Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 8, 1951)
Orman Daily EMERALD The Oregon Daily Eme*ald published Monday throug^Fnday during ■except Oct. 30; Dec. 5 through Jan. 3, Mar 6 through 38^ m y ’Students of the University .-rate*: $5 per school year; $2 per term. rates: per * * -r~ -- ^ ^Opinions expressed on ihe ASUO^r^/thf^U^rsity. 'initialededitoriafs are written by byW editor. - ’Anita Holmes, Editor Don Thompson, Business Manager Lorna Larson, Managing Editor_' Shiri-EY Hillard, Barbara Williams, Assts. to Business Manager yjev/s Editor: Norman Anderson Sports Editor: John Barton Asst. News Editors: Marjory Bush, Bill Frye, Gretchen Grondahl. , „ . , „ Asst. Managing Editors: Bob Funk. Gretchen Grondahl, Fred Vosper. Night Editor: Sarah Turnbull. Circulation Manager: Jean Lovell. Advertising Manager: Virginia k-e'logg Don Miller. Val Schultz, Harriet Vahey. Who Leads the Way to Salem? Oregon’s own congress convenes this morning at Salem. Legislators, their families, and lobbyists from all parts of the state have dug into the capital city in preparation for a lengthy and heated session. Here in Eugene—72 miles south of Salem—we students study government from textbooks while they enact it on the floor of the statehouse. Why don’t we drop the books for a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon and sit in on Oregon’s 46th biennial legislative as sembly? A crowded calendar day in the legislature and a light day on the campus could be chosen. Such a pilgrimage to Salem must be initiated and organized by the students. No administrative member of the University is allowed within shouting distance of a senator or represen tative while the session is underway. But we surely must have a political science club or even the international relations organization—one of which could mastermind the trip. Details such as date, transportation, and arrangements with officials in Salem would have to be worked out. The Emerald would gladly give all possible assistance, and the Executive Council should be of some help. If we University of Oregon students aren t the moles peo ple say we are—we’ll go to Salem this winter. But we’re not suggesting the trip for what people say—there must be many more students who, like us, would like to learn government from the gallery as well as from the book. Better Understanding-World Law School The student newspaper of Harvard Law School heartily approves of the projected world law school, which has long been needed to provide a broader approach to world legal problems.” Such a school, according to the Harvard paper, “would at tack international legal problems from a world viewpoint. “Lawyers in the international field are beset with a host of special difficulties not encountered by national lawyers. There is no single legal international framework. “Lawyers must come to understand the basic concepts and ■ways of thought of those trained in alien systems of law. Spe cial training and skills are required. Present law schools do not do an adequate enough job.” It is curious that such a school was not heretofore estab lished. Such a step many decades ago might well have kept the world from the course it steers today. When the legal minds of the world fail to understand the basic concepts and ways of thought of each other, global un derstanding on many other levels is impossible. And this lack of basic understanding seems to lie beneath most of today’s troubles. Without a question, the great gap of understanding between the Far East and the West set off the first sparks when the foreigner moved into China, Japan, and Korea. If every major nation of the world established a law school emphasizing the international . . . but today that is an if of immense proportions.____ I V i THE DAILY ^ to the University business office for moving the deadline of dormitory board and room payments to the tenth of each month. University paychecks are issued the tenth, and it bad been a long standing complaint that dorm bills were due the fifth. THE OREGON LEMON ... to Executive Council members and Howard Lemons, as sistant to President Newburn, for not catching the legal quirk in the proposed new student body cards until Sun day afternoon before the pictures were to be taken. The legal technicality has temporarily squashed the cards. Morals in Colleges: a Series Campus Dating and Courtship—No. 3 This is the third of a series of articles on the college stu dents of 1950—their outlook on life, their moral codes and behavior, their changing standards. The series origi nally ran in the New York Post. By Max Lerner The bright college years are the time for courtship, and the campus-is as good a place for it as any. The late teens are the years of sexual and emotional as well as mental growing up. These are the impressionable years, when body, looks, brain, wit, ath letic prowess, grace, skill, per sonality and achievement all leave a deep imprint. But with many—let us not mis take it— there is already evident a depth and seriousness of court ship that shows they are on the threshold of becoming mature persons. They are thinking in col lege not only about a career but about marriage. They are look ing about not only for a job but for a mate. There has been a tendency re cently for the anthropologists who study American civilization to have some fun with these youngsters and their courtship habits. I mean, of Course, not a rowdy and ribald fun but a sol emn, intellectual kind of fun. Take, for example, two recent books by the British anthropolo gist Geoffrey