ustxtxb_obs_1967_04_28_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

saying to another one that he bet a school drop-out had written it. In his discussions with the administration, Gorden is known to have contended that campus dialogue about controversial issues affirms belief in the democratic process. He has alluded to what he said was the lesson learned by some members of the U.S. Information Agency that the credibility of the country is not enhanced by carefully managed news. He has said he was disappointed that the students who were making the tape did not handle data better and did not reason closely enough, but that they did illustrate how some students think about sex, and they didn’t use any obscene words. He has argued that the disturbance was caused by their colloquial language and their enthusiasm for sex contrary to prevailing mores. A university could respond with a faculty discussion, but to cancel the discussions destroys faith, Gorden said, in educated people dealing forthrightly with ideas. He’ has also taken the position, the Observer is informed, that the restriction of his students’ discussion to the classroom deprives them of valuable learning experiences, alienates them, retreats from faith in dialogue, and puts the college in a position of defending controlled speech. The college could fight off moralizing legislators or public vigilantes, he has said, if the faculty and administration would unite in defense of freedom of expression. ON MARCH 30, the Rev. John A. Hurd, Jr., chairman of the academic freedom committee of the Central Texas A.C.L.U., and George Schatzki, a U.T. law professor who is chapter president, wrote to Gorden that on the basis of their information about the restrictions placed bn him, “issues both of academic freedom and of free speech are involved, and \\Ve want to assure you of our immediate and continuing interest in this case.” Finally, on March 31, McCrocklin, two vice presidents, Abernathy, and Gorden met. McCrocklin questioned Gorden on how he conducts his classes. The college president raised the matter of the word written on the blackboard, saying it wasn’t their usual custom, but they had called in students and found that it hadn’t been spelled with an “o,” but with a “u.” McCrocklin is represented as having said he had had to defend Gorden a number of times. McCrocklin mentioned the teaching of atheism; it would be within Gorden’s code of teaching that he advance his own views on religion, which are skeptical. In this context McCrocklin also mentioned that Gorden had spoken before a local school board meeting. McCrocklin said that despite complaints he has received about Gorden, Gorden had been approved for promotion to full professor, but now this promotion was suspended, and the investigating committee was appointed. Abernathy obtained McCrocklin’s agreement that discussions by the students could go beyond the classroom if they were responsible and in good taste; subsequently Abernathy and Gorden came to a verbal understanding about this, but ambiguity was of course inherent in the situation. McCrocklin would not discuss on the record the subjects of atheism, the word on the blackboard, and Gorden’s testimony before the school board, except emphatically to say that nothing was brought up in the meeting that was intended as a reason for the suspension of Gorden’s promotion, except the tape. McCrocklin said he asked Gorden whether, if he, Gorden, were McCrocklin, he would have released the tape. Gorden re S TUDENT EDITOR Sparkman, a senior journalism student from Beeville, said that he heard about the cancellation of the radio program, but the journalism secretary, Mrs. Lillian Dees, “called me and told me that if I ran anythinganythingon it, I’d be fired. She said Dr. Hinton said it.” Dr. Billy J. Hinton is one of the deans. The student paper, a weekly, is printed at the San Marcos Record. When Sparkman was there closing out the next issue, he said, Kenneth Casstevens, a member of the journalism faculty, “came down to see if we were running anything on the story. He said that Dr. Hinton didn’t want us to.” Nothing was run., The next week, however, Sparkman called on McCrocklin, who, Sparkman said, had the tape played to him, said it was in bad taste, and with regard to suspending Gorden’s promotion, “made it sound like it was all the normal thing to do.” Sparkman said he told McCrocklin that he was worried, that “my staff was real upset about it. . . . I told him I was afraid there would be a hell of a big stink about it, trying to keep it out of the paper.” McCrocklin responded, Sparkman said, that he was free to publicize the case, and that what had happened had been due to a misunderstandingthat he, McCrocklin, had told Hinton to go and freeze the tape, but not to stop publication of the news in the student paper. McCrocklin supposed that Hinton had set about to freeze the tape, and “He might have said there ought not to be any further releases.” As for what McCrocklin told Sparkman, McCrocklin said, “I said, look, he could print anything he wished to print as long as it was the truth and that if anybody told him anything to the contrary, it was false.” \(This raised a related issue, which the Observer then discussed with McCrocklin. Sparkman had alluded to “the Johnson restriction,” saying that upon his, Sparkman’s, election as student editor, the journalism chairman told him that he and plied that he supposed he would not, if he was the person who McCrocklin is. Well, all right, McCrocklin retorted to Gorden: would you have released the tape? Gorden said he would have. As McCrocklin recalled it, Gorden said he guessed he would have to, or something to that effect. McCrocklin said he asked Gorden if he had anything else he wanted to say and that Gorden said he did not. Gorden, of course, had presented the aformentioned arguments in the earlier meetings with officials of the college. Thinking things over, on Tuesday, April 11, contrary to Hurd’s urging, Gorden turned in his resignation. the paper were prohibited from editorializing on any of President Johnson’s policies. Told of Sparkman’s instruction from the journalism chairman, McCrocklin appeared surprised, and a vice president of the college who was sitting in on the interview appeared absolutely astonished. McCrocklin said perhaps they had better have the committee on the Gorden STAN REED, an instructor in speech who is leavinglike Gorden, he has no job lined up elsewhere, but is leaving anywaywrote a letter to the student paper protesting the makeup of McCrocklin’s investigating committee, and in the issue of last Friday the paper printed it, along with a front-page story written by the journalism laboratory supervisor, a senior journalism student, giving the committee’s answer to Reed’s points. \(Sparkman said the answering story was written when he was out of town and he did not realize in advance of its publication that it had come into being in reReed’s main point was that “the appointment of administrators [primarily] by administration is not good practice and actually is suspect” as a means of investigating a college administration’s charges against a faculty member. The instructor wrote that “a group should be appointed from the faculty, with the consent of the faculty. . . .” McCrocklin’s committee is made up of Dr. Everette Swinney, associate professor of history and chairman of the committee; Dr. Robert Walts, chairman of the English Department; and Dr. Hugh Meredith, chairman of the Department of Romance Languages. Swinney has been acting chairman of his department. Together they are the present and the two immediate past-presidents of the Faculty Senate, a group smaller than the general faculty. In the course of her story, the journalism lab supervisor wrote, “All three [corn April 28, 1967 3 Some Questions About The Student Newspaper