ustxtxb_obs_1964_08_21_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

ward for to visit Nannie and Grandad. And here am I: jobless by choice, not even a Jaycee, possessed of a fine new set of radical-looking muttonchop whiskers, with bumper stickers on my car advertising the wisdom of re-electing Senator Yarborough and snidely backing Goldwater In 1864. More, the author of a heretic-filled book soon to appear, which stomps on the sensitive toes of the Old South and hoots and dances in favor of radical integration, and goes so far as to make fun of bankers and Rotary clubs and newspapers and J. Edgar Hoover and speaks, additionally, of S-E-X in approving tones. I tell yew, a body is not safe in his bed. Shave I the chin whiskers, rip off the stickers, troop dutifully down to buy the local Reporter Telegram \(“The Best In there to goggle at stirring editorials welcoming Visiting Lions and congratulating the merchants on another rip-snorting, money coining, progress on the march $Dollar Day$? Or shall I skulk about the city in nocturnal shadows, paying surreptitious call on Reagan Legg and Dallas Willis and a few other folks in whom the human juices have not yet dried and withered? Or, shall I rush in where angels fear to tread: bristling chin whiskers and barking at the moon, spitting defiance and rattling staid old walls with mad hootings, saying: “I am come home, Midland. I am come the bearer of face beard, habitual voter for Democrats, prodigal son of Liberal persuasion, and embarassing statistic to the Administration each month when it grimly totes up the unemployed.” Once I was secure in my little cocoon, content to grin the .working politician’s great, practiced glee; whooping for Prayer In The Schools, damning Jimmy Hoffa, puckering my forehead in Sincere Concern over Constitutional conflict in the Public Accommodations section of that law, properly suspicious of Federal aid and the gubernatorial reign of Price Daniel. Made welcome at country clubs, beloved by moderates and jellyfish-spines and cuddled snugly against the gray flannel bosoms of all beholden to The Establishment. Now I am ruint and spoilt and flawed and gone to seed. And must go Home again. Howdja git us in this mess, Billie Lee? 1:] North Texas State: Consensus Without Community George W. Linden Edwardsville, Ill. No doubt, as some of your readers have suggested, Bob Goedecke writes from a well-tuned ego [“My Resignation Under Duress from S.M.U.,” Obs. June 12]. Nevertheless, he did recapture some of the spirit of S.M.U. My one overwhelming impression when I walked across the S.M.U. campus was: Nothing happens here. But Goedecke was wrong when he said S.M.U. was like Denton. It wasn’t. Denton was different. And for a few glorious years, everything happened there. Of course there were basic similarities between North Texas State University and S.M.U. Both rested on the normal Texas basis of higher education, a conjunction of need and uneasy money; both had regents dominated by Dallas banking interests; both had architecture beyond belief. But aside from these things. they were totally unlike in style. N.T. was a swinging school. I shall refer to North Texas as N.T. because it’s shorter, and the word “university” in the name is not a description of fact, but an assertion of wild surmise by some Texas legislator. We are a P.R. nation. It is a fundamental American belief that one must be concerned with his reputation, and in Texas this is not only a belief, but also an obsession. It was normal, then, for S.M.U. to be concerned about creating good publicity and avoiding bad, but the administration of N.T. was abnormal: it had a paranoid fear of any publicity, whether good or bad. While S.M.U. George W. Linden was head of the philosophy department at North Texas State University in Denton from 1956 to 1962. He is now chairman of philosophy of Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, tried to attain status, N.T. tried to retain quo. This terror concerning publicity of any kind forged a power axiom of a new type: At N.T. nothing failed like success. Now to be concerned with one’s image in the gaze of another is an early stage in rudimentary awareness; it reveals a sensitivity to one’s environment. Perhaps many things might be said of the administration of N.T., but no one would accuse it of exhibiting intelligence. Keep a burning candle under a pail long enough and you smother it. That’s what happened at N.T. The years 1957-’62 were a sad story of the transformation of censorship and power. Over a five year span, N.T. degenerated in style from benevolent to brutally coercive paternalism. In the beginning, the administration would send the faculty notices of football games and tell them to remind students to wear sweaters, for the weather forecast was chilly. The emphasis was on teaching, not research, and the prevailing attitude was that students should be coddled and fed information. No wonder some of the Chicago graduates on the faculty were looked at askance when they suggested that students should not be fed but cooked. Independent student movements were discouraged and maximum support was given to local sororities and fraternities. Fraternities, of course, are merely organized forms of immorality designed for those who have neither the vision nor the courage to bear guilt individually, but they do serve the useful function of prolonging adolescence. Things went easy at N.T. True, all faculty had to work as clerks on registration and were forced to sign yellow-dog contracts demanding that they render a set percentage of their pay, which was in turn donated to such worthy organizations as the Boy Scouts and the Denton chamber of commerce. True, faculty were treated as employees. True, there was no faculty participation in policy, and Sabbaticals were regarded as some weird type of Jewish holiday. True, nothing was printed in the school paper without prior approval from the top. True, the hungry students were neglected, since the faculty bore onerous teaching loads. But these were minor annoyances and one could pass them off as local color. They even enhanced the “pioneering spirit.” On its own, the faculty was generally free to create, to speak, and to act. IN 1957 the rhythm of power began to shift. Somehow Philosophy was unimportant enough to merit pressure at first. The first troubles came with the artists. N.T. had one of the best music schools in the South; maybe the best. The jazz band had been notoriously successful, winning two national championships in a row. Such success could not last.The dean of the school of music and the leader of the jazz band left. Most of the band went too. Ed Summerlin’s jazz service for the Methodist church was successful on tour and became the basis of a national television special. However, Ed was told that the name of the school should not be associated with his work. He left. Another area was showing unusual success: creative writing. Larry McMurtry and others not only won all the school prizes in creative writing but had published some minor works. Unfortunately, they also published an independent literary August 21, 1964 7