Gorer (“The Ameri can People”) and the American anthropologist Margaret Mead (“Male and Female”). Both books include a long discussion of the pattern of “dating” by American boys and girls. Gorer especially has a hilarious time with American “dating,” as if he were describing the highly patterned and ritualized behav ior of a primitive group. He links it not with love for some one in the other sex, but with esteem for oneself. He regards it not as part of courtship, but as a kind of game from which every element of genuine emotion has been squeezed out. In fact, he says it is “compar able to such a competitive game Re: Hash Psychology-Humbug! Columnist Lampoons It -^ By Bob Funk —— We are led to believe by the vernacular press that anybody can be a psychologist these days. Instead of spending the evening with television (as people liv ing in places other than Oregon and the Lake Tchad region are wont to do) you can delve into dianetics. Popular parlor games are fast channeling into the “Name My Complex’’ category , and if Mr. Lamb were still alive he would probably be writing a child’s version of Mr. Freud as he did of Mr. Shakespeare. We are not at all sure about psychology. W’e don’t care for it. (Psychologist’s note: those who do not like psychology are un doubtedly psychotics who fear the science because it may reveal facets Of their personalities which they are afraid to face). It seems to us that psychology is the sci ence which has enabled the un happy to see how miserable they really are. “How am I unhappy —let me count the ways . . .” might be an author’s preface to many psychology books. Determined not to be held back by our own rather medieval views on the subject, we have made our debut into the field of popular psychoanalyzntion for everyone, and have found it easier than thinking. To be a good psycholo gist, we discover, one needs only an appercipient mind, and a mo tivating interest (plus intelli gence, years of experience, and two or three college degrees). Our first Project in Psychology (we may record other’s later, or hold them all to be published in a large book called Contradictions) was in the field of mental images. Everybody who keeps up with these things knows that our minds are rich in imagery, which helps us to think. For instance, if someone were to yell the word “dog” quite suddenly, an image of a dog might leap into our con sciousness. Or we might see a set of teeth (fear motive) or a litter of pups (probably Oedipus com plex) or a section of fur (mater ialistic motive). Now to get back to imagery. We interviewed several persons to sec just what kind of imagery their minds dealt with. The first person interviewed saw the image of a bathtub when we yelled “bathtub” quite sud denly. We labeled this person Predictable Mentality. The sec ond interviewee saw a large snake w’hen we said “reptile” and said they felt shivery all over. We labeled this person an Emo tional Type Mentality. The third person saw nothing at all when we yelled a word, so we called him Non-Mental, or Blank Type. The fourth person re fused to co-operate, so we label ed him an Evasive, or Hidden Psychotic Type. Having completed our Mental Imagery Survey, we are now working on a General Compila tion and Evaluation, with Foot notes. as chess, in which the rules are known to, and observed by, both parties, but in which each move is a response to the previous iuov'e *of the other player.” He calls an invitation to a date “a pleasant and mutually profit able evening to enhance each other’s self-esteem and demon strate one’s skill in the game. He cites the case of a “typical Midwestern college fraternity,” in which “ the senior members insisted that the juniors have at least three dates a week; and further that these dates should be with girls who did honor to the fraternity, and, barring betroth al, should not be too frequently with the same girl.” Margaret Mead is a good deal more subtle than Gorer, and the last part of her book, “Male and Female,” is a richly woven tapes try of American sexual attitudes. Yet she too falls into the over simplification of Gorer about our institution of “dating.” -« She says that the boy takes out the girl “as he takes out his new car, but more impersonally, because the car is his for good, but the girl is his only for the ev ening.” She defines a successful date as one “on which there is no petting at all, but merely a bat tle of wits, of verbal parrying, while the boy convinces the girl that he is so pbpular that he has the courage to ask for anything, and the girl convinces the boy that she is so popular that she has to give nothing.” I don’t know which of the two over-simplifications about young Americans trouble me more—the one spread by the sensationalists who say that the campuses are dens of iniquity filled with teen age Casanovas and Lilliths in dulging in wild orgies and prac ticing the most monstrous ob scenities, or the one which is be ing spread by the intellectuals who tell us that our young camp us boys and girls are only cold and calculating strategists. If 1 speak strbngly about two social scientists whose work as a whole I value, it is because I have in mind the actual boys and girls whom I have known on many campuses, and because it is dan gerous to let a very attractive anthropological theory distort the real human beings that every practicing teacher knows. (Please turn to page three) Kampus Karacters Another term is underway, and once again the academic prof and the activity-ite take a long, despairing look at one another.