Editorial comments
Death of a
ding-a-ling
It is indeed a sad state of affairs when, in a public
building, one cannot make use of a public telephone.
No, it's not the lack of service on the part of the
telephone company (not this time, anyway). It is the
result of either a very successful kleptomaniac, a
habitual destructive weird-u or possibly, one of our
i 7 104:164t5 . with an egression complex stemming from an
unpleasant experience with the telephone company.
The dastardly villain has struck not once, mind you,
but on four separate occasions; each necessitating the
calling (from another phone) of a repairman.
Yes, it is a shame that someone is making a
collector's item out of the common telephone dial.
What will happen when push-button service is installed?
These incidents have not gone unnoticed. The
business manager is fed up, the Dean of Student Affairs
is fed up ("The story of my life"), and students who
have been forced to make their calls from some less than
convinient location are MORE than fed up.
It would really be unfortunate to lose our phones
once again (perhaps for the rest of the year) to a person
with an obvious communication "hang-up."
o.llr. Eigilarns.9 (foltrgiatt
The Collegian office is located in the Memorial Building
Office hours are Monday thru Friday, 1-4 p.m.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Alan Leininger
Paul Pianovich
Kris Karchner.
Ed Pietroski....
Torn Heppe
Richard Campbell
Assistant to the Editor: .Vancy Kent. .'VEIL'S: John
Roslerich, editor: Celine Student, .Margie Grega, Anne
McKinstry, Alice Bright, Susan Kisthart. SPORTS: Tom
Caccese, editor; Mark Brashly. CREDIT: Susan Kistha•t.
CIRO' '1...1170.V: Eileen Stacelauki. DI'EIiTISING: Betsy
Switaj, Lorraine Drake, Mark Brachie. COMPOSITION: Joan
Mente, Bright. PHOTOGRAPHY: lion trojnar. ART:
Paul Pianocich, l'uehrer. EDITORIAL WRITERS:
,John Hancock, John Martonick, Richard Rockman.
.11EMBER: The Press Association of Commonwealth
campuses, Association Press Services, Newspaper Conncil of
the Press .Issociation, Intercollegiate Press.
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- AGAIN!
Editor-in-chief
Executive Editor
Managing Editor
Business Nlanager
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SI 11 I
Hawks, Doves and
Blackbirds
There's been a lot of talk recently about the decline of the
peace movement. The line goes that people have given up on
marching; that the government and the Pentagon seem to be
immune to mass demonstrations; that President Nixon has
noticed the absence of marchers in the streets and was thereby
encouraged to authorize American air support in expanding the
war into Laos.
Would be peace marchers take note: it IS possible to lodge
protests which will force the Pentagon to stop plans for killing. A
recent dramatic example comes not from the jungles of Southeast
Asia but rather from the woods of Tennessee. Milan, Tennessee,
to he more precise.
It seems that there is a 15 acre section of pines in the 50,000
acre Milan Army Ammunition Plant, which over the past few
years has become the favored roost of millions of blackbirds.
Their presence has become bothersome to the hog and dairy
farmers in the area, to say nothing of Army personnel. Cows have
an aversion to eating food that the birds have messed in, so the
farmers report. Hogs seem not so particular, but it makes them
sick. Other farmers in the area report that their field crops have
been destroyed.
The ever-resourceful Department of the Interior, in the
person of Mr. Paul Le Febvre, came up with an ingenious plan to
kill off the birds, a plan worthy of any chemical warfare strategy
employed in Indochina. A World War H B-17 bomber would be
brought in to spray some 2,000 gallons of a special solution over
the pine roost. The solution would neutralize the birds' body oils
so that in freezing weather, they would quickly freeze to death.
The Chamber of Commerce and the city board of Milan approved
the plan and everyone sat back to await a freezing cold spell.
But the national news media got wind of the idea before the
birds did; stories appeared all over the country; and network
camera crews converged upon Milan. Storms of protest began to
roll in, primarily, it seems from East coast sources. The
Department of Interior strategy was referred back into the Army
change of command where it is predicted the plan will be
forgotten until the birds migrate North in a few weeks.
