-editorial Vote ROTC off ca N At its meeting this afternoon the General Faculty will once again consider Prof. Bayard McConnaughey’s mo tion recommending that the ROTCs contract with the Uni versity be terminated. This time, however, there’s a difference. The motion passed — albeit narrowly — at last month’s meeting, and was kept from going on to University Pres. William Boyd’s desk only by a last-minute procedural maneuver initiated by Boyd himself. The most vigorous and productive debate on the na ture and role of ROTC to take place in years has ensued. Those who attend today’s meeting will be interested, in formed and aware of the larger issues involved. This con trasts favorably with the offhand manner in which similar proposals have been dismissed in previous years. The defense of the ROTC has centered around the notions that the ROTC contributes to the cosmopolitan diversity of the University, that to terminate the program would infringe upon the student’s right to choose a course of study, and that ROTC cadets provide a liberalizing influ ence in the armed forces. These are arguments that could be modified and put to use in the defense of the School of Librarianship and CSPA, but their application in relation to the ROTC is specious. In the first place, the ROTC is not really a part of the University at all. It is, rather, an appendage over which the Department of Defense has primary control. The ROTC is the military’s way of using the resources of universities in the training of their middle management. The ROTC’s special place in the University community means that its defense as a part of that community’s diversity could only apply if the University controlled the ROTC’s offerings and requirements. Further, the idea that students snouid De allowed to follow any course of study they choose is based on false premises. Students don’t decide what their courses are like, those decisions are made by the University and the various departments and schools. As in any curriculum decision, it is the educational value of the ROTC that is at issue. It is not a question of conditions of total educational freedom — conditions that don’t exist in any case. Finally, the argument that the ROTC produces officers who exert a moderating, liberalizing influence on the milit ary is open to serious question. Having existed for 50 years, one would expect the ROTC’s influence to have become in some way visible in our nation’s military history. Instead, the U.S. military has compiled a record of atrocity, brutality and insensitivity to human suffering that denies the ROTC’s pretensions of liberalism, or at least shows them to have had no effect. Realistically, the General Faculty does not have the power to demilitarize the University. If the motion passes again today, it will go to Boyd for approval. Boyd’s feelings on the ROTC were clearly stated by his actions at the last General Faculty meeting when he engineered the recon sideration move. But even if Boyd were to go along with the General Faculty’s recommendation, the State Board of Higher Education would still have the final say. But the General Faculty can and should express its opposition to the presence of the ROTC at the University. A yes vote on the McConnaughey motion will show that the faculty feels the University should be free of military and government influence. A yes vote would mean the faculty is not ready to accept the military as a necessary part of the University community. A yes vote would acknowledge that the nature of the military cannot be reconciled with the nature of liberal education. The McConnaughey motion should be approved — again. J Letters Freedom fighters It seems I have hit a nerve in our radical elements. I wish to state clearly that I do not attack the movements themselves, only the “revolutionaries" who parade around campus supporting them. I would suggest that breathing clean air, drinking clean water and respecting other life forms are pre requisites to solving our difficult and fundamental social, political, and economic problems. One cannot write letters to the Emerald while one’s hand is shaking from kepone contamination, much less deliver it while breathing poisoned air. In addition, I note that members of Greenpeace plan to openly challenge the Soviet and Japanese whaling fleets this summer on the open sea, expos t ing themselves to physical harm. I don’t see members of the South ern Africa Support Committee signing up for a three-month summer stint as freedom fighters. Perhaps they can't take their stereos along ... Gary Frazier Sophomore — History Not liberalizing A former ROTC cadet has cal led opponents of the military on campus ‘‘shrill”, (emotional? un thinking?) (Register Guard, May 27); another ex-cadet has callea me naive; and a student now in ROTC, in a letter couched in the jargon of the counterculture, (“Right-on,” “I mean”) but reac tionary in tone, has insinuated that I am a "pinko”. (ODE, May 5) All this because I told !* process aimed at the killing of human beings; when they receive these orders they will be expected to carry them out with no ques tions asked. The Pentagon de tachment stationed at the Univer sity is expected to turn out platoon leaders who will feel at ease in a rigid and relentless pecking order where orders are received from above and passed on down the line. The leavening (liberalizing) effect of ROTC will be negligible. The Register Guard, in an editorial of May 25, carrying the liberalization argument to its ulti mate absurdity, implies that a uni versity without ROTC is not free. (This may cause concern to those universities who do not have ROTC.) Let us examine the leavening argument in the light of recent history. Beginning in 1965 and lasting through 1972, the U.S. conducted a savage war against the Viet namese people. (The My Lai massacre was only the most pub licized of many atrocities.) During the years 1965-1972, the U.S. dropped on Indochina, an area about the size of Texas, more than 6,300,000 tons of bombs and other aerial munitions, killing countless thousands of civilians and maiming and wounding hun dreds of thousands