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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, October 16.1967
KU, not death to ideals
This is a challenge to freshmen.
It is a very personal challenge; perhaps not suited for the editorial page for a university that likes to think of itself as being very sophisticated.
But perhaps the responsibilities of the editorial staff should occasionally extend beyond the presentation of irate discourses on surface issues.
You, the freshman, have probably brought certain dreams with you to college; ambitions, secret hopes, ideas and ideals. At this point, beginning your college career, you probably hold certain illusions about KU, your plans or yourself.
KU can be a very disillusioning way of life, as you may be finding out after your first few weeks here.
If you are a freshman who enjoys writing or studying literature, and have been looking forward to college level English courses, English 1 can be very disillusioning. If you are a woman who has been looking forward to the freedom of college life, the mountain of rules, regulations, and dress codes that face you can cause you to go sour on KU.
Living groups can have this same effect. If you had been expecting something else, the coldness of residence halls, the mickey-mouse aspect of fraternities or the solitude of apartment living can get you down. If you let them.
Or simply the realization that once you used to daydream about some far-away, misty college setting, with a more mature, sophisticated you confidently poised in the middle of it, and now that you are suddenly here; it can be very disillusioning to realize that you are still you.
All these things, and more, are great rationi-
lations to scorn or laugh at your dreams, illus-
ions and hopes. If that's what you want.
This is our challenge to you; hold on to your dreams and illusions.
Certainly, learn the ropes at KU quickly, and learn what is unrealistic. And even learn what is corny, square and considered completely out.
But don't allow your personal dreams of what you want from college or yourself to be shattered. Hang on, inside.
KU is a tremendous place to learn that it's worth it to hold on to your dream-like goals, and a great place to try them out at the right time. We dare you.
To those of you who have had no use for thoughts of dreams, we would only offer that KU may be your last opportunity to be able to give any thought in this area. Laugh at this on the surface, but give it some thought inside.
There are a lot of us who think that holding on to our illusions, in spite of KU's mickey mouse or pseudo-sophistication is well worth it.
Again, to those who are offended, skeptical or amused about editorial treatment of such an unsophisticated, personal subject, we are sincere in our apology. We can easily understand how this can be termed as corny or sentimental and dismissed from the mind.
But we are not too concerned with a negative reaction to our simple challenge. After all, probably very few people actually read the editorials anyway.
Which can be very disillusioning.
John Hill
Associate Editorial Edito;
HERBLOCK
"Part Of What You Pay Is For What You Mail, And Part Is For What He Mails To You"
Letters to the editor
ASC, reader speak
To the Editor:
We the undersigned, representing the opinion of the members of the All-Student Council, wish to formally declare our position on the state of affairs concerning Watson Library's closing hours. We feel that the library should be returned to its operating status of last year. To this end, the council has dedicated its efforts.
By conception, a university is an institution of higher learning, and the library is a manifestation of this conception. If the students are not given ample time to use the study areas and to conduct proper research in their pursuit of an education, then the university has failed.
Is it more important to con struct tennis and basketball courts? Is it more important to plant new trees and shrubs? Are these endeavors more important than providing the students with a fully functional library? In our opinion, they are not. We feel it is the duty of this and any university to forego other allocations in order to facilitate the smooth functioning and efficient operation of the library for the good of the student body.
Jeff Peterson
Jeff Peterson
Moline, Ill., senior
Business School Representative
Patty Mills
Topeka senior
Sorority Representative
Don Chubb
Lawrence senior
ASC Chairman
To the Editor:
I don't know whether I've gotten lucky and picked up a UDK on two of your "best" days or what, but the UDK's for Tuesday, Oct. 10, and Wednesday, Oct. 11, were well written and extremely interesting to read. I can't remember ever really enjoying a newspaper before I read those two issues. I especially
liked the articles about Salsich's freer university, the one about the Centennial College (which, by the way, was the most informative on this particular subject that I've seen since the CC became a fact of life). "Landlords Air Rent Problem," is a fascinating piece of information. Thank you.
Thanks again!