There you have it. The Pentagon was stopped dead in its
tracks and the lives of three million to nine million birds have
probably been saved.
Pentagon operations abroad, however, are still in effect.
While the protests were rolling in concerning the lives of
blackbirds and starlings, the death rate of American soldiers killed
in Indochina reached a three-month high. While the Art* reports
that only one of the fifty-one solfliers killed that week was
actually inside Laox, the Laotian operation was considered
responsible for the rise in killings. Some 9000 American troops
operating in the northwest corner of South Vietnam to back up
South Vietnamese troops crossing the border of Laos have come
under strong North Vietnamese attack.
Of course, the President assures us that Americans are not
invading Laos. Invasion, according to such reasoning, occurs only
when a border is crossed with ground combat troops. If that
assessment is correct, it seems America owes Japan a retroactive
apology. I recall that the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor was
definitely considered an invasion--and Hawaii wasn't even a state!
Maybe the Pentagon is now more consistent. After all, the
offending birds cross the Tennessee border by air. Perhaps
rampaging hordes of wild boars or grasshoppers launching their
attack on the ground would have been dealt with summarily.
But the Pentagon response to protest is really the heart of
the matter. Some seventypercent of the American populace
express the opinion, when asked, that they would like to see
American troops out of the war in Southeast Asia. The President
and the Pentagon have yet to clearly hear and respond to that
desire.
Perhaps the peace movement should learn from the
Tennessee experience and lobby for legislation to draft household
pets, including the feathered varieties—parakeets, parrots, myna
birds and canaries—sending them to Vietnam to face certain
death. Storms of protest would surely ensue. There seems to be
an emotional attachment to domesticated members of the animal
kingdom which does not carry over as strongly when human lives
are concerned. Pet protestors might bring the war to a halt. .
AM of which is another way of saying once again that war is
for the birds
Parting Shot
Paul Scirrulous, B.M. (business manager), earlier today
announced the results of P.I.S. on U's 1970-71 fiscal iear.
Huge profits were recorded from the SSD, Secret Scourge
Division, mostly from parking fines and parking lot land
speculation.
In addition the library, with its outrageous
absent-mindedness fine (perhaps it should be termed rent), added
to the dividends of wealthy stockholders.
The Company Store, selling wares necessary for academic
hie. continued to show progress, especially in the Historic XXI
hook sales. and ping-pong balls bounced monetary gain upward.
Today's market human interest story concerns a campus
radical-nut-freak-effete- and-impudent snob who dared approach
Scirrulous and inform him that, after paying the heavy fines,
which were turned over to the rich who redistributed them to the
lazy rich (i.e., those having time to snow-sculpt), that the poverty
stricken students had no tuna for supper.
Said Scirrulous in reply, "Then let them eat lobster."
Dick Gregory
the light side the dark side
by John Hancock
For our own sake...
It is a cliche that talk is cheap. It is also a fact that most
cliches are true. A case in point is the reform of the American
system of justice. Years of debate have brought us minor reforms.
But instead of basking in our glory, we must continue to push
forward in this area which is vital to all Americans.
It is a sad fact, but although we possess a myriad of proposals
for reform we don't seem to be able to find a solution (or even
begin to) for the problem. The problem is a plague spreading like
the Black Death. The longer we go without finding a cure, the
more people will be afflicted; the disease will continue to spread.
There is no excuse for this laxity on the part of most of our
elected government officials.
But where are the areas where reform must be made and
what within these areas can be done to correct the injustices
which exist in the American system as it now stands?
The first area is police. It is important to note that this
branch of the American system of justice is the most efficient and
therefore demands the least number of reforms. But there are
police organizations in many cities which are corrupt. What is
needed? A new department of the Attorney General's office to
oversee the selection of all men who are to serve on a police
force. Perhaps a double check by the state Attorney General and
maybe even a triple check by the individual city governments,
with the Federal Government givingthe final unbiased opinion
would be practical.
