The Rattler (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 45, No. 9, Ed. 1 Friday, February 9, 1962 Page: 2 of 4
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: The Rattler and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the St. Mary's University Louis J. Blume Library.
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Page 2
THE RATTLER
Friday, February 9, 1962
STACK FLACK
ST. MARY’S
UNIVERSITY
Permits Are A Must
In days prior to comprehensive exami-
nations, seniors are expected to continue to
maintain St. Mary’s standards of academic
excellence. Test preparations will be in-
terrupted only by required course work as-
signed at the discretion of departmental
professors.
OF TEXAS Senior stu-
dents will serve
dual functions
then: continuance
of required
course work and
comprehe n s i v e
examination pre-
paration covering
four years of
study.
They can better
prepare for these
activities, as can other students study-
ing at an advanced level, if “open stack”
permits in Memorial Library are made
available.
We fully realize the University’s
library facilities are limited and
strained trying to keep pace with St.
Mary’s rapidly increasing student
body. Yet, the library remains a serv-
ice to students and is obligated to fill
its scholastic function.
“Open stack” permits are merely a
convenience for senior students pressed
for time. Permits more speedily facilitate
selection of necessary research material
and better familiarize students with broad
areas of related study catalogued in com-
plicated card files.
We submit permits be issued only
to students of junior standing and
above. To assure individual necessity
in all cases, we recommend “open
stack” privileges be given by library
officials only after advocacy of the
student’s departmental chairman.
Certainly administrative areas within
the University will not deny remedying
this oversight. When arrangements for
“open stack” permits are made, students
will surely voice their appreciation by us-
ing them wisely and frequently.
NFCCS MESS
Council to Act Soon
Students receive from a University
program only in proportion to what they
put into it.
This is true in major courses of study,
work, and student activities. A particular-
ly pointed example at St. Mary’s is the
National Federation of Catholic College
Students.
NFCCS is designed to give local
Catholic universities a combined na-
tional voice. Locally, NFCCS can and
should act as a coordinating and in-
forming agency for Catholic activities
©n the University campus.
During the first semester NFCCS ful-
filled neither these functions. The Stu-
dent Council created an investigating com-
mittee specifically to study this situation.
With the transfer of St. Mary’s senior
NFCCS delegate to another University
the Student Council is posed with several
problems. A^nong the solutions, the dras-
tic measure of withdrawing from the
national federation is included.
Possibly a better solution would be
publication of the Student Council in-
vestigating committee findings about
NFCCS and election of a new senior
delegate to fill the local vacancy on the
Student Council.
But the Student Council can act in this
area only under stimulation from the stu-
dent body. Students with views and opin-
ions about this problem should mail their
letters to the RATTLER, Campus Mail-
room; or attend Student Council’s next
meeting, Thursday, 7 p.m., Chaminade
Lounge, and voice their solutions to this
matter.
Free University Press Eyed
By Experienced Journalist
EDITOR’S NOTE—S econd
semester has begun the spirit
of purpose and desire to im-
prove St. Mary’s University.
The RATTLER will endeavor
to accurately reflect student
views while informing the Uni-
versity of additional areas of
thought which should be ade-
quately voiced and considered.
The position the RATTLER
shall take in all matters, how-
ever, will be comenserate with
its present policy. This posi-
tion is best reflected by a well-
thought-out piece by John M.
Harrison appearing in the
Daily Texan and the January
edition of the Nieman Reports.
Harrison is a journalism teach-
er at Penn State and former
teacher at Iowa. He has long
been associated with college
newspapers. We urge all in-
terested in the scope of Univer-
sity journalism to carefully
examine this article.
By JOHN M. HARRISON
A lot of hogwash has been
written about the college press—■
its place in the educational scheme
of things, how much freedom its
editors should enjoy, the reasons
why it should be free at all.
TO INVOKE the provisions
of the First Amendment on be-
half of college editors is to miss
the point. A newspaper operates
on campus at the behest of ad-
ministrative officials, just as do
social clubs and political groups.
Its rights and privileges are de-
fined and limited by presidents,
boards of regents, trustees and
overseers—whoever makes and
administers educational policy.
This is true whether the
newspaper is in some degree
an adjunct of the university,
or operates outside the official
family. The most outspoken
and untrammeled campus news-
paper is in some degree an ad-
junct of the university, or op-
erates outside the official fam-
ily. The most outspoken and
untrammeled campus news-
papers today have little or no
official status. The Harvard,
Crimson and the Michigan
Daily are prime examples.
Tradition confers on them an
independence that is relatively
rare.
Yet nothing prevents Presi-
dent Pusey from closing up the
Crimson shop tomorrow. He could
do it by any of several acts with-
in his rights as Harvard’s presi-
dent. An unholy howl might go
up from many quarters. But no
constitutional provision could help
the boys in Plympton Street one
bit should be decide to take such
action.
THAT HE DOES not do so is
rather a mark of President Pu-
sey’s intelligence and of his ap-
preciation of the purposes stu-
dent edited and written news-
papers serve in a complex uni-
versity than of his acknowledge-
ment that Crimson editors pos-
sess any constitutional right to
say whatever comes to mind. Col-
lege newspapers like the Crimson,
like the Michigan Daily, the Cor-
nell Daily Sun, and the Penn
State Collegian exist precisely
because the tradition of an inde-
pendent student daily exists on
these campuses. They are sus-
tained by administrative respect
of these traditions and the edu-
cational values they represent.
