EDITORIAL OPINION A dubious honor The beauty__ . , queen glides gracefully down the runway; turns and smiles demurely at her public who marvels at her radiance and beauty. A touching scene? To an in creasing number of Americans, the concept of the beauty queen has crystalized as a slightly horrifying example of the debasement of women. Homecoming weekend at Penn State this year may witness just such an example of degradation. In their efforts to recapture the past, the members of the Homecoming Queen Committee have restored the "traditional" queen and court. Granted, some things need not change with the times.: Homecoming is a perfect occasion to forget the present and continue old traditions. But the Homecoming Queen should not be viewed as one such treasured tradition. By continuing this sexist contest, the committee Student participation- By DION C. STEWART Giaauate geochemistry I believe that your Sept. 17 front page story, entitled Student leaders want changes in SAB, misrepresented the attitudes and goals of the students present at the reported meetiags. Although the discussion of events was for the most part correct, several of the statements Collegian forum written in the story were out of context and thus created the wrong impression. Let me first summarize the ptirposes and achievements of the meetings and how the SAB was involved, and then attempt a clarification of several statements printed. MEETING I. Friday, Sept. 7. Approximately, 10 students who were attending Encampment '73 expressed their frustration at a late night meeting over thEAr inability to bring problems of major concern to students before the decision-making bodies of the University for a solution acceptable to all involved. The student leaders present agreed that they should coordinate their efforts so as to introduce proposals for change into all' the legislative bodies possible. This would require that student leaders would get together THE INDIVIDUAL THE SORORITY TWO COMPLEMENTARY WORDS Suites open KAPPA DELTA - Cross Hall DELTA DELTA DELTA -.Cross Hall Wednesday, September 19 ALPHA SIGMA ALPHA - Cooper Hall 7:00 - 10:00 P.M. KAPPA KAPPA GAMMA - Cooper Hall DELTA ZETA - Hiester Hall - PI BETA PHI - Hiester Hall Register for fall rush PHI MU - Hiester Hall ZETA TAU ALPHA . - Ritner Hall Panhel Office 212 HUB ALPHA GAMMA DELTA - Ritner Hall UNIVERSITY CALENDAR Wednesday, September 19, 1973 SPECIAL EVENTS Philip Dettra, piano recital, 8:30 p.m., Music Bldg. recital hall. "Ham's' Wide World," film, Penn State Amateur Radio Club, 7:30 p.m., HUB assembly room. SEMINARS Ceramic Science, 3:55 p.m., Room 244 Deike. Dr. R. A. Queeney, engineering mechanics. • LECTURES Professor Colin M. Kraay, Keeper-of the Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, on "Timoleon and Corinthian Coins in the West." 2:20 p.M., Room 230 Arts. MEETINGS - Graduate Council, 3 p.m., Room 101 Kern. A.W.S., 7 p.m., Room 203 HUB., • INTEREST GROUPS ' • • Chess Club, 6:30 p.m., HUB card room. Focus on Sweden, 7 p.m., Room 312 Boucke. • Young Socialists, 7:30 p.m., Room 62 Willard. Gymnastics clinic (women), 7 p.m., White. PSOC Ski division, 7:30 p.m. Room 121 Sparks. OFFICIAL . • Add period ends, 5 p.m. , FILMS Commonplace Theatre, 8 and 10 p.m., Room 112 Kern. "A Midsummer Night's Dream," James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Olivia DeHaVilland. • EXHIBITS Kern Gallery Shirley Sturtz, jewelry, prints, paintings. Paul Jay, pottery. Pattee Library, Circulation Lobby "Retrospect," multi-media drawings and paintings by Janet I. Dougherty. Sackett Gallery, third floor Architectural models. :••• has debased the larger tradition of Homecoming. Though- the committee has in cluded such criteria as a woman student's contributions to the University and cumulative average, Chairperson Richard Schroeder admits they mainly wish to stick td , the 1940. standards. The old criteria remain: poise, personality, grace and overall appearance. Schroeder said the decision was based on a general concensus across campus and from alumni. However, he admits that he knows of no University-wide poll. In ad dition, the Alumni Association has assured the Association of Women Students it would take no stand.on the issue. The only concensus ap pears to be within the Homecoming Queen Committee it self. Dorene Robotti, AWS president, said' the committee informed her they would open the competition to work out solutions to problems and then introduce these into their organizations (as - someone said: "communicate-cooperate and coordinate). MEETING 11, Tuesday, Sept. 11. To fulfill the purpose agreed upon in Meeting I, i.e. cooperate for solutions to student problems, required that a group be formed. This meeting opened with my quoting Lee Uperaft. Since tfiat quote was attributed