Secondly, the courts are in dire need of assistance. The basic
problem here is that they are hopelessly overcrowded. This causes
hastened trials which are less fair to the defendant. A new
practice which is becoming increasingly common is "plea
bargaining." This is where a defendant pleads guilty in return for
a lenient sentence. Surprised? Annoyed? Is this the American
system of justice which provides, theoretically at least, a fair trial
for all? The positions are being held by judges who are
incompetent. On most state and local levels throughout the
nation judges are not even required to be versed in the law. Again,
political corruption ensues. An important question should be
asked. Does this arouse you to any great degree? Maybe so and
maybe not, but at any rate, the third area of needed reform is the
shocker which should stir you to action. It is prison reform.
In the United States today our jails and prisons are cages for
animals and not the detention centers for human life which they
are supposed to be. The overcrowding due to the inefficiency of
our judicial system has bred beatings, rackets and homosexuality
inside the prison walls. These in turn lead to frustation on the
part of the convicts, leading to riots. But the system has even
greater drawbacks. How can we justify putting a forgerer,
embezzler or drug addict in a prison cell with a murderer or
rapist? This only succeeds in making our prisons graduate schools
for crime. They are in effect machines which manufacture crime.
All of these problems can be solved and, surprisingly enough,
quite easily. We can institute conjugal visits to deter the
homosexuality which exists. We can institute reforms where
people who forge, embezzle or are drug addicts can pay a
restitution to society or obtain the medical assistance they so
desperately need. Rehabilitation, theoretically, is the goal of our
prison system. This has .sadly , failed—and, the time has come to
bring the goal back into -in prdOr. perspective. Prison
psychiatrists, doctors and w - orktei:'4o4l'd all combine to make
the prisons a better place for the inmates and make the inmates
more adaptive to the society they will someday return to.
What can be done? There are mnay possibilities. We as
students can do a great deal. We now can vote. Surveys have
shown that officials who favor reform of the justice system also
favor an end to the war. Why not kill two birds with one stone?
Other countries in the world have already instituted massive
reforms in their justice systems. Why should the United States lag
behind? What good excuse can there be?
If anything is to be accomplished, it must start with each of
us. In this issue of Newsweek, a poll shows that the American
public has only a 58% show of faith in Ronald Reagan's views.
That is the greatest percentage and he is ultra-conservative! Only
54% support the President, only 42% support the Attorney
General and only 40% support the views of liberal Edward
Kennedy.
So we must try ourselves and realize that years of neglect of
all but the police have bred a degree of apathy that will be easily
overcome
Revolution:
Ballots versus bullets
by Richard Rockman
There are two methods which can be used to stimulate
change. These methods are non-violence (voting) and violence.
Before either of these methods can be used, the first step in
attempting to change the attitude of people must be to draw
attention to your cause. No one is going to help you if they do
not know what you are fighting for. Protest is one method of
making people aware of what you believe are the wrongs being
perpetrated against you.
Once this has been done, you and your followers must
attempt to overcome your opposition. As I mentioned previously,
the two methods of doing this are: (1) by non-violent means,
which includes voting to elect those who are sympathetic to your
cause, and (2) by violent means.
Taking the latter course of action into account first, it is
found that it is usually used by people who are frustrated due to
either not being listened to, or by people listening but not
reacting or reacting negatively. But violence almost always
involves the destruction of both life and property. To say that
you are for violence no matter what the consequences would be a
rash statement to make in light of the fact that violence can cause
untold destruction and in the end might even be the factor which
could destroy all that you hope to accomplish.
On the other hand there is the less radical method of
revolution, gradual non-violent change, of which the vanguard is
voting. In this manner change can be accomplished by the
utilization of the principle of democracy. It can, if used correctly,
be an even more formidable force than violence.
It is apparent that by working through a system to attain a
goal instead of working against it and perhaps destroying it, more
may be accomplished with less strain. If your cause is one in
which you believe that violence is the only recourse, then you are
taking the weak man's way out, for if you cannot convince
people of the merits of your cause by non-violent means, then
perhpas your cause is not worthy of much consideration.
by John Martonick
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