A New The “term system,” as the Univer sity’s academic calendar is called, with in a few days will be the subject of a student-faculty poll. Few topics have received such con stant debate as the term system. Since Penn State discarded the standard se mesters in 1961. both wrath and praise have been heaped upon the present sys tem. which is based on. four 10-week terms. Now the Senate has proposed changes in the term system. Suggestions include returning to 15-week semesters. But nothing is definite yet. And the Senate, before making a decision and relaying it to President Eric A. Walker and the Board of Directors, has wisely decided to solicit faculty and student opinion. The trouble is that most students here don't know the difference between the term system and the semester sys tem. Before student opinion is consid ered, therefore, the Senate should make sure that it has fully explained the oper ations and effects of the two calendar methods. The basic difference is that the se mester system calls for two 15-week per- Sane Policy The Daily Collegian office was bursting at the doors last night as stu dent politicians attempted to publicize their preferences for Undergraduate Student Government positions. Because of past experience, and considering the relative worth of such endorsements, the Collegian is not printing any political opinions from, so-called student leaders. Since petty personal grudges rather than reason guide many a political en dorsement, the Collegian feels it a saner policy for each student to.form his own opinions. Sty? Satlij (Eollpgtan Published Tuesday through Saturday during the Fall, Winter and Spring Terms, and Thursday during StlleCoK, PaT'ldSOk Circulation: s »at e University. Second class nos.age paid at Mail Subscription Price: *8.50 a year Mailing Address Box 417, state College, Pa. l«80t Editorial and Business Office Basement of Sackett (North End) Phone 865-2531 Business office hours: Monday through Friday, 2:30 a.m. to 4 p.m, PAUL J. LEVINE ■ Editor n M ?.T 21? Edl,or; SemH ' Editorial Editor,- Judy Rite, City Editor; Richard Ravllz, JJJIJt* R °P a ?, K ° lb ' Spor,s Editor; Steve Solomon, Assistant Sports Editor; Dan Rodgers, Photog „E , r; , Phyllis Ross, Personnel Director ■ Office Manager; Pat, GurosKy, Kitty Phllhin, Dennis Stimeling, Senior Reporters; Elliot Abrams, Weather Reporter. nm d cu f Manager, Ed Fromkin, Assistant Local Advertising Managers, f 0 *^*^*-Manager, George Geib;. Assistant Credit Manager# Carol Book; ?™ dl >ed AdverJuiniManager,:Mfcry ’Ktameiv'National Advertising'Mahagers, Mary Ann Ross and Linda Hazier; Circulation Manager, George Bergner; Office and Personnel Manager, Mary Gebler; Public Relations and Promotion Manager, Ronald B. Resnikoff. Committee on Accuracy and Fair Play: Charles Brown, Faith Tanney, Harvey Reeder. Adviser: Donna S. Clemson. PAGE TWO LOOKING FOR A MEANINGFUL CHALLENGE? SHERUT LA'AM Volunteer Service Corps If you are a professional, college grad uate or undergraduate, you are needed as a teacher, instructor, tutor, technician .nurse, social worker, etc. Or for an experience in communal living, you may join the full year Kibbutz program as a regular Kibbutznik. ORIENTATION AND ULPAN Knowledge of Hebrew not essential. One week orientation before departure, plus three months intensive Hebrew study in Israel. COST $670 round-trip air fare, and orientation costs. NEXT DEPARTURES July and September 1988. Limited number of partial loans available; SHERUT LA'AM-V.I.P. 515 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022 • Tel. (212) 753-0230/0282 I am interested in Please send‘ me IT WAS THEIR FINEST HOUR ... IT GOULD BE YOUR FINEST YEAR! Editorial Opinion Successor to The Free Lance, est. 1887 62 Years of Editorial Freedom Member of The Associated Press LOOKING FOR SELF-FULFILLMENT? If you are between 18 and 30 For Israel ONE YEAR ADDRESS.' System? iods between September and June. This would be equal to what we now know as the Fall, Winter, and Spring Terms. Under the semester system, classes during the fall semester would break for Christmas vacation. Classes would then resume in January. Opposed to this is the present Fall Term, which ends in December. Stu dents are not burdened with school work during the holiday, as they return to the beginning of a new term. For this reason, it is our guess, that most students favor the term system. Several complaints have been made against the term system, however. It has been accused of resulting in four mad rushes per year, causing a decrease in the quality of education. Faculty members have said that the term system doesn’t allow enough vaca tion time between the Winter and Spring Terms. Other complaints include those against the system’s disorganized final examination schedule, long Christmas break, and late termination of the Spring Term. One overlooked difference between the term system and the semester sys tem is the matter of class length and credits. Two semester system plans now under study by the Senate allow for 55-minute classes. This might be a pleas ant change from the present 75-minute long classes. The Senate has mentioned no dif ferences between the two systems con cerning credits. In most universities em ploying the semester system, students carry an average of 15 credits. Students here carry an average load of 10 to 12 credits. It would be helpful if the Senate clarified its plans concerning credits. For that matter, the Senate should fully ex plain all aspects of the term and semes ter systems, before students and faculty members are asked to offer their opin ions. WILLIAM FOWLER Business Manager WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1968 JOIN □ SHERUT LA’AM □ More Information V.I.P. Volunteers for Israel - Program SIX MONTHS Any assignment upon arrival in Israel, living and working in a Kibbutz or Moshav with the possibility, of short-term assign menis-in recovery and development projects arising from new circumstances in Israel. HEBREW CLASSES, LECTURES, SEMINARS COST $535 round-trip air fare. NEXT DEPARTURE July 2,1968. □ V.I.P. □ Application Forms SERIFS WORLD "is yours an old button, too?" Letters to the Editor He Looked Us Over Last Week TO THE EDITOR: I have just finished looking through last week’s Collegians for about the tenth time, thinking I may have missed the story the first nine times. What I’m referring to, of course, is Jim Clark’s death. In case you’re confused, Jim Clark was a two-time world cham pion -race 'driver and a major sports figure. He won Indy once; finishing second twice. He also holds the record for most Grand Prix races won in a career (25), surpassing Juan Fangic It's not that I like "blood and gpre and guts and veins in my teeth," but I would never have known if a friend hadn't told me. I really don't see how you can miss a story like this and still call that thing you publish a news , paper. By the way, I also missed the first letter I wrote on this subject: that’s two strikes. I did find a thrilling story on the Pirates’, win over San Francisco. Who the hell cares? I sure don’t, particularly since you don’t mention the Phil lies or the other seventeen teams. I also found about fifteen stories on Martin Luther King’s death (most 'of- them justifiable), along with the same number of letters asking why Friday classes weren’t canceled. The answer to this'is obvious; it took something of. a nitwit to ask in the first place. Then there were Miss Siewarl and Mr. Vassel who accused me of being a bigoted racist. Well, I must admit, I try my. damndest not to be, but probably don't quite suc ceed. I don't understand how people like Miss Stewart can write letters such as they do, accusing white America of being bigoted, when it is obvious from the content of their letters that they are just as bigoted (at least) in the opposite direction. At any rate, I wish you’d let someone get a word in edgewise to eulogize Jim Clark, because he was a great driver and a popular personage, well known out of his field as well as in it, and died in his greatness, so to speak, doing what he wanted to do. Obituary of a McElwain Roach TO THE EDITOR: At 2 a.m. on Tuesday, April 16, 1968, McElwain R. Roach was pronounced dead by a competent team of resident coeds. The cause of death was stated as a sudden and crushing blow, inflicted, while Miss Roach ascended the left leg of a student, who was showering. Funeral services will be held at the Department of Housing, 101 Shields Building, Friends of the deceased are invited to visit the vast Roach family which is mourn ing throughout McElwain Hall. Estelle Creed '69 Ellen Volusher '69 How Much Does If Take To Care? TO THE EDITOR: Neal Anderson, Assistant Professor of Biology, is quoted in the April 11 Daily Collegian as Having said “. . . we aren’t getting paid enough to care,’’ in refer ence to a plea for teachers who care at Penn State. I ask you, Mr. Anderson, how much would it take to make you care? Leonard M. Herring '69 id W. Stevens islant Professor of Economics Individuals Cannot * ■ ■ j Transcend the Law By LAURA WERTHEIMER Collegian Staff Writer' You help your girl put her bags on the train, tell the conductor' that you’re getting right off, see him nod—then watch help lessly as he gives the signal for the train to puli' out. You call to make an appoint ment, and the secretary’s voice is warm and friendly until she hears yours. You are picnicking quietly in someone’s far-off wood lot and the farmer drives up and curtly or ders you off, and you know he'd have smiled and waved if you were white. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe that farmer is nasty to everyone, maybe the conductor really didn't hear you? maybe the secretary suddenly choked on a fishbone. Sure, But the slights , pile up, and the irrita tion grows. What was unfair be comes pre j u diced, then bigo ted, then racist. But the ..av erage white stu dent at Penn State is neither bigoted nor ra cist, and is prej udiced only to the extent that average people, black and white, tend to congregate around what is the norm. What hurtsJs the average person’s tendency to be cruel about it. Most people are horribly unkind to each other. This is true, although disproportionately so, wheth er the people involved differ racially, poli tically, or not at all. MISS WERTHEIMER It is unfair to say that every Penn Stater who detected a tinge of hypocrisy in the Administration's decision to cancel class es last -week is a racist, just as it is unfair to say that everyone who opposes riots is. Some undoubtedly are, but so are some who favor both. Most people, unfortunately, don’t com municate the full extent of their thought in casual conversation. The expression “ba loney” as a comment on canceling classes may mean that any gesture of honor for Martin Luther King is preposterous, or it Paper Asks for Faculty Writers University faculty are in vited to submit articles to Col legian’s “Faculty Forum.” Columns of opinion from all members of the faculty are welcome. The articles should be type written and triple-spaced and should not excee' T-> lines in length. Interested faculty should bring their articles to Collegian office, 20 Sackett Building. may represent the vastly more thoughtful position that phony gestures are no way to deal with a very real crisis. The problem is: What DO people say when confronted with a situation of emo tional or moral significance? Most people take refuge in a banality. There rarely seems to be enough time to explain a life style, and serious thought is seldom com municated in brief conversations—but that does not mean it, isn’t there. When a rational person puts a personal judgment above the, law, as Martin Luther King did, he is attempting, to supplant one law—an unjust one—with a just one.' .His purpose is to create a just law, and' he then expects people to uphold it or be punished. It is irrational, to hold that because you are opposed to a law. you can “transcend” it, because someone who is annoyed at you can use the same* logic to-‘‘transcend” the homi cide laws in your direction. The horror of 35 dead in recent "rioting is a manifestation of a problem that every Negro faces: Is the law friend or Jos? A cool examination of the problem sug gests that the laws are 'the best protection Negroes have. Equality is demanded. Civil Rights legislation, on the-books, finds dis crimination in jobs, housing, schooling and services punishable by law. The de facto situation is less lovely, but the laws stand. It. is unequivocally forbidden by law to do what Hitler’s Germany decreed by law. Carl Oglesby, former president of Stu dents for a Democratic Society, predicted last week that this summer would see geno cide for the blacks. The only things that stand between that unspeakable idea and actuality are moral sensibilities and the law. The only thing that can be relied on, in the wake of the predicted riots, is the law. The situation is strained, at best. But terror and destruction cannot improve it, and, much as i.i goes against current socio logical notions to say so, only time and edu cation can. The vast majority of people on campus and in the country are people of good will, who are doing their best to avoid both prejudice and any trace of paternalism or tokenism. The cretin who shot Dr. King will be punished, not in lip service to King’s vocal followers, but because it is the law. ‘■* M /ItUW / WREI j QUITS LOCK‘D ’ ySCHRQEPgR.. J c> ,/} V *»•*•/7 C Utl b, U.JiU »..•»■« litfon Ht m mo OFFICERS WHILE THE'/ EAT f t? * ■ '"fxi,. Fly to Africa, Europe and Asia IF YOU EVER 60 INTO THE ARMY, THEY WON'T PUT Ho\) IN THE FRONT LINES... IfeM (ftflOGH!), Join us as a PAN AM. STEWARDESS or the glamorous cities of Latin America . The capitals of the world soon become as familiar as your own Stewardess Interviews will be held on campus Monday, April 29, For further information contact your Placement Office M EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER PAN AMERICAN WORLD'S MOST EXPERIENCED AIRLINE home town.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers