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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, October 30, 1967
Hippie life-a fraud
Everyone talks about the hippies. For months, we've been deluged with news stories, editorials, and magazine articles describing the delights of the turned-on, tuned-in, drop-out way of life.
What are the hippies?
Hippies believe in love, flower power, and mind-expanding. Nothing's wrong with that. We're all hippies at heart—we want to love and be loved. And, we'd all like to believe, despite the seemingly endless, unpopular war in Vietnam, that the power of the flower is mightier than the bomb. As for mind-expanding, most of us at KU have some hope of broadening our mental outlook.
So what's wrong with the hippies?
First, many hippies proclaim they have "dropped out" of society. The Diggers of San Francisco, the hippy Mecca, truly seem to have "dropped out"—economically at least. They have become famous for their knack of getting things free just to turn around and give them to whoever needs them most. This represents true conviction, whatever their broad, social aims, if any, tend to be.
However, many self-styled hippies haven't even dropped out economically. Dressed in the latest Army surplus issue, they continue to spend and consume like everyone else. They have only the appearance of rebellion—the long hair, the beads and sloppy clothing.
Hippies show no sign of an intense, thoughtful or sincere search for a better society. Unlike most revolutionaries, they are characterized by apathy. Their only solution to world and social problems is "dropping out." In fact, the only mind-expanding many seem to be doing is on marijuana—"pot" or "grass," or on LSD—"acid."
Recently, these drugs have been charged with causing nervous and psychic disorders.
A mystery to me is why the movement seems to be characterized by a rejection of books as a medium for mind-expanding. Despite Marshall McLuhan's pronouncement that books, like God, are dead, I think any sensible rebel will in time turn to books for hints on how to better the society he has rejected.
The phrase one most often hears is that hippies are striving for their own "thing"-they are disappointed in the world they inherited and the society that produced it. Many feel that a rejection of organized society and mores is the answer. The plea for individuality is a particularly poignant one.
Yet, the irony is, I believe, that in reality they have set up a strict society of their own—a society of "teeny-boppers" (age 12-15), "hip-pies," and "acid heads" (LSD users) that live in a rather strict sub-group. Individuality of thought or action doesn't seem to characterize this group. Most are living stereotypes of a subculture that is allergic to jobs, uninterested in political events and generally apathetic.
The greatest inherent danger of the hippie way of life, aside from the possibility of never returning from a "trip," is the appeal it has for the very young, the 13-year-old "teeny-boppers" who run away from home because of problems with parents. Because the hippie way, the uninvolved way, is such an easy way to avoid the painful process of growing up, it offers many the path of least resistance.
If stringing sunflower seeds is your bag, this is for you. But, for the potential artist, scientist, teacher—a real opportunity to develop a real "thing" for life, the hippie way of life is a fraud.
—Diane Wengler
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Mrs. Garnet E. Brennan, an elementary school principal, who was recently suspended for admittedly using marijuana since 1949: "I do not consider marijuana a habit-forming drug, but for me nicotine is."
Oville Freeman, agriculture secretary, on big-city crowding as a threat to national stability: "More and more people are living in less and less space."
Letter to the editor
Frank Paulson, president of the District of Columbia Junior Chamber of Commerce, on why Jaycees have started using tops-off go-go girls and nudist movies at their weekly luncheons: "It's kind of a little extra."
And here in Lawrence, the University administration thinks a fire unlikely; so it has tailed to provide adequate exits from Heeh Auditorium.
Hoch is a deathtrap
This is how diasters happen. Those in authority, who could and should prevent them, ignore the unlikely.
To the Editor:
Why did hundreds die in the Hartford circus fire of 1943? Because the owners thought a fire unlikely; so they failed to fireproof the big tent.
Why did twelve hundred human beings drown when the Titanic struck an iceberg in 1912? Because the owners thought it unlikely she could sink; so they had provided lifeboats for only one-quarter of the passengers.
These exits, some seven in number, do nicely for casual sauntering at a slow rate of speed: just the way audiences always have left Hoch.
In an emergency, however, the situation would change drastically. Such an emergency might be a smoke-producing fire; it might be sudden damage from tnaoae or electrical storm; it might even be a plane striking the building.
Whatever the emergency, anyone triving to escape from the auditorium and using either of the two east exits nearest the stage, which exits should serve about five hundred people, would find himself in as neat a death-trap as in a film featuring James Bond.
Let us examine the exits on the east side of Hoch.
Hundreds may die at Hoch Auditorium the next time it is filled. Why?
Many are the tragedies which have come to pass because responsible men have refused to recognize the unlikely as the possible.
This is the trap: these two exits, as well as a third one, the only exit from the stage on that side, lead to a narrow balcony some forty feet long. On the south, by the south, by the stage exit, this balcony is a dead end, with a two-story drop beyond the balcony wall. On the north, the only escape is to climb a flight of ten steps: a classic example of a bottleneck.
not yet reached safety. He is on another balcony about twenty feet long, and at the north end of this twenty-foot strip are finally some steps leading east to the ground and to safety.
Once up these steps, if he manages to get that far, our man has
But our man would, in all probability, never get through those twenty feet. Because there are four other exits all opening onto the same twenty feet, and all the hundreds of people using those four exits have only one path to safety—that same way to ground level at the north end of the strip.
But why wait until after the unlikely has become the Hoch Auditorium disaster?
There is, of course, more than one solution to the problem. Perhaps the simplest would be to build a wide concrete ramp from the deathtrap part of the balcony to ground level.
No thinking person can look at these seven east exits without the certain knowledge that, should an emergency arise, the balcony outside the three exits farthest south would be hopelessly blocked within seconds. And also obvious is the fact that those using the other four east exits would be in plenty of trouble, too.
Mrs. Raymond Cerf 1000 Sunset Drive
Paperbacks
A novel by Morris L. West called "Backlash" has been reissued under the title of Second Victory (Dell, 75 cents). It is headed for the movies, and because West wrote "The Shoes of the Fisherman" and "The Devil's Advocate," it is bound to have new readers. The setting is a small village after World War II and the hero is an American major.
J. P. Doneleavy's A Singular Man (Dell, $5 cents), by the author of "The Ginger Man," promises wild comedy and plenty of sex. Doneleay, however, should not be put down as a sensationalist; he is creative in the sense of the great 18th century comic novelists, and he has a feeling for fantasy that makes you feel you're in a wild world of the future.