to me and was incorrectly stated in the paper, let me state it here correctly:• "Student participation in University decision-making comes about in two ways, first when students are allowed to sit and vote om the dicision-making body, and. second when students form an outside group which represents their viewpoint and exerts force on the decision-making body much as a lobby does." This gave our group two possible ways to function. If its membership included students who sat on the legislative and • advisory bodies of the University, It could introduce solutions to problems right to the decision-making bodies. If its membership was outside of the University hierarchy, it would act as a lobby on the decision-making body, for the solutions determined by the group. It was then pointed out that the SAB, on the basis of its membership, could function as the "inside"-body and could propose solutions directly to President Oswald and to the organizations which they represented. MEETING 111. Thursday, Sept. 13. The purpose of this meeting was`to determine what changes were needed in to men if she wished. They added, she said, that although the com petition, would be open, a man, (4 course, would not win. University funds may not' be used for activities which discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, sex or religion. Although the competion may be opened to men to quell AWS ob jections, the contest remains blatantly discriminatqry. Aside from legal considerns, the competion should be scr aped from a moral standpoint. Despite the token criteria of contributions and scholarship, the contestants will still be scrutinized for "poise, personality, grace and ap pearance." It represents a serious regression - from the modem con cept of women as equals to the old ideal of women as fragile objects to be pampered and protected. As Robotti observed, "It is a blatant example of how we should not see a woman in today's world." 4 9 1 1 —7l is 16 I • I l %171" ~...,, r F:ist Refief qi PI 4 11/:' • a diamond says you mean it! • CrOird/4# 9 ,AK9jetet 6 4 .44 " . One three two south alien street registered amedcan gem society one hour free parking in the pugh street garage you may use your master charge card & bankamericard No proposition is more widely believed with less solid evidence than that we have been making a sexual revolution for ourselves. The end of marriage, the extinction of the, family unit as we've known it in the West over the last 5,000 or more years, has been offhandedly predicted even by Republicans and others who ought to know better than to be caught up unthinkingly in a fad. So comes Playboy magazine (October issue), of all unlikely institutions,-to tell us that.the small group of skeptics were right all along: there hap been no sexual revolution in America. Changes, yes, some very interesting ones; but revolution, no sirree. To come to these conclusions the magazine paid for the first massive study of American sexual behavior to be made since the late Dr. Alfred Kinsey's work a generation ago. All the study's findings will be published in a series of *tides and a book by Morton Hunt,, but the overall picture is laid out in this issue of Playboy, where we read, "... liberation his not cut sex loose from significant personal relationships or from the institution of marriage ... for the great new ideas if it was to assume the purpose agreed upon In ing I by the means agreed upon in Meeting 11, I.e. ion to student problems by students proposing ion directly to the decision-making bodies. SAB Meeti solut solut The decisions agreed upon were: . 1. SAB holding caucuses prior to meeting with President Oswald to discuss the problems and possible solutions; 2. Early distribution of the agenda allowing ample time for thought and discussion; 3. Discontinuing the dinner meetings to allow more time for discussion with President Oswald. A major misrepresentation in The Daily Collegian's story of these meetings was in regard to the statements concerning "Osward's influence" over the SAB members. To suggest that President Oswald controls or manipulates the thinking of the students on SAB is a disservice to both President Oswald and the students who sit on SAB. The control that President Oswald does have I.Tover the agenda and the timing of the meeting. For example, it was noted that at previous SAB meetings the majority of time was taken by President Oswald either presenting a report or giving a talk,- followed by dinner, leaving students with less than a half hour to present problems and ideas. This Is the type of influence and control that President Oswald has over the SAB and this was what was discussed at the meetings. Nicholas Von Hoffman: Sexual revolution? NEED AN APARTMENT? *-41 ; majority, sex remains intimately allied to but they still only sleep with three or their deepest emotions and inextriaably possibly four different mates in the interwoven with their conceptions of course of a year. Hardly reminiscent of loyalty, love and marriage." the delicious excesses of the last days of The Playboy study involving 2,026 Rome. participants, even finds that most married people or people living together, regardless of their age, "ate not inclined to grant their mates permission for overt extramarital , sex acts." Indeed, all that wild stuff -mate swapping, open marriage or tribal families is what we like to read about others doing: "... the much-publicized sexual practices that greatly alter the relationship between sex and marriage are far less common than they are generally alleged to be ... only 2 per cent of married males and fewer than 2 per cent of married females have ever participated in mate swapping with their spouses." The data from this involved and costly study tend to reinforce the idea that the American sexual revolution didn't take place in the early 60's with the mass distribution of the pill, bilt right after World War I, at the start of the 20's when the upper middle class renounced the cult of female virginity and proclaimed that sex was as good and valuable for fun as it was for babies. Even so, the flappers did their playing around within the framework of 'marriage, albeit sequential marriage, just as their grandchildren now choose monogamous relationships. What seems to be happenihg is that the revolutionary ideas of the "liberated" portion of the upper middle class have been spreading out and downward through our class system. Thus ever since Kinsey there has been a huge jump in premarital sex, but the Playboy study tells us we're still not very promiscuous. The partners, women especially, have marriage on their mind. Nor is there nearly so much switiching around as we've been led to think. Women under the age of 25.. usually have but one bed partner in the course of a year. The median number for males in the same age group is but 1.5. Single people aged 25 to 34 bounce around somewhat more, =Collegian PATRICIA J. STEWART Editor We are ready to make deals!! 1. Short Term and Semester Leases 2. EARN part of your rent 3. Need furniture? We have plenty. 4. Short of funds? Talk to manager. m As low as As low a l s Bed per Bedroom $5 ,„ per mo. Room $ 1 3 L) o. 1-1 /2 Bath per man including: heat, hot water, cooking & 1 0-channel cable for more info call . 238-1443 238-1965 Between' 18 and 58 years old Willing to help in the treatment of hemophilia and other blood diseases. Available for a 2 hour interval Monday Through Friday IF SO, THEN WE WANT YOU Call 23 7-5 761 for details Why not become a plasnia donor at Sera Tec. Biologicals? You may come to donate 8:30 AM * to 4:00 PM Monday through Friday and earn $6O or more • er month for your efforts. - Within the bounds of_ marriage or the .Iquasi-marriage of living together, the changes of a generation have been impressive. People are making -love more,' liking it more and doing it in many more different ways, or, as Morton Hunt writes, "there have been dramatic increases in th,e frequency With which most; Americans engage in various sexual - activities and in the number of persdns who included formerly rare or forbidden techniques In their sexual repertoires." A generation ago the male-above position in sex was the only way we did it in America, and then we didn't talk about it in the newspapers. Now Americans are routinely using love making positions that we once thought only Hindu acrobats were capable of. Oral sex, customarily called unnatural acts in papers during Kinsey's time, is now practiced by more than 75 per cent of married couples between the ages of 18 and 34, and by more than 50 per cent of married couples between 35 and 44, the study shows. There is no evidence to show any increase in the practice of sadism, masochism or homosexuality. The incidence of bestiality apparently has declined since the late 40's. Whatever that proves, this truly valuable study should reassure us that we're not losing our marbles or becoming degenerates. We're having more orgasms more often women particularly and we don't feel guilty about it any more. We have become a lot more tolerant about the strange things others may do In bed as we have become more sensual, playful and experimental ourselves, although always within the confines of received social institutions. None of it may be progress,• but It does read as if we are a little happier than we were. JOHN J. TODD Business Manager Successor to the Free Lance, est. 1887 Member of the Associated F-...5s Park Forest Apartments West Aaron Drive ARE YOU QUALIFIED?
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