ustxtxb_obs_1957_12_27_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

%_,,z.. …-,,,,,….:.-t\( ——-,A…_4-z. ….o t , ……………. … -11-tQ7– 411dEtgOST r rif ‘i A , , . Lvt ‘4,1.mo t It y , … ,;!it ,4Nt . ‘-“”—-Aggies Defend Corps from ‘Civilian’ Slurs \(On Dec. 12, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s editorial page “Letters From the People” feature carried a letter criticizing a decision by the governing authorities of Texas A&M to return, next year, to compulsory Cadet Corps membership for all but veteran and physically handicapped students. The letter provoked some answers. We pass along excerpts from the I am an Aggie sophomore in the corps at A&M. I graduated from Technical High School in Fort Worth in 1956. On Dec. 12 I was astonished to learn that the Star-Telegram would print anything as false as someone who about our school. Let me explain to you how the Aggies feel about the people who attend our college, but never take part in any of the responsibilities, traditions, and other things which give A&M the name that it has. These people are referred to as the “scroungy non-regs.” They call themselves civilians. The only thing that these nonregs have contributed to our school is a couple of paths across our sacred drill field, which is a memorial to Aggies who have died serving their country. If a man doesn’t even show respect for someone who died so that he might be free, he certainly has no right to attend this school. The purpose of the Cadet Corps is to mould boys into men who can take orders, and give orders, not only in military service but throughout the rest of their lives. I believe our Cadet Corps to be one of the best personnel management courses in the world. Ask an employer who hires an thinks of the man. Isn’t it true that an Aggie can follow orders, that he shows more respect, and that he is more responsible than the average student from another college? A non-reg, or civilian student, at A&M accepts no responsibility while he is here except getting up in time for his morning classes. .. . The most common question in regard to a compulsory corps is “Why does a person have to go through all of that in order to attend A&M?” Every Aggie’s answer is this: Texas University is a very fine academic school, but it doesn’t do anything toward the development of the student’s personality. The non-reg is a leech or a free-loader on the Aggie reputation every time he says “I am an Aggie.” GERALD ROY SPENCER, ’60 Box 7215 College Station Except for the physically handicapped and veterans, Texas A&M will require all entering students to be in the Corps of Cadets next fall. Certain scholastic requirements will have to be ,met for them to remain in the corps. Civilian students or “nonregs,” as they are better known, who can not act as men and remain under military discipline for two years do not deserve to sponge off of the prestige, and respect that true Aggies have built up over the years. Everyone can run down Texas A&M and kick it when it is down, but when the shooting starts it is amazing how quick opinions are reversed. During World War II Texas A&M furnished 14,000 officers, 29 of which were generals. Yet, relatively few of the officers turned out at A&M remain in the service as a career. Texas A&M is not a West Point, but a college where a man can learn to live among and with his fellow men, learn to react under pressure, and obtain a finan cially cheap education that will prepare him to make a living as a citizen of Texas. Of course, you get a certain percentage of men who should not be away from home, much less in college. One thing that every Aggie learns is that A&M may be outscored in athletic competition, but it is never beaten. It 4 that same spirit that can carry an Aggie through his roughest ordeals in life. Aggies are ridiculed as “share croppers,” “c 1 o d hoppers,” and “hayseeds,” but they have something that other schools and their students lack. That “something” is hard to define or pin down but it is commonly known as “spirit.” JAMES B. THOMPSON, ’57 College Station Let me be one Texas Aggie who is 100 per cent in favor of the board of directors’ recent decis OTwenty women of the Dal las County Patriotic Council told the Dallas City Council they had found paintings by communists in the city museum of fine arts. “You told us to come back to the city council any time we found any evidence of communist paintings being supported and encouraged,” Mrs. Robert Fitch told Mayor Bob Thornton. OTexas Methodists said they planned a year-long statewide “Tell Texas About Christ” campaign in 1958. Their goal: “The reaching of every inactive Methodist and unchurched person in the state.” OTexas State AFL-CIO ap pointed a five-man committee on ethical practices for selfpolicing. The members: Jack Blackburn, Texas City; Carl Mattern, Dallas; D a n Quick, Odessa; Lenna Wicks, Houston; and James Sharp, Lubbock. OCity of Corpus Christi was sharply criticized for using tax money in defense of two policemen ordered by a federal court to pay a $5,000 judgment to a man who charged the policemen violated his civil rights in unlawfully arresting him, using unnecessary violence on him, and unlawfully searching him. OWest Texas Chamber of Commerce, A b ilen e, said construction in 67 West Texas cities totaled $370,468,750 in 1957. Walter Sparks, a state Liq uor Control Board agent, was charged with taking two billfolds and the money they contained from two Negroes at Longview. Spark s’s superiors brought the charge. OA $2 million oil well plant will be built at Fort Worth, the Western Co. said. OEarl Rudder quit as land commissioner to be Texas A&M vice-president; DA Bill Alcorn, Brownwood, replaced him. OThe Railroad Commission set January’s allowable at 2.9 million barrels daily on a 12day producing pattern. OState GOP Chairman Thad Hutcheson said growth of his party in. the state is “inevitable.” OGov. Price Daniel praised the holiday safety crusade of the