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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, January 11, 1968
Keep legislature out
One of several bills pending in this legislative session which could affect KU is the question of cigarette sales on state-owned campuses. When the Kansas Board of Regents refused to rescind a March 1964 ban on campus cigarette sales, two legislators took the matter to their own organization in order to overrule the Regents. House representatives have already passed the bill against the Regents' ban, and the measure now awaits Senate attention.
--rule that was invoked against Dickey."
It is regretful that the issue was ever brought before the legislature and that the House of Representatives saw fit to pass it, but let us hope that the Senate will have the good judgment to refuse jurisdiction in this case. To pass the bill would be to initiate a precedent which could eventually render our non-political Board of Regents impotent in internal campus matters and leave KU and all other state colleges and universities open to political pollution.
One need only read the campus newspapers of schools across the country to realize how fortunate Kansas has been in its Board of Regents. Regent censoring of adverse student publications, banning of campus speakers with alien ideas, firing of teachers who have deviated from the party line—all virtually unknown in Kansas—the rule in many other states. And perhaps the greatest devastation of all results when a campus becomes the central issue of a political campaign.
Political immunity, combined with an unusually progressive and far-seeing group of Regents, has secured and maintained for the Bible belt state a solid tradition of academic freedom surprisingly unique for this country. We don't want to lose this.
The campus cigarette ban was a seemingly pointless order which has accomplished little more than to cause a frustrating inconvenience for campus smokers. The ban has probably neither seriously deterred potential smokers nor stopped any confirmed habituals.
Nevertheless, this is the campus resident's rightful gripe with his Regents, not that of the legislature. Although there has been one attempt by combined student councils of state schools to have the order changed, there was never any prolonged or strong movement to persuade the Regents to withdraw their decree. A strong and united campaign by the affected schools could still change the Regents' minds.
Regardless of the speed with which the Regents elect to change their order, however, we cannot allow the legislature to move in on their territory. We cannot allow a group of the proven ability of the Kansas Board of Regents to be cast aside merely because we disagree with one, academically trivial, order.
—Betsy Wright Editorial Editor
"Do You Think We'll Be Recognized Now Diplomatically, That Is?"
Alabama college censors censored
An Alabama college newspaper editor was summarily expelled from school after he refused to run an article on raising dogs in North Carolina in place of an editorial deemed detrimental to George Wallace.
Instead, Gary Clinton Dickey ran the headline of his planned editorial, and, in large type under it, one word, "censored." The editorial was later published in The Montgomery Advertiser.
The case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Dr. Ralph Adams, president of Troy State College, had established a policy that nothing detrimental to Wallace or the legislature could be published in the student newspaper. Great harm could be done to the school, Adams said, if Wallace or the legislature were angered. "I feel that the editor of a paper should not criticize its owner." Adams told Dickey.
The editorial censored from the
Troy State newspaper supported Dr. Frank Rose, president of the University of Alabama. Rose was under attack by state legislators for refusing to censor a UA student publication that carried excerpts from speeches by Bettina Apheker and Stokely Carmichael along with an article by Gen. Earl G. Wheeler. The Troy editorial explained the excerpts were printed in the UA publication "to give a balanced view." The editorial did not mention Wallace or any legislator by name.
Attorney Morris S. Dees of the ACLU of Alabama filed suit for the expelled editor in Federal District Court. Dees asked the Court to rule that Dickey's actions as an editor were protected by the First Amendment. This question could not be determined by the College, Dees said, because the College was unlikely to provide a fair hearing. In the alternative Dees asked the Court to order a hearing by the College's
The Court chose the alternative and ordered the College to reinstate Dickey, then provide a due process hearing. The College notified Dickey that he was charged with "insubordination." After the hearing, the College suspended him for one academic year.
Student Affairs Committee—with advance notice, "the rudiments of an adversary proceeding as guaranteed by due process requirements" of the Constitution, and provision for Court review of the decision.
Dees went back to Federal District Court for an injunction against the College. In this second round the Court ruled on the First Amendment issues in relation to academic freedom.
