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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (March 10, 1966)
Che Battalion Volume 61 COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 1966 Number 280 grab bag By Glenn Dromgoole A friend of mine struggled in last Friday from his afternoon classes, and muttered something like, “Somebody ought to figure out a way to get rid of these . . . Friday afternoon classes.” “They just take something out of the weekend,” he went on. “By the time they’re over and you have to rest up Friday night, sleep late Saturday and take in a movie Saturday night, the weekend is pretty well gone. “I think you ought to editorial ize for longer weekends,” he ad vised. So, the same minds that cal culated A&M to be a 385-point favorite over TU in the Thanks giving Day football rivalry this year set to work on the problem. Most of the Friday afternoon classes, we concluded, are con ducted at 8 a.m. Tuesday and Thursday and 1 p.m. Friday, and 9 a.m. Tuesday and Thursday and 2 p.m. Friday. By holding hour and a half sessions from 8-9:30 a.m. and 9:30-11 a.m. on Tuesday and Thursday, these Friday p.m. classes would be eliminated. What would happen to the 10 a.m. Tuesday and Thursday and 3 p.m. Monday classes? Well, they would have to be reset for 3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Friday afternoon labs could be moved to vacant Tuesday, Wed nesday and Thursday slots. With that problem out of the way, we thrned our thoughts to ward elimination of all Friday classes. This objective could be best decided, we reckoned, by hour and a half classes every day. Absorb the lunch hour with classes, ex tend the school day to 5:30 p.m. and Fridays could be added to the weekend. Okay, so we have a three-day weekend. Why quit now ? Three hour classes on Tuesday, and a few night classes here and there, and we could begin our weekends on Wednesday night. But why do we need Wednes days? Since we’ve already got three hour classes, why not ex tend this to Mondays, and by Tuesday afternoon or night the weekend would begin. Then by the same shrewd man ipulation, we reduced class sched uling to a fine art. By starting at 7 a.m. on Monday and attending class (without a break) until 10 p.m., a student taking 15 hours and no lab could finish his week in one day. So there’s your long weekend, my friend. Literary Festival Lectures, Movies Begin March 21 The third annual English Literary Festival begins March 21, Dr. John Q. Anderson, head of the Department of English, has announced. This year’s topic will be “En lightened England — Eighteenth Century Literature in the Age of Pope and Johnson.” Dr. Harry P. Kroiter, chair man for the festival, has ar ranged a program of lectures, oral interpretations, movies and exhibits in the Memorial Student Center, Cushing Memorial Li brary and the Academic Building. Lecturers will include Dr. Stewart S. Morgan, Kroiter and Dr. John Paul Abbott, all from A&M’s Department of English, and Dr. Phillip Malone Griffith from Tulane University. Topics range from “Doctrines in Sentimental Drama,” “Dr. Johnson on the Metaphysical Poets,” and “Mighty Conquests and Trivial Things,” to readings from such works as “The Dunci- ad,” “The Spectator,” “The Rape of the Lock,” Fielding’s “Pame la,” “The School for Scandal,” and the “Smiling Sage.” Students Awarded Grants Buck, Kasotvski Win Fellowships Two Texas A&M students are winners of Woodrow Wilson fel lowships. They are Craig Buck, a senior government major from Tyler, and Robert V. Kasowski, a grad uate physics student from Hous ton. William S. Moore, a senior eco nomics major from Houston, won honorable mention. He has been offered a 12-month renewable fel lowship to A&M. Woodrow Wilson Fellows re ceive an academic year of gradu ate education, including tuition and fees, plus a living stipend of $2,000. The awards are made to potential college teachers. Buck, a straight “A” student, is the son of Mrs. Jennie G. Buck, of Tyler. He hopes to study poli tical science at the University of Florida or international relations at Stanford or Columbia. The 22-year old award winner is a campus leader as well as a Distinguished Student. He serv ed as chairman of the 11th Stu dent Conference on National Af fairs in December, is parliamen tarian of the Student Senate and is active in the Young Democrats Club off campus. Buck worked last summer as an intern in Congressman Olin Teague’s office in Washington. He is a graduate of Carthage High School. Kasowski, in his first year of graduate study in physics, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Kasowski of Houston. He was graduated with honors from A&M in January with a bachelor of science degree in physics. The 22-year old student hopes to pursue studies in physics at California Institute of Techno logy or the University of Chicago. Eventually, he aspires to teach physics at the university level in Texas. Kasowski is currently study ing with aid of a University Fel lowship. As an undergraduate he won Opportunity Award and Western Electric scholarships. He was president of the A&M chap ter of Sigma Pi Sigma, a na tional physics honor society, and a member of Phi Kappa Phi, a scholastic fraternity. A Houston high school grad uate, he plans to work this sum mer as a flight analyst for NASA. Engineer Meeting To Draw 700 High School Students Seven hundred high school stu dents will be at Texas A&M Friday for the Junior Engineer ing Technical Society state con ference. An array of speakers is headed by Maj. Gen. Alvin R. Luedecke, USAF (Ret.), deputy director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Tech nology. Luedecke will discuss “Engi neering Education and Its Rela tion to Management,” and nar- g. w. McCullough of the Ranger spacecraft’s ap proach to the moon. His talk to JETS students is set for 3:15 p. m. in the Memorial Student Center Ballroom. Registration for the conference begins at 7 a.m. in Guion Hall. A general assembly at 9:30 a.m. will include greetings by A&M President Earl Rudder and Engineering Dean Fred J. Ben son. A report will follow from the Texas Advisory Committee for JETS by Chairman John S. Bell, Houston area manager of Humble Oil and Refining Com pany. G. W. McCullough, engineering vice president for Phillips Pe troleum Company, will highlight the session with a talk on “The Graduating Engineer Today — Some Opportunities and Respon sibilities.” Competitive tests for high school students will be offered in six divisions. The top three stu dents in each division will re ceive awards. A. H. Meyer, assistant state coordinator for JETS, and Joe Piccolo, senior resident engineer for the Texas Highway Depart ment, Navasota, will speak dur ing a clinic for sponsors and ad visors at 11 a.m. Dr. C. H. Samson Jr., Depart ment of Civil Engineering head, will speak at 1:15 p.m. about “Engineering Concepts and High School Science.” He will be followed by Dr. C. D. Holland, Department of Chemical Engineering head, whose topic is “Engineering Concepts and High School Mathematics. John Groomes, JETS board of directors president, will discuss “Engineering Guidance for Schools” at 4 p.m. in the MSC Ballroom. ALVIN LUEDECKE • 15 ■li! i NEVINS MAKES A POINT famed historian addresses profs. Author Praises Literary Output Of Historians By TOMMY DeFRANK Battalion Managing Editor Contemporary historians are producing as much quality work today as in any period of Amer ican literature. But renowned historifr'’ Allan Nevins believes the verdict is still out on the lasting literary ranking of present-day historians Arthur Sehlesinger Jr., Bar bara Tuchman, Bruce Catton and Samuel Eliot Morison. Nevins reminisced about old friends and past experiences dur- his lengthy career to the College of Liberal Arts faculty in the Chemistry Lecture Room Wed nesday afternoon. “There is as much good history being written today as in any period,” he said. “The volume has been enormously expanded and the best of it is excellent in quality.” Nevins noted, however, that most modern historians have not published sufficiently to be ac curately measured on an all-time yardstick. “Sehlesinger is steadily gaining and is very promising indeed,” he ventured, “and his Kennedy book is much better than (Theodore) Sorenson’s (the late President’s special counsel).” But Nevins took issue with Schlesinger’s completed volumes in his projected series on Frank lin Roosevelt and the New Deal. “They are very partisan and offer only one side of the facts,” he pointed out. “We’ll just have to see how he gets on with the rest.” “They’re certain to be very im pressive,” he added. He praised Mrs. Tuchman’s World War I and pre-war chroni cles, “The Guns of August” and the more recent “The Proud Tow er.” “These two are brilliant,” he continued, “but we must wait awhile to see how she fares in later works.” Bruce Catton’s Civil War ef forts also drew heavy praise, but Nevins said Catton is confined to military history alone. “He is an excellent military historian but unfortunately noth ing more,” he lamented. “But his works are absolutely first-rate.” Often called the dean of living historians, Nevins bestowed that tag on his good friend Morison, who recently published “The Ox ford History of the American People.” “Sam is the greatest living his torian without question,” he said, “and will rank as one of the greatest. I have a great deal of admiration for his works.” Nevins, whose prolific output (30 volumes) has won a passel of awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes for biography, said his torians face a tremendous prob lem in rehashing history into a lively, readable product. “It is important to give the work a central idea, a point often overlooked by today’s winters,” he said. “The writer must also make the people in it come alive as much as possible.” He also told an anecdote about old colleague Walter Lippmann’s lunch with President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge, whom Nevins said looked upon editorial writer Lipp- mann “with juandiced eyes” be cause of the writer’s frequent jabs, sat silently through most of the lunch. Finally Lippmann chose to break the silence and struck up a con versation with Mrs. Coolidge about the dinnerware. She replied that the plates were gifts from President Rutherford Hayes’ wife while the spouses of Presidents Grant and Roose velt had also contributed to the service. Finally Coolidge could stand it no longer and cryptically remark ed, “We didn’t have to buy a thing when we moved in. There was plenty of crockery already here.” Nevins Says Mass Media In Poor Shape By ROBERT SOLOVEY Battalion Staff Writer The present situation of mass media is deplorable but not hopeless, historian-journalist Allan Nevins said Wednesday night in the fifth in a series of University Lectures. Often called the dean of American historians, Nevins questioned whether the mess media was really serving democracy. “We are in the age of mass media, the majority of the people are dominated by it, and so it is important that it serves the arts and the economy,” he. remarked. A former editorial writer for the old New York World, Nevins referred to the United States as a “nation of newspapers” whose support had come from the increased leisure time of our age and the growth of education and thirst for knowledge. He reviewed three of the major media: television, radio and newspapers. “There has been a continuous attack on television, whose quality has deteriorated in the past ten years. Television is today void of controversy or scholarship because it is afraid that it may offend or bore somebody,” he said. “Radio has been accepted with silent content and the newspapers have been under criticism and censure for years,” he continued. He said that newspapers have come under fire because the news they present is sometimes as misleading as it is informative. It has been said that they are too ignorant to present the quality of news needed by a well-educated democracy. He posed two important questions: Is television controlled by advertisers, big business, opinion and the press, and is the press controlled by special interest groups ? “Mass media ought to be battlers for truth. More competition can do the most to promote freedom of the mass media,” he said. He added that each media should be open to all who wish to enter and competition should take place not between big names in each field but between the various fields themselves. He outlined these three fundamental conditions governing mass media: —All must fill an enormous amount of space or time. Espe cially in television and the press there is an unfortunate but un- changable and ridgid time deadline for news or program presentation. —There is a shortage of talent. —The popular vote eventually controls. Nevins claimed most television is tailored to meet “prime time,” or evening audiences, and other hours of the day afford little notice or reward. This has caused frustration among writers and what he termed a vulgarization of programming. “Television is failing our society. It is plagued by two, much- believed myths: that the consumer is getting television free because it is being payed for by advertisers who give out of the goodness of their heart, and that the consumer gets what he wants and gets what is good for him.” He added that in reality programming is merely paid for by increasing consumer prices for the products advertised, and that the consumer really gets what the advertisers want to present; names, programs that appeal to children, the ignorant and the in different. “The three big networks are far from competing in artistic and educational programming,” he noted. He agreed the good programming presented could be termed “the cultural ghetto of Sunday afternoon.” He listed three necessary improvements: stronger Federal Com munications Commission regulation of commercials; more money devoted to educational programs, and a government-owned station, as in Britain, a ‘third program” devoted to artistic values. “Radio is inferior and barren of the content required to be of service,” he said. “Newspapers remain powerful and have a great deal of eco nomic vigor, but they are still not a match for the complications of our age,” he continued. “It was a government mistake to let newspapers own radio or television stations with which they can voice bigoted and one sided opinions over the air.” Popular Banjo Duo Headline Louisiana Hayride March 19 If you’ve ever watched The Beverly Hillbillies on television, no doubt you’ve heard a banjo played the way it was meant to be played. It’s the hard-driving, three fingered style of a pair of rec ording veterans behind the cur rent banjo boom sweeping the nation. They are Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs and the duo will be on campus March 19 for the second annual Louisiana Hayride. Accompanied by the Foggy Mountain Boys, Flatt and Scruggs highlight a star-studded show which includes the sounds of Little Jimmy Dickens, Nat Stuckey, Debbie Day, Archie Campbell and Wilma Burgess. Playing a type of folk music known as the “sound of Ameri cana,” Flatt and Scruggs have entertained audiences from Bev erly Hills to Carnegie Hall, uti lizing concert halls, colleges, state fairs, amusement parks, radio and television. Flatt, a native of Tennessee, grew up singing for local gath erings and community affairs and has performed traditional ballads and folk songs for as long as he can remember. Scruggs began entertaining as a young Carolina banjoist in 1945. It was his style that formed the foundation of the Bluegrass sound. Since uniting, the duo have ap peared on such television shows as the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, Hootenanny, The Tonight Show and Folk Sound-USA and are long-time stars of the Grand Ole Opry. Advance tickets for the G. Rol- lie White attraction cost $2.25 in the reserved section, $1.75 for general admission and $1.25 for students. The sell for 25 cents more at the door. They may be purchased at the Exchange Store, Memorial Stu dent Center Finance Office, Stu dent Publications Office and from the Department of Journa lism. Tickets are also on sale at Jarrott’s in Townshire and in downtown Bryan. Gerlach Orchestra To Play For Junior Ball March 19 The annual Junior Ball featur ing the Ed Gerlach Orchestra is scheduled March 19 in Sbisa Hall. Banquet time will be 6:30 p.m. with the dance following at 8:30. Selection of the Junior Sweet heart will highlight the occasion. Students wishing to make entries must deliver pictures to the Stu dent Programs Office by Satur day. Tickets are on sale in the Stu dent Program Office or from junior class officers for $2 per person to the banquet, $4 per couple for the ball or $7.50 if bought together. Ticket sales end Wednesday. Gerlach, a former cadet at A&M, organized his own band in the Air Force and became mus ical director in the Hal MacIn tyre Band upon his discharge. He later served as director and arranger of the Tex Beneke Band. Known in Houston as “The Name Band of the Southwest,” Gerlach’s orchestra consists of musicians who are former mem bers of such groups as the Glenn Miller, Tex Beneke, Stan Kenton, Tommy Dorsey, Buddy Morrow and Claude Thornhill bands. In a recent contest sponsored by the American Federation of Musicians, the Gerlach Band was selected the top band of the Southwest.