KANSAN COMMENT
Feeding the Army
KU is feeding Nixon's Army.
Feeding it 22-year-old second lieutenants straight out of ROTC. University-trained leaders leading 19-year-old boys into Cambodia to get their heads blown off.
That's KU's contribution to the war effort.
After all the moratoriums. After all the strikes. After all the protesting has been disregarded, KU grads will still be leading boys into battle.
Is the university really the center of the nation's conscience?
If it is, then students had better do a little house-cleaning. And the ROTC program should be swept out first. It can't be hidden, by integrating the courses into other departments of the University.
Nixon decides to invade Cambodia and the students ask, "Why does the Senate let him get away with it?"
But Nixon has been using KU's campus as a training ground for his army. Why do the students let him get away with it? Why do the faculty and administration let him get away with it?
Is it because we have to have an army? And since we do, it's better if the officers have well-rounded educations?
Military men are tools. What benefit is a well-rounded education for a lieutenant in Indo-China? A battle is a very primitive situation. A man either kills or gets killed. And either way he loses.
But KU spends four years giving each ROTC cadet a liberal background. Then the army gives him a commission and reduces him to an animal. An animal attached to Mr. Nixon's leash.
At Kent State, four students died because they recognized the hypocrisy of ROTC on their campus.
But dying in a fight against ROTC is as senseless as dying in a fight against the Viet Cong. It's not necessary. If enough students unite, ROTC can be eliminated completely—without violence.
Because violence is as unnecessary as ROTC. But then they're really the same thing, aren't they?
Joe Naas
hearing voices—
To the editor:
After reading Mr. Naas' illogical diatribe on "Evening the Odds," I am convinced the singular qualification an editorial editor for the UDK must possess is the ability to lift statements out of context, twist them as he wishes, attack them with misdefined concepts, and finally reject them with a fallacious conclusion.
Mr. Naas shows what a master he is early in his editorial when he states, "And the theme of Harambee, Frizzell said, is that blacks must arm themselves. So that is sedition." Well, as most everyone who can read anything other than UDK editorials knows, that is only part of what Attorney General Frizzell said. He also stated that the Harambee analyzed the effectiveness of certain firearms for killing policemen, and urged, "Before the pigs seize you we must move from resistance to aggression, from revolt to revolution." That, Mr. Naas, is not evening the odds, that is not self defense. That is sedition (look it up in your Funk and Wagnall sometime).
Mr. Naas then makes the brilliant statement that "freedom vanished when the National Guard and Highway Patrol entered the town bearing guns." Wrong again. Freedom vanished to fire bomb the Student Union and Lawrence when senseless people took it upon themselves High School Administration building, set fire to the Military Science building, and burn a furniture store in downtown Lawrence. That's when freedom vanished—but then maybe that was someone else's freedom, not yours.
Next we hear that "The people of Lawrence had no power to resist." That is, no power except for fire bombs, thin wire strung head-high between buildings, various clever booby traps, and snipers' bullets for policemen and firemen. And to resist what? The inconvenience of being forced to do something like study at home rather than getting three nights of "relevant" education hanging around the Rock Chalk?
The choice quote of the entire editorial, however, has to be: "When people begin to act, their rights are nullified and troops are sent in to make sure there is no reaction." Yes, Mr. Naas, when people begin to act (i.e., to fire bomb, damage private and public property, shoot at
firemen and policemen), troops are sent in to nullify their 'right' to do those things.
Mr. Naas predictably concludes that the curfew enforcement showed that "Harambee's plea was extremely relevant." Now there is a very stylish, catch-all word—"relevant." If you can find no logical basis of support for your position, simply explain that it is "relevant" and everyone can accept it. But how Harambee's plea is relevant to anything escapes me. Does this mean that if people had followed the advice given in the Harambee they would then have been able to "defend" themselves by shooting it out with the policemen and National Guardsmen? Taking arms to obtain an equalization of power is not the answer and never will be the answer to the problems of the blacks or anyone else in this country. On the contrary, pleas such as those in the Harambee are irrelevant toward achieving any solution.
Mr. Naas, somewhere you missed your calling.
Rick Lucas Lakin graduate student
To the editor:
In view of the event, any statement regarding the Kent affair would be both understatement and inappropriate.
A guardsman, quoted by the L.A. Times-Washington Post Service in The Topeka Daily Capital said, "We've got a democratic society. . .." A democratic society in which unarmed, young civilians are killed by inadequately trained, part-time security guards? Four young people might still be living had the guard been limited to protection of buildings or completely eliminated.
I request the entire campus community to quickly establish an emergency, volunteer, unarmed, student peace force to self-contain our own problems rather than patrolling caravans of armed troops in the event of another campus crisis.
I am sick of this ignorance that kills.
I do not want to see a young woman dead at my feet.
Barry L. Miller Wichita freshman
'I wish it could be more but we're so busy fighting for self-determination in Southeast Asia.'
Others on issues
This column is made available periodically for campus leaders to discuss current issues.
By GUS diZEREGA
(Ed. note—Gus diZerega is a former student senator, still active in campus politics.)
Nixon's escalation of the war into Cambodia and the murdering of four students in Ohio has amply proven the nature of the Amerikan government. Like all states, the Amerikan government rests ultimately upon bayonets, not consent. We shall see more of this in the weeks and months to come.
Tomorrow we will begin a strike in coordination with our brothers and sisters across the nation. And then what?
Many of us in frustration have developed the attitude of "OK, you'll win in the end but we'll take as many of you as possible with us before we go." I sympathize with this feeling, but it will eventually end in defeat and martyrdom—not exactly what we are after. Also, once we take on the role of brave and noble martyr we cease to be interested in talking to those people who have yet to develop a radical outlook. It is then that elitism, authoritarianism, and manipulation make their appearance within our ranks. Yet ironically it is just these tendencies we abhor in Amerika. There will be martyrs enough without looking for it.
So, OK, we're frustrated, what do we do, where do we go from here? Violence can either build support around an issue and consequently be progressive or it can be a nihilistic lashing out more in fury than in thought. The distinction is vital for the latter will lead to defeat while the former is a necessary tool for victory. Of late there has been some of the former and quite a bit of the latter.
We must cease to be only a campus movement. The campuses are vital and we must increase our influence in them, but many of the people we contemptuously call "crackers" or "rednecks" are screwed by the system worse than we are. We are rebels because we have the affluence, security, and time to sit back and ruminate on how sick our society is. Others are also oppressed but don't have time to sit back and philopozize. They must work in order to make ends meet or in order to stay solvent, consequently they blame those different from themselves for their troubles. Only a truly secure man can be truly tolerant.
Rather than defeatist revolutionary romanticizing, our job is to convince people that the solution of their problems lies in their taking control over their own lives, local power over state power and personal power over local power.
Longhairs and blacks aren't responsible for inflation, high taxes, war, and corporate manipulation, but until we can demonstrate this, we will eventually lose. We and not the State are the natural allies of those oppressed by the system, but little effort has been made to demonstrate that fact.
Dig it and dig it good. Two hundred and forty rednecks were ready to march on our turf during curfew. If we don't communicate with them, are we going to build the ovens for them after the revolution—or are they going to build the ovens for us?
CREATED BY © 1970
ED OAKLEY
S.C. WILSON
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