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Show 1 O J The following was written by Miller Upton, President of Beloit College, Beloit Wisconsin. In our opinion he has something to say which is well worth reading. I have just about reached the end of my tolerance for the way our society at the present time seems to have sympathetic concern only for the misfits, the pervert, the drug addict, the drifter, the ne'er-do-well, the maladjusted, mal-adjusted, the chronic criminal, crimi-nal, the under-achiever, the loser in general, the underdog. un-derdog. It seems to me we have lost touch with reality and become warped in our attachments, if not in fact psychotic. I feel it is time for someone some-one like me to stand up and say, in short, "I'm for the upperdog!" I'm for the achiever, the one who sets out to do something and does it, the one who recognizes recog-nizes the problems and opportunities op-portunities at hand and endeavors en-deavors to deal with them; the one who is successful at his immediate task because he is not worrying about someone else's failings, the one who doesn't consider It "square" to be constantly looking for more to do, who isn't always rationalizing why he shouldn't be doing what he is doing; the one, in short, who carries the work of his part of the world squarely on his shoulders. shoul-ders. Not the wealthy, necessarily, nec-essarily, not the ones in authority, au-thority, necessarily, not the gifted, necessarily, just the doer, the achiever, regardless regard-less of his status, his opulence, opu-lence, his native endowment. We. are not born equal; we are born unequal. The talented are no more responsible respon-sible for their talents than IB the underprivileged for their plight. The measure of each should be what he does with his inherited position. No one should be dammed by the environmental condition of his life, whether it be privileged or underprivileged. underprivileg-ed. This is an occasion to honor the successful, to say it is better to win than to lose, better to achieve an A than a C, that class rank is meaningful, that those who have developed the pattern of achieving in college will go on achieving out of college col-lege and because of their achievements the rest of us will live richer and easier Let us stop referring naively na-ively to creating a "great" society. It is enough at this stage of our development to aspire to create a decent society. To do so our first task is to help each individ ual be decent unto himself and in his relationship with other individuals. A decent society cannot be created out of a vacuum and imposed. im-posed. Our economic system has become the scapegoat for the failure of our educational, edu-cational, religious and family fam-ily institutions to develop decent and responsible individuals. indi-viduals. We will never create a good society, much less a great one, until individual excellence and achievement are not only respected but encouraged. That is why I am for the upperdog, the achiever, the succeeder. I'm for building an ever-better society and this will only be done by those who take seriously their responsibility for achievement, for making the most of their native ability, for getting done the job at hand. |