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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, November 14, 1967
Election thoughts?
Someone once said people get the kind of government they deserve.
But it is difficult to believe that students on this campus deserve the present All-Student Council and the plethora of misguided souls who keep it running.
It is equally difficult to believe that the situation is going to be much better after the elections Wednesday and Thursday.
Only one party is submitting candidates for the voters' yea or nay. The party's leaders contend their unopposed position will offer students "quicker" legislative action once University Party takes unanimous power, and the party has produced a platform of sorts, promising everything from "re-evaluation of parking tickets" to "establishment of an ASC publicity committee to inform students about the ASC."
Hogwash. University Party has had a majority of seats on the ASC since last spring, and
hasn't produced on even the inane promises made then. To think things will be better if there's only one party, when in effect there has been only one party in power all along, is a fascinating bit of naivete on the part of the UP promise-pushers.
Equally fascinating is whether they're going to get by with it. We hope not.
The ballot this fall is an insult, morally and intellectually, to students who deserve better than they've been getting; the pablum promises passed out with the ballot would gag a maggot.
There may be, on that UP ticket, a warm body or two who can produce. If there is, go vote for him. But if you, like we, don't think UP and its leaders deserve to get a show of support in return for insults, choose the other alternative: If you don't please to vote, please don't.
The Editors
Letters to the editor
Union food, flunking classes
To the Editor:
I returned to KU this semester after a two-year absence only to find that a perennial point of student discomfort and complaint has somehow managed to get unbelievably worse instead of better. The problem: the Kansas Union.
Surely the Kansas Union would become the classical study of flagrant mis-management for every business school in the country, if (by an act of god!) anybody but Mr. Burge knew how this organization is administered.
At KU, one must go several miles to find a more expensive place to cat, yet need hardly go a block to get better food!
The Kansas Union receives the advantages both of being supplied through the cheapest distributors and of a $4.50 "gift" from each tuition-paying student; i.e., approximately $67,500 per semester (or $135,000 per year) specifically set aside for operating expenses. With such financial advantages, it is incredible that the Union should charge $1.30 to shovel up a helping of appetite-murdering mush, when other non-"subsidized" Lawrence establishments need ask only nine cents more for all the palatable food one can eat.
To add insult to injury, service is a joke hardly worthy of laughter. The Prairie Room will gladly serve you a half-pound of ground beef for $2.50 (including,
..quotes..
Sen. John G. Tower, Republican member of the Senate Armed Service Committee, on the recently announced Soviet orbital bombardment system: "The United States had better get into the defense business in space in a big way."
--of course, a seven-cent potato,
ten cents worth of lettuce and all the
coffee you can drink).
Dr. Ahmad Hassa El-Zayat, Egypt's official spokesman, when asked how far Egypt would go in resisting any U.N. solution requiring an Israeli pullout from captured Arab territory: "Does anyone think we are going to stay with our lands occupied forever?"
* *
King Mahendra of Nepal telling a national press club that he doubts the existence of an "Abominable Snowman" but ... "I certainly intend to do everything possible to encourage belief in his existence in order to boost our tourist trade."
Moreover, the Union will be happy to cater a social event anywhere in the Union building at a price considerably more than Dillons will cater the same event anyplace in town. And the charge for the room alone is enough to make the most affluent person choke.
It is certainly of little wonder that Union personnel prefer to clear out before sundown and let elaborate (usually out-of-order) gum - ball machines dispense wretched coffee by the teaspoon, seven insipid soft drinks, dehydrated hamburgers, etc., all at prices as though they were edible. Of course, one must clear away the polyethylene coffee cups himself, unless he wishes to eat standing up.
So KU scores another first: worst student union in the Big-Eight. It is about time people start asking what student unions are and what they are for, because this situation is really enough to make the most callous indignant!
R. R. Bollase
Wichita senior
To the Editor:
Right now at school I am having a few problems. I'm flunking math, for one thing, and really flunking astronomy also. I am not doing too well in anthropology either. The whole thing is that I don't study as I perhaps ought to. I have no interest in any of these subjects, no interest strong enough to hold my attention very well.
The one course I like is art history. It isn't a terrific subject, but it's much more interesting to me than any of the others. Study in art history is not much easier — it is based on the accumulation and interpretation of information—the same way any science or other subject is. Fut art history is just a bit more appealing to me; I relate to it well. It is interesting to me not because I find objective beauty in art (though that is there) but because I find the expressions of human beings throughout the ages, and I am interested in what they have to say to me through their art.
Math and science and social studies, as I am being exposed to them, are static and objective. They have to do with technology—not with spirit. I think they
make our lives more secure, but not necessarily more meaningful.
I think I am basically a creative person. So, knowing who I am, I am not too worried about whether I pass or flunk those meaningless courses. They are, after all, requirements. The University has required them of me without knowing or caring who I am.
KU is a wonderful, free environment. It is filled with energy and youth, and it is very beautiful. But I have not one iota of influence on the solved and settled questions which are repeated over and over in my present courses. Who cares?
Warren Watson Kansas City junior
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Kansan book review
Fulbright's 'Arrogance'a slam
By Fred Shock
Senator Fulbright in his latest book, "The Arrogance of Power," has developed a series of proposals and ideas advanced during his participation in the Christian A. Herter Lecture Series at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in the spring of 1936.
Senator Fulbright bases his defiance of American foreign policy upon as much or more serious thought as anyone has outwardly demonstrated in book form in the past few years.
The book is a synopsis of the Senator's convictions of what is the matter with the United States and its manner of self-extension through foreign policy.
To begin with, Fulbright, a controversial figure by any sense of the term, figures that the U.S. may have become committed to goals that exceed even America's capacities.
rius assumption is based on a series of intricacies, on psychological and historical evaluations of man and man's powers; so much that he characterizes the root cause of human conflict and of the power drive of nations in the simple, "ordinary fears and hopes of the human mind."
The "Arrogance of Power" is a 258-page reprimand of our foreign policy and why we, as Americans, have spent money to finance a chase for prestige and security through the Dominican Republic, Cuba, South Vietnam and other nations which have accepted the contents of our pocket books, but not our goals or our handshakes.
He argues that the hopes and fears of man transcend even economic forces and historical aspirations. With that as his premise, the senator fears the U.S. may be on the verge of losing its humanitarian approach to other nations and
giving way to what he calls the arrogance of power, the "tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission."
It is a condition which Fulbright fears is causing the U.S. to lose perspective of what is within the realm of its power, a situation which in some cases has caused the destruction of great nations in the past.
With this philosophy, the senator has armed himself to do battle with many of those who hold concepts which now influence our behavior abroad, particularly in Asia and Latin America.
Senator Fulbright does not regard communism as a total evil. Instead, he is arguing for a policy of assistance and influence which will allow nations which receive American aid and advice to arrive by "self-determination" at an ideal form of political organization and economic well-being—whether or not it follows tenets of the American way of life.
His dissent cannot help prompting controversy. He is bold enough not only to question the validity of some popular approaches to the containment of communism, but to suggest convincing alternatives.
He is not rocking the boat because he wants to sell books, but because he is genuinely convinced that powerful America could falter unless there are some changes in the manner it tries to "build bridges" of friendship with other nations.
It is a book rich in conviction, sometimes sarcastic, but nevertheless the mouthpiece of a man who desires to fulfill his commitment as a person of concern over the future of our nation.
Taken in such a context it should be included as "must" reading for critics and advocates of American foreign policy.