The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 52, No. 13, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 17, 1964 Page: 1 of 8
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5 S The Rice Thresher
^iV ALL-STUDENT NEWSPAPER FOR 49 TEARS
8 Days
'Til Christmas
Volume 52-Ntimber 13
Eight Pages This Week
HOUSTON, TEXAS
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1964
Rice Places One
In Region Finals
For 1965 Rhodes
Wiess Senior Walter John-
son, Jr., will be Rice's lone
representative at the Rhodes
Scholarship regional finals to
be held in New Orleans next
Saturday.
Johnson, a physics major
from Camden, Arkansas, won
his place in the finals at the
Arkansas state interviews held
in Little Rock this week Stu-
dents may enter the Rhodes
competition either in their
home state or in the state
where they attended college.
Competing against eleven
other finalists from the six-
state region, Johnson will be
trying for one of four scholar-
ships likely to be awarded by
the interviewing committee.
Texas Interviews
In the Texas state inter-
views held on the campus yes-
terday, places in, the finals
were given to Stanford Uni-
versity senior Thomas A Cot-
ton and University of Texas
senior William C. Keach, Jr.
Keach, enrolled in a liberal
arts honors program at the
University of Texas, was born
in Robstown, Texas. Cotton, a
native of Dallas, is an Electric-
al Engineering major at Stan-
ford but plans to read history
at Oxford
Rice's delegation- to the Tex-
as interviews was composed of
seniors Donald Alvin Alton,
Mark W. Booth, David Louis
Gassman and Don Siegmund.
Alton and Siegmund are mem-
bers of Will Rice, Booth and
Gassman of Baker.
Also A Drummer
The committee which inter-
viewed here included Stanley
Marcus of Dallas, Dr. Carleton
Chapman of the University of
Texas School of Medicine, Pro-
fessor Joseph McKnight of the
SMU School of Law, and Dr.
Raymond Pruitt, Robert Eikel
and Ewell Murphy of Houston.
Johnson returned to the
campus late last night. A mem-
ber of Phi Beta Kappa and a
Fellow of Wiess College, he
will study physics at Oxford.
NYC Charter Jet
To Leave Friday
A chartered Christmas flight
to New York engineered by a
Rice undergraduate entrepre-
neur will take off tomorrow ev-
ening at six, carrying —"hope-
fully"—upwards of seventy Rice
and area college students.
The flight, arranged by Ba-
ker senior Mike Derkacz, had
originally been scheduled ten-
atively, but Derkacz went ahead
and committed himself Monday
. though "way short" of the pass-
engers needed to pay for the
plane.
"As of now, I'm losing my
. shirt," Derkacz said Tuesday.
"But I'm hopeful." The only
sure thing now, he said, is the
flight and a bill for $4576.55 for
tne 92-seat Turboprop Electra.
Studentd or others interested
in the $60 flight to New York
can contact Derkacz tonight or
.tomorrow at J A 2-6676 or J A 8-
4141, ext. 633.
I
The tinsel and sentiment of the fourth week of December stands in cold contrast to the
crush of exams and papers which seemingly always fall due in the third. But Christmas
manages to intrude on the Rice campus in spite of the rush to get finished and get gone.
A CASE AND AN INTERVIEW
Free Speech: National Perspective
By RICHARD BEST
The problem of controversial speakers on
campuses has plagued university presidents for
years. A question impossible to avoid, it has been
handled by some with obsequience to local pres-
sure groups and by others with a forthright de-
fense of academic freedom.
An example of the latter case was acknowl-
edged in 1961 by he American Association of
University Professors when the group gave its
Alexander Meiklejohn Award to President Arthur
S. Flemming of the University of Oregon for
upholding the right of students to select campus
speakers.
(The Meiklejohn Award is presented each year
to an American college or university administra-
tor or trustee, or to a board of trustees as a
group, in recognition of an outstanding contribu-
tion to academic freedom.)
Flemming, Secretary of Health, Education, and
Welfare under President Eisenhower, was also
lauded for less controversial efforts in the same
area when he was president of
Ohio W e s 1 e y a n University.
There he urged the local AA-
UP to draw up its own state-
ment on academic freedom and
responsibility, and then saw to
its adoption by the administra-
tion, the alumni association, and
the Board of Trustees.
At Ohio Wesleyan there was
no "cause celebre" because as
one professor recalled, "he was
the kind of administrator who,
by constantly sustaining the
principles of academic freedom,
prevents such untoward events
from taking place."
