PAGE. FOUR Editorial Opinion More Than A Prayer Probably the most constructive thing that can be said for the University's appropriation request from the state legislature this year is a prayer. Exactly six months have passed since this column featured the above statement. In the interim more action than invocation has accompanied Penn State's plea, yet the statement remains regrettably true. Students, faculty members and administrators all have a stake in the government's decision—a stake that has caused them to join what might be considered opposing forces in an effort to make the legislature see the specific need for more funds and the implications of this need. For the students, a full budget would mean relief, for another, year at least, from a tuition hike. President Eric A. Walker has pointed out that if the full appropria tion is not received, the financial burden will fall upon the students and their parents in the form of substantial tuition increases. For the faculty, the budget money means increased salaries. These may be small, but it is to be hoped that such increases would lessen the "mortality rate" which afflicts this University and influence our qualified faculty members to remain at Penn State. For the Administration the full request means the expansion of enrollment and facilities, thus enabling Penn State to fulfill its responsibility to the Common- wealth. In the past six months these three branches of the University family tree have attempted to influence the legislature with impassioned pleas, student rallies, deluges of letters and lobbyists, and even the proposed "march to Harrisburg:" These voluminous efforts have been met with apparent indifference by the legislature who have without fail been non-committal and unresponsive. We can only wonder if they realize that for every student admitted to the University in the fall, four will be denied the benefits of their own state University. We can only wonder if they realize the immense task of education that faces not only the state of Pennsylvania but this entire nation. Not one educated mind in this country can today deny that the future of the free world rests heavily on education. Pennsylvania's legislature will not only be doing this particular University a gross disservice if it does not grant proper appropriation—it will be demonstrating that its members are not worthy of the public trust granted them by the democratic system we are struggling to preserve. A Student-Operated Newspaper ftittuttr Tollrgiatt Successor to The Free Lance, est. 1887 Published Tuesday, June 13 and every Thursday thereafter from Juna 22 through August 17. The Summer Collegian Is a student-operated newspaper. Entered as second class matter July 9. 1931 at the State College, Pa. Poet Office under the act of March 3, 1879. Moil Subscription Price: Fifty cents for 10 issues MEG TEICHHOLTZ WAYNE HILINSKI RICHARD LEIGHTON 0624 1 Business Manager Co-Editors STAFF THIS ISSUE: Photography Editor, Tom Browne; Head line Editor, Doti Drasher; Assistants, Jean Bastion, Bobbi Bot wick, Nancy Bradney, Maxine Fine, Claudia Levy, Dick O'Brien, Judy Scalfidi,ldy Wils. (ALL YOU EVER ) THINK OF 15 THIS STUPID PIANO - - ••• • 111- - ' j IJ M GOING TO BE MORE THAN THAT. I SUPPOSE (k)) THINK You'RE EON& TO BE ANOTHER €SEETNOVEN 111E111.111 . 1 I ' M GOING 10 BE THE , SAM SNEAD OR M usicil: 7 SUMMER.. COLLEGIAN. STATE COLLEGE. • PENNSYLVANIA Dateline Washington (Miss Mills is working this suininer in the Washington bureau of United Press Inter national news service.) Secret meetings, pass words, handshakes, badges and buttons symbolize the John Birch Society or one of them. For a new John Birch So ciety, not to be confused with the controversial, right-wing group pledged to fight com munism, has been established in Baltimore, the Insider's Newsletter reports. The society was named for John Z. Birch, original brew er of birch beer. The more fa mous Birch organization bears the name of Army Capt, John Birch, who died in 1945 while on an intelligence mission in China. The full name of the newer group is the John Birch Chow der and Marching Society. The society has as its aims (1) the abolition of the post of fice department which it claims "by socialistically delivering people's messages for them makes people weak, dependent and without moral fiber," and (2) abolition of all cola drinks. This John Birch Society is headed by an attorney, whose age is one of the group's se crets. Equality of the sexes was dealt a blow numerically speaking by recent Census Bureau figures. Single males 14 years old and over outnumber females by 3 million, the Bureau says. There are 15.4 million single males over 14 and 12.4 females. Reason: the Bureau of the Census says that, on the aver age. men are approximately two and one-half years older when they marry than are women, allowing an excess sin gle male population to develop. —Kay Mills What, we can wonder and never know, caused Ernest Hemingway's suicide ? It seems too glib to write off an action of this importance by saying it was the violent end to a man who had lived a violent life. What then are the possible reasons that Hemingway may have used to facilitate his ac tions last Sunday? The first sentence of Albert Camus's essay entitled "The Myth of Sisyphus" is this: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suiscide." What Camus is saying here is simply that it is a matter of first-order importance for ev ery tninking human being to decide whether his own life is worth living. Further on in the Camus es say the statement is made that "in a world without values man must create value." One of these values is that of being able to adjudge our own lives as having dignity and worth. Without the creation of this primary value we find our selves in the inane position of having events in our lives re semble the proverbial rock that Sisyphus must push up to the top of a hill time after time only to know that it would roll back down again. Without this primary value life becomes meaningless, the individual's concept of the world becomes. in a word. absurb. For the creating. sensitive artist this prospect necessarily implies that without the evolu tion of certain values life can become absurd; this realization can have grave personal