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Recollections of a UDK Editor
(Below is a letter from former UDK staffer George DeBord now with the University of Montreal's tomorrow's anniversary edition will carry reminiscences of many former editors.)
It was my turn to play managing editor, that winter morning in 1990, and I was walking across the wind-wheipped snow field that in other seasons was known as Parking Lot X. I was about an hour late getting to the newsroom in Flint and had visions of finding one of the new sophomores caught in the teletype machine.
The window slid down and young Douglas Yocom, the UDK's personal affairs editor, leaned out. The girl beside him was a former homecoming queen, the one on the far side an officer in the liberal Hedonists for Freedom society.
Nearing the gates at the entrance to the lot. I came across an old Chevrolet. There were three people in it and I thought I recognized the driver.
"HEY, IN THERE," I said, knocking on the frosted window. "Is that you, Doug."
The PA editor grinned, then held up an old envelope that had a couple of words scribbled on the back. "Writing a feature story. We've been working on it all night." The girls more or less looked out the far window. I guess there was something going on over there that I couldn't see.
"What ya doin'" I asked, knocking the snow from my coat.
"Anything we can use on page one?" I asked. "I got the paper today."
"I doubt it," he said, "I haven't got it developed far enough yet. Probably be a couple of weeks."
FROM THE LOOK in his eyes, I figured Doug was laying the ground-work for something big, and that if probably would be better if I didn't interfere.
"Maybe I'll see you up at the hall later," I said, and turned toward the driveway leading to the street.
"I doubt if I'll be in today," he said. "This will probably take more time than I thought."
I thought I heard one of the girls gigging as I walked away, but it probably was the wind. Doug was one of our better staffers. He always had something going for him.
THE HEAVY green doors separating the winter air from the world of Flint Hall slammed shut behind me a few minutes later and the sound of howling wind was replaced by the pounding, clicking noises of typewriters, Teletypes and Linotypes. I glanced at my watch, threw back my shoulders, and turned into the corridor leading to the news-room.
I stepped at the door to remove my coat. Mel Mencher, faculty adviser, glanced up from a stack of proofs. The fire in his eyes would have melted the ice from every sidewalk on campus.
"You're late again, DeBord," he yelled. "You get an A for the day."
I glanced around the room hoping to find something with which to change the subject. One of the new students was leaning over the teletype, his right arm reaching down inside the cover. Great rolls of yellow paