ustxtxb_obs_1970_08_07_50_00023-00000_000.pdf

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Box 1248 Corpus Christi, Tex 7840, Erwin’s destroying UT pound. He loved the land and the grass and life and hated drought and suffering. He gave me a horse, Pinto, when I was a kid and taught me how to ride. I rode Pinto -eback and without a bridle through the astures. I fed the cattle after school and loved to watch them grow. This was a fine father represented the best of it. He had a kindness that only a man associated with the land and cattle and horses can have. He talked about judgment and he made sense. But I remember as well the racism and glorification of money and athletics almost to the exclusion of ideas in school. I remember the minor war I carried on in order to read For Whom the Bell Tolls in study hall despite the interruptions and harassments of teachers and students who apparently were not Hemingway fans. And I remember the religious bigotry. I went to fundamentalist revivals and rededicated my life more than once out of fear and, worse, boredom. The last time it was a real plot; I was seated in the front row and the preacher came down front and pointed at me and said, “You’re not saved,” and we’d still be there if I hadn’t gone forward. I haven’t been back since. And I remember the sense of something lacking I don’t want to say culture, but that’s close \(Lash LaRue and John Wayne can’t last a man a lifetime; nor for that matter can Butch Cassidy and the iomehow this background produces exas of 1970 with its anti-intellectualism and hostility to the academic world, and its legislature, and its political leadership. At the Bowie drive-in this summer Midnight Cowboy was showing, and I heard several Bowieites downtown declaring their unwillingness to see the movie because they “knew what it was about.” They obviously did not, and I wondered how many things they judged like that. Too damn many, obviously. Easy Rider was coming to the downtown Majestic soon, and, judging from comments about its arrival, I knew that anybody in attendance was going to be suspected of subversion and probably sodomy forever. I found myself cynically hoping that Z never got there. Bowie, you mix up the panic at my sideburns and suspected religious non-fundamentalism and not-to-be-mentioned-in-polite-company attitude toward blacks, and the jubilation at Yarborough’s defeat, and the refusal to go see Midnight Cowboy, and the hostility to students, and general distrust of the mind and you get Lloyd Bentsen and ole Preston and university boards of regents ’10 think that Suetonius is somebody in a nnny Cash song and that college teachers are “hired hands” who must be taught their place and proper reverence for the depletion allowance. And Illinois beckons. But I won’t forget riding Pinto and my dad talking about judgment. Come back, Jimmy Allred! Austin In the meeting during which Chairman Erwin told John Silber to quit or he would be fired, Erwin is quoted as saying: “John, you’re the most intelligent, articulate, and hard-working man at this university. Because of these qualities, you make some people in the higher echelons nervous.” Erwin has said many outrageous things during his despotic tenure on the University of Texas Board of Regents, but in his remark to Silber, he reached the pinnacle of callous power mongering. The UT faculty was deeply shaken by the firing of Dr. Silber. Professors, like students, have been left by Chairman Erwin with few legitimate means to express their grieyances. With a feeling of frustration and impotence many important members of the faculty have threatened to resign. Erwin has answered these threats by saying, “If any person employed by the university wishes to resign, all he need do is quit playing games in the newspapers and submit his written resignation to the president of UT-Austin and I am sure his resignation will be promptly accepted.” One is forced to conclude that Chairman Erwin is officiating at the calculated destruction of the center of higher Reflections education in this state. The ramifications of the destruction of the University of Texas would be felt far beyond the Forty Acres. If academic ideals are ignored at the state’s best university, the educational climate at the lesser institutions will be even worse. The Observer often is criticized for what some readers feel is inordinate attention to happenings at UT-Austin. I think that criticism is unjustified. In the fall, 42,000 of the state’s best students will come to the University of Texas because it is the heartland of higher education in Texas. Within a generation, these UT-educated Texans will comprise the leadership of the state. Frank Erwin is jeopardizing not just a university. He is jeopardizing our future. There are eight other men on the UT Board of Regents. During The Chairman’s reign \(Erwin really is known as “The August 7, 1970 23