sug gested that, despite extreme provocation stemming from the standstills and recurrent snags, groups refrain from re sorting to violence as “the only way to get what we want.” A conservative co-ed is opinionated and concerned but not pubiically active. Opinion is not by implication activism. As Dean Trimble suggested, there has to be another way — an alternative to militarism or the SDS. As the co-ed put it, “What we first have to do is get together." It seems violent activism is not the way to win the truly silent majority, the unrespon sive 77% of this poll. “They bring about change now yet have no answers, no alternate suggestions for improvement, and therefore their dramatic, violent demonstrations have been futile, accomplishing little other than publicity.” Some conservatives, consid ering themselves part of the silent majority believe it's time to speak. The liberals have con ferred and ate tired of hot air. “Usually the silent majority speaks up when something drastic goes wrong or when something they support is chal lenged strongly.” The time is imminent. Silent majority: SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG WITH OUR AMERI CA. YOU ARE BEING CHAL LENGED. The liberals aren’t waiting on “America — love it or leave it.” While I’m here trying to define this tacit group to you people are denouncing their beliefs in the L. S. before the conservatives became the church mice of North America. Quite easily the majority has becomf, for some, “a myth, a boogeyman made up by parents, college administra tors and (above all) politicians who want to scare anti-war protestors back into the class room and into a placid accep tance of our country’s faults.” They can no longer believe in the hypocracy of the silent people who allow the system to run this country for them. People cannot stand by while their beloved country goes I went to Washington for the anti-war demonstration for a variety of reasons. One. I was deeply concerned with the deaths of four fellow students at Kent State University — a school I considered attending. Secondly, being a male of 2-S draft status, I was very con cerned with the,new violation of International Law by the Nixon Administration. And, thirdly, being an American citi zen, I felt it to be my duty to express my opinion to a gov ernment that is supposed to work for my interests. Upon entering Washington, D. C., the capital of the most powerful nation in the world, 1 was taken aback by the size of the force of the City and Park Police, as well as the National Guard troops. Even at 6:30 Saturday morning, when I first arrived, police barricades were set up, tear gas canisters were being passed out, and police were busily guiding traffic. Not that these precautions were not necessary, but the magnitude and the placing of so many officers gives rise to some thought as to how safe our country really is. As the day wore on and the weather grew more humid angry words were flying through the air from the stu dent leaders on the speaker’s platform. On the ground, many of the students slept or enjoy ed the sun. Out on the Mall, many students tried to cool off by taking a dip into the Tidal Basin, sometimes au nature), which prompted some police by Tom Robinson to go into action and arrest them for indecent exposure. Later in the day, however, the heat got to some students who refused to give right-of- way to pedestrians, so the pol ice, snatching at the first op portunity to use their gas, fired a couple of canisters at the demonstrators as well as a lot of the pedestrians they were supposed to protect. This also prompted several other police men to come from what seem ed out of the woodwork. The force they used in the afternoon was nothing com pared to that about 1:30 Sun day morning. Several students desired to put a poster up on the Washington Monument. The students got a little rough, so once again. City Police fired tear gas into the crowd. It was of no consequence to the Pol ice that the tear gas also drifted toward people who were trying to sleep. Later that morning, police also fired tear gas to break up small disturbances at George Washington University, and once again, the tear gas fell among several students trying to sleep. No one who was there, ex cept the police can say with a straight face that the po ce couldn’t have broken up the disturbances without tear and pepper gas. Not all the police were trig ger-happy with the gas guns; but there were those who ob viously got some kind of sadis tic pleasure shooting tear gas at people who were not even in volved in the disturbances. (Continued on Page 4) Editorial exchange Opinion from around the state . . . Before this year was out I knew I had to ferret out the truth or falsity of the Mar cerian Myth — apathy and the silent majority. Much has hap pened during the past two or three weeks to cause me to re consider my original statement “What this campus needs is some thought.” Words have been flying hot and heavy around campus. At least I thought they were. One night around midnight I conceived an “opinion poll’’ of the lowest order — hand typed, etc. It was one of those spot cheeks of croaseections which never represent a true section of anything except areas people being asked the aaaae things over and over. Unfortunately the results are conahsaive, as always - the SILENT MAJORITY, contrary to recent signs around campus, IS NOT SPEAKING UP, even about themselves. Mr Question was this: Who andwhnththesilent majority? After all, who would know bet- tar than a cross section which paobabty contained that “ma jority”? Result: of the two FWRH halls polled I received exactly sight replies, that is, 18%. The opinions were not necessarily from the “liberal left.” Definition stood primarily on the wall-worn “anybody who doamit gvead Mr impression, in reading fur ther wm that the silent raa josity le a