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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, September 25, 1967
Watson at your service
If you think of the library as a last sanctuary of peace from the outside world, as a structure for individual research and discovery, or even as a long writer's cramp from listing call numbers, long titles and authors, go look at Watson. You'll be in for some shocks.
If you always remember the library as one infinitely long callslip, you'll be impressed by a clever new computer that does the work for you. On the other hand, if you ever expected quiet from your friendly college library, forget it. The machine man forgot to make the computer noiseless, and if it does your work for you, it grumbles the whole time.
If you think of the library as a place to go when Professor Snarf assigns 30 outside readings for tomorrow, and you've been thinking the library ought to stay open all night because there is only one copy of the book and 55 folkins in your class, forget it and punt tomorrow. The library has a new policy of minimum hours in which it has to be open, and that closing time is 10 p.m., in case you thought you hadn't heard it right.
If you always thought the general reading
room was at least one exception to the closed library situation, notice its shiny new internal turnstyle the next time you pass through. And then you must prove to an advance guard, formerly called a librarian, you are not abscending with her books. The reason the library can't pay that nighttime employee may be because it now furnishes two for the daytime—one to play security guard. But the sanctity of the library is still violated by the cops—evidently the first checker is not completely trusted. The least they could do, it would seem, is stamp you on the forehead the first guard out, so that the man paid for checking on you can check out books or something.
And if you've always thought it would be nice to see what the state's largest library locks like in terms of books, and you always secretly hoped that the place would someday be made safe enough from yourself so that you might browse among that treasurehouse of a million, forget that this instant.
If these are your ideas about libraries, run, not walk, to your nearest Watson. You've got a lot to learn. -Betsy Wright, Editorial Editor
Student activists
Social psychologists often study groups of individuals that stand out or somehow draw extra attention. On today's college campus the much-publicized student activists are such a group. They have, of course, been analyzed.
Here is a portrait of the student activist—the collegian who organizes against the draft and the war, or for civil rights and student freedom, or whatever—as published in several recent professional studies:
Our activist is more intelligent, less prejudiced and psychologically more stable than the nonactivist, the tests show. Now that's enough to surprise quite a few people, but there's more.
In a 55-page monograph about eight studies conducted on several campuses the past two years, Dr. Joseph Katz of the Institute for Human Problems at Stanford says student activists "tend to be more flexible, tolerant and realistic; less dependent upon authority, rules or rituals for managing social relationships.
"In their values, activists tend to be concerned with selfexpression, intellectual orientation, sense of community with and responsibility for their fellow men."
The activists, who the researchers say have wide impact, have closer emotional and intellectual ties with their parents than nonactivists. Hippies and beatniks, the most extreme of all activists, are the exception to this finding because of their rebellion against parents, especially fathers.
In short, the studies show that the "typical" student activist has acceptable, and even socially ideal, characteristics.
Think about that when the silent peace vigils and sign bearers reappear at KU.
— Allan Northcutt, Editorial Editor
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Letters
Add spirit
An open letter to the University establishment:
Thank you for sending me the materials requested. Looking through them has afforded me some pleasure, but I feel critical.
Judging by the Spartan tone of the pamphlet on University housing, the University of Kansas would appear to be run with the efficiency of a good prison or a mental hospital. I am reminded of the Army. Regimentation is the order of the day, I suppose, in Kansas as in Red China. One becomes a bit weary, however, with the lists of do's and don'ts.
Looking over the catalogues, I wonder who is responsible, in your administrative staff, for the monotone pictures of glum-faced students marching stoically to the library, or sitting fish-eyed in classrooms. Life on the Hill is surely more fluid than your literature would suggest.
The academic life (as any of your worthy professors will tell you) consists of more than bills and receipts, strictures and admonitions. To some, education may still mean enlightenment. Instead of doing statistics, please tell us what we are getting into when we go to college.
From what sovereign origin has all this paper-work legality issued? It offends originality and creativity. It is mean and pinched. Can any thoughtful person wish to obey all these mandates and fall in line with such narrowness? When one attends a university what is he doing, after all?
Your literature is laudably detailed; now, add spirit.
Sincerely,
Warren Watson
Kansas City junior
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kansan encourages signed letters to the editor for publication. They should be typed and contain the writer's classification and home town. Letters are subject to editing by the Kansan staff. Libelous statements will not be printed. Send letters to the editorial desk, 112 Flint Hall.
The Hill With It by john hill
The little hoppy-toad quietly hopped across the lawn of the KU campus and humbly approached the coed.
"Excuse me," said the hoppy-toad with humility, "would you please give me a kiss so that I can turn into a handsome prince?"
"Hii!" she squealed with delight. "What fraternity are you in?" The toad sighed.
"Don't tell me—let me guess," said the toad. "You're a freshman."
"Right! How did you know? Where's your fraternity pin?"
"I am an Enchanted Toad," he said with great dignity, his little hoppy-toad chest proudly swelling.
"You don't understand," said the toad, looking uncomfortable. "I'd like for you to give me a kiss so I can become my true self. I'm really not a toad. I'm a handsome prince, if I do say so myself, and—"
"You mean you're having trouble finding the real you?" "Well, yeah..."
"I know what you mean." She bent over and looked very solemnly at the ugly little hoppy-toad. "I'm having trouble finding myself too. Sometimes I'll just sit in my room and play Joan Baez records, or Bob Dylan—"
"Yes, I'm sure but if you could just—"
"—or Barbra Streisand, or Peter Paul, and Harold records for hours when I get depressed." She paused for a moment, and then added in a confidential tone, "My Cwen says I'm having my Identity Crisis."
"I'm sure your Cwen must know," yawned the toad, fascinated by the turn the conversation had taken. "After all, she is a Cwen, and smiles a lot and all, but my own problem is very simple."
He knew he would have to keep this very clear. "I am not really the ugly toad you see before you; that is, I'm not what I appear, i.e., the real me is not what you see, ergo,—"
"I'm the same way! I'm never sure if I'm a disillusioned idealist, or an optimistic free-spirit struggling to emerge unblemished into a cynical world, or a socially-oriented seeker of practical advantages, or—"
"Look," said the toad tiredly, "it's about this mere shell of my former self that you now see before you. I'm really not a toad."
"You mean you're really not a toad?" Her wide eyes and blank look revealed her keen grasp of the obvious.
"Yeah, I'm a salamander traveling incognito. No, really, ever since that residence hall director caught me in a P.D.A., uh, a public display of action, it's been like this. She sprinkled some of that evil red ink that girls who come in late have to sign in with all over me, and I've been an ugly toad instead of a handsome prince. Now how about that kiss?"
A long passionate kiss followed. Finally, the freshman girl staggered away, dazzled, but serenely happy inside that she had helped another in finding himself during the confusing beginnings of college.
"Those freshman girls." the ugly toad smirked to himself as he quietly hopped away, "they'll believe anything."
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