con sequences. It is this sort of realization Ei=3 Suicide and Art: A Tribute By STEPHEN R. BLUM Contributing Writer accents Back the Beagle! With all the talk of budget appropriations, capital punishment and pension increases you would think that there would be no more room for controversial legislature in Harrisburg. But that is not the case, on there for years and today another bill concerning, it will come out of committee. •. - Yes -today is the' day' that Senate Bill No. 8 comes Out 'of committee and hasx-its second reading. If all goes well the bill will be voted on tomorrow. You, of course, have heard about the infamous No. 8. You haven't? Why it's the bill" to make the Great Dape'•the state dog for Pennsylvania. The bill will have no easy sledding if it gets out of Sen- ate because it might run a- muck of sup- porters House Bill No 11. You say that you don't even know what House Bill No. 11 is? That's LEIGHTON the bill to make the Beagle the state dog. It was difficult to find any information about No. 11 (Bea gle) except that most of the House seems to prefer it. The Beagle, adherents says, can be more easily associated with Pennsylvania and its great amount of small game. It is (the bill, that is) still in com mittee. But Bill No. 8 (Great Dane) is a dog of another color (and, I might add, another size). This bill, according to Sen. Jo Hays, Centre-D., has been introduced every single year "since he can remember." It has, he said, been fostered by an "extremely active" lobbyist, Miss Rosalie Piersal of Swarth more. The active Miss Piersal makes frequent trips to the capital and sends out "piles" of mimeographed data extolling that may drive a man to be consumed by his work or his art. Hemingway gave his life meaning by involvement that often reached far and above the written words of his novels. Though not acutally a bull righter himself, he befriended many a Spanish matador, and, one is almost tempted to think that he not only wrote of their lives and actions, but also vi cariously lived that strange, im passioned, art of the bull-ring. Certainly the concern with violence was in his writings. Certain critics have pointed out that Hemingway's writings were, in the bad sense of the word, existential in character and content. I say "in the bad sense of the word" for neither Hemingway nor many of the existentialists can be flatly labeled "violent" or morbid." The existential concern which Hemingway did indeed manifest goes a little deeper than the quasi-morbidity of the death scenes in "Farewell to Arms" and some of the short stories. The concern of Hemingway, as the great novelist that he was in the early novels and stories, was to portray the an guish of certain human beings when they were caught, or caught themselves, facing the possible myriad of paradoxes which fill the lives of his char acters and of any thinking human being. The moment of supreme lu cidity probably never came to Hemingway, nor to the charac ters of his novels. None of them arived at The Answer. Each of the characters, as must be true of a great novel, gained some sort of insight into himself. This insight was so painful to some of Hemingway's char- THURSDAY. JULY 6. 1961 dick Leighton There has been a battle going the virtues of her favorite dog (Great Dane). Unfortunately, Miss Piersal's efforts have had little effect on Hays. He said that he "is a Beagle man" and he is going to vote against Bill No. 8 (Great Dane). "I prefer the oth er dog (Beagle)," he said. It is easy to see how these important and complex issues can create much public inter est, and it was even hard to re late the above facts objectively. But now is the time to take sides. I side with Hays (Beagle) be cause a Great Dane (Bill No. 8) would look incongruous be side our state flower (Moun tain Laurel) and our state bird (Ruffed Grouse). But I have to concede a point to Miss Pier sal her dog (Great Dane) wouldn't look half bad next to our state tree (Eastern Hem lock). Even after having heard of Miss Piersal's (Great Dane) reputation as a superb lobby ist I still wish to challenge her. I feel that it is going to be a fight to the finish. I propose that we organize on this campus a "Back the Beagle" campaign. I have al ready posted a Back the Bea gle petition in the Collegian office. All Beagle lovers (or Great Dane haters) are en couraged to sign up. In the fall, I will ask SGA President Dennis Foianini (Galgo boliviano) to personally present our petition (Beagle) to Governor Lawrence (uncom mitted). Pro-Beagle students are urged to write their rep resentatives now. Get your par ents to write. A pep rally (Bea gle) on the steps of Old Main is in the planning stages. A Great Dane indeed! acters that we saw them only as great self-deceivers perpe trating a massive lie to them selves. Perhaps it was just this sort of massive lie that Hemingway had the, yes, courage to want to avoid. Biographers will soon be telling us the "inside story" of what "really" went on when Hemingway was recently treat ed at the Mayo Clinic. We shall also be told, I sup pose, that, "really," Heming way was treated not only for hypertension but also for some strange and inexplicable form of (and here is the revealing "bad" word) neurosis. But, does this all really matter? Might we not conjecture (and let these writings be interpret ed as nothing more than such conjecture), that the only "neu rosis" that Hemingway felt was a slow sapping of creativity which can drive a man to bore dom, or even worse? Might not Hemingway's "illness" have been the horrid malady of the realization of old age? The Hemingway who killed himself, let it now be said, was no longer the great chronicler of the Lost Generation. Nor was the Hemingway who died last Sunday the man who was a producing writer of great nov els. Unfortunately, America can not lay too much claim to this man. He was born here, and he died here but he must be considered, perhaps along with T. S. Eliot, as "the classic ex ample of the expatriot." Perhaps then Hemingway was simply a great man who knew that he was no longer great. His immortality will come not from the courage, or was it despair, which sur rounds his death; but rather from his life as he lived it and wrote it.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers