Ithacan Ethics

From the days of Mark Hanna through the present dominance of Leonard Hall, no one has ever accused the Republican Party of not being shrewd. The party's latest move, the Ithaca ploy, is certainly a marvel of political duplicity. By masquerading a television campaign program by Vice-President Nixon as a press conference designed to increase collegiate interest in politics, the Republicans have furthered their interests doubly. Not only do they achieve the usual effects of ordinary television, but they also gain the advantage of seeming to dispense absolute truth, in league with the legions of education.

The Republicans can hardly be criticized for agreeing to take part in a television press conference supposedly under the aegis of Cornell. Their truth serum ballyhoo is good politics. But it is most unfortunate that Cornell has allowed herself to be duped into appearing as the sponsor of any political party.

It is one thing for a university to sponsor political speeches as part of its educational program--although the wisdom of that might also be questioned. But it is quite another to permit its "educational" program to be televised nationally by a political party at the height of a Presidential campaign. The Cornell conference throws the moral weight of a state-and-federally subsidized institution behind one candidate and one party. A personal invitation from a university president to an unavoidably partisan press conference does anything but clarify political issues for college students, or for anyone.