Rider University - Shadow Yearbook (Lawrenceville, NJ)

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keep running away from history. A case in point: People are saying that the Domino Theory does not apply in Indo-China. I don't know whether it does or not. The Domino Theory is one that I don't think has ever been proved or disproved. There is a great deal of evidence in the captured documents at the end of World War Il to the effect that if certain actions had been taken at the time that Hitler had been moving into Czechoslovakia, that he would have stopped. Now, given the pressures within Germany at that time, given the nature of Hitler, I suspect they might have found a different outlet at a dif- ferent time in a different way. Yet I think World War ll could clearly have been pre- vented or at least postponed. This is what bothers me. Many Americans were saying we should not become in- volved in Europe. All right, maybe we shouldn't have . . . at age 17, I was just frightfully offended by what Hitler's German was doing to the world, doing to the Jews, and so on. I just felt that was a wrong thing. It's so easy to say it's all different in Indo-China. Obviously it is differ- ent. However, is it all that different? I honestly don't know. Shadow: What if, for example, your son was willing to go to jail or to Canada to avoid fighting? Would you be opposed to this kind of thing? Dr. Elliott: No, l'd simply say that if l had lived with this boy for 18 years, I would hope that I had instilled cer- tain values-a sense of independence, a certain level of maturity, a certain sense of perspective-so that he could make judgments right or wrong that he was going to be willing to live with, and that he was going to live with the obligations as well as the responsibilities. But, as far as I'm concerned, this would be my son. And, there are certain bonds of affection which transcend what I might do or what I might personally feel that he should do. There are certain things you have to make your own decision on. And this is one of them. Shadow: On this issue would you then be in favor of a volunteer army, or do you think it would not work? What is your opinion on that? Dr. Elliott: No, I don't think a volunteer army would work. I wish that it would work. Given the state of the world, I think that we've got to assume that there is go- ing to be a continued need for armies, if for no other reason than for deterrent purposes. In a democracy I think that we have to assume that one of the responsi- bilities of citizenship is the obligation to bear arms when need be. Therefore, I believe we do need a draft of some sort, but I do think that we could make a great many changes in the draft laws which would help im- prove the situation so that it was better than it is now. Shadow: Intervisitation at Rider: Do you think that it's working? Dr. Elliott: My impression is that it is working and working quite well. I am sure there have been some abuses: it would be a little presumptuous to assume that there hadn't in some cases. There have been com- 10 plaints on the part of roommates that they have not had freedom of access to their room. This I'm sure has been true, that there are cases where the individual right of roommates have been violated. I would question if there have really been any more abuses of conventional moral standards as a result of Intervisitation than there were in the so-called good old days when students would wander off into various isolated parts of the campus or the parking lots, or neighborhood motels, or what have you. Shadow: Being a father with two daughters and knowing how other parents feel in similar situations, would the fact that a school had 24-hour Intervisitation affect your decision as to sending your daughter to a school? Dr. Elliott: I am not ducking the question when I say that I think that that largely depends on my daughters. If they become the mature people I think they are going to be, then I think they will have a sense of personal val- ues so that I'm not going to have to stand over them with a club as a policeman. And being very realistic I suspect that if I have to stand over them with a club as a policeman that it probably won't work anyway. So what I'm trying to do is instill a sense of morality, a sense of personal value, a sense even of good taste, which I hope will enable them to make individual deci- sions which they can live with and which as a result I can live with. Shadow: You have said that the Student Government Association's greatest single weakness is its inability to represent the entire student body effectively. On what basis do you make that statement? Dr. Elliott: I think that the problem starts in the first place, when you have a fairly hotly-contested election with only about 20'Z, of the student body voting. Ob- viously, you have a relatively small group of students who are choosing the officers of the Senate. Our present S.G.A. framework provides for a smaller amount of responsibility than is desirable. For instance, people are being elected from areas where there is no clear cut constituency. Let's put it this way: If I'm a rep- resentative to the S.G.A. from Poyda B and I vote for something CI don't care what it isp and it becomes known that I supported it-then there are some 40 people in Poyda B in the position to say Elliott, why in the world did you do that or EIliott, that is the great- est thing you ever did, I'm in back of you all the way. Now it is entirely conceivable under the existing frame of government that you could have all of the male rep- resentatives of the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior classes living on the same floor ofthe same wing of the same dorm. That is not probable but it is entirely possible that that could happen. At that point, opportu- nity for the constituents to say to their S.G.A. represent- ative what in the world are you doing is just gone. It is not at all certain that the elected representativefsj will even have a chance to check with the constituency to

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iff as the case may be, can't handle the situation then they call in the State Police. If the State Police feel that they can't handle it, they would be the ones to ask the governor to call in the National Guard, Shadow: In general, do you believe that these outside authorities, mainly police and National Guard, are equipped to handle campus disorders? Dr. Elliott: They're equipped to deal with violence. Shadow: But how about campus disorders? Dr. Elliott: To the extent that campus disorders are violence, yes, I think they are. Let's face it, violence be- gets violence. The moment you have violence the only kind of response that you can have Cit's almost a maximj is a violent response. I heard a faculty member raise the question, Should we bring the police on campus? In the first place, at a certain point, we have no say in the matter. The police always have the right to come on campus. They always have had that right, and so there's nothing that can be done about it. The police have respected the concern of the college that it be allowed to regulate itself to the extent that it is capable of doing so. We have an excellent relationship with the area police: in fact, I suspect that most students aren't even aware of them or think much about the police sim- ply because the local police don't bother about things on campus for the most part. Shadow: In your opinion should marijuana be legalized? Dr. Elliott: You're asking my opinion, and l'll violate my regular procedure of not giving a personal opinion on a public issue. No, I don't think it should. And for this reason: I think that the medical service in the United States has probably done us a disservice in not doing a better job of studying the effects of marijuana so that they can say that it is, or is not, a general threat to health. There is a great deal of evidence that is start- ing to come out now to the effect that marijuana is harmful. I have talked to a number of doctors, including my brother-in-law who teaches internal medicine. He, on the basis of his experience with his patients, is ab- solutely convinced that marijuana causes a progres- sively depressant effect. Recently I talked to one of the deans of one of the major medical schools in the country who, on the basis of a fair number of autopsies, makes the flat statement that it causes deterioration within the brain. And he is just getting more cases before he publishes his results. Are they right? Are they wrong? I really don't know. But, I think l've seen enough, and l've talked to enough people who I think are serious, genuine scientists who would not be saying that marijuana was harmful unless they were really convinced as medical men that this is true. Shadow: What is your reaction to the Scranton Com- mittee Report? Dr. Elliot: I still haven't had a chance to read itg we haven't got a copy yet. I guess they ran out of the money and haven't been able to circulate the whole thing. Having read a great deal about it, though, I guess my reaction to it is that they're talking about a college and are saying too many faculty members are indiffer- ent to the students and more concerned about their own research. I have been at colleges, one college in particular, where this was true. That was Columbia Uni- versity, where I was from 1961 to 1964. This was before Columbia had all of its trouble. And I can name you names of faculty members who clearly fall into that cat- egory. On the other hand, I can also name you names of Columbia faculty members who were there at that time who were everything you could conceivably ask for. These were great men: these were wise men: men who were outstanding scholars. But they were also magnificent teachers who were genuinely concerned about the students. Shadow: On this campus, to what extent does the Scranton Committee complaint about faculty members who are more concerned about research than about students apply? Dr. Elliott: I honestly don't know of a single faculty member on this campus that this could apply to. I do know there are some faculty members who are a little casual about maintaining office hours. And we're trying to do something about that. I think that one of the things that the Ad Hoc committee on faculty evaluation did was to emphasize that the chief thing that we should be looking for is good teaching. This is the thing we are really concerned about. We aren't indifferent to scholarship which is a reflection of good teaching and is an integral part of good teaching. But we are really concerned about this man or woman who stands in front of a class or works, sits down with the class and attempts to convey a certain amount of information: the whole learning process. The Scranton Committee also made the complaint that in many cases the curriculum is not relevant. That is true. This has been true on many campuses. I think that it has been true on this campus. But I think that you can carry relevance too far. However, let's face it, last year this campus-on its own and long before any Scranton committee report came along-undertook a really radical change in the whole division of Arts and Sciences. Business and Education had done this a year earlier. Shadow: Let's turn to the Indo-China conflict now for a few questions. And in regard to it, would you care to classify yourself as a hawk or a dove or some- where in-betvveen? Dr, Elliott: I'd have to be somewhere in-between. l guess l've seen enough war in my own life as a soldier so that I don't like the idea of war. On the other hand, as a historian, I can't escape the fact that man simply frequently has not found it possible to avoid war. Na- tions do have interests, and there are principles in- volved. The thing that keeps bothering me is that we 9

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'nge -4: - 1550197 ' see if it's in agreement andlor to get the flack if he does something it dislikes. So I think we need to get representatives oriented to the living units. That, of course, wouldn't adequately protect the concerns of the commuter student. And talking about the commuter students, we are dealing with roughly a third of our student population. We need to get the S.G.A. so that it's more representative of this group. I also don't think it is practical to have a town- meeting sort of thing because that just doesn't work too well, particularly if you can only get 20'MJ out for a vote. Shadow: On the question of finances, do you think that students have a right to be fully aware of the col- lege financing? Dr. Elliott: It depends on what you mean by fully aware. Now, are you entitled to know how much each one of your professors is getting? No, I don't think you are. I think that a man's salary is his own private do- main. There's a certain element of privacy here to which he's entitled, just as I think students are entitled to an element of privacy, too. We don't broadcast what your college board scores are, what your rank in class is. I think that any budget is subject to all kinds of second guessing. For instance, do we give the Music Depart- ment a Moog Synthesizer or do we give the Biology Department an x-ray machine or do we give the Library S5000 to build a collection in economic history. In each case we are talking about S5000. Which one gets it? You've only got 35000. And you know our hindsight is awfully good on this. Shadow: Who makes those decisions? Dr. Elliott: I'm not ducking the question when I say there is no one person. The way it happens is this: Each one of these departments is going to make a recom- mendation and they are going to support it. The Music Department will say we need a Moog Synthesizer be- cause, and it will then spell-out all of the reasons. The Biology Department will say we need an X-ray machine because and they will spell it all out. Mr. Epstein will do the same for the Library. From there it goes to the appropriate dean. The dean, in the case of the Music and the Biology Department, is in the position where he can say that it seems at this stage of this College's history it is more important that we get the X-ray machine. So, he has taken two con- flicting goals here and come up with an order or prior- ity. And, really, I can't expect the Biology Department to sit down with the Music Department and say, Oh, you're right. You really do need it worse than we do, because both of them know that they need. Shadow: Getting back to Vietnam, what do you think about categorizing people as hawks or doves. ? Dr. Elliott: This bothers me for a number of reasons. l think it is much too simplistic in the first place. You may find an occasional pure hawk or pure dove, but there is an enormous amount of inbreeding between the two. The reason I am disturbed about the definition is that those labeled as hawks or doves will make the most idiotic statements and then anyone else in that category is presumed to support that statement and be put in that category which, in many cases, is unfair. I got involved with this in a University of Wisconsin seminar. We spent a whole year trying to find a pure lib- eral in 19th century Europe and we never found, to our satisfaction, a liberal that fulfilled the definition we had devised. A similar seminar, which I wasn't in, spent two years trying to find a true conservative and the only one that stood up to their scrutiny was Metternich. Shadow: But don't you think you could categorize any of our political leaders into either one of those categories? Dr. Elliott: Only to a certain extent. For instance, take a man who is genuinely concerned with ending the war but who says it will take 12-18 months to get the troops out, is he a hawk or a dove? Or, might you not say that the man who advocated dumping 20 atom bombs on North Vietnam was the greatest dove of all because he would end the war right away? Of course I am being a bit absurd, but l'm just trying to show that it is most dif- ficult to clearly define issues all of the time. Shadow: Then you wouldn't classify yourself as a hawk or dove? Dr. Elliott: No, I really don't classify myself that way on this issue because I am not satisfied that I have all the answers, or that I'm even sure precisely what the defini- tions are supposed to mean. Shadow: Back to the College itself, will it ever become a university? Dr. Elliott: Oh, I think it will. But we have state educa- tion laws to comply with first. They state that an in- stitution must offer three Doctor of Philosophy degrees before a school can become a university. Really, I think we are just as much a university as half the universities in the nation but because of the state laws we are still a college. Shadow: Does the College plan to expand its gradu- ate program to include those three PhD's in the near future? Dr. Elliott: That is a hard question to answer. It takes money to expand, money which at this point we do not have. A year from now we might have it. I can't really say. Shadow: Thank you, or. Elliott. S9 11