don't plan to prosecute. At
Texas Tech, meanwhile, David
Murrah. director of the South
west collection, stands staunch
ly behind his museum piece:
"NASA’s claims that the rock
doesn’t exist suit us just fine,”
he says. "If they want to come
put the university in jail,
that’s fine, too!”
Beyond
Divestment
The divestment move
ment is far from over, even
though Congress recent
ly overrode President Reagan's
veto of economic sanctions
against the Pretoria govern
ment. Hundreds of students
across the country turned out
for the Oct. 10 and 11 National
Protest Days, but now that 116
schools have divested about
$3.8 billion worth of stock in
American companies with op
erations in South Africa, the
question remains: What next?
To figure that out, Middlebury
College in Vermont recently
hosted a national collegiate
symposium on South Africa,
which was broadcast live over
American Public Radio and to
radio listeners in Australia.
r or iwo nours, siuuenis
from schools that ranged
from the University of Alas
ka, Fairbanks, to Florida
International phoned in ques
tions for the five panelists,
who disagreed sharply over
what role students can still
play in ending apartheid. For
their part, some student ques
tioners seemed to feel they
could be most effective by con
tinuing to make the divest
ment debate a national issue.
What college students need
to do now is start d isprovi ng the
argument of those opposed to
sanctions [who say] that black
South Africans would be hurt
the most," said Jabuiani
Xhlapo, a Middlebury sopho
more from Soweto. "Ifyou have
a ladder and you pull it out.
who is going to be hurt more,
the ones on the bottom or the
ones on the top?”
- akt mm
Humoring tho stutfonts: Radio s riotous Dick Orkin
Laugh Lessons
From a Pro
Faculty and administra
tors at Franklin and Mar
shall College decided
they had a problem: the
school’s earnest, largely pre
professional students seemed
to be in danger of losing their
senses of humor. Rampant ca
reerism had induced laugh at
rophy, an unseemly state for a
school named, in part, for the
witty Benjamin Franklin
F&M alumnus Dick Orkin,
the funnyman whose classical
ly resonant voice is one of the
best known in radio advertis
ing, volunteered to come to
the rescue as the school's first
"humorist in residence.” The
school arranged a four-day
whirlwind return to the 199
year-old campus, nestled in
Pennsylvania’s pastoral
Amish country. The campus
radio station stoked the audi
ence for weeks beforehand by
playing installments of
"Chickenman," Orkin’s hi
larious radio serial from
the '60s. and its hallmark
cry, "He’s Everywhere! He’s
Everywhere!” filled the air
waves. Orkin shared secrets
of humorous writing with Eng
lish students, talked the ad
game with business classes
and spoke in auditoriums and
one on one, "wandering about,
sprinkling levity all around
the campus.”
While keeping the stu
dents in stitches, Orkin
pushed a serious message: that
"it’s OK to give yourself per
mission to laugh," and that a
sense of humor, essential for
coping with life, can help you
succeed. "It's going to change
the way I look at classes," says
senior Josh Levine.
The most impassioned
views came from panel mem
ber Malcolm Fraser, former
prime minister of Australia
Ever since he returned from a
mediation mission to South Af
rica earlier this year as part
of the Commonwealth Emi
nent Persons Group. Fruser
has insisted that nothing short
of "much toucher, immediate
sanctions" imposed by the
United States in concert with
other major Western govern
ments will be effective Pre
dicting that civil war "could be
months away." Fraser urged
students on: "Badger all your
senators and besiege the
White House."
In This Tank,
Talk Is Chirp
Arthur Myrberg can
drive a tank of bicolor
damselfish crazy—and
not by tapping on the glass, ei
ther Myrberg, professor of
marine biology at the Universi
ty of Miami's Rosentiel School
of Marine and Atmospheric
Science, has unlocked specific
meanings of damselfish "lan
guage"—grunts, growls and
chirps He even makes many of
the fishy sounds himself
Most of his subjects' conver
sation has to do with sex Alow
chirp says there’s a male
around ready to mate; tone in
dicates whether the chirper is
large or small To female dam
selfish, that matters; big fish
can better protect theeggsafter
laying. Other noises stake out
watery turf and coax a depart
ing object of desire to return.
Besides having developed
one of the world's great party
tricks, Myrberg sees many
practical applications for his
discovery, including directing
fish away from polluted areas,
controlling spawning and in
creasing harvests But he
denies being an aquatic Dr
Dolittle: "I have just learned
the signals. The animals do
not talk back to me."
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