jefly-fish type group ~ and doiag nothing save r ate “that group in society which acts aa a ‘behind the * ^ tar — Serendipity Reprinted from the Baptist Faculty Paper The U. S. has poured more than one trillion dollars into the military since the end of World War II. One tenth of this staggering amount was invested in the Vietnam war. Out of every tax dollar in Fiscal Year 1969, seventy cents went to pay for wars, pint and present, and preparation of war. Of this amount, nineteen cents went to pay for Vietnam, thirty-five cents for other cur rent military expenditures, and sixteen cents for the cost of past wars. Every man, woman, and child in the U. S. is now spending an average of four hundred dollars a year on the military, an increase of 60 per cent over the last five years. What could even a portion of this amount of money buy if invested elsewhere? In Viet nam, the U. S. has lost six thousand aircraft valued at six billion dollars as of October 24, 1969. Six billion dollars could buy a fully equipped elementary school for one thousand children, a fully equipped junior high school for thirteen hundred and a fully equipped senior high school for fifteen hundred in each of 250 communities, plus a starting salary of $7,000 for each of 35,714 teachers — one teacher for every twenty-seven child ren. in memoriam Four Kent State University students were shot down by the Ohio National Guard troops Monday. The incident of student rioting on the Kent Campus which precipitated the shootings has been given full 111 mags by the national media and requires no further descrip tion here. Dead are two coeds, Allison Krauee of Pittsburg and Sandy Schauer of Youngstown, Ohio, and two male students, Jeffrey Glenn Millar of Plain view, N.Y., and William Schroeder of Lorain, Ohio. Whan Nixon heard of the risootiap, he blamed the stu dents for the tragedy. Earlier, he had called diaMnting stu dents “college bums.” Agnew blamed college faculty and ad ministrators and the media for encouraging “violent diasdht” which he said provoked the killings. Former President Truman went one step further when he publicly proclaimed, as quoted by AVANT GARDE magazine, “He’s (Nixon) a who never told the truth in his life.” Agnew is not worth fur ther mention Nixon doesn’t seem to un derstand that he connot con tinue to use violence as a means himself and simnlta- Pulse of the public Reprinted from the George—Anne Georgia Southern College, Statesboro, Georgia The GEORGE-ANNE is cri tlcized by many different people for many different rea sons. Some people say that we don’t devote' enough space to the Greeks (others say we devote too much space to the initialed few); some people say we complain too much about the administration and the campus facilities; others accuse us of arrogantly sitting back in easy chairs and writing hypo critical copy. Reprinted from the West Georgian West Georgia College, Carrolton, Georgia neously condemn students’ use of it. Nixon has okayed the death warrants for thousands of Americans in Southeast Asia, not to mention thousands of Southeast Asians. And now ha has apparently justified the murders of four Kent State stu dents. Nixon is proving himself one of this country's . most treacherous and vicious presi dents. His blind foreign policy has widened the rift between Intellectuals and ignoramuses like himself. Ha is setting the stage for a revolution, and providing increasing grounds to justify one. But the criticism voiced most often and most consis tently is that our editorial columns represent only a small portion of the student body. We are told that our columnists are always writing extremely liberal, and sometimes radical, columns (tell that to the boys at Berkeley). None of our columnist will deny that his political and social philosophy is somewhat to the left of Wallace. Reagan, and Gold water. We realize that this campus is a stronghold of Southern conservatism but freedom of the press allows us to speak our minds, and we do. Causing most of the friction is the mistaken belief that a t9w long-haired radicals control the printed word and no con servative opinion can be voiced. Balderdash. Last quar ter we literally got down on our collective knees and begged readers to send letters to the editor, giving us some inkling as to what was going on in the minds of the silent majority. The flow of letters increased for a couple of weeks, and then settled back down to a trickle. In the hope of clianging this supposed under representation of all campus elements, we are instituting an open column, “Pulse of the People.” This column will be open to anyone having an inclination to apeak out on anything - students, faculty, administrators, and staff personnel. 'The columns may be writ ten on any subject in any style, with no restriction on length. The only limitations placed on these columns will be rele vancy, literacy, and taste. The only editing we will do will be to correct flagrant grammatical errors and to strike out any un necessary obscenities which might needlessly offend, and. since we are admittedly liberal we will keep our editing at a minimum to allow you to say what you want to say in the manner in which you wish to say it. The deadline for these col umns is the Thursday before Tuesday publication; columns submitted after Thursday will be held over for the next edi tion. So, if you have something you want to say, this Is the best opportunity you’ve ever had. The “Pulse of the People" column is open to everyone — anarchists, monarchists, conser vatives, radicals, liberals, mo derates, socialists, communists — everyone The success of this innovation depends on von Reader interest could turn it into a campus forum; apathy will kill it. You’re in college now. you can think for yourself. Pick up your pen and write Support Action Line Box 1070 ..■a’*. THE MERCER CLUSTER • May 19, 1970 • 3