ustxtxb_obs_1960_10_21_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

!! i i.a I l it :, -,*ifit a U. T. RACIAL CHANGE COMES BIT BY BIT serve Negro students, but sometimes they are required to show their blanket-tax, the student activities card. Shops on the Drag are open to them. All University cafeterias are available to them, but they are not allowed to eat as guests in the cafeterias in the women’s dorms. According to Jean Greer, director of women’s housing, Negro girls may visit white girls in their dorm rooms and lounges. Professional organizations such as home economics clubs and scientific societies have Negro members. ROTC is completely integrated, including bands and drill squads. There is token integration in three private living units: the YMCA, the Christian Faith and Life Community, and Campus Guild, a men’s co-op. Negroes are also welcome in Y activities. Appointive jobs in student government and student union’ activities are made by the students in charge, theoretically without discrimination, but few Negro students participate. Churches and student religious groups have attracted a number of Negroes. One Negro has written a jazz column for the Daily Texan, the student newspaper. On the other hand, University housing is segregated. Negro girls live separately in a renovated house at 2500 Whitis, across the street from the white girls’ dormitories. A few doors down the street is Almetris Co-op, a house for Negro girls. Negro men live in a wooden dorm on San Jacinto and, just this year, in one section of Brackenridge Hall, a dormitory for white men. Many Negro students of both sexes live in Negro sections of the city, especially in the East Side. There is a strict ban on Negro participation in varsity sports. It is not quite clear whether continuation of this policy is being most encouraged by the administration, the regents, or the athletic department, but it is known that the athletic department does not welcome any change at the moment. Texas teams often play integrated teams, however, in all sports, both in Austin and away. Most restaurants in the campus area and elsewhere refuse to serve Negro students, creating something of a problem for them on Sundays when University cafeterias are closed. Both movies on The exception to the rule is worth all the pain and expense that \\it causes.” In a recent speech to a downtown club, Ransom brushed off ivory-tower talk”Let us not discuss the University of Utopia, then, but the University of Texas, which comes earlier in the alphabet”and sided with attention to student individuality against a system of channels for students fitting categories. Letting everyone graduating from high school into the state university would lead to “weeding out,” neglects the values of counseling, and ignores wastes of time, money, and powers, he said. On the other hand, initial selection, of “top students” for university education assumes the college population is “an intellectual elite,” neglects the potencies of counseling, and limits or postpones opportunity for “the highly motivated but poorly prepared student.” Texas has generally rejected both these policies, he said. assists the student, “assumes that different disciplines require different abilities,” “emphasizes the individual student,” acknowledges “the Drag”the Varsity, an Interstate Theater, and the Texas, a “fine-arts” theater in the TransTexas chain, remain closed to Negroes. No white barber shops in the area will serve Negro students. Honorary student organizations claim to be non-discriminatory in their selection policies, but so far no Negro has been invited to join Cowboys and Silver Spursthe two men’s service groups or Orange Jackets and Spooks, the women’s service honoraries. All four choose members mostly on the basis of participation in campus affairs. Spooks’ by-laws stipulate the tapping of three girls a year from each sorority, but as yet no girls from the two Negro sororities have been invited. An outstanding Negro student was nominated by Silver Spurs last year, but there was strong feeling in the group against bringing in a Negro at that time, and he failed to be elected by two votes. Friars, the highest men’s honorary, also has not yet selected a Negro. No Negro student has been elected to the student assembly or to any elective student government position. Campus politicians, however, realize there is an informal “Negro bloc” in voting. Many student candidates and the one student political party include “equal rights” planks in their platforms. Negroes are taking part in various talent shows on the campus. It is a regents’ policy that no Negro may play a lead role in a drama department production, chairman Loren Winship said. A source in the fine arts department who wished to remain unidentified reported Negroes have been in the symphonic band and in the choral group since the beginning. Asked about operas, he said, “We have no Negro singers who are voice majors.” Members of the Longhorn band are chosen on the basis of an audition and “sound academic standing,” band director Vincent Di Nino said. “So far we’ve had seven colored students who have talked with us,” but none passed the requirements, he said. Di Nino said there would be no discrimination against Negro applicants. He added, “We may be tied to the athletic department on this.” With rare exceptions, the Negro student has not been “socially accepted” by white students. The that the state university is “not a mere intellectual acropolis from which a slow-marching student must be diverted in his climb toward knowledge. “The University of Texas has believed and still believes,” Ransom said, “that there are different routes and different paces in this climb. It is determined to keep the paths cleared for every student capable of ‘reaching the top.” Not an ‘Elite’ Ransom’s phrase, “the poorlyprepared student,” suggests the question, Where would he guide the poorly-endowed ‘student? He does not like the term. “Climbing to the acropolis they may get there on their knees, but by golly a lot of ’em get there. That’s anti-California, I might say,” he says. He recalls one student he had who had made all F’s his first semester, all B’s his second, and straight A’s thereafter through professional school, and is now a top young man in his profession. “It took him time to adjust to the noise and cubic footage of the University.” Does not the Ransom course justify mediocre students continu huge Greek system of fraternities and sororities, around which much organized social life centers, has remained almost aloof from the Negroes. Invitation’s extended Negroes for private social functions by white students are rare. There are two Negro sororities and one Negro fraternity with small memberships and without lodge houses. They do not belong to the InterFraternity Council or Pan-Hellenic, the sorority council, and under present rules on membership in these organizations based on membership in the national IFC and Pan-Hellenic groupsthey are not eligible. Many national fraternities and sororities with University chapters have “restrictive clauses” on membership: some forbid the pledging of Jews, some of Negroes. Some nationals have abolished such clauses, but the Greek system ‘at Texas is solidy segregated on membership. ‘A High Price’ The most common complaints voiced by Negro students concern segregated housing, the ban on Negroes’ playing on varsity athletic, teams, and the lack of genuine comradeship with white students. They feel a very strong sense of exclusion. Time and again they told the reporter, in effect: “We do not feel a part of the University, the way students should when they go to college.” Bettye McAdams, a second-year law student, came to the University in 1956 as a member of the first integrated freshman class in the school’s history. “I don’t feel there’s been any real progress toward integration,” she said, “no good-faith effort made in any direction. “But I don’t want to denounce the whole thing,” she said. “As Negroes being able to take Donald and being treated by them fairly, just like any other student, we’re fortunate. But there are very few students or instructors like this.” Most of them, she said, either “roll out the red carpet too much” and embarrass the Negro student, or ignore him altogether. “The great bulk of the students choose to ignore us. Some seem to think it a novelty \\ to have Negro friends, and make you always feel you are on display. Then ing, thus slowing up the pace in the classrooms? “It ‘obviously does noteither in the good or the bad sense produce this intellectual elite which, many universities would like to produce,” he responded. Something is lost for the good student professor interplay, he also allowed, but if learning by “a slow comer” is also a vivid experience, the system results in “one of the most exciting experiences in state universities.” Private colleges may not want to do such work, he said. “I think it’s the obligation of the state university to do so.” gives students three chances, not one: warning and probation after a first not-passing; after the second, the student’s withdrawal and an interim period; then, the third chance on re-entry. “The final decision,” Ransom said, “ought to be not simply based on grades and rules of thumb, but on academic advising and individual counseling. I don’t just want to say, ‘You made 59 instead of 60, go away.’ This imposes on the state’s personnel and timebut that’s what we’re here for.” R.D. there’s the one percent who take you sincerely as a friend. The subject of race never comes up. This kind of thing is a real treasure, believe me. And the ones who will dare have Negro friends in a sincere way pay a very high price they’re excommunicated from any social groups. “There are some students,” she said, “willing to take the first steps in making friendships, but a great many things rub you the wrong way. For instance, one white student told me, ‘the bulk of Negro people are immoral, but you’re an exception.’ A white girl who had been friendly with me for a while in my first year once told me how Negro men want to go to state universities because they want to marry white girls. A lot of little things like that. Judy Horton “There seems to be almost a calculated attempt here,” she continued, “to cut off Negro students from any kind of social contact with whiteseven to the point of its being taboo to study with a white girl in one of the dorms.” Bettye said she joined several clubs her first year. “They took my money and gave me a membership card, but that was about it. Nobody invited me over for coffee or to the dorm. So pretty soon you get the message.” Some of her most unpleasant experiences have been in law school, she said, “which surprised me, I thought it would be a liberal place.” In the mornings the white women students usually take a coffee break. “Many times I would be sitting in the lounge when a number of other girls were there,” she said, “and some girl would come in and invite the others ‘by name to come have coffee. They never asked me.” She said most Negro students “resent” having to show their blanket taxes when they go to the few integrated restaurants on the Drag. “One time some of us took a number of kids from other \(Netaurants. They were asked to show their blanket-taxes, and when they couldn’t, we all had to leave. We were all embarrassed. “Whenever anything comes up about Negro rights at the University,” she said, “they \(the adminard answer: they always mention the legislature. I once asked a man, why Idon’t you call their bluff sometime? They always apologize and say, this isn’t my policy, it’s someone else’s policy, and we go round and round in circles.” ‘Doubly Difficult’ Carolyn Mims is a senior from Houston majoring in art. She lives in Almetris Co-op. She thinks there has been “some intangible progress. I notice a change in general attitude this year,” she said. “People seem more relaxed. I don’t know if it’s Kennedy and Nixon’s endorsement of Negro rights, or the sitins, or the general movement toward civil rights, but something’s different this year. “In the more tangible ways, it’s different, of course.” She mentioned housing, ‘segregation in most restaurants in the campus, area, and segregation in intercollegiate sports. She considers the exclusion of Negro students from varsity teams “frustrating and disgusting.” The use of Negroes “would help attitudes’ a lot,” she said. She has always found students and teachers friendly and courteous. “There are always a few nice ones aroundeven my freshman year, when everything was miserable for me. “The first year is always difficult for a student. It’s double difficult when you feel people aren’t going to accept you as an individual. “As it is now,” she said, “we concentrate on the classroom but this isn’t all there is to education. Quite a part of education is outside the classroom, in contacts with people. My first year we were living on the Eagt Side, 4ad that was horrible. We had such a long way to get to the campus.” For entertainment Carolyn said she goes to the student union mainly, to movies and dances. On dates she goes also to the union or to University functions like concerts and plays in Gregory Gym. Her sorority, she said, always has difficulty finding a place to give a party or social function. The group has no sorority house. “It mosts $50 to rent the union ballroom, which is about the only place around the University. Other sororities are able to pay that, but we aren’t. We usually have to give our party on the ‘East Side.” Her teachers in the art department, she said, are “very fair and open-minded.” Has she been invited in her first three years to get-togethers or dorms by white girls? “I’ve been invited to a dorm room once, I think once,” she said. There have been no invitations to socials. She attends the University Methodist Church, along with ten or fifteen other Negro students. Why isn’t there more participation by Negro students in student _government? She explains, “There was a Negro boy who ran for student assembly from arts and sciences. He had a good academic record and lived in the \(Faith