• Perhaps the worst phenomenon of college life—worse than swallowing goldfish, or founding a student chapter of Citizens For a Sane Nuclear Policy—is the popular election of the editor of the student paper. I do not have the count oh how many campuses practice this barbarism, but that it should be condoned anywhere is a source of—if I may wrench the words away from Little Rock for just a minute—National Shame. I once happened on a news story in the daily undergraduate paper of the University of Texas, several years ago, describing with total equanimity the movements on the preceding evening (election eve) of rival candidates for editorship of the same Daily Texan, which quite froze my blood. There had been a torchlight parade, swinging placards, cheerleaders, and great orations (“Student Government should have a voice in the selection of the faculty”—that kind of thing).
What happens? The following is what can happen. I give you an editorial from a recent issue of the Daily Texan. Please note the syntax, the imagery, the style, the thought, the content—and remember, the man who wrote it was the people’s choice . . .
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