Waco Federation of Women’s Clubs. Marion Hughes of the Texas E m ployment Commission’s Edinburg office said farmers in his area prefer citizen to bracero labor. ion to reinstate compulsory military training for the first two classes at Texas A&M. . . . Let me remind him that A&M became a great institution beginning in 1876 and not in 1954, when compulsory military training was abolished. Being an Aggie is something of which I am extremely proud; and I sincerely believe that no person can have that undying love for his school by being a civilian student at Texas A&M. The Cadet Corps not only “grinds out officers,” as Hefner so aptly put it, but it teaches a man discipline and enables him to take the hard knocks of life along with good fortuneno matter what profession he chooses. A cadet learns that he must rely upon himself and make decisions without falling back upon his parents or someone else. If a man quits because the going gets OGulf Oil Corp. at Oklahoma City is defending itself on a charge of violation of the state corporation commission’s ordea:s on crude purchases. If found in violation, t h e company faces fines totaling $500 million. OSheriff Joe Martin of Webb County died. He had held the office since 1933. O”Americans must work \(to though there will never be a tomorrow and everything must be done tonight,” said Sen. Lyndon Johnson. He warned: “We now face a situation which in some espects is comparable to Pearl Harbor.” OMarshall “Boll W e e v i 1” Lamkin of Luling won a U. S. Supreme Court stay of execution, to Jan. 20. Lamkin, a Negro, was convicted of the murder of Ernest Webb, Jr., a white man. OTarrant County Treasurer Gurley said it “wouldn’t surprise me if two or three people might go fishing if we had an audit” of the county books. OThe Mesquite City Council upheld a city zone commission order denying a building permit to a man planning to erect an upholstering shop next door to a residence. OSan. Antonians approved ur ban renewal by a vote of 2,645 to 663. Urban renewal also won at Mercedes, 192 to 7. OLamar Fleming, Jr., chair man of the board of Anderson, Clayton and Co. of Houston, was named a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Lawyers Note To the Editor: I wish to commend your publication for the unbiased and common sense appeal to Texans on behalf of democratic citizenship … I hope you can publish these questions; perhaps some smart !lawyer can furnish the answers. Can a state remain in a union of states and disregard the national constitution? May any citizen exercise authority to interpret the constitutionality of a Supreme Court order? Can any state profit by rebellion, secession, or mob rule? Should federal authority be a little tough as a cadet, as so many of the “civilian” students have, what will this man do in the future, when again on his own? If a boy prefers to go to a civilian school, that is his privilege, but don’t knock A&M because the civilian aspect is being abolished. Hefner intimates that all students at A&M, except civilians, make poor grades and that all anyone looks for in a man is the grades that he made in college. That is certainly untrue on both counts. The ratio of distinguished students among cadets has been as high through the years as for civilian students. A look around will see Aggies who had some rough going with their studies with the best jobs available. Certainly it is an honor be to a distinguished student, but is that the symbol of a successful education? If it is, woe be unto us for OU. S. Ambassador \(to Mex planned a two-week on-the-spot probe of vice in Mexican border towns. OThree San Antonio police men arrested a 13-year-old girl for stealing pop bottles, discovered she intended to sell them to help her slum-dwelling family, sent her home with a few dollars from their own pockets. Osaid it wants to discontinue two passenger trains between Houston and El Paso. A Railroad Commission hearing on the request is set for Feb. 5, at San Antonio. OThe price of bread in Houston went up two cents a loaf. OTexas Baptists gave a total of $76 million to their church in 1957. OA Texas A&M student group planned a 35-pound rocket launching from Padre Island. ODist. Judge Charles E. Long, at Dallas, permanently enjoined Harry Hoxsey from practicing medicine in Texas. Hoxsey once ran a string of “cancer clinics” across the nation. OHouston’s recent municipal government scandals have prompted this recommendation from a Harris County grand jury: “… It is evident that a change in the form of the city government will be required … A city manager, himself free of political entanglement, will demand and obtain efficient service.” subject to the whims of local authorities? be permitted openly to advocate the overthrow of federal power by armed rebellion and mob violence? ROBERT L. HERSEY 1005 No. Tabor St., Bryan Hmmm To the Editor: Although a careful reader, I somehow missed t h e Dallas Morning News coverage of Senator George Parkhouse’s dealings with National Bankers Life and Robert E. Lee Life \(Observer, 9000 Denton Drive, Dallas mer cadets who aren’t carrying DS cards in our pockets. Far be it from me to question the decision of the board of directors. Incidentally, they seem to have overcome the insurmountable obstacle of being in the Cadet Corps with its “extracurricular activities” by rising to the top of their professions. One is a successful banker and another is the head of a large oil company, to name a few. .. . Rigorous, regimentedyes, the life of a cadet is perhaps not the easiest way out, but it offers the compensation of the added training essential to our survival in these days of crisis and of an intangible surge of feeling so very well expressed by a predecessor of mine who wrote the words, “I’ll always be an Aggie till the day that I die.” DAVID M. BRITT, ’51 Britt Ranch, Wheeler. ORobert Milner, the Houston oil man who heads the White Citizens Council of America in Texas, won dismissal of a