The North Texas Daily (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 57, No. 24, Ed. 1 Friday, October 12, 1973 Page: 2 of 6
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'
An Editorial
Campus Ignores
Ethnic Group
Ethnic groups on campus have been emphasized more in the past two
years and Black and international students have begun to receive the atten-
tion they deserve.
Yet, somehow in the new awakening, Mexican-Americans have become
lost in the shuffle. It is a sad situation when a Student Government Asso-
ciation (SGA) officer, who is himself a member of a minority group, says at
a (SGA) meeting that Mexican-American students should not be guaranteed
positions on special committees because they never do anything.
This attitude of a student leader who should have sympathy with the eth-
nic segments of the school is pathetic, and a group of Mexican-American
students has recently started an organization in an effort to help North
Texas focus on their particular culture.
The Mexican-American Students Association (MASA) is a new group on
campus. Unlike Los Chicanos, which is still at this school, MASA does not
stress strong political action. Steve Thornton, San Antonio junior and one
of MASA’s founders, said the organization is trying to become a recog-
nized club and will cooperate with the Center for Ethnic Affairs.
Three realistic goals have been set by the club. Students and the univer-
sity, along with Mexican-Americans, will benefit if the goals are accom-
plished.
The association plans to promote student awareness of Mexican-Ameri-
cans on campus, recruit Mexican-American students to North Texas and
promote curriculum enhancement in the areas of Mexican-American cul-
ture.
North Texas is a major education school in a state where a Mexican heri-
tage is strong and many citizens are from Mexican-American families. It
is important that future teachers have a proper perspective of the back-
grounds of youth they will one day teach.
Classes in Mexican-American politics, culture and communities are of-
fered at various times through the university course system. MASA would
like for more students to be able to take such courses and hopes that other
studies will also be added.
MASA is soliciting support from all segments of the campus and wants
students of all backgrounds to participate in its activities. The Mexican-
American culture has played a major role in the development of Texas. It is
time that all Texans learn and understand the people who have been influen-
tial in the state’s history. MASA is giving the opportunity.
— MARGARET TOAL
The North Texas Daily
57th Year
North Texas State University
Denton. Texes
CHERYL COGGINS
Editor
SoutfiwMttm Journal am Congress
travis McLaughlin
Business Manager
Editorial statements of the North Texas Daily and readers' letters reflect the
opinion of the individual writer and not necessarily that of the Daily, its adviser
or the North Texas State University Administration.
Bo* 5297 NT Stator Dsnton Texas 76203
PACEMAKER 5 TIMES
SUBSCRIPTION RATE- $10 annually or
$5 per long semester and $2 per summer
Teisphon* 788 2363 or 788 2406
ALL AMERICAN 69 TIMES
Represented by National Educational Ad
vertismg Services
Friday, October 12,1973
DIALOGUE
Don Sorsa
EDITOR’S NOTE: Don Sorsa is an itin-
erant recruiter for the Young Socialist Alli-
ance (YSA) and the Socialist Worker’s
Party. Sorsa and fellow YSA members have
been on campus all week discussing socialist
thoughts and ideas with students. Sorsa sat
down Wednesday with staff writer Scott
Parks for this tape-recorded interview.
DAILY: What is the YSA and what are the
goals of the organization?
SORSA: YSA is a national organization
comprised of students and young workers
who are interested in helping to educate
people about socialism, explaining social-
ism to different radicals, conservatives,
people on the job, students or whoever;
winning people over to the ideas of social-
ism. Our main goal is to help lead and or-
ganize a socialist revolution in this country.
We think that a socialist revolution will
allow the country to be more democratic,
since there would, then, be no economic
base for anyone having a great deal of
power. For instance, the Rockefellers have
a tremendous amount of political power
only because they have so much money. So
you could say that our goal is to institute a
democratic socialist society in the United
States and in the world.
We work with organizations and revolu-
tionaries throughout the world. We are
legally barred by reactionary legislation in
the United States from being members of
the Fourth Internationale, which is an in-
ternational revolutionary organization
founded by Leon Trotsky. If it were not for
these laws, we would be members.
DAILY: When you speak of a socialist
revolution, is this a democratic process
utilizing ballots or is it a violent process in-
volving arms and weapons?
SORSA: Well, in any revolution, I think
the violence is precipitated by the old order.
Take the 1776 revolution in this country.
Men like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jef-
ferson weren’t violent people. But they did
feel that it was necessary to defend the
newly found United States against Britain.
