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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, November 17, 1967
This is your ASC, UP
The fall ASC election is over, and as per expected, UP, you're in. You've gathered in 18 more seats to make an already lopsided Council positively obese with your weight. But beware: one of the smallest percentage turnouts in KU election history is hardly an overwhelming vote of confidence in your abilities.
You're naked now, UP, and everybody is staring at you. No longer can an ineffective Council be blamed on the opposition party. The new Council ought to reek with good fellowship and cooperation.
And to make sure everything will come out all right, a fledgling organization, to be known as the Independent Student Party, is going to be keeping a tally of your gains.
It would seem, therefore, that you might consider getting some things done. The first and easiest place to start would naturally be your own platform—the one in which you set out ten goals to be accomplished "immediately and explicitly."
And that shouldn't be too hard. Of the ten platform proposals, four "issues" have been floating around the ASC so long they may die of old age and three others are merely proposals to set up investigative or evaluative boards—no promise of when or if the evaluations may be expected, or what, if any, action could be anticipated on these issues.
That leaves three categories in which the UP may still shine. These are: the institution of a
Student Opinion Poll, the establishment of a student run and oriented Better Business Bureau and student evaluation of teachers. These seem like nice viable goals, and who knows, with the aforementioned seven almost out of the way already, you just might fulfill all of your platform promises.
But mere fulfillment of a pablum platform may not make you campus heroes. Come out and look beyond your party sometimes, friends, and you may see that the mood for student action is warmly flowing across campus. A more condemnation of those who ask you to solve real problems in a reasonable length of time, rather than exhausting your energies on trivia, may not do it for you the next time.
The University Party is in an enviable situation now; for it may define its own destiny. With the internal strength you now posses you can prove your worth by tackling some pertinent problems and coming up with solutions, if you want.
Or you can rest in the comfort of your sweet ball of solidarity—doing nothing—together.
But if you fail to perceive the voices of your constituents, if you fail to initiate and solve rather than stall and forget, you may at best annihilate yourselves, and at worst, be remembered as the group that killed student government at KU.
—Betsy Wright Editorial Editor
HERBLOCK "I Thought We Were Getting A New Model"
Letters to the editor
Union Food
To the Editor:
I have been interested in sending a letter concerning the Kansas Union food but put it off until I noticed the letter from R, R. Borlas in the Tuesday Kansan. Most students do not really care how good or bad the food situation is here at KU because they do not have to eat it or pay for it.
In most cases I would not have taken the time to write about such a trivial matter except that recently I had the chance to be in Columbia, Mo., at the University of Missouri and had three meals in their cafeteria. Right then and there I realized how bad the situation is at KU. They offered a greater selection of main meals (at lunchtime), offered better portions, had a much higher quality and the prices were low enough to amaze me when the girl totaled my bill.
The only thing I could think of was "Why can't KU run a food service like this." If it can be done in a nearby institution of quite similar circumstances what has happened here? I only wish that the director of the food service realizes what is being done elsewhere and then maybe he can put forth a similar program which would put KU on a par with other institutions.
George Parker Albany, N.Y., grad. student
★ ★ ★
To the Editor:
Atop the Hill at KU stands a lone monument, a solid edifice dedicated to the proposition of
making money. The Kansas Union is the fortress of the overpaid; the heaven of the underworked. It is the mode of poor management, the abhorrence of the student. But of primary importance, it is the bastion of terrible, unbelievable food; the epitome of high prices. Where else can one get a $.70 meal for $1.40? Where else can one be pushed, shoved or cailed through an express line so fast that by some divine principle of optics, prices blur and shapes and sizes become distorted? Where else can one get bread, so selectively aged and seasoned (meaning it's used in all seasons), as to warrant a $.03 per slice service charge for the honor of devouring it? Where else can one get Jello (or a facsimile thereof so round, so firm, so fully packed as to merit its use in the U.S. space program, not as a food, but as protection? Where else can one get spaghetti every day of the week for two weeks running? Yes—but the same spaghetti? I named mine "Irving."
Is it significant that they distribute, free of charge, copies of prayers at each table? I know "Go Big Blue" is essential to school spirit, but "Big Blue" is not essential in the minute $20 droppings of instant mashed they gladly serve up.
And so, fellow students, the problem is what do we, as patrons of this gastronomical flasco, do? Continyew, ad infinitum, ad nauseum?
James E. Harris, jr.
Leavenworth graduate student
Newsroom—UN 4-3616 — Business Office—UN 4-3198
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $8 a month year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 60444. Accommodations and employment advertised offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
Managing Editor—Dan Austin
Business Manager—John Lee
The crime-comedy movie is as old as Cary Grant (almost) and generally as popular. With the introduction of a modern flair, films like Sinatra's "Ocean's Eleven" concentrated on dreaming the impossible heist. Television, of course, is currently milking that theme into "Mission Impossible," "Garrison's Guerrillas," "The Rat Patrol" and such defunct series as "Jericho."
Perhaps it is this long-established and now highly-exploited popularity that is "The Jekers" undoing. A less over-exposed theme might have carried this mediocre array of screenplay, directing and acting to an entertaining conclusion.
Kansan movie review
"Topkapi" is still the top crime-comedy of recent years, the standard of suspense and satisfaction by which attempts like "The Jekers" find themselves measured. The immodest "Mcdesty Blaise" successfully carried the "Topkapi" banner to one extreme, while more subtle James Coburn's sadly underrated "Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round" triumphed at another.
'The Jokers' not wild
By Scott Nunley
It would be pleasant to say, as so many apparently have said, that "The Jokers" is wild. In honesty, however, this hand has been dealt so often that even the kibitzers can read the cards from the back.
For example, the plan works flawlessly—but what a refreshing change if it hadn't? Moreover, the boys carefully avoid the unfortunate consequences of their theft—but what is it like when a joke like this is really pulled and really fails? "The Jokers" might have been a suspenseful weight of reality instead of this expected flick of fluff.
"The Jokers," however, tries to muddle up the middle—tossing in a bit of realism here, a bit of extravagance there—never dedicated to satire or suspense. The result moves fairly rapidly, but to no particular point of excitement or laughter.
There is no fun in merely daring to Steal Big any more; as the two brothers recall, the Great Train Robbery's been done. There is scant satisfaction in watching our crooked herces snap out a foolproof plan to heist the crown jewels, when plans like that are a cinematic dime a dozen. The "twist"—a staple ending to any crime-comedy film—is not that startling and it is certainly not worth the last quarter of the film that is devoted to it.
What director-writer Michael Winner might have done to create a worthwhile motion picture seems obvious from the things which his film so carefully does not do.
LBJ still in the running
By William Theis
WASHINGTON — (UPI) — Whatever else they hope to get from the White House, the American people expect their President to be unflappable. Some worried Democrats think President Johnson's record in this regard may be the core of his political strength in 1968.
They now see ahead a political year of dissension over Vietnam, tumult over urban problems, more party frustration and likely congressional losses, if not a major presidential threat from the Republicans.
Now that a probable presidential challenge by Democratic Sen, Eugene J. McCarthy has been added to that of Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, the outlook is for a year of cyclonic uncertainty.
Reports that Johnson has reached a serenity of mind and spirit toward the torrent of criticism of his Vietnam policy suggest to some that his opponents might move with caution. Republican leaders already have called a halt to criticism which "demeans" his office.
Could such a picture of steadfastness—assuming there has been no break in the Vietnam war—make a meaningful difference for candidate Johnson?
Patience long has been one of the President's attributes. As Senate leader before he became vice president, he never moved impetuously to attain a legislative objective. He waited until the time was ripe, until he had the votes, until the public climate would lend support.
Veterans around Capitol Hill
expect Johnson to outwait those who call for the resignation of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, just as President Harry S. Truman ignored calls for the dismissal of Deen Acheson, who went through the kind of fire now being heaped on Rusk.
They also recall that Truman's troubles, like Johnson's, were with some so-called intellectuals of his own party as much as with Republicans.
If the 1968 contest should be in any major sense a clash between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, there are still more of the latter than of the former. As retired longshoreman - philosopher Eric Hoffer says of Johnson: "He is one of us."
That might enhance the stance of an unfappable President.