Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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JIM FARRELI. LUCRETIA JONES DAVE LUNDGREN MANAGING ED AD. MNGR. EDITORIALS A good team The appointment of Mike Grier to the position of ombudsman is one of the most positive steps the administration could have taken in the in terests of students and faculty alike. He is a full-time complaint bureau who can give advice and assistance to anyone needing it, concerning just about any problem imaginable. "He is empowered to cut red tape where necessary and is expected to approach students, faculty and administrators alike in the most direct manner possible to perform his duties," President Jones said. We are convinced that this will indeed be the case, and a better man could not have been chosen. Grier works well with students, and above all, he is a reasonable man. Working closely with him is Clay Riley, Student Government Om budsman. Riley has already proved his value this semester, and he does get things done. They are a good .;m, one that can and will produce some real progress in making thi. wiversity a better place for the people who make it possible--students. CHARLES F F.iLCNBAUM Visit the Senate zoo Any faith any student at this university has in the Student Senate is entirely unjustified. The Senate is a zoo, a comedy of errors. It is made up of individuals who (1) think it is a game (2) more often represent their own personal views instead of their voting constituents, if that was ever known. The Senate is a group of junior lawyers who think it's cool to overuse parlimentary procedure. They legislate, and forget what they have done a few months later. For example, five senators were chosen last Spring to fill vacancies. Their terms expired Oct. 26 by law, which someone pointed out at the last Senate meeting. A very good case could be made before the Supreme Court that every bill iassed between Oct. 26 and Dec. 1 was illegal. Hopefully that won't happen. There is no sense in making a bigger mess out of what we already have. But all of this is quite trivial (?) and could perhaps be forgiven. What cannot be forgiven is the fact that it seems highly unlikely that many Senators have ever read the Student Government Constitution. If they have read it, they don't remember or understand it. The Constitution is a good document, more so than most people realize. And if the Senators would only read it, they might not make such a farce of the ideal of "student government." No doubt there are a few Senators who have read the Constitution, who are conscientious about their jobs. To them, we offer sympathy because they have to work with the rest. F-7dW On display at Car Dabbs pa (Editor's note: This column, written by Jack Bass, originally appeared in the Charlotte Ob server.) The late James McBride Dabbs may go down in history as one of the most significant voices in South Carolina in the middle of the twentieth century. When he died last year at the age of 73, the publication South Today called Dadds, "one of the South's great voices of common sense and poetic insight." A collection of his papers now on display at the Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina reflects his wide interests as a poet, essayist, philosopher, and leader in the fields of human rights and religion. Dabbs retired from a career. as a college English professor in the mid- 30's to go back to Rip Raps, the family plantation near Sumter to farm and to write. At the entrance to the room exhibiting his papers is a profile of Dadds, smoking his ever present pipe, superimposed with the following quotation from his book, Southern Heritage: "I have no more doubt of the fire which burns at the heart of the South than I have of that which burns at my own. Why should I ? They are both the same." The exhibit includes an ex change of letters between Dabbs and the poet Robert Frost, who once publicly credited Dabbs with renewing his career as a poet after being struck by personal tragedy in middle life. Other items include a letter from Richard Nixon, written when he was vice president in 1959, inviting Dadds to a religious conference in Washington. Another came from Adlai Stevenson, expressing ap preciation for insight gleaned from Harriet Van Hor A mericajn BY HARRIET VAN HORNE Columnist The American Dream, in its raw essentials, does us little credit. It lacks soul. It's short on elegance and moral precepts. It is basically immature. Still, it drives men upward and onward. Spurred by advertising, by the clamor of greedy wives or by the simple lust for power, up the ladder they go. By sheer hard work, enormous sacrifice and occasional low cunning, some men live to see the American Dream come true. Sometimes they even enjoy it. More often the gift of enjoyment is left to sons and daughters, along with the newly crested silver and the second-rate paintings bought for twice their worth. CBS Reports recently showed a documentary about a Midwestern family whose dreams have come true. Jane and Sam Greenwalt are upward-strivers in the fullest, in the saddest sense of the term. They are WASPs. They are rich, good looking and healthy. Their three children are bright and in no trouble. In the course of the film we saw how the Green walts live, how they think and feel and where their dreams are taking them. It was not a TV hour to send abroad with pride. It confirmed the views of our worst critics. To say that "money can't buy happiness" misses the point. The real point Is that the malaise, the oliniana Lpers refle an informal talk Dadds gave before a group at