ustxtxb_obs_1970_09_04_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

QUOTATIONS from CHAIRMAN FRANK Frank, this will make you famous! $1.25. Sold in bookstores across Texas, in campus stores, and in the Texas Observer Bookstore Available by mail, wholesale and retail. Write or phone P. O. Box 12636 Capitol Station Austin, Texas 78711 Phone 512 476-7053 The Catalyst wins its suit By Dale E. Pontius and Theodore J. Taylor Lubbock Texas Tech University, nestled in the middle of a friendly, churchy, “Lucky Me I Live in Lubbock” atmosphere, for the most part has been spared from protest from the student body. The student population of 19,000 still comes primarily from West Texas, and an abundance of cowboy boots and hats is still seen on the campus. In recent years, however, the various colleges in the university related to the social sciences and humanities have been Mr. Pontius is past president of the Lubbock chapter of the ACLU and chairman of the chapter’s legal committee. Mr. Taylor, also a past president of the Lubbock ACLU, is an assistant professor of economics at Tech. 14 The Texas Observer growing, and Tech now boasts of graduate programs in all the humanities, and of new schools of law and medicine. With this diversification, Tech’s student body is slowly being transformed, and with this transformation it seems as if there is no longer a “safe” campus in Texas to which one can send a youngster and feel reasonably certain he won’t be exposed to the true educational process, including the movement and its assorted vices. Students at Tech are becoming more aware of issues which vitally affect their lives but over which they have no control or influence. In this past year, with the installation of synthetic turf on the football field, completion of plans for a new athletes’ dormitory, hiring of a new football coach, and the performance of the Coaches’ All-American football game \(Tech still harbors faint dreams of achieving football parity with the University of campus a bitter controversy over the proposed change in the name of the university, the activities of the October and November Moratoriums, voter registration efforts, and the publication of an underground student newspaper, The Catalyst. Even the usually placid University IN AN EFFORT to restore the sale of the paper to the campus, Catalyst staffers John Fletcher and John Hughes met with Tech administrators, including President Grover E. Murray and others. When no relief was forthcoming, the writers of the paper asked the American Civil Liberties Union, through the local chapter, for assistance. On behalf of the campus sponsor of the paper, a complaint was filed in U.S. District Court, seeking to enjoin the Tech Board of Regents and its administrative Daily showed a marked change in emphasis and a spark of independent journalism. THE CA TA L Y ST, however, aiming its persistent barbs at the Tech administration and the Lubbock establishment, has been the real thorn in the side of the “law and order” advocates. On Jan. 13, 1970, Volume 1 Issue 6 of The Catalyst was summarily banned from sale or distribution on the Tech champus. Prior to this issue, the paper’s staff had received, through its campus sponsor, the Channing Club, permission to sell the paper in the Tech Student Union Building and in the campus bookstore. Vice President for Student Affairs Owen Caskey, in announcing the ban on the grounds that the paper was in “poor taste” and contained “objectionable words,” threatened with severe disciplinary action any student apprehended in the act of selling or giving away the paper. Supporters of the papqr believed that the reason for the ban was not the general content of the paper nor the use of rather was the persistent satire and criticism of Tech officialdom. In particular, the issue contained an article \(“Meet coach, Jim Carlen. Carlen had been widely quoted in the Lubbock press as being a strict disciplinarian of the athletes who would not tolerate drinking, smoking, class cutting, or long hair or sideburns, and who insisted on a trim physique and church attendance on Sunday for everyone, players and coaches alike. The Catalyst called attention to one aspect of the college athlete’s life \(at least for some overlooked: screwing. The article was found to be objectionable by Tech administrators solely for the use of that word. \(To illustrate the type of censorship employed, another objectionable article contained the sentence “Fighting for peace is like fucking for chastity.” Tech officials maintained that the writer could have conveyed his message in a nicer way