"Regulations and rules which are necessary in maintaining order and discipline are always considered reasonable," the Court said. "(But) it is clear that the maintenance of order and discipline had nothing to do with the
The Court continued, "A state cannot force a college student to forfeit his constitutionally protected right of freedom of expression as a condition to his attending a state-supported institution. . . The attempt to characterize Dickey's conduct, and the basis for their action in expelling him, as 'insubordination'... does not disguise the basic fact that Dickey was expelled . . . for exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right of academic and/or political expression."
The Court declared the suspension invalid, stating that the "Adams Rule" posed a greater threat to the College than did Dickey's "insubordination."
The College appealed the decision. Dees is arguing the appeal on First Amendment grounds with amicus help from several organizations, among them the National Student Association.
Reprinted from Civil Liberties December, 1967
Paperbacks
Melville J. Herskovits' The Human Factor in Changing Africa (Vintage, $2.45) is a huge volume by an anthropologist who describes the cultural evolution of Africa from prehistory through European expansion to the recent transitions that have made maps of Africa in the early fifties look almost prehistory themselves. More than government is surveyed, here, Herskovits also treating the arts, education, agriculture, religion, the economy and the like.
A great intellectual history is Jacob Burckhardt's The Age of Constantine The Great (Vintage, $1.95), a description of what happened in the Roman empire in the third century A.D. Historians have regarded this as one of the landmarks of historical writing. Another notable work newly published in paperback is A. J. P. Taylor's Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman (Vintage, $1.95). This is a re-evaluation of Bismarck's career, especially in the Sixties. It is not a bulky biography and for that reason should attractive to many readers.
Letters to the Editor
Theology rejector's 'Christian' claim questioned
To the Editor:
One would suppose that in speaking about the Christian faith that it would be possible to assume that the word "Christian" would imply at least a belief in the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the gifts and in the letters of Paul, James, John and Peter. Reading these letters as accurate historical documents (which any reliable historian will admit them to be) and not even as the "word of God" one recognizes a basic nucleus of belief which was acknowledged by the Roman Catholic Church, preserved in the Reformation writers and is fundamentally acknowledged by both the Roman Church and every main-line Protestant denomination to this day.
A man who calls himself a Christian should, it seems, have as his starting point a marked
adherence to this nucleus of belief. But as we all know, one can no longer make that assumption; the fellow who calls himself a Christian today (perhaps he will reject the word "Christian" and just say that he walks in the spirit of the man Jesus, or that he is a true follower) may be almost anything. This fact is well illustrated by a statement quoted in Tuesday's Kansan spoken by Mr. Larry Van Sickle, former vicepresident of the United Campus Christian Fellowship. "I'm not interested in theology or God, I'm interested in ethics and action." Being aware that this statement represents a prevalent atmosphere in some campus religious groups I am prompted to make the following remarks.
One may ask how a student such as myself could find any real objection to the above statement.
Indeed, Mr. Van Sickle has only declared what it is that interests him, which is his own business and not mine. But what I do venture to ask is how Mr. Van Sickle happens to believe that his concerns are somehow "Christian." (I assume that he does believe that he has Christian concerns in that he chooses to be a leader in a Christian fellowship.)
Even a cursory reading of the New Testament will show that Jesus was greatly occupied in these "theological matters." Jesus told parables about a "Kingdom of Heaven," called himself the "Son of God" and upbraided a man named Nicodemus for not receiving his testimony concerning the New Birth and queries. "If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?" Everywhere he assumes
that there is reality beyond this present, empirically-discernable world; theological issues virtually permeate his teaching. Whatever one does with the New Testament is his own business. But one thing must be sure: categorical rejection of questions of theology is wholly foreign to the teaching of Jesus Christ and deserve in no way to be called "Christian."
In my own heart I can only regret that Mr. Van Sickle has no interest in "God or theology." There is the testimony by many Christians that there is One in our midst, a God, not of Nature but above Nature, Spirit and not flesh, closer than we think. Who may appear at any time. However repugnant such an idea may be to our preconceived notions about reality, there is the constant reminiscence going through our minds that there is some thing or
Someone that we are missing in life. It would be a pity indeed if we should have to admit in the end to our Lord and God that we simply had no interest. . .
Larry Watkins
Garden City senior and
Vice-President of
inter-Varsity Christian
Fellowship
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