Britain was not allowing the people of the
country to control themselves as they
should in a democracy. Britain wanted to
hold on and so they tried to overthrow the
U.S. government. The same thing has hap-
pened in every great revolution by op-
pressed people in history. The conservative
element has been the one to react with vio-
lence. They just will not voluntarily relin-
quish their disproportionate power.
Now socialists in this country are running
candidates in national, state and local elec-
tions. it’s not because we have any illusions
State Eases
Penalty For
Possession
SALEM, Ore. (AP)—Oregon has be-
come the first state to eliminate criminal
penalties for possession of less than one
ounce of marijuana.
A person caught with less than an ounce
of marijuana will be issued a citation simi-
lar to those issued for traffic violations and
will be subject to a maximum penalty of a
$100 fine
Under the old law, conviction for posses-
sion of marijuana meant a maximum jail
term of five years and a $2,500 fine.
Still in the books is an older, but still
effective law which provides a one-year
jail term and a $1,000 fine for frequenting
a place where narcotics are used.
Gov. Tom McCall supported the liberal-
ized law. But he almost vetoed it be-
cause he was uncertain whether it would
also apply to hashish, a more potent deriva-
tive of the marijuana plant’s pollen.
He allowed it to pass, but said he would
ask next year’s legislature to specifically
exclude hashish.
Feedback
of sneaking in the back door. We aren’t
naive enough to think the capitalists would
say, ’Well, a socialist has been elected. I
guess we have socialism and now i don’t
own my factories anymore.’ We run candi-
dates in the elections because that’s the
best way to explain to people what our ideas
are and to explain that the whole idea of
these elections isn’t democracy.
You get to vote every four years for presi-
dent and the man has virtually unlimited
authority. The most recent Gallup Poll that
1 have seen said that at least 70 per cent of
the people believe that Nixon was guilty of
complicity in Watergate or that he at least
knew about it. But the people of the country
will never get to vote on the issue of whether
he should be impeached. The reason you
find political apathy rampant is because
who cares about a choice between, say, a
United Farmworkers. We help organize
picket lines, teach-ins, and personally boy-
cott scab grapes and lettuce, of course. We
help the farmworkers explain what their
situation is all about. In that sense, we also
support the women’s liberation movement
and the Black liberation movement. In the
cities, when we learn of a labor strike, we do
all we can to help the strikers. We are very
active in supporting workers' strikes.
The other part of our activity, I’ll call a
propaganda thing. We sell our literature.
We sell our Young Socialist newspaper and
the organ of the Socialist Worker’s Party
(SWP), The Militant. We also sell a theo-
retical magazine, the International Social-
ist Review. There are literally thousands of
pamphlets we dispense explaining various
aspects of socialism. They cover things such
as the place of terrorism in a revolutionary
"The reason you find political apathy
rampant is because who cares about a choice
between, say, a Wallace and some liberal
who will do the same things as Wallace, but
just be a little sneakier about it.”
Wallace and some liberal who will do the
same things as Wallace, but just be a little
sneakier about it.
DAILY: How do you, as a Marxian so-
cialist, view the Watergate experience?
SORSA: I think the Watergate is not an
isolated incident. I think Watergate-like
events have been occurring in our political
system for the past 100 years. Watergate
has shown us a lot of things that happened
under the Johnson administration. Take
Watergate and the Pentagon Papers and
combine them and you will come up with
the deceit that both Republicans and Demo-
crats have been practicing behind the backs
of the American people. Watergate, I think,
is an integral part of the American capital-
ist system.
DAILY: What sort of tactics are the
members of YSA using to educate people
into the ideals of socialism?
SORSA: There are many tactics. One
is the support of strikes such as that of the
movement and a Marxist analysis of
American history.
What we are doing on this campus is
holding meetings on various topics such as
Chile, the Middle East and on socialism in
general. This, plus selling our literature and
organizaing various activities. I don’t know
what the local issues are, but we would also
like to sec candidates in local elections
under the socialist banner; also candidates
in the student government elections.
DAILY: How did you feel when Salvador
Allende died in Chile and was replaced by
the military junta?
SORSA: This was a real tragedy for the
people of Latin America and the working
class of the world. The military coup could
have been avoided, 1 think. Right now, the
most important thing that every person who
believes in civil liberties can do is to actively
protest the atrocities being committed by
the Chilean military. We should protest
their whole movement to eliminate the left-
ist movement in Chile through murder and
book burning. 1 think, though, that Allende
left the door open for the right wing, when
he refused to arm a majority of the people
in Chile and agreed to leave the conserva-
tive military generals 100 per cent in power.
He just left himself open instead of taking
precautions to protect himself. In that
sense, the coup was inevitable.
DAILY: How did you view the candidacy
of George McGovern in 1972? He obviously
incorporated socialist goals into his plat-
form such as a wide redistribution of the
wealth in this country from the upper classes
to the middle and lower classes.
SORSA: I don’t think that McGovern
was as radical as everyone made him out to
be. You remember that there was a whole
big fight at the Democratic convention over
the abortion plank. McGovern finally de-
cided that it would be politically expedient
to omit that proabortion plank. There, he
was putting politics above the right of
women to control their own bodies. On the
income redistribution, McGovern often
made contrasting statements. Toward the
end of his campaign is when he really began
to show his true colors. He said in a speech
at Hunter College that he would not alter
the income tax structure. I was shocked
and so were a lot of people. This hurt him
when he did this. A lot of people in the be-
ginning did support McGovern because he
did sound like a real leftist. He said that he
was for immediate withdrawal from Viet-
nam and he changed that, saying that there
would have to be some further settlement.
By the time the election rolled around, I
think he was supporting Nixon’s peace plan.
He just said that it could have been had 10
years earlier. I don’t think that peace plan
was at all in the interest of the Vietnamese
people.
DAILY: Could you describe the affiliation
of the YSA with the Socialist Workers Party
that exists in this country?
SORSA: The SWP is a revolutionary
party that we believe will ultimately lead
the revolution for justice in this country.
The YSA is an organization composed
mainly of students right now. It takes no
great commitment to join YSA. If you be-
lieve the country is due for a socialist revo-
lution and you want to be a part of an or-
ganization that is helping to organize that
then you should join YSA. Joining the revo-
lutionary party, the SWP, is much more of
a commitment. We are in political solidar-
ity with the SWP. We support their candi-
dates for political office. The more active
members of the YSA also are active in the
party. We look to the SWP for political di-
rection, although the YSA
dent organization.
is an indepen-
Paula Doyle
Singles Life Proves Nice
For Some, But Not for All
Marriage, the rumpled professor said to
his experimentally cohabitating college stu-
dents, is a result of archaic attitudes that
extol the destructive force of jealously as a
means of showing love.
All marriage is, he continued to say while
cozily chewing on his pipe, is the sharing of
loneliness.
“Bunk!” I thought to myself as I sat in
the movie theater Tuesday night watching
the “Harrad Experiment.” The movie tells
the story of a college research program that
experiments with human sexual values and
activities and tries to prove that marriage
is nonfunctional and that random cohabita-
tion is the answer.
EVEN THOUGH the professor and his
mate had been married for 12 years and
liked the exclusive arrangement, the two
were out to prove that people should be free
with their bodies and their feelings and
chunk the age-old institution of wedlock.
i rather quickly discounted the movie as
a poor attempt to show naked male and fe-
male bodies under the guise of what was
supposed to be a fashionable, relevant com-
ment on the now-unpopular institution of
marriage.
I am tired of being told how dumb I am
for getting married before age 30, or for
getting married at all.
1 am weary of all the comments on how
“selfish” marriage is, and how it limits the
full development of both man and wife as
individuals.
I AM fatigued of, after being asked if 1
am married, people shaking their heads as
if I have some dread disease.
1 am sick of hearing about how much
greener the grass is on the other side of the
marriage fence, because I don’t think it is
that much greener.
Marriage is not right for everyone, but I
wish people would stop trying to tell me
that it is not right for anyone.
Our society, which in recent years has
Ex-Student Blasts Parks for 'Poor Research'
Duff Daniels, 7915 Bryn Mawr, Dallas
As a 1964 NTSU journalism grad, I was
interested to read vour editorial of Sept. 7
by Scott Parks (“Area Media Misuse
Word” with the kieker "Minority De-
fined”).
In it, you take “the Dallas area media,
led by the fear-inspiring Dallas Morning
News' to task for misusing the word “mi-
nority” in reporting that white students
are in the minority in the Dallas Indepen-
dent School District.
Your editorial maintains that the
white students, who make up 49 per cent of
the district's enrollment, are not in the mi-
nority since their percentage is larger than
that of blacks (39 per cent), Mexican-Amer-
icans (II percent) and all other (1 per
cent).
You say that ’’Webster’s Unabridged
Dictionary" defines minority as "the smal-
ler number; the smaller in number of two
aggregates,” and that therefore The News
and other media are guilty of untrue, gross-
ly misleading reports, “poor research and
reporting,” “printing erroneous stories"
and “bad and unethical reporting."
You base your emotional attack on the
above definition, which is incomplete and
self-serving. You omitted an important
part of that definition, “the smaller in num-
ber of two aggregates that together consti-
tute a whole.” And you conveniently ig-
nored or overlooked Webster’s most appli-
cable (in this case) definition of the word
minority -“a group numerically smaller
than other groups or a combination of other
groups in a community but constituting the
predominant element.”
That definition clearly explains that the
largest group is a minority if it constitutes
less than 50 per cent of the whole
If Scott Parks has the opportunity to take
C. E. Shuford’s editorial writing course, he
ought to take advantage of it.
Whitley Gives Views
On Religion's Meanings
Michael D. Whitley - 454-82-0512
First, to Mr. Box, let me say that materi-
alism aside, the spiritual in man is just as
real as the matter. The mind is just as ob-
jectively real as the bombs which fell on
Cambodia or the drought in Africa.
After all, a bomb was first an idea, as was
the policy of dropping them, and in Africa
those “primitive” goatherders do not ask
their God for rain or relief so much as they
ask Him what the drought means. To ask
what something means in this connection
is to ask a spiritual question, for how one
relates to the facts of life is a concern of
religions.
I tell you this in order to put your state-
ment that “religion is an opiate of the peo-
ple” (now who else said that?) in the proper
perspective.
The religious impulse in man is contrary
to the effects of an opiate. It revives life,
orients men to the facts of existance, chan-
nels his energies into something besides the
worship of the state and, perhaps most im-
portantly, gives man the symbolic means by
which he can interpret himself and by which
he may recognize his opposing natures and
become, in the fullest sense, a man.
Religious symbols make man at once a
total individual and an inextricable part of
everything and everyone. Religious symbols
express the mysterious unity of the contra-
dictions, the paradoxes, the forces of oppo-
sition in the personality as well as in the
“nature” outside the personality.
Reader Discusses Vote,
Advocates Wet Denton?
Dale Montgomery, Box 7467, N.T. Station
A beach with maybe a dozen geese and
their two dozen feet. Two humans (female
’n male) were dragging their feet through
the sand down along the ocean front just
outside of Palmolive. The two minds wrung
each other out verbally and dried the air
with their criticisms. A bakery never
smelled better than the clouds of abuse that
hung in front of their mouths.
Marvel (the male) blew opium rings in
their weaving path and allowed his stomach
to growl.
J.L.S. Tao’d by with the greatest of ease.
Holding hands of sweat, they scattered
the geese to the velvet cushioned pockets of
the earth with a hoop and a holler and a
dosie doe (skip-to-thc-lou-my-darlin’).
Yes, truly they were very much em-
balmed with love. Everybody who wishes to
be so too should register to vote and put
down his mark come election time for a wet
Denton.
been a worshiper of youth, now seems to be
a worshiper of single youth. Singledom is
great—I was there once myself but it is
not the only way to maintain one’s sanity.
One can, I truly believe, fully experience
life and its beauties while wedded.
PEOPLE COMMIT themselves to occu-
pations, ideals and causes which are impor-
tant to them. Why should one of the most
precious gifts of life -love and sharing be
treated as casually as changing shoe styles
occasionally?
Marriage doesn’t work for everyone, as
the divorce rate makes painfully clear, but
it does work for some. Marriage is not an
inherently grubby existance characterized
by boob tubes and beer, mortgages, scream-
ing, dirty-faced urchins and a regimented
schedule.
This situation exists only when the people
in a marriage cause it to exist.
IT IS NOT the institution (itself) that
causes such a high divorce rate, it is the big
decision people must make before marry-
ing the decision of who is right for whom.
As many people have seen through their
parents' marriages, if two people aren’t
right for one another, marriage can be
hell. When the situation exists where two
people are destroying one another, divorce
is an answer.
All this may sound like a lot of prosaic-
nonsense, but it is something 1 feel. 1 do not
mean to say that Marriage is the answer to
all life’s problems, because it is not. But I
am bored of hearing persons who have
never been married rant about the horrors
of the set-up.
1 just wish that movies like the “Harrad
Experiment” and other commercial pro-
ducts such as “singles bars" and “singles
apartment complexes” would stop trying to
tell me that I am all messed up.
Singledom can be great, but so can mar-
riage.
4
T
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The North Texas Daily (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 57, No. 24, Ed. 1 Friday, October 12, 1973, newspaper, October 12, 1973; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth723445/m1/2/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.