The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 57, No. 1, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 4, 1969 Page: 2 of 6
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Dr. Mary Ellen Goodman
We have lost irreplaceably someone whom we admired, respected
and loved, a distinguished social scientist dedicated to research
and teaching, a citizen devoted to her country and fellow men
who gave time and effort generously to civic betterment, and
a woman remarkable among human beings for her beauty, charm,
and humane qualities.
—Edward Norbeck
Dept. of Anth.
NSA tumult of dismay; stidents seek new perspective
(Lee Horstman, Student Association president, attended the annual Congress of the National Student
Association last m^jjth. Following is a report on idet.s and thoughts generated by his participation
cClF-NQ?
Rational radicalism
(This is the first in a series of essay articles by Don Johnstone. Johnstone, past
president of Lovett College, is a senior political science major.)
By DON JOHNSTONE
What is it to spend your im-
pressionable years during WWII
patriotism, under Joe McCar-
thy's totalitarianism, through
the lethargy of the 50's—Ike
was politics, textbooks were
academics? You know, if you
are sensitive, that fascism
(Hitler style, of course), must
be stopped at any price, that
there can be a tyranny of the
majority, and that politics and
academia must contain realistic
choices and confrontations of
some order. It is easy to see the
Civil Rights Movement growing
out of these attitudes, striving
to make Democracy what it
ought to be. Tjiis was a new
liberalism, as opposed to that
of LB J and HHH.
But what is it to spend your
impressionable years during
the Civil .Rights Movement, the
nuclear threat, the Berkeley
protest and the Viet Nam ab-
surdity? You know nothing.
Because you are caught, im-.
mobile, between the new liberal
vision of the late '50's and its
contradiction in the events of
the Ws. What is to be "known"
when liberal faculty urges
moral-legal protest amidst
slaughters in Chicago and Col-
umbia? Either we continue to
believe in liberal vision of
gradual peaceful change (and
ignore the slaughter) or we re-
ject all liberal hopes and take
our leap into the absurd, calling
for a change in the entire order
of things. Many of qjir new lib-
erals therefore became new
radicals. To be in between was
to be hopelessly confused, im-
mobile.
So what do you do after re-
nouncing not only the older
liberals (LBJ, HHH) but also
the protesting faithful who
spend their lives pleading with
the establishment to reform?
You do nothing. Because yoa
know nothing. Because any edu-
cational, sophisticated dialogue
concerning real change is for-
bidden. It is forbidden legally
(because its is far-left rhetoric,
void of meaning) or morally
(because it is not anti-com-
munist, which is to say it is
pro-Stalinist) or intellectually
(because it is far-left rhetoric,
void of meaning). You simply
do not endanger your reputation
on a campus (much less in the
real world) by calling yourself
a Marxist or other brand of
radical. We find only a clique
of alienated, bitter radicals
throwing out century-old rhe-
toric. A few attempt to under-
stand the rhetoric and perhaps,
later join the clique. Most are
turned off by the entire situa-
tion. This seems to be the order
of things. But if the radical al-
ternative is to become a legiti-
mate alternative, a respected
analysis, if it is to produce any
results, then there must be a
description of the radical posi-
tion that is acceptable and com-
prehensible to the liberals, the
confused, the immobile, etc.
Is this series of articles going
to offer, finally, a rational dis-
cussion of the radical alter-
native? I doubt it. I call for
complete change of the status
quo and will likely slip into that
rhetoric that I think has mean-
ing. Nevertheless, on the belief
that significant radicaLdlalogue
has yet to begin at Rice, Iwe-
gin this exercise in discussing
the immobility of the liberals
and the potential of the radicals,
in terms of campus events, Rice
and otherwise.
in the convention.^
By LEE HORSTMAN
The United States National Student
Association chose El Paso for its 22nd
National Student Congress (Aug. 19-29),
and the Student Body President's Con-
ference which preceeded it (Aug. 16-19).
About 1200 students from 280 colleges
attended, including myself as an ob-
server.
What impressed me most was the
tension at the Congress. America's youth
were criticizing their society and their
education in a tumult of dismay. In hotel
rooms and coffee houses, in buses and
on the streets, delegates blamed their
hang-ups on archaic norms of conduct;
they blamed their campus problems on
overly rigid and impersonal fact fac-
tories; and they based their philosophies
on the need for a transformed society.
Most delegates did not speak of them-
selves as student leaders needing solu-
tions for assorted inequities at their
colleges. Rather, they spoke as citizens
seeking a new' perspective in life, one
that might revive their nation.
If modern technology is to serve us
and not destroy us, alternative ideas about
living must be tested. Is American com-
petitiveness the ideal? Or is human con-
_flict unnatural?
Q
Think of other questions', large a?ad
small. Do repressed feelings impair
^clarity "of- thought? Does that help
^ explain the perverse and careless logic
of America's bloated military economy?
How can we open ourselves and others
to the need for repairing our polluted
environment and preserving our dwind-
ling earth resources? How frantic and
meager must life become before popula-
tion control is really exercised?
Do our professionalized and frag-
mented work environments induce
human growth? Or rather, do they re-
duce the individual's control of his life ?
As more careers require advanced de-
grees, will many feel trapped in jobs
that their college. ti'ained them for but
which their interest has outgrown ?
What if we let people work where, when
.and at whatever they want to ? Many
. . .You are free to anger
at the waste of your living
earth
in the industries of alienation, at
men "reasoning together"
in the abstractions that ration-
alize power
and deny the dark faces of their
Other, at the distorted uses
that conditioned your ego to
compete for a smile
in the classrooms of greed, and
left on your spirit
the indelible stain of death and
anger and fear
turned inward and moving like
bold saboteurs
in the work of your hands . . .
... So let it all come out,
get straight with your frag-
ments, you will need all you
are
seem to fear that this would yield a
death-like paralysis in our complex so-
ciety. Others claim it is the only way
to put our abundant society to the serv-
ice of people, not products.
Perhaps student protests are linked
to a feeling of helplessness- about an-v
swering such thorny issues as these that
students feel their world is posing to
them. An accelerating rate of change
is widening the gap between how we
see the planet and how our fathers see
it, and Bob Powell, NSA's outgoing pres-
ident, warned that the forces of re-
actin are rising against America's dis-
senting students. Perhaps this polariza-
tion is inevitable,
Ira Magaziner, a philosophy student
from Brown University, spoke of using
college education to change our cultural
values. Our institutions, in turn, would
be affected. A New York professor
named Birenbaum used history in speak-
ing to the point that knowledge must
begin with learners, who in turn generate
teachers. He noted that Bologna's 12th
century universitas, or student union,
was an open-ended storefront operation
that hired and fired teachers. Eventually,
the teachers there retaliated with their
own union, called a collegium, to which
they admitted students whose talents
they felt matched their own. Only later
did such universities as Oxford leave
the spontanaiety of city streets in order
to affect an air of detachment by in-
habiting monastic Compounds. Biren-
baum suggests that we abandon that
pretense. America's universitas should
return to the streets, and to the control
of all who want to learn.
I am reluctant to blunt the impact
of these thoughts with details about
the Congress's many meetings, and the
myriad information I gathered at them.
These are covered in a report to the
student senate, and extra copies are
available. Instead, I wish to close my
report to you with an exerpt from a
poem by Michael Rossman, a poet from
Berkeley who attended the Congress. It
is entitled "Poem for a Victory Rally
in a Berkeley Park":
to survive and build in the ris-
ing wind
that topples the house that
denies its foundations!
Let go, confess all of your spec-
trum of light
to see clear and accept the
" choice of your time:
to lay down the suicide knives
of your one-dimensional names,
to encounter the addict of
control
who administers the fascism of
meaninglessness,
to plant in the soil of the pres-
ent the seed
of your being, as full itself as
the apple Word,
and to choose to create with
your Life
a Death that furthers Becoming! -
thres
Charles Szalkowski .... Exec. Assoc. Ed.
Laura Kaplan Managing Ed.
JACK MURRAY
Editor-in-Chief
MIKE WALKER
Business Manager
Howard Simms Assoc. Ed.
Talley Guill Ad. Manager
Susie Clary Fine Arts Ed. Kathleen Williamson .... Fine Arts Ed.
Mike Ross Calendar Editor Jim Rollins Circulation Manager
Staff: Lee Horstman. Charles Lavazzi, Chuck Tanner, Don Johnstone,
Rethany Ramey, Greg Colomb, Gil Perez, Ed Dykes, Steve Thorpe, Diane
Weaver, J'ane Hamblen.
The Rice Thresher, official student newspaper at Rice University, is published
weekly on Thursday except during holidays and examination periods by students
of Rice University, Houston, Texas 7701. Phone JA 8-4141, Ext. 221, 645.
The opinions expressed in this paper are those of its writers and editors and
are not necessarily those of Rice University, its administrators or officials.
The Thresher is a member of the United Student Press Association
subscribes to College Press Service.
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the rice thresher, September 4, 1969—page 2
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Murray, Jack. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 57, No. 1, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 4, 1969, newspaper, September 4, 1969; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245058/m1/2/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.