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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, February 21, 1968
Deferment loss hurts
A nation's greatest natural resource is its supply of intelligent, well-educated, young men, an old sage was once heard to say.
The Johason administration's recent decision to abolish graduate school deferments except for medical and dental students, students in related fields and those who will have completed two or more years of their studies by June seems at the least, imprudent.
Already there are more than half a million men in Vietnam—where a war which is at best ill-advised and at worst a total disaster rages on.
With the crisis in education our country is facing, the decision to draft first and second year graduate students seems a particularly unwise one.
Faced with a shortage of Ph.D.'s, many universities, including KU, have employed Master and Ph.D. candidates as part-time teachers. With many of these teachers leaving for the service, our colleges and universities face a critical manpower shortage.
The graduate school of the future will be populated by women, older men, the physically infirm and foreign students.
Maurice Mitchell, chancellor of the University of Denver, stated:
"U.S. draft boards are turning over educational facilities in this country to foreign students while our boys go off to fight. This seems to me to be foreign aid paid for in blood."
Johnson's decision will handicap advanced level education, creating manpower shortages in teaching and research for years to come.
His decision, therefore, to free 150,000 students for the draft is short-sighted. Too much is being sacrificed for a war that is, as John Kenneth Galbraith says, "perhaps the worst miscalculation in our history."
Even without reducing the war effort or the draft calls, several alternatives could relieve the need to draft graduate students.
First, women could be employed in many non-combative jobs, therefore reducing the need for so many servicemen.
Second, many non-college men, now classified 1-Y for physical reasons, could be drafted for clerical and non-combat duty.
Third, reservists could be called.
However, a wiser alternative would be for this country to re-examine our rationale for being in Vietnam. The administration's decision to exhaust our money and manpower in an apparently unwinnable war is unwise, especially in light of crying domestic needs.
-Diane Wengler Editorial Editor
CONRAD
"... Which crime in whose streets . . .?"
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drama review
'Crumbling Citadel' is predictably weak
What has been happening politically in Romania is important. What has been happening in the Romanian theater is significant as an index to political developments, and someday the Romanian theater may develop into something as exciting as Czechoslovakian films. If The Crumbling Citadel is a valid representative of Romanian drama, it would appear that that day has not come. Written in 1956, the play, as drama, has roughly the value of nineteenth-century melodrama.
By Jerry Balch
The plot, centering around two brothers who are faced with the problems of adjusting to Communist rule, is cluttered but not complex. The older brother, an intellectual who philosophizes endlessly and torments himself with some rather vague theories of freedom (freedom to study aesthetics, or to live aesthetically, or something equally ambiguous) is contrasted with his younger brother who is blinded in World War II, yet goes on to adjust to the system and even marry his Communist mentor.
The "villains," a couple of capitalistic relatives who are ruined by nationalization, are attempting to flee Romania to secure fortunes in Swiss banks. "Money isn't dirty. Money makes you clean" are the only memorable lines of the play and are, of course, delivered by the villainess.
The play is completely predictable, as is any variety of Soviet realism—a misleading term which really means politically-oriented romanticism. Soviet realism is not ineluctably bad drama, but it seems always to turn out that way. Perhaps the drama department felt that it could justify the word "experimental" over the door of the theater by giving this play its first performance in America. If so, it failed. The play is twelve years old, has no importance except historically (perhaps not even that), and was acted so clumsily that whatever merits the play may have had in the creation of characters were totally obscured. Verna Pierce and Earl Trussell, as the capitalistic relatives, are excellent in their interpretations of snobbish, comic villains. Whenever they are on stage, the play has life and humor. Unfortunately, they are offstage during a great part of the play.
editorial essay
White backlash does exist
By Will Hardesty
"For every action, there is an equal, and opposite, reaction."—Sir Isaac Newton.
After four long hot summers and several years of civil rights legislation, demonstrations and court decisions, it looks as though an opposite reaction has been conceived and is growing into its own. The "white backlash" is now a force in the nation's jobs, philosophy, demonstrations and politics.
The race issue was particularly obvious in Boston. Louise Day
The elections last fall demonstrated what may be a bigger and bigger force in 1968 and the years to come. In three cities—Gary, Ind., Cleveland, Ohio, and Moston, Mass—the candidates running had "backlash" as a greater or lesser campaign item.
Paperbacks
The mail brings some new paperback delights, none of which is likely to disturb your mind, though maybe your sleep a little. Matt Helm is back in a thing by Donald Hamilton (who else?) called The Devastators (Gold Medal, 50 cents). You'll be seeing Dean Martin in it one of these first years. Let's see—there are these spooky Scottish moors and there's this half-crazy scientist and all these Russians and these beautiful babes and old Matt. In the same genre (get that word, genre) you'll find John D. MacDonald's Pale Gray for Guilt (Gold Medal, 50 cents). Much tough guy stuff and all that brutality and Travis McGee after the dirty killers, the rats. And Lawrence Block's Two for Tanner (Gold Medal, 50 cents). The hero of this one is named Evan Tanner and my he's smooth. And silly. And W. R. Burnett's The Cool Man (Gold Medal, 50 cents). Burnett? He still alive? Apparently so, it's a new book. Burnett was doing things like "Little Caesar" almost 40 years ago. Rough underworld stuff. Lee Marvin? James Coburn?
Hicks opposed Kevin White. Mrs. Hicks ran as an answer to those who were tired of seeing the Negroes "get everything."
Mrs. Hicks said, "Yes, I do think there's a white backlash, and I honesty ask at times it is justifiable. I think at times it is too much appeasement of Negroes. We have all these laws to protect their rights, but what about the white working man?"
The people, too, felt the pressures.
One white said, "The suburban housewives and the Ivy League students, they've gone poor-crazy, but only for the colored poor . . . And it's becoming worse now that they talk about juggling our kids around so that they're 'integrated.' That's when you'll get an explosion in here, when they try to move our kids across the city, or bring all those little darkkies here."
And, on the other side of the city, a Negro said, "I'm hearing people I thought were non-violent say they'll burn buildings if Hicks wins."
In Cleveland, the race issue was the main issue. One man working against a Negro candidate Carl Stokes said, "If Carl Stokes is elected, then I'll never live to see a Caucasian mayor of Cleveland again."
In Gary, the scene was the same, with different actors. Richard G. Hatcher, the Democratic Negro candidate for mayor, had trouble getting funds from his party because of his race.
The voters felt the race issue there, too.
"Soon as he (Hatcher) gets elected he's gonna kick me out and put some nigger in my job. Pretty soon there'll be niggers running the whole city," a white city worker said.
But these examples are only in the area of politics.
The blacks and white are facing and will continue to face off in other places—the streets, for example. Father James Groppi, a Catholic priest, has led marchers into Milwaukee suburbs to try to gain open housing. An opposing faction, headed by another Catholic priest, Father
Richard F. Witon, marched wherever Groppi's followers appeared. Witon's group carried signs proclaiming "White Power," and shouted slogans such as, "Keep 'em in the inner core; I don't want a jig next door."
Last summer, the backlash showed its ugly face in Chicago. There, Martin Luther King led whites and blacks in to "closed" neighborhoods to try to force open housing. One day, the backlashers threw bricks and bottles at the marchers and shouted such pleasantries as, "We'll kill you niggers if you don't get out." They were also singing a little ditty called "Alabama Trooper," which goes.
"I wish I were an Alabama trooper.
That is what I would truly Like to be;
I wish I were on Al
1 wish I were an Alabama trooper,
Cause then I could kill the niggers,
niggers, Legally."
Another day, the backlaskers found the marchers' cars. Two were pushed into a lagoon, a dozen set afire, and the windows smashed on two dozen more.
One day, the rock-throwing started again. King himself was hit this time. A crowd of 5,000 whites occupied a knoll in the park where the march and demonstration was. The whites waved rebel flags, displayed Nazi insignia, and shouted greetings ("Nigger go home!"). "White Power" was another favorite yell.
About the Chicago scene, King said, "I think, on the whole, I've never seen as much hate and hostility before, and I've been on a lot of marches."
What's ahead in 1968?
Probably more of the same. The Negroes will probably continue to stage marches and demonstrations which will continue to upset the whites. There will be more and more open expressions of resentment. The nation will probably hear more sentiments like, "I'll treat the niggers like my friends when they've earned the right, and not before."