of others. This tonnage is more than three times that dropped in the European, Af rican, and Pacific theaters of op eration during World War II. At the beginning of this carnage, ROTC had been in existence in its pres ent form for nearly fifty years — a period of time that represents one-fourth of the entire history of this nation. How long must we wait for ROTC's liberalizing influence to be felt? Guido Palandri Assistant Head, Catalog Dept., Library Tenure priorities If you read the May 24th article entitled “Faculty tenure hinges on ‘publish or perish’”, you might have been surprised to find out the priorities by which our teachers are selected. What is even more distressing is that the ability to teach makes little or no difference when tenure is being considered. The consequences of this system are readily seen. Just consider how many times you have had a marginal teacher. Then consider that this teacher very likely has tenure and will keep teaching. Another consequence of this system is that a good teacher, younger and less established, could very easily be denied tenure and be out on his own. Consider as an example, a younger and less established chemistry teacher. He has not published and is less likely to get grants for re search. His graduate students have to work as teaching assis tants and therefore have less time to spend doing necessary re search. If the research isn’t done, nothing can be published and he probably won’t be given tenure. He could be a very good teacher but that won't do him any good when tenure time comes around. The experienced ahd estab lished teacher also has graduate students working on his research projects. Being established, he is more likely to get research grants. With these grants, he can pay his graduate students to work on his research so they won’t have to work as teaching assistants. They can do more research and he can publish more material. He has his tenure and will keep it as tong as he is remaining current in his field and is adding to th§ body of know ledge. There is no explicit re quirement that he be a good teacher, just that he be a good researcher. A system that requires an ability to research but not an ability to teach belongs in private enter prise, not on a university campus. Ability to teach should be just as important a consideration for tenure as is the ability to research. Until it is, you and I are going to have to live with some great researching, but worthless teaching, profes sors. Poor teaching is not what you and I came here for. Scott Nelsh Senior — Mathematics -opinion Tuition fight continues One of the most powerful weapons the State Legislature has used to try to defeat the struggles on Oregon campuses against the tuition hike has been “divide and conquer." By trying to hit one group of students harder than another, or more recently by proposing to freeze tuition for some students and increase it for others, the legislators have tried to pit us against each other, squabbling among ourselves for the crumbs they leave for higher education. In the last week another attempt to pit some students against other students, and thereby aid the legislature in putting across its tuition attack, has surfaced. But this time the authors aren’t the fatcats in Salem but some student "leaders" right here at the University. What they have done is to draw up, circulate and send to the Legislature’s Ways and Means Committee a petition stating how they "sincerely appreciate’’ the visit to Eugene of three members of that Committee for a tuition hearing May 17 and "apologizing for the rudeness of some audience members." This petition, which was circulated around the ASUO offices, concludes by pleading with the all-mighty legislators in the hope that the behavior of "insensitive and uncooperative demon strators” won’t “adversely affect your actions” on tuition. How the hell do the authors of this petition, who claim to be concerned about rising tuition which even they say is "severely restricting peoples’ ability to attend school,” expect people to react to this attack being launched upon Oregon students by the legislature and the bankers and businessmen they serve in Salem? Did all the pleading and “reasona ble proposals” of our junior bureaucrats in the Oregon Student Lobby and the ASUO stop tuition from rising 25 per cent over the past two years, while one program after another is cut back? The tuition hearing here on campus was no gift from "concerned” legislators or junior bureaucrats: it took 1500 signatures on petitions and the seizure of the President’s office at Portland State University to get the legislators to even hold a hearing on any campus. And students who attended the hearings saw clearly just who these legislators really represent, they are rich lumber tycoons and corporate lawyers who serve the interests of the businessmen who put them in Salem in the first place. No amount of documentation on how education is a "wonderful non-polluting industry” is going to stop their attacks, because there is a fundamental antagonism between their interests and those of students. They’re cutting back education here and across the country because the rich class they represent needs the money being spent on education to try to get themselves out of their profits crisis. The tuition hearing here was not, in fact, disrupted. What did happen was that students were angry — angry about these attacks they’re making on us and on our ability to get an education, and we voiced that anger firmly and strongly. We were saying that the approach of pleading with these guys to please take their feet off our necks and please stop grinding us into the dirt just don’t cut it—and never has. We have to take on the attacks they’re launching head on. That’s what we did at the tuition hearing and that’s what we'll have to do in the next few weeks when the hike comes up in the legislature in Salem—even if they have conveniently postponed it (again) until after school is out. We can fight and defeat these attacks — but only on our feet, not on our knees. John Lanier Renee Romanoff Committee Against Tuition Hike and Cutbacks