If you could only manage to coax Scott Nunley away from the theater long enough to focus his fingers, eyes and brain, he might, just possibly, learn how to criticize. He's terribly good at tearing apart films. I dare him to try to put one together! However, John Hill's column usually makes up for Mr. Nunley's fascos.
I don't know how a newspaper runs or who decides to change what, when and where. I do know what I enjoy reading, both for a bit of fun and a bite of news. If the rest of the UDK's are planned and printed like this Tuesday's and Wednesday's, this campus will really, actually, be the proud producer of an honest-to-god newspaper.
Bartlesville, Okla., sophomore
Trilla Reagor
Paperbacks
Some drama is new this fall in paperback. First is Max Frisch's THREE PLAYS (Mermaid, $1.75), which includes "Don Juan, or The Love of Geometry," "The Great Rage of Philip Hotz" and "When the War Was Over." These are for admirées of the Theatre of the Absurd. Another is Thomas Middleton's A GAME OF CHESS (Mermaid, $1.25), a work that goes back to the 16th century. A similar volume is Cyril Tourneur's THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY (Mermaid, $1.25), which also dates to that early time.
kansan movie review
Bonnie and Clyde: Fine crime film
By Scott Nunley
Those who remember "The Untouchables" may not believe it, but it is possible to create a fine motion picture about the Depression criminal. Director Arthur Penn has the secret and he shares it exuberantly with the viewer in "Bonnie and Clyde."
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker become the Romeo and Juliet of the Dustbowl in Penn's film. The two young people, after all, only want success and luxury in an era of failure and starvation. Their struggle may have set them in opposition to the authority of the 1930's; but then, as Clyde says, "This is the best way we know how to make money."
As ambitious lovers, Bonnie and Clyde are certainly set for tragedy. Bonnie is helpless to leave Clyde, and Clyde is unable to choose a less offensive vocation.
"What would you do if we was clean and could start over?" Bonnie asks.
But Clyde could never have escaped: "I'd certainly do things different; I sure wouldn't live in the same state where we pull our jobs."
But "Bonnie and Clyde" may not be a tragedy, despite the brutal deaths of the errant lovers. Clyde never intended to live out his crime spree, to get any place in particular—the act of going, the spree itself, was all the future he could imagine. If the nation could just be made aware that he was acting, Clyde Barrow would be content.
Bonnie's bad poetry—splashed across the front pages of Depression newspapers—gave Clyde his dream. Not only did the nation know
of the Barrow Gang, but emotionally as well as economically depressed Americans envied the gang's dash and audacity. The Barrows acted for starving America, acted as thousands dreamed of acting, and acted against the common enemy the Banker.
As actors in a black comedy, then, Bonnie and Clyde try and succeed before their deaths. A barrage of machinegun bullets is futile against a bulletproof legend and can do little more than ring down a bloody curtain. The color, the excitement, the laughs have already become a part of American mythology. Penn's Clyde Barrow has become as immortal as Joan Baez' Pretty Boy Floyd.
But tragedy or black comedy, "Bonnie and Clyde" is also a surprisingly successful study of human individuals. Here, Faye Dunaway's Bonnie Parker is a triumph. Whatever the real moll was, Miss Dunaway has created a hot and living woman as memorable for herself as for her role in the Depression myth. Even hapless actor Michael Pollard has been directed at last into a home: his fine role as child-criminal W. C. Moss.
Director Penn's cameras record every bleak detail of an era and capture an American legend without obscuring the humanity inside. His chase scenes are as uproariously successful as those in "A Hard Day's Night" or the best of Max Sennett. With slow motion, hazy filters, and Flatt and Scruggs banjo background, "Bonnie and Clyde" creates meaning from mayhem and makes the getting there twice the fun.
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..quotes..
Charles de Gaulle: "How can one conceive of a one-party system in a country that has over 2.0 varieties of cheese?"
Dr. Benjamin Spock, professor of Child Development at Western Reserve Medical School, Cleveland:
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Sen, Joseph S. Clark, D-Pa. objecting to the new $5 million U.S. anti-ballistic missile system: "A very expensive flying erector set."