The reasons why the college
press should be free have noth-
ing to do with students rights.
They are at the very heart of
the educational process in a
free society. These will sug-
gest themselves immediately to
the educator who is genuinely
concerned that today’s college
student develop a free and wide-
ranging faculty for criticism.
It is this faculty which is the
mainspring of a free society.
Its withering away has been
widely deplored by critics of
today’s educational system and
the graduates it produces.
Outlets for the expression of
opinion by students are always
needed. The need is especially
great today when mounting en-
rollments tend to isolate the stu-
dent, to make him feel he is more
a cog in a machine than part of
a continuing educational pro-
cess. Student newspapers pro-
vide forums in which all kinds
of problems are discussed, and
not just by the relative few who
serve as editors.
BUT SUCH a forum functions
properly only in an atmosphere
where the free expression of
ideas—including ideas that are
critical of the status quo, unpopu-
lar idea s—is encouraged. Of
course it requires forbearance to
grant freedom of expression to
students hardly dry behind the
ears, who may use this privilege
to question the motives and abil-
ities of distinguished scholars and
educators. Of course it may de-
mand patience beyond the ordi-
nary to concede that the student
critic—however wrong-headed he
may be—should be permitted to
express his opinions.
But aren’t patience and for-
bearance in the face of student
error and abuse essential quali-
ties of educators? Surely they
are if the teacher or adminis-
trator accepts as one of the
basic tenets of a liberal educa-
tion that the developing mind
must be encouraged to test and
stretch itself, to put its convic-
tion and its critical judgments
into words—even when they
may be wrong.
Unfortunately, other considera-
tions come ahead of education in
the minds of some college ad-
ministrators today. They have
come to regard students almost
as a nuisance, who get in the
way of the peifectly functioning
administrative machine. They are
not so much concerned that stu-
dents shall have an opportunity
to whet their critical faculties as
that students shall not rock the
boat at all.
ONE CAN almost sympathize
with the plaintive declaration of
one such administrator, sorely
tried by what an outspoken stu-
dent editor had written:
Habitually I am called upon
to explain why the University’s
attitude is thus-and-so, when,
as a matter of fact, it is the
(student newspaper’s) attitu.de
and not the University’s which
I am called upon to explain. I
see no reason why I or anyone
should be put to the trouble
this involves. Indeed I see no
reason why educational funds
. . . should be expected to sub-
sidize a project—which adds to
our difficulties and troubles.
Poor fellow! His is indeed a
thankless job. He must watch
out for his University’s relations
with a board of regents, a legis-
lature, an alumni association, and
a whole state’s population—none
of which is likely to set much
store by the ideas “those crazy
college kids” are prone to pro-
pound. But in his concern with
all these, he has lost sight of his
first responsibility, which is the
education of the young. And the
young are a troublesome, feisty
lot. They will explore the fron-
tiers of knowledge, and some-
times venture far beyond, instead
of being content to be indoctrin-
ated with the safe and tried. They
will express new and revolution-
ary notions. They will be critical
and altogether disrespectful o f
their older and so much wiser
mentors.
THE GENUINELY wise edu-
cator knows this, of course. Not
only does he expect that young
people will be critical: he encour-
ages them to speak their minds.
He recognizes that this is an es-
sential aspect of the educational
process. That is why he leaves
them free to give tongue to her-
esy, and why he recognizes that
a free and yeasty student news-
paper is important.
One hopes that students who
undertake to edit and publish
a newspaper will assume a
measure of responsibility com-
mensurate with the freedom
granted them. And with an oc-
casional exception, college edi-
tors want nothing so much as
to be regarded as reliable and
responsible.
Freedom provides a stimulus to
responsibility. For once a student
knows he will get either credit
or blame or the job he does as
editor, he begins to be concerned
about his own reputation. He
seeks advice before he acts,
where otherwise he would wait
for a higher authority to correct
his errors. He begins to learn the
essential lesson that freedom
never really is earned until the
individaul proves that he can ex-
ercise it responsibly.
IN THIS WAY, the college
press stimulates not just the crit-
ical faculty in the student, but
also helps develop that more so-
phisticated faculty—the respon-
sible exercise of freedom—which
can be cultivated in no other way.
Thus, the case for freedom
of the college press, which is
strong and persuasive, too of-
ten is put in its weakest terms.
It has nothing to do with the
protections the Constitution
affords the press. What is at
stake is protecting these very
constitutional freedom, which
are based on a society whose
members are free to examine
and criticize all institutions.
These freedoms will survive
only so long as we make it a
stated policy of our educa-
tional system to stimulate the
critical faculty, not suppress it
because it sometimes may cause
embarrassment.
The RATTLER is a publication of St. Mary’s Uni-
versity. Its reorganization and new format are in keep-
ing with furthering the University aims, “unity through
solidarity.” The RATTLER is a bi-partisan newspaper
dependent upon student staff and departmental help
for information. Its policy is rooted in traditional col-
lege journalism: information, education, and promo-
tion. The continuation of this policy is dependent upon
the support of St. Mary’s populace; The RATTLER
editor is wholly responsible for its application.
Editor 1961-62
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St. Mary's University (San Antonio, Tex.). The Rattler (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 45, No. 9, Ed. 1 Friday, February 9, 1962, newspaper, February 9, 1962; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth841889/m1/2/?q=%22%22~1: accessed June 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting St. Mary's University Louis J. Blume Library.