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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, October 2, 1967
A call to protest
Why doesn't somebody start a new type of peace organization? Why doesn't somebody start an organization where persons opposing the war can discuss their objections without constant harassment to picket and protest.
The old group which publically represents Vietnam war protestors advocates a brand of peace and brotherly love that runs to signs proclaiming "LBJ kills kids" or the more recent "Marines eat people." Like an infamous civil rights group, which violently obliterates its nonviolent name, the so-called pacifists are smudging a legitimate and crucial cause with their self-centered theatrics and their irresponsible words.
But the blame lies not so much in the publicized picketers, but in the large bulk of the silent protestors—we who have let a small group of showmen become the voice and the Bible of the protest movement. We go to their meetings, disagree with their methods of protest, go home and forget the whole business.
There are many other potential methods of protest against the Vietnam war besides soapbox oratory or inflammatory charges by the peace men against their brothers.
There is the avenue of legitimate study of the facts and issues of the war without sole reliance on "Ramparts" or other similarly biased works for The Word.
There is the possibility of bringing nonprofessional peace speakers to the campus persons who have earned national respect for their achievements in other fields. In other words, persons who have already reaped a lifetime of publicity and therefore are not intent on making a name through the cause of peace.
And finally there is that golden opportunity for 1968—pressuring the people who can do something about the war to do it, or else.
If the voice of the typical peace protestor becomes much louder in U.S. life, the peace ideal may go the way of the civil rights movement. A repulsed public may forget the legitimate issues and necessities at hand in their reactions to the stereotyped protestor.
Like the civil rights cause, world peace is too important to become a mere fad—something to be "in" only until people tire of it. Responsible citizens must see that it doesn't.
— Betsy Wright, Editorial Editor
"Our Examination Shows Conclusively That All The Shots Came From The Direction Of Hanoi"
Letters
More criticisms
To the Editor:
Two items in last Tuesday's "Kansan" create an itch. One is Mr. Hamilton J. Salsich's column. The other is an announcement of goings-on at Trinity Methodist.
Salsich's revolution; not so easy
Now Mr. Salsich, echoing countless others, is at pains to incite The Young to action against dominations and oppressions by its elders, in this instance, the Gray Eminence of university faculty and administration. (As a faculty member, according to the by-line, one wonders at his purpose, but perhaps he is trying to "Identify.")
The common thread that seems to join these two pieces is an assumption that the young are oppressed by their elders and, given half a chance, would rise to great creative heights, casting off bonds
Trinity Methodist reveals that Wednesday night worship will not, for some time, be restricted to preaching the gospel according to the four evangelists, but will present it according to Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Jackson Pollock and other latter day saints.
of tradition, freeing the masses,
identifying, involving, etc., etc.
Both articles fail to take into account that the young must know—and know thoroughly—the traditions and values of their elders before they have any business attempting to change them. The young are often knowledgeable of facts; they are rarely wise. And while their elders may be neither, they at least possess the basic prerequisite to wisdom, experience.
It would be refreshing to find someone suggesting that it would be well for students to concern themselves deeply with the business of learning thoroughly the heritage of the race before attempting "radical vision" and "revolutionary change." It would also be refreshing to find representatives of the major denominations who would present the traditional position of their several churches without cant, gloss and ersatz psychology. While the facade might not be as intriguing, perhaps the inside would hold more substance.
John F. Buckner Topeka graduate student
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To the Editor:
What is it that makes people think the kind of mass action and narrow-minded thinking which Mr. Salsich seems to advocate in his editorial will revolutionize the University (or the world) and make "liberals" of us all?
If a student has allowed himself to be forced into a situation he doesn't like, and if he has never spoken out about it, there is the "distinct possibility" that he never had "the ability and the desire to speak on his own." And it has been my experience in the classroom that few of us do have either the ability or the desire.
Teachers' function
I use quotes with "liberal education" because it has come to mean something like "the accumulation of a lot of facts about a lot of fields." But all that we need for that kind of education is a well-stocked library.
We are, after all, pretty young and pretty inexperienced. But this should not be taken as an insult, because ideally we come to college to learn this ability and to be inspired to have this desire. We come as much for a broad-minded attitude as for a "liberal education."
The best and highest function of any teacher is to inspire his students both to learn certain facts and, more importantly, to adopt a critical, humanistic, and even strongly moral outlook. In other words, every teacher of liberal arts should do his best to help students become people who can live with and understand other people.
The difficulties involved in carrying out this mission are Gargantuan. The job involves WORK — complex, frustrating, tedious work; and since no one can give any solution to so complicated a task, general pronouncements on a truly liberal education often sound like the "same empty rhetoric about the freedom of education and the dignity of the student."
So, admittedly there is often a failure by teachers to carry out this liberalization. The only possible solutions for their failures involve more work, more devotion, more experience.
expect students, the mass of whom don't seem to know what they want, to solve anything by "radical vision and revolutionary change." Whatever that means.
But I don't see how Salsich can
Welcome dissent
I, for one, would welcome a revolution of sorts among some students. For what could be more "revolting" than a class full of people who refuse to respond to any stimulus—either from homework assignments, or from the teacher? What teacher would not welcome dissent in place of silence and apparent apathy?
Again, some teachers give up and sink into routine lecture methods. Some students give up and opt for grades. But this matter of "individual" action goes much deeper than one person's standing up and yelling. That type of revolution is a blind alley, for even if we were to do away with grades, large lectures, and committees, their concepts would remain as long as teachers viewed education as a gathering and distributing of facts, and as long as students accepted utilitarian goals as their own.
So that while any number of people may scream, kick, spit, or defy, no final civilized solution is likely to come about until people sit down and think these things out for themselves, or (even better) until they sit down with each other and talk things out.
The same applies to racial discrimination. As long as people use terms such as "the Negroes" as abstractly as does Mr. Salsich, and as long as people think that the Chancellor is able to end "discrimination in fraternities" we will have racial discrimination.
Belief sillv
We will have it because such a belief is silly; it's an excuse for avoiding the real problem. Picture the Chancellor calling on any residence hall and saying, "Okay, gang, let's stop discriminating." Or try telling the next person you meet that because some Negroes live in Templein, there is no racial discrimination in Templin.
We can have all the sit-ins and stand - ups and walk - outs we want, but until each person (on a truly individual basis) undergoes a change of heart or a
broadening of mind, the concept and the reality of discrimination will be with us.
Well, that's very easy to say. And again, the solutions involve hard work, hard thinking, maybe hard living. And it's not that mass action (even in the form of one student's protest) is not sometimes effective as a stimulant to thinking; but, very often, demonstrations of this kind are viewed by so-called liberals as THE answer to a problem. And so often as not, mass actions merely stimulate actions that are more massive and more unthinking.
As far as having a voice in administration goes, if there is a teacher or an administrator who refuses absolutely to confer with students about grievances, search him out and expose him if you think it is worth your time.
But if you are going to yell for the sake of yelling, or if you think bad manners are going to solve anything, chances are you won't be heard, much less listened to.
John E. DeMoss Graduate student and instructor of English
...quotes...
Gov. Ronald Reagan: "It's hard for me to believe the President was brainwashed by the military when every day there's evidence of the military squirming when so few of their recommendations are accepted."
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Don Maclean, a syndicated columnist, on two governmental leaders: "Gov. George Romney says Defense Secretary Robert McNamara tells lies. McNamara says Romney talks nonsense. What bothers me is maybe they're both right.
* *
A Marine, while under continuous artillery and mortar fire for four days in Vietnam: "You know, your girl forgets to write, the paymaster forgets to pay you, the supply officer forgets to bring food, but Charlie the Viet Cong, Charlie never forgets you."