2 UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN Wednesday, October 18, 1967 Faculty forum KU hiring discrimination By Robert T. Howard Professor of Engineering Editor's note: The following is the first in a series of general-interest articles written for the Kansan by KU faculty members on subjects of their choice. Any University faculty member may contribute. Views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Kansan or its staff. Chancellor Wescoe is to be congratulated for his forthright statement in the Faculty Senate regarding the employment of people from racial and ethnic minority groups. His position, if I may paraphrase it, is that department and division heads must not only discard discriminatory attitudes toward employmen of Negroes and other minority people, but they must also adopt positive methods of recruiting them. One can only applaud his stand as an act of fellowship amongst those who have been advocating a more active role for the University in the correction of racial inequities. That there are de facto racial inequities can be deduced from a "sight census" of the faculty and student body. This is about as good an estimate of the situation as can be obtained since racial indications on official personnel records are repugnant to fair-minded people. From whence to these inequities arise? I think the University of Kansas has long cherished the ideal of "equality of opportunity"—but in a passive sense. How real is "equality of opportunity" to a Negro boy from Kansas City or Wichita with a bare "C" average in high school? One would sense that the problem is one of economics. Social and economic problem The problem is indeed economic, but it is also social. Even among white, disadvantaged youths there are ferocious social pressures from family and peers tending to immobilize them in the "culture of poverty," as Oscar Lewis puts it. One student, whom I counseled in Kansas City, stoutly resisted his girl friend and his parents who wished him only to attend to his job in the Safeway Store. He persisted in engineering to the B.S. and entered graduate school. By new he has obtained his Ph.D. in the application of mathematics to economic theory. He is a potential college teacher. Herein lies a lesson in our quest to assist the economically disadvantaged. A strong university such as KU has the talent and resources to evolve a positive program of integrating racial and ethnic minorities into the fabric of contemporary culture. The University of Michigan has evolved the "Opportunities Awards" program, a group of activities aimed at seeking out and financing youths from the ghettos of Michigan's largest cities. Roy Campanella has evolved an organization for encouraging and assisting Negro youths to take advantage of the many athletic scholarships. The common thrust of these activities is the utilization of social channels of communication which exist, or can be established, to "pry" students, even the marginal ones, out of the culture of the ghetto. Faculty recruiting One such channel capable of enormous influence is that of example. To upperclasmen and graduate students, the professor who guides them through projects and dissertations may represent a star of first magnitude in the universe of cultural goals. It follows, therefore, that the University should stimulate the recruiting of a pan-racial faculty. Graduate students in such predominantly Negro colleges as Tuskegee Institute and Howard University are potential college teachers. Their institutions are, therefore, active channels for the recruitment of faculty. We must take care that, in our zeal to recruit faculty members in these institutions, we do not denude them by a "brain drain." To avoid this, the University of Michigan has established a cooperative arrangement with Tuskegee Institute. It operates in exactly the same way as our foreign university programs such as that with Costa Rica. Faculty members are encouraged to come the University of Michigan to upgrade their capabilities. Their places are filled by faculty from the University of Michigan. Thus there is provided a strengthening of both curriculum and faculty. This program is the reduction to practice of the worthy ideals of a great university. Of course there are inhibitions. What ambitious young faculty member would desert his research to undertake the grind of a heavy schedule of teaching? Does Heaven provide the only rewards for such a sacrifice? Professor Henry Smith of the School of Education has told me privately of his immense personal satisfaction in working with Negro teachers in Mississippi. In his annual report, President Pusey of Harvard University warmly commended the Dean of the Harvard College, John Monro, who resigned a position at the apex of academic life to undertake a similar position with a Negro "street car" college in Birmingham. Here is the challenge to those of us who would be conservatice by becoming "deers" instead of "sayers" only. Would the University of Kansas accept the challenge, collectively? Here indeed is a thorny question. LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS "I'VE GONE OVER HIS HOMEWORK GRADES — I'VE RECHECKED HIS LAB WORK — FIGURED HIS DAILY AND MID-TERM EXAM SCORES AGAIN, AND I STILL COME UP WITH A POINT TOTAL LOAN ENOUGH TO FLUCK HIM." Paperbacks Any month that can bring readers a paperback edition of Bernard Malamud's The Fixer (Dell, 95 cents) cannot be a loser. This is one of the great books of our time, winner of both the National Book Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize. Better than these, it helped to bring recognition to a novelist not particularly known to popular audiences. The story is both shocking and inspiring, dealing with the arrest and imprisonment of a Jew, Yakov Bok, in the Ukraine, cn a trumped-up charge of ritually murdering a Gentile boy. As Yakov spends his long stay in prison and undergoes inquisition after inquisition the reader senses that this hero's story may be the story of the Jewish people themselves. The ending will be unsatisfactory to some readers, for it leaves one hanging, not knowing what will happen. But "The Fixer" was based on a real-life occurrence, and perhaps you should know that the real man finally did go free, acquitted. O Beautiful For Spacious Roads That Spread From Slum To Slum" Letters Love film too violent To the Editor: "Bonnie and Clyde" is billed as a love story. Yet one leaves the theater dwelling not upon the tragic lovers but the blood and gore depicted by this sickest of all sick movies. I would, in all truth, suggest that this sadistic trash be restricted from screening. However, "Bonnie and Clyde" is the American entry in the Montreal film festival and The public should see the "fine" people and ideals that represent them. First of all, the movie presents two attractive, young, restless people who just happen to find bank-robbing a whole lot of fun while, at the same time, getting to read about themselves in the papers. One day Clyde, dashing fellow that he is, happens to put a bullet between a bank-teller's eves (bang! splatter, drip, drip). More headlines, more holdups, lots more blood and finally Bonnie and Clyde become our heroes because she loves her mother (a sure winner) and he loves his brother (very human!). Just as we begin to identify with the lovers and enjoy their defeat of their love-block, they are savagely mutilated by the vengeful guns of the law. Senseless as the "execution" is, even more senseless is the way it is depicted. A shudddering body being pocked by bullets, a slow-motion roll of a bloody corpse, a final dangling, dead hand and the massacre is over. I have seen more taste in photos of auto-wrecks, and the Indians were lucky. I do not advocate avoiding the distasteful side of life but I do reject the idea of rubbing the audience's nose in the slime of violent, sickening death. Americans can now be ashamed of Bennie and Clyde and "Bonnie and Clyde." Dennis Ali McPherson senior THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan Newsroom----UN 4-3646 ---- Business Office----UN 4-3198 Published at the University of Kansas, daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester, $10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 66044. Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised to all are regard to color, creed or national origin Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents. 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