340

319

"As a parent I have just seen our third child enter the University and have one more to go, and I am as concerned for their development and welfare as any parent can be.

"As a trustee I feel that my main concern - my main responsibility is to act with you in preserving for our young people an institution designed to help them learn, to think, to choose, and to project their ideas so that society may benefit from all they have to offer.

"In each of these capacities I often turn to the wholesome viewpoint of young people who have been untouched by the ebb and flow of political winds and sometimes I find a fresh approach to adult problems and decisions.

"Sometime ago when I was visiting in the home of a friend a small boy about nine who was playing with his toy cowboys on the living room floor looked up at me and said 'Mrs. Burgwyn, do you think it is all right for me to let my bad side win? I don't mean a little win', he continued. 'I mean a great big win for keeps.'

"Now, this is a tremendous question and I realized that he was asking something beyond the obvious. He was asking, 'Is it all right when I have the power to choose to allow the negative forces to prevail?'

"This is the same sort of question a young man at the University must ask himself:

'Is it all right for me to follow the crowd as long as I know right from wrong?'

'Is it all right for me to lie or cheat even though I know the difference between trugh and make believe?'

"A writer of books asks himself this question.

"A Trustee must ask himself this question. And I did. I asked, what is the negative force in this law? What is wrong about this bill? Surely none of us want our young people persuaded to the Communist faith.

"Yet, is this the real issue here? I think not. This is concerned with deeper issues. It is concerned with the negative force of our own fear. This bill, I believe, was prompted by the forces of fear the same kind of fear that any parent feels when his child gets into a car and launches forth on a busy highway. It is a legitimate and responsible fear, perhaps. Yet, it is negative and we cannot shackle and fetter our children with such fears. In either case I do not feel that it is right for me to say, 'Because I am afraid, you cannot go.' And it is wrong for me to say, 'Because I am afraid, you cannot listen.'

"I do not want my child or any other young person bound by the negative force of my fear.

"In this moment when we are charged with the responsibility of making sure that we preserve the freedom of our young people to read, to listen, to feel, to study, io assimilate, and then to give to the world the best that is within them it seems to me that we have to show faith in American parents who have the responsibility of building ideals in their children.

"We have to show faith in the Administrators of our institutions and in the faculty who spend their hours teaching.

"And we have to show faith in American Youth - in their ability to think, to choose and to act upon their convictions.