the Field Foundation in New York. There is also an engraved in vitation from President John F. Kennedy inviting Dadds to the White House ceremony on the 100th anniversary of the Emanicipation Proclamation. Dadds said it was the traditional South Carolina emphasis on manners that first involved him in civil rights. When a special session of the legislature was called in 1944 to attempt to circumvent a federal judge's ruling that the "white only" Democratic primary was unconstitutional, Dadds wrote in a letter that appeared in South Carolina's largest newspaper, the State in Columbia: "My first reaction was that it was a graceless, mannerless thing to do: At this moment when our soldiers are fighting all over the world to protect democracy, South Carolina announces to the world that her government intends to protect the doctrine of white supremacy." A copy of the printed letter is on display, together with a scrawled note from another reader who addressed Dadds as Dear "Rat" and attacked him as a "Nigger Lover" after his letter was published. The U. S. C. exhibit ends Jan. 15, and the Dadds- papers will be permanently housed in Chapel Hill as part of the University of North Carolina's Southern Historical collection. The people at Chapel Hill con tacted Mrs. Edith Dadds soon after her husband's death asking for the collection of his papers, which will be catalogued and preserved for scholarly research. The University of Wisconsin also contacted Mrs. Dadds. ne dream. spiritual lassitude that has af flicted this country for the past decade rises in good part from the miscarriage of the dream. The average American's inability to use his wealth in a creative, useful manner is tragic. He lives for THINGS; he is ruled by THINGS. And with perfect poetic justice, he will be destroyed by THINGS. In the rather overblown narrative that accompanied this film, we were told that Sam and Jane were enjoying "a love affair with the obvious--good food, beautiful clothes and the best education." All these "obvious" items proved to be conspicuously lacking, along with what is usually called a taste for the finer things In life. These empty, rich people own a beautiful house which Is also empty all day because Jane is either busy at her "sensitivity sessions" or raising money for Junior League projects. Deliverymen stock the refrigerator with diet ice cream and cottage cheese, judging how much the family needs. Con versation within the family Is dull, the diction and grammar suggesting not the "best education" but the worst. The two young daughters, delicately pretty at 12 and 14, wear eye shadow and speak a kind of hoodlum English ("Yeah, you guys...") . But they have lots of THINGS. . ay Jane .at. one point:. "My,,. ct life Her husband had been valedictorian of his graduating class at the University of South Carolina and had hoped that perhaps his papers might go permanently to the university. His was an active role in a con troversial period and there was always uncertainty whether or not he might be "too controversial." After months passed, Mrs. Dadds. accepted the Chapel Hill offer. A few weeks later, a University of South Carolina history professor who had been on leave in Europe returned and began to initiate efforts to secure the Dadds papers. It was too late. Actually it was probably the lack of an organized program at U. S. C. to collect the papers of historically significant South Carolinians that caused Dadds to be overlooked, rather than the controversial positions he took on civil rights. A few years ago, there was a special luncheon for House speaker Sol Blatt, who was turning over all his papers to U. S. C. Among the guests was James F. Byrnes, whose political career spanned five decades in South Carolina. The Byrnes papers are deposited at Clemson University. During the luncheon, Blatt asked Byrnes why he didn't leave his papers with U. S. C. The somewhat embarrassed Mr. Byrnes replied, "They didn't ask." The excellent display at U. S. C. arranged by graduate student Thomas Johnson after four months of work, is attracting wide at tention and has resulted in several friends of Dadds sending in a permanent microfilm of the Dadds papers at U.S.C. The experience has pointed up the need for ad ditional library support to insure that other historically significant collections in the state are not overlooked. hings children are now 10, 12 and 14. I feel I have very little actual responsibility for what they do." It is not to her credit, she goes on, if they do well in school, nor to her discredit if they fail. Somebody at one of those sensitivity sessions may one day advise Jane that it is precisely this attitude that sends children to the dropout culture of drugs and petty crime. The flower children, studies have shown, came mostly from homes where Mother said proudiy, "I let my children make their own decisions." In Birmingham, Mich., where the Greenwalts lived as the film opened (they went up the ladder to Bloomfield Hills by the close) , the children of affluence are lost and bored. Shoplifting Is a serious problem. (Some of the shoplifters carry credit cards and could easily charge their stolen goods.) There are 300 cars in the high school parking lot. After-school jobs, even baby-sitting, are frowned on. "But What if the Dream Comes True?" was tiresome viewing all the way. But it was a valuable social document. As the moving van disappeared down the high way, carrying the Greenwalt's THINGS to a bigger, grander house, narrator Charles K.iralt ventured to ask, "Is this dream of acquisition the one you want to put your faith in?"