A Wise Decision?
There's turmoil up the valley.
Two Oregon State college professors charge that their con
tracts are not being renewed because they are active in the
Progressive party.
Whether that’s the real reason for their dismissal, or
whether another cause exists, no one, except OSC officials,
knows—including this paper. But two things can be noted.
First, it is the undisputed right of President Strand to re
lease non-tenure faculty members. And it is his right to keep
his motives quiet.
In this case, though, the secrecy may be inadvisable. With
the University of Washington Communist fracas still very
much alive, such action by a university will be interpreted
in relation to it. Dr. Strand can expect Red baiting charges if,
by his silence, he leaves his motives begging for speculation.
Secondly, it is unfortunate if, as the two professors allege,
they were dismissed for their political activities.
Critics of the Washington case will have scored a point.
Many of them said the residt of that action will be the elimina
tion not just of Communists from schools, but of any shade
bird the administration dislikes.
And if the OSC men received walking papers solely be
cause they are Progressives, these critics are bullseye right. A
Progressive is not necessarily a Communist. He is just a mem
ber of a liberal and rather confused political party—just an
other color bird. B.H.
Mr. Scullin's Letter
Elsewhere on this page, Mr. Fred J. Scullin, one of our
faithful readers, takes us to task for not doing something about
the spiel a Communist presented in Eugene last Thursday.
Mr. Scullin is right. We should have ripped off a little of
Ex-Professor Phillip’s hide long ago.
Perhaps we made our mistake in figuring that what Mr.
Phillips had to say was self-answering. Perhaps we trusted
too much to the good solid common sense of our campus read
ers for the refutation of the Communist line.
In any case, we’d sorta like to think that in this particular
case, ignoring the ex-prof accomplished its purpose, too. We re
not scared of retaliation, and we’re not fellow sympathizers.
But at the same tinje, we’re not quaking in our boots be
cause of what Mr. Phillips or others of his ilk will do to our
country.
Good solid common sense will win out in the long run, Mr.
Scullin. That’s our American way. Don’t you agree.
With the Legislators
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Washington
In an uproarious session during
which six Democratic committee
men stalked out of the room, the
house veterans committee yester
day approved a multibillion dol
lar veterans pension bill.
Tlie members who took the
walk charged Cliuirman Konkin
(D-Miss) with “dictatorial” ac
tions, and he accused them in
turn of "running out on the vet
erans."
The measure proposes pensions
of $90 a month at the age of 65
for all of the 18,800,000 veterans
of World Wars I and II. Its ulti
mate annual cost has been esti
mated at $6,000,000,000 a year by
some members of congress.
The hill provides for payments
of $120 a month—regardless ot
age—to all physically or mentally
handicapped veterans requiring
nn attendant. The disability would
not have to la* service connected.
Rankin, who gaveled the bill
through the committee in the
stormy session, moved to force
it to the house floor where it was
conceded a chance of passage.
However, he must buck admin
istration opposition in getting his
- i0 a vote. President Truman
has stated that pension and bonus
legislation have no place in Iris
budget or legislative program at
this time.
Kankin applied to Speaker Ray
burn t\>r recognition to bring the
bill up under unanimous consent
_at best a forlorn chance. While
Kay burn sni.t )>»
under consideration, Rankin al
ready was planning to seek a
clearance tor the measure tor the
rules committee.
If both those efforts fail, Ran
kin's ace in. the hole is the new
house rule by which committee
chairmen may force a bill to the
floor after 21 days by demanding
that the speaker call it up.
‘ I've got several ideas up my
sleeve," the veteran lawmaker re
marked.
‘‘They’re fooling with one fel
low who knows his way around."
* * *
Senator Taft (R-Oliio) accused
the American Federation of La
bor of seeking "the most extra
ordinary special privilege any or
ganization ever claimed in the
United States.
Taft made the statement after
William Green, the AFL’s 75
year-old president, told the sen
ate labor committee there is no
good reason why unions should
be subject to several Taft-Hart
loy law provisions. Those included
the ban on closed shops, the sec
tions making unions liable for
damages, and the provision re
quiring unions to bargain collee
tively.
After Green had denounced
those T-ll law provisions one by
one, Taft, co-author of the Taft
Hartley law. said:
“Mr. Green. 1 don't want to
make a speech. But it seems to
me you are claiming the most
extraordinary special privilege
auy organization ever claimed in
----'
From Our Mailbag
Letters to the Editor
To the Editor:
Are your writers scared of
Communist retaliation or are they
fellow sympathizers? I ask this
question because I have found
only agreement and diversion
from the real issues whenever the
Red ex-assistant professor’s
speech is mentioned in your pa
per. Is it your intention to allow
an admitted Communist to flaunt
his membership card in our faces
and preach a sermon of distorted
facts without one word in answer
to the challenge? How can you
let him pour out his full command
of half-truths, using the cause of
academic freedom to mask his
real purpose of making converts
to Communism, without giving
him the answer he deserves? His
role of a martyr defending free
dom must have been successful
because after his talk some of the
college students clustered around
him like flies looking for Com
munist indoctrination.
Mr. Phillips boasted that he has
been a member of the Communist
party for the last thirteen years
and held up his membership card
for all of us to see. He said he
would tell us about the Commun
ist party, but, instead of telling
us anything about the party, he
devoted his time to defending the
twists and turns of the party line.
The inconsistencies of his argu
ments were always apparent, but
most obvious when he admitted
openly that during the early stag
es of the war he tried to influence
our country to keep out of the im
perialistic, capitalistic war. How
ever, he went on to say that when
Russia, the great Socialist state,
was attacked by Hitler, he sud
denly changed his mind and real
ized it was a people’s war for de
mocracy!
In spite of the millions of dol
lars of tax money that are coming
out of our pockets to clothe and
rebuild Europe, he had the nerve
to accuse the United States of
using food to swing its weight
around politically in Europe and
of trying to stifle industrial de
velopment in Europe to suppress
competition against our capital
ists. Perhaps we should send our
money to mother Russia.
During the question period
which followed his lecture he ad
mitted that he had seen some of
his former students at Commun
ist party meetings. (Students
were probably trying to get A’s).
In answer to other questions, he
stated that Russia had free elec
■tions, but admitted that he had
never been to Russia.
After hearing such perversions
of the truth, I can only insist that
we should not allow Communists
to be instructors at any level in
our educational system because
Communists are not only incom
petent to teach, they are incom
petent to follow the truth wher
ever it may lead.
Fred J. Scullin
i
\
i
T
-Footnotes
Well, Well -- No More Green Cards
By Michael Callahan
Tradition dies slowly on the
Oregon campus—especially the
has been the
pleasure of the
English depart
ment to issue
small green
cards during
regi s t r a t i o n
week, such
cards being nec
essary to open
classroom doors.
traditions of the English depart
ment.
For years without number, it
Without these green ducats, no
matter how many otherwise ac
ceptable class cards have been
stamped, checked and turned in,
Student X simply does not exist
in the eyes of his English prof.
This foolishness caused no end
of hard feelings. It was obvious
that ..the ..green ..tickets ..were
bound to stray during the half
dozen weeks between pre-regis
tration and the opening class of
the new term.
Which always made for long
lines and cut classes as the lit tie
green babies were carefully made
over and handed out again. Some
-Out of Focus
Fotog Thinks There Are Too
Many Campus Beauty Queens
By Kirk Braun
What's the similarity between
a January 1st bowl game and a
campus beauty queen? Well, the
answer is, that there is too many
of both.
I met a practically extinct per
son on the campus the other day.
There used to be lots of them
around in past years but they are
becoming quite rare. It was a girl
who had NOT been named a
queen, hostess or “Miss Sorne
thing-or-other.”
What are the powers in the
higher echelons doing about the
growing bowl industry? Recent
developments seem to indicate
that they are going to take steps
to cut down on the number of
bowl games so that the “Big
Three” really mean something.
“It's time that someone put a
stop to this merry-go-round of
campus beauty contests.
Oregon used to have its “big
three" when it came to queens,
in the fall there was the Home
coming Hostess. Winter term
campus beauty was the “Little
Colonel" and in the spring, it was
the Junior Weekend Queen. And
a gal who could come out on top
in those days was a real queen to
to behold.
Now there are enough queen se
lections to give very girl in every
house a chance to win a title and
get her picture in the Oregana.
And if tilings keep up this way,
the Oregana will run out of pag
es on which to run pictures of
“queens before the school year
is half over.
Oh, sure, the more queens, the
more business for photographers.
But isn't there any limit ? A cam
pus queen just isn’t a queen any
more—she’s just another coed.
Any co-ed.
And then there is the King of
Hearts contest, which was just
completed amidst chuckles from
every corner of the quad. First
there were six candidates for the
coveted award, then there were
seven, and then an Emerald story
of late last week listed five. The
gents concerned were quite dis
gusted with the whole thing as
was shown when they refused to
be introduced at a recent basket
ball game.
King of Hearts! That’ll be a
good one to tell the grandchil
dren.
And then -oh, oh, there goes
the phone.
Gotta go out and shoot a pic
ture of Miss Vogue, or was it
Miss Moonlight, or Miss Oregana
—or Betty Coed or Miss Emerald
—or Queen of the Test Tube—oh,
hell, only two more terms.
times this could go on for weeks,
much to the delight of the Eng*
lish department and the printers.
At last, however, the old order
cliangeth. ,
The change comes slowly
though, so as not to cause too
much confusion in Friendly hall.
Now the procedure shapes up
like this. The same green cards
are made out in duplicate as be
fore, at the same time that regu
lar class cards are stamped.
However, under the NEW system,
the English department does not
give us even one of them, but
keeps both green cards and class
cards too. All of which makes
for huge index files. . . .
Of course, this just might be
the English department’s coy
way of filling office space. . . .
Add other snarls from the hec
tic pattern of registration week:
Someone should tell the girls
who habitate the registrar’s
check in Emerald hall. They
should be told that the average *
adviser on this fair campus does
n’t give a hoot-in-hell what .
courses his young advisees sign
up for, just so long as they come
and go like clockwork.
Therefore, when the advisers’
slips come in with very small
changes or additions marked
thereon, the young ladies should «
thing a moment before waving
the unfortunate back out into the .
rain.
The odds are that the student
prepared his program entirely
without aid from his adviser, that
he and he alone knows best what
to take, and that the “advising”
was limited to a rubber stamp. In
fact, the best advising that a
large number of professors can
do on this campus is to suggest
such gemlike culture courses as
“Survey of General Principles”
or “Physiology of the Neander
thal Man.”
One of these years, so the his
tory books will read, the Ameri
(Please turn to page eight)
The Oregon Daii.y Emerald, published daily during the college year except Sundays,
Mondays, holidays, and final examination periods by the Associated Students, University of
Oregon. Subscription rates: $2.00 per term and $4.00 per year. Entered as second-class matter
at the post office, Eugene, Oregon.
BtLL YATES. Editor
Bob Reed, Managing Editor
VIRGIL TUCKER, Business Manager «
Tom McLaughlin, Asst’ Bus. Mgr.