310
VIEWS.
VIEWS
EDITOR VIEWS:
In the last issue of the Courier, the editorial department devotes some space to arguments against consolidation. I desire to give some reasons for such a movement and to discuss some of this writer's statements.
He begins by asserting that there has been a clamor for consolidation ever since the Courier started. No one has ever heard of this except himself. Last Spring Mr.J.F.Tucker endeavored to make peace between the companies and to bring about a consolidation.
This writer asserts that three fourths of the students are non-fraternity men, then in the next sentence that for this reason the Courier gave the barbs. one half the stock and one half the editors. Now I say, reasoning from these premises, that the Courier does the barbs. a palpable injustice, they should properly have three fourths of the stock and three fourths of the editors.
Our Senior editor is very indignant about the spirit which toadies to a man who wears a society pin. Yet he has never explained his connection with the disgraceful "freeze out" of a certain barb. from the Gradatim, and by silence at least, has concurred in the declaration made by some frats., that club was meant for the Greeks alone.
"The other is the cant of 'putting the best man in the best place,' which fraternities employ when they appropriate all the college honors. For instance, witness the following from the Kansas Review. 'It is not the giving of somebody a position because by some accident he belongs to some society, or does not belong to one, that
gives a paper the true stamp of excellence, or the principle that should be followed in selecting an editorial board, but individual worth.' As the Review has just nine fraternity men and not one non-fraternity man on the staff, the inference is that the outsiders are devoid of worth—perhaps are fools or idiots."
With this statement of the Review I most heartily concur. We should have the fullest liberty of selection, and we need more of it in the Courier. Doors this writer imagine that he would have been elected unanimously to the position he now holds on the Courier staff, if he had run upon his own merits, and not been put up as the choice of his fraternity?
Then the wrong inference is drawn from the fact that the Review has no barbs. on its staff. The reason it has none is because none could be obtained. All who care for such are in the Courier company. The members of the Review company are not such "fools or idiots" that they can not see the advantage of having some barbs. on their staff. It is commonly known that the writer of these lines was most earnestly solicited to go into the Review, and other barb. editors have been approached in the same way. But the Courier men have constantly exerted themselves to prevent snch a thing. I myself kept one or two barbs. from taking positions on the Review, and there was even an effort made last year, to induce the only barb. editor it has had to resign.
The honorable gentleman thinks that the present Review staff proves a belief on the part of that company that the barbs. are "fools or idiots." I am forced to believe