Nevertheless, once at Oregon, Flemming was
confronted with protests of a student group's
invitation to a former secretary of the U.S. Com-
munist Party to speak on campus. He stated at
the time that, "A university by its very nature
cannot pay lip service to the concept of freedom
of expression and then deny persons with whom
ii is in sharp disagreement the opportunity of
giving expression to their views." '
The two feature, articles
printed here are offered to
provide more perspective on
the issues raised by last
week's policy statement by
President Pitzer regarding
the academic freedom of stu-
dents. On page two a profes-
sor and a student comment
on the University's expressed
views on free speech.
—Ed
By HUGH RICE KELLY
"It's a simple issue—either you are able to
hear people or you are not," Robert Van Waes, a
staff associate of the American Association of
University Professors (AAUP), told the Thresher
this week.
"To say that some can and that some can't be
heard is invidious by definition, defeats the whole
educational process and defies the notion that the
academic community should be free to search
for the truth and go where the search takes it."
An employee of the Washington office of the
AAUP whose work includes staff service to the
Committee on Faculty Responsibility for the
Academic Freedom of Students (Committee S),
Van Waes was on campus following a conference
held at Baylor University last weekend. While
he consented to discuss the general question of
student freedoms, Van Waes declined to comment
on the particular situation at Rice.
"At good schools," he said, "the question of the
students' right to invite whom they please has
been answered long ago. There
is a correlation between the
quality of an institution and the
degree of freedom it allows,"
he added.
As an association, the AAUP
has "emphatically endorsed the
student's right to hear." Its
most recent involvement in this
area was the draft report of
Committee S (Thresher, Octo-
ber 22) which has yet to be
considered by the AAUP's dele-
gate convention.
Van Waes reported that reac-
tion to the committee's state-
' < ment has been generally favor-
able, although few chapters have yet given it
formal consideration.
Some criticism of the wording has been voiced
and some changes in the composition have been
made as a result, but no changes have been
made in the section on speakers.
[The section on speakers provides that "any
person who is presented by a recognized stu-
dent organization should be allowed to speak"
" (Continued on Page 3)
Editor's Note
121 off 123 Accept
Early Admission,
38 Receive Aid
BY DARREL HANCOCK
Thresher Staff Reporter
Only two of 123 successful ap-
plicants for early admission to
the University under the first
year of tuition next September
failed to accept early admission
offered them under Rice's new
Early Decision Plan.
Undergraduate Affairs Dean
M. V. McEnany said Tuesday
that 38 of the 79 who requested
financial aid received scholar-
ships.
"There were no Negro appli-
cants for early admissions," said
Director of Admissions Bernard
Giles, referring to the removal
of the "white only" provision in
tne Rice charter which, together
with the charging of tuition,
was approved by the courts ear-
lier this year.
Negroes To Apply
"We anticipate a number of
Negro applicants in the spring,"
Giles said, attributing their lack
in the early program to the
short notice with which the
Early Decision Plan was estab-
lished last semester.
Mr. Giles feels that the pro-
gram will have an even more
favorable response next year
when information about early
admissions will be more readily
available to all candidates.
The Admissions Director,
speaking of the 174 seniors who
completed the special applica-
tions, emphasized, "It is note-
worthy that there wasn't the
spread in quality that is often
found among applicants." He
added, however, that they were
not "super-candidates."
"As best we could, we chose
every student who we thought
would have been accepted in
regular spring admissions."
First Choice
"Students who made early ap-
plication to Rice were not per-
mitted to make similar applica-
tion elsewhere," continued Mr.
Giles. He stressed that the pro-
gram was intended only for high
school seniors who have def-
(Continued on Page 5)
Epidemic Cause
Still A 'Mystery'
The cause of last week's
epidemic of diarrhea among the
college residents is still un-
determined, according to Dr.
Ray H. Skaggs of the Rice Stu-
dent Health Service.
Cultures were grown in
specimens taken from all food
services employees and from
patients who reported to the
infirmary. "To date none of
these have grown any of the
major organisms causing di-
arrhea," Skaggs stated.
Dr. Skaggs said that only
two bacteria, Salmonella and
Shigella, are major causes of
diarrhea and only these types
can be completely identified in
cultures.
So far it is only speculation
that the food served in the col-
leges' commons last week was
the source of the disease which
struck around campus last
Tuesday evening and Wednes-
day.
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Kelly, Hugh Rice. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 52, No. 13, Ed. 1 Thursday, December 17, 1964, newspaper, December 17, 1964; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth244931/m1/1/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.