University of South Carolina Libraries
By Wagner Halsene Roberts Emperor of North A merica So. Some of you thought you could get rid of me that easily -- thought you- could discourage me with poverty, neglect, and abuse. Well, it has gone bad for you ! I am back. You have been wicked and bad and so your Emperor has come back to chastise and scold you -- no longer with just irate, periodic letters to the editor sent from Versailles -- but a regular column! OH! What a herd of sacred cows I shall carve up now! What beautiful sides of sacred beef I shall expose to the maggots of intellectual sneers and spoofery ! Incidently, speaking of sides of beef, what Is beige or pink, rarely black, almost never red or yellow, generally weighs between 190 and 200 pounds, is bulgey all over, goes up and down up and down until it stinks, is the product of much loving attention, carefully controlled diet (in some cases carefully controlled drugs) and great general expenditure and upkeep? What an ingenious child you are! You said, "USC jock!" -- that was very good but mistaken, for I was actually thinking of an agitated Hefty Trash Bag full of race horse manure. But don't be so sad my child -- it's much better to crack jokes with your Uncle Wagner and make light of the situation than to take to the streets burning and killing and smiting with righteous indignation and contempt. Why should you be bothered if your univer sity and her alumni pour their treasure and devotion into their athletic program in the pursuit of absolute folly? That for the year ended June 30, 1971, the Department of Athletics spent $27,442.69 dollars on publicity alone while the Philosophy Department languishes on less than half again USC Bands' budget while getting zero for research and travel? That the Department of Athletics has the resources to spend over half a million dollars in scholarship expenses while a poor undergraduate has difficulty landing a partial loan with the government and a poor entering graduate student has practically no hope for a loan, even through local banks and considers himself lucky to find a job as janitor cleaning out public commodes in order to just exist and continue his studies somehow in spite of such grinding poverty and what it does to the human spirit? That colleges all over USC must scrimp, cut back already threadbare budgets at student's expense, watch every Xerox sheet. ditto coDy, and piece of chalk, or that the Admninistration naively celebrates its one millionth volume in its horribly overcrowded, overworked, un derpaid, understaffed single library worthy of the name while Harvard worries about the modernity of its facilities with several million books -- even a medium sized midwestern university has two to three times as many books as we do -- but why should you be upset, my child? There, there, stop that knashing -- USC will long be remembered for its great athletes, its fine, upright Christian qualities and attitudes, its surface dec.ency, its wholesome, just-plain-downright-good Jockula Fundamentula fellowship. Yes, yes, my child, be patient; ll tell you who Jockula and Fundamentula are soon enough, but first -- before wild charges are made and disgusting demands for apologies are thrown at me to which I'd never in a thousand years beg a pardon from and would simply heap yet more abuse and scorn on the per secutor -- I should like to make it plain that every financial ill the University of South Carolina suffers is not the Department of Athletics' fault. Indeed, except for the drop that student athletic fees provides, this institution's mainstay is the box office, contributions, and some mysterious Other Revenue. It is like the deathless algae -- consuming precisely what it *produces -- yet growing,. growing, ever BewaI growing... until everything else in the pond is overwhelmed by its omnipotence and strangled. Yes, my child, it is strange and deadly to the intellectual, this bite of Jockula. Aside from the usual symptoms of such a bite as the sudden urge to lift weights, play hand ball, and eat peanut butter milkshakes, one will stare at NFL football for hours and even more horrible things... yes, yes! There are not many classes of vampire more dreadful than Jockula and Fundamentula! But you mustn't be unduly frightened -- we have charms for these too -- whenever Jockula catches you at an unguarded moment as when your female makes cutting remarks about your undernourished scholar's body or when Mr. Biceps puts hand over face and throws you out of line, fear not, even though Jockula's fangs are bared, or you already suffer from the in fection of a previous bite and you have the overpowering urge to buy two tickets to a football game or you are at a Jascha Heifetz concert that the Student Union has gone ten years in debt to bring to USC and you are about to plug your portable a.m. back into your ear to catch the basketball score, remember this; pronounce firmly the words, "Kant's Critique of Pure Reason," or the rules of Arpad Daraz's Be-Attitudes. Either one will do in a pinch, my child, and the charms of Jockula will be broken. Unfortunately, there is no chant to cure the disease in an entire university and state. It is the dream to be number one in collegiate sports -- a dream that we have neither the resources nor native talent to pursue in con junction with the search for academic ex cellence -- that fan the fevers of this disease and foster myths that it will bring in students and-or We Have Tht For 2,000 BELL BO NAVY BELL BOTTOMS Stripes - Corduroy - Al -4 HIP HUG4 PEA-NUTS BE ~ HIEI ALL COLORS I * ARMY FATIGUE TROUSEI *ARY KHAKI TROSERS 1*. SHIRTS -.WALLACE BE *BSFATIGUE TROUSER! ARMY-NAVY SI THE YELLOW Fli 1316a AeS:-EnLY S. e of the money for the University. Such a thing could not be farther from the truth -- the money is always reinvested into the athletic program and the athletes themselves are semi professional people cut-off and separate from the university at large -- our parents had it better than we did in this sense -- the Games might not have been as good and PROFESSIONAL but everyone knew Tom, or Joe who played on the team for us, not the Alumni, not the big league scouts. Athletes in those days did, after all, have special talents, but they were not an end unto themselves -- the athletic department knew its place and academia reminded it when it forgot. Now what do we have? An entity -- the Department. of Athletics -- which is so com ? V 'm In Stock You PAIR TTOMS IN DENIMS - Whites 1 Colors - All Sizes ERS * LL BOTTOMS AND SIZES IDNM I S.................... 26 to 4 ....................26 to 42 RRY - STR IPES - KNIT TOPS S & JACK ETS ...... SIZES 2-161 JRPLUS STORE !ONT STORE AT1 Ph. AL39-A641