PAGE FOUR Editorial Opinion Under the Microscope The hardest thing students attending the first ten week term in the history of Penn State wilt have to face is how to avoid feeling like a white rat or a chemistry unknown That the new system speeds up the educational process is obvious. Yet it must be remembered that when some thing is done quickly it has more tendency to be slip-shod. Therefore, administrators and faculty members will be listening and watching student's reaction to the change from every angle and with unusual acuity for they realize that there may be kinks in the system. Although they may be preoccupied with making the term system look good, the University officials have the primary responsibility of admitting its failings and taking constructive action to work these out for the benefit of the University community. One of the major problems to be faced will be the adjustment to class periods of the 75 minute variety. Mem bers of the faculty that had difficulty in holding the atten tion of students for 50 minutes may find themselves alone with a blackboard for 75 minutes. The upshot of this will be a necessary revamping of lecture procedure perhaps with a short break in the middle of the class. Both students and professors toil also have to face the fact that the old concept of final examinations has become outdated and impractical. Comprehensive final exams would seem impossible without the preparation time of "final week" and proba bility of students having three of four exams on one day. It would seem that the way to get around this includes lessened emphasis on examinations, with finals (if they must be included) covering the last unit of work. Students, too, have some adjusting to do. For those who are beginning the college experience, this process will be complex. High school classes are one year in length—Penn State's are 10 weeks. Those who have been acclimated to the slower semes ter method are likely to find the new intensification adds pressure to education, regardless of how carefully the Ad ministration has inculcated the total classroom minutes of the semester into the attenuated term. Both faculty and students have a responsibility to the University to make their adjustments to the program. Our letter columns remain open for your comments. Only your initiative and industry can keep you from getting the feeling that you are just a number in a new experiment. It may well be a history making experiment. Your challenge is to take advantage of its benefits and evaluate its failings—always for a better Penn State. Keep Up the Campaign The new taxes proposed yesterday by Governor Law rence have been in the air for months. Those who have been serving the University's cause in attempting to gain increased state appropriations have heard again and again that the state does not have the money to give. Clearly, then, one of the most efficient means of securing these funds has been resorted to by the Governor. And just as clearly the only way Penn State's tuition will remain where it is would be to have one of the bills approved, Although Dr. Walker has requested $23.1 million, the governor's recommendation for the University remains at $17.1 million. The new taxes, at most, would yield between $6 and $9 million for higher education. This money, of course, would also go to Temple, Penn and Pitt, all of which have their own budget seekers in Harrisburg. It is unfortunate, but the above facts indicate that Penn State will not get the appropriation requested. With these facts in mind, however, the student body has an increased duty to the University to continue the "Back the Budget" campaign in earnest. There is now more fuel for letters to state legislators from students and parents urging passage of the tax bill. Although the taxes will probably not give us all the money we need, they undoubtedly will help. Those activities that are operative this summer must take up this call. They might band together in a "Budget Council," led by the summer SGA to rouse and channel student voices and efforts towards getting the Lion's share of available money for the University. SUMMER COLLEGIAN. STATE COLLEGE, PENNSYLVANIA Cam. us Beat Campus Beat Notes Grads, Glenn, Ivy Well students, I have just seen 2800 students punch out of Penn State. I'm now await ing the arrivals for my class es in hubology 110 for the new term. Please have your num ber two card signed by your advisor for admittance. While we are chattering about graduation, an -interest ing report came out of public information just prior to the punching out ceremonies. It seems that it is now "Univer sity tradition" not to have a graduation speaker at com mencement. This is one "tradition" we hadn't heard about. Thought it was just that last year the ad ministration decided against a speaker. They seem to have sanctified the practice by mak ing it a sacred cow. It's called slaughter at Beaver Field. We were sorry to learn that a prominent senior and mem ber of Lion's Paw, who was often to he seen in our Hubol ogy 495 class and in the BX failed to graduate. We offer our condolences. Hubology 535 is open to correspondence stu dents. United Press International reports that the University of Minnesota is to be stripped of ivy. Official sources at Minnesota claim that the leafy green stuff is highly detrimental to mason ry since it "traps moisture and rots wooden frames around the windows." Well, Old Main went down in smoke once. The next time it may be a three alarm blast of chlorophyll poisoning, A friend of ours, recently returned from Pittsburgh re ports an interesting phenom enon. Along one of the scenic by-ways in that city is "Dr. Glenn's Dog and Cat Hospi tal." Mono anyone? I checked my mailbox yes terday after I sent nut my grades on those postcards and found a letter from the Uni versity Senate 'Committee on Committees. One of the new appointments is Dr. Larry Lattman as head of the Senate Committee on Student Affairs. Hope he en joys SGA next year. By STEPHEN A. BLUM Contributing Writer War has been defined, by an official military hand book I have seen, as the ex tension of the bargaining table to the battlefied. This, basically, is garbage: the only "bargaining" that is done on the battlefield is done in terms of human equations whose common denominator seems to be a frantic wish to attain peace via its opposite: destruction. One of the methods by which we are made war-conscious is to be kept war-ready. Call this "cold war," call it "prepared peace," or call it "defense," it is basically all the same: the keeping of peoples in a state of economic and political readi ness for an occasional blood bath. It was said several weeks ago that Civil Defense is one of these fatalistic exercises that we go through in preparation for the maintenance of peace. The reasoning behind this argu ment was tossed back and forth in letters to the editor of this paper for several weeks. Basically we are all Consci entious Objectors. None of us want war—but some would rather have war than threaten our war-oriented political sys tem with its accompanying myth: peaceful democracy for all. The thirteen people who demonstrated downtown sever- E:3 —Prof. Wayne Peace Versus Amorality the megaphone Contradictions Your are attending a University that owns a research laboratory in La Spaza Italy but whose library ranks at the bottom of the stack in comparison to other institutions of this size Your are attending a University that awarded about 30 Ph.D. degrees in science and engineering, and awarded three such degrees in the humanities, You are attending a Univer sity that has inaugurated the four-term plan to speed up ed ucation and accommodate more of Pennsylvania's students, but one that must humble itself to the state legislature each year to get the money for expan sion. You are attending a Univer sity that ca n hold more stu dents in its res idence halls than in its classrooms. You are at tending a Uni versity whose professors had to take their own survey to find that their salaries are some of the MI" Teichh°lta lowest in the trade because University offiicals refused to make the survey. You are attending a Univer sity that once upon a time had an ice skating rink, and put a roof on it to give it year round use thus finding itself with a wind tunnel. So now the "skating pavilion" is to be enclosed and what will we have then? You are also attending a University that DOES N 0 T have a respectable auditorium. In short, this is not altogeth er the "collection of books" as the epigram inscribed on the face of Pattee Library would A Student-Operated Newspaper #tuttutror Tollrgiatt Successor to The Free L4nce, est. 1887 Published Tuesdkv, June 13 and every Thursday thereafter from June 22 through August 17. The Summer Collegian is a student-operated newspaper. Entered as second class matter July 5, t 934 at the State College, Pa. Poet Office under the act of March 3, 1879. !Hail Subscription Pries: Fifty cent■ for 10 issues MEG TEICHHOLTZ RICHARD LEIGHTON 4:i>bi Co-Editors STAFF THIS ISSUE: Photography Editor, Tom Browne; Head line Editor, Doti Drasher; Assistants. Susie Eberly, Barry . Myers, Kathie Dayton, Carol Enslin, Steve Milner, and Joel Myers. al weeks ago were not protest ing Civil Defense in and of it self. What they weir., saying is that we should pay more at tention to orientation; and, that our orientation is one that is leaning toward "hot war," rather than the political farce that we know as "cold war." Thus I don't think that any of us can really disagree with the purpose of the demonstra tion. We can disagree, however, with the fact that these people seemed to be saying that the way to attain peace (which we all want) is to protest its ap parent protective measures. The realities of this situation, as I see them, are twofold. One of the realities that we must face is that the only way to attain peace is not the cur rent American ideal of self determination with a little bit of democratic threatening in between the lines. It didn't work in Cuba or in Laos: both of these countries are, for all purposes other than political speeches, lost. The organization which con ducted t h e demonstrations downtown was only saying—so far as I have been able to gath er from its unnecessarily secre tive participants that war, and that which prepares us to engage in it, is morally wrong. War is something that has yielded nothing more than a loss of humane consciousness and substituted for that con sciousness the law of the jun gle, the "big stick," and inhu TUESDAY. JUNE 13. 1961 by meg teichholtz lead us to believe, but a collec tion of contradictions. But it is summer now, things are tranquil on campus. It seems an ideal time for a re evaluation of Penn Stat e ' s goals. University officials might do well to have their ow n en campment at which they could discuss the old issue of qual ity versus quantity. The state of Pennsylvania has not charged this institu tion with the job of expansion, the Universtiy has done this itself as a service to the state. Yet it would seem that the University could do a greater service to the Commonwealth by re-evaluating its goals, by slowing down on physical ex pansion and concentrating on intellectual expansion, by channeling the funds that will permit 1200 additional sI u - dents to enter this University into higher faculty salaries. It is all a matter of values, not the short run kind but the ones that have meaning in the long haul. A University is not evaluated in terms of its fac tory—teaching can be done in a grass pasture. Primarily it is evaluated in terms of its faculty and this University will not be first rate until it faces the fact that high er salaries must come into this phase of building. For it is from an improved faculty that the anemic aca demic side of Penn State could burgeon into a scholarly con tribution to learning and cul ture in the state. WAYNE HILINSKI Business Manager man practices that defy any ethical category. However these people are faced with another aspect of reality: current international political actions are neither hu mane in nature or ethical in character. We live in a time of increas ing amorality—that is we have lost consciousness of just what it is to be "wrong" in arty sense. As such, the people demon strating downtown shouted in to basically deaf or indoctri nated hearts and ears that will only hear when the scream of a bomb awakens the many. They will then realize the amoral fantasy - that we call "perpetual preparedness," "lim ited war," "defensive war," and all the rest of the double-talk that makes up the current poli tical scene. But the demonstration down town did start to awaken some of the brain-washed binds and unfeeling hearts. If this is accomplished more often, by groups having more organization, then we may get that change in attitude which we all basically want: peace, perpetual peace—that is an af firmation rather than a farcical negation of the phrase "the brotherhood of man." (Editor's Note: References to civil defense protestors in this column refer to a small group of students who marched on the southeast corner of College Avenue and S. Allen Street in, protest to the civil defense drill on April 28.)
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers