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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, December 15, 1967
1967 ludicrous awards
No year should slip by without presentation of the traditional ludicrous awards for the most absurd campus situations. In 1967, as always, hot competition for the awards rocked the campus. It was the year in which two yearbooks came out in one year, or one yearbook came out in two years, depending upon how you looked at it.
Top all-around ludicrous award for the year goes to a state budget that keeps ignoring Watkins Memorial Hospital. The facility designed to serve 4,500 still stands in museum-like originalia, despite pleas of several successive hospital administrators that conditions and fund allocations change. Limited facilities combined with a physician staff budgets kept at a neat seven, make a student's trip to be cured these days an occasion demanding a sack lunch (if he's eating), a 700-page book, two or three hours of prime classtime and a high resistance to other plagues he may contract while skrunched in with other sickleies in the waiting halls.
The "this is how far campus women have progressed" award goes to a well-entrenched system in which dormitory women must play "Mother May I?" with the dean of women before choosing what to wear to dinner. After the whole hall votes and presents its findings to its
floor presidents, the decision must be placed before the dean's office to determine if the women have properly judged what will nauseate themselves in other's dinner wear.
The "bleah" award for 1967 was stolen by McCollum Hall residents for caring if other people cared if they cared about a noxious habit labeled PDA. While students everywhere inoculously held hands, McCollum residents rose enmasse against their leader for saying there was public affection in their own, yes in the very midst, of their hall. While the controversy rages around President Emery Goad, nobody has bothered to examine this peculiar condition—what constitutes public affection, how many are grossly disturbed by whatever it is and how many care?
And finally, the saddest ludicrosity of them all is when KU, with what must be the nation's most enlightened open-door policy on campus speakers, can't find anybody to speak. And isn't it ludicrous that Gov. Alfred M. Landon found K-State, rather than his alma mater KU, deserving of his excellent political lecture series?
Betsy Wright Editorial Editor
Wescoe rebuts Atkinson
Dear Mr. Atkinson:
On Dec. 1, you addressed a letter to me (at my residence) which called upon me to take certain actions as part of a protest against a directive issued by the Director of Selective Service, Gen. Lewis Hershey, on Oct. 26 of this year.
The American Council on Education has formally and officially urged that the directive in question be withdrawn. In its statement, which has been transmitted to high government officials, the Council notes that "our civil government has the right and duty to prosecute and establish the illegality of acts committed by all citizens, including students" and that a citizen's classification under Selective Service may indeed be affected by the court's action. However, "The net effect of the Oct. 26 letter," the Council's statement continues, "will be to
... bypass or supersede due process . . .
In presenting this statement, the American Council on Education spoke for the entire educational community of the United States and it did so at a time and in a place where it could make its impact felt. I take it that the Department of Justice's reassurance of a few days ago that orderly protesters had no cause for apprehension was a partial response to the Council's presentation.
The approach chosen by the American Council, that of a rational, reasoned, temperate presentation to those in lawful authority, is in the best tradition of a free society. Nothing is accomplished by obstructing the work of individuals who themselves are acting under lawful orders. Nothing is gained by interfering with the rights of others who would, to take the specific case, wish the
opportunity to discuss a career opportunity of interest to them with persons qualified to do so.
A university, we agree, is a place dedicated to the promotion of a better understanding of thought through unfettered access to differing ideas. This University has always been prideful that it operates within this tradition. It will not now close its doors to those whose presence in no way interferes with the University's principal tasks and purposes.
Although your letter was addressed to me at my home and may thus have been viewed as personal, you apparently made it available to the Daily Kansan for publication. I trust that you have no objection if I do likewise with this letter of mine.
W. Clarke Wessee Chancellor
Letters to the Editor
Hill, Abrams firing
To the Editor:
Although I don't normally expect too much from Kansan editorials, I was truly shocked at the recent one entitled "Bucking the System is Out." After reading it, the only impression that came to mind was that Mr. Hill had some vague feeling that to protest against certain aspects of our glorious society is foolish, although I'm not certain why he thinks so.
He uses a form of the word contradiction four times, but unless it has a definition I'm not aware of, he never came close to revealing one. The article would lead one to believe that because one criticizes many aspects, including attitudes, of the society, he is contradicting himself if self-criticism is encouraged and practiced by the society. Supposedly, now that protesting has encouraged self-criticism, the former should be terminated. Is Mr. Hill really against more self-criticism? I certainly hope not. I do, however, wish that he would find out just what he is for and against and present it in a sensible manner.
P. Richard Katz
Kansas City sophomore
- * *
Mr. Norman Abrams' dismissal from his position in the School of Fine Arts will be a tragedy. That 220 design students find themselves in the position of opposing their department in the abstract and that Professor Abrams is considered by them as a separate entity in that department has a vital meaning: the department and the students have found themselves in opposition, and it is Professor Abrams who is breaking through that opposition to get to his students.
To the Editor:
One risks undermining the uniqueness and essential importance of Professor Abrams' case by discussing too much the tendency of established members of any department to protect their own points of view at the expense of their juniors in the faculty and of their students. That is the case, but Professor Abrams is more important than any such general case right now.
In his statements to the Kansan, Professor Abrams did enough for education at KU to justify not only his retention on the faculty of any department in the arts and humanities, but a fat raise. I will certainly bring to the attention of my students his raising of the questions of commercial orientation in the university, of the necessity of a "guiding philosophy" and of the modernity of coursework, because, if they haven't considered such issues, their education has yet to take on essential meaning in their lives.
As a matter of fact, we have discussed similar issues in class. Professor Abrams' dismissal coupled with his clear-sighted statement of important issues could well have come up in our discussion of "Babbitt."
I hope it is not too late for Professor Abrams' department to reconsider the value of retaining such a stimulating thinker.
Eric Chaet
Teaching Fellow
Department of English
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"Hold Still, Boy, While I Gift-Wrap You"
Kansan drama review
New 'Knack' to tragicomedy
By Jerry Balch
"The Knack" was made into a movie a couple of years ago. But if you saw the movie and liked it, or saw it and didn't like it, don't let that stop you from seeing the play at the Experimental Theatre. The plot will be the same as that of the movie, but the diffuse, light humor will be put back into its original form—a frank, incisive and very funny examination of twentieth-century sexuality. Against a background of light comedy of sexual frustration, the ploy-wright Ann Jellicoe plays the darker tragicomedy of a society which, having freed itself from the restrictions of Victorianism, is looking for a guide to the proper manner of releasing the pent-up frustration of generations. The guide most likely to be followed is the one who makes the most noise. In this case, the one who makes the most noise is a man who compensates for his psychological insecurity by constantly flounting his sexual prowess.
Nancy, played by Kathy Melcher, is a country girl in London for the first time, who asks three men to direct her to the WYCA. The three men are Colin (Philip Silverglat), Tom (Scan Griffin), and Tolen (Bob Bettcher).
Colin is a young man looking for a guide in sexual matters. Tolen is attempting to lead him into a life of easy, meaningless and sometimes violent sex. Tom, a would-be painter who
thinks that freedom can be made both humane and meaningful, is the implacable and cynical fce of Tolen. When Nancy enters, the battle for Tom's mind, and perhaps his soul, is stepped up to a feverish pace. Played around the central symbol of a delapidated bed, the battle has no overtones of the Victorian dilemma of chastity versus sin.
The battle is not only a mental one. The amount of physical action on stage, particularly the small stage of the Experimental Theatre, demands great coordination and dexterity. The cast, particularly Sean Griffin and Kathy Melcher, showing an amazing skill in rough-and-tumble acting.
Silverglat at times exaggerates the naive, little boy quality of Colin's character, and Bettcher's accent sometimes seems drawn from the south of England—somewhere near Atlanta perhaps. However, the actors work together very well. Their timing, particularly Griffin's is at times flawless.
The first act, which is a bit slow and heavy, demonstrates the dangers of this play. Without the humor that proper technique gives to the play, the irankness verges on tastelessness. There is probably more humor in the play than this production brings out, but what they have accomplished is a likely, thought-provoking, and most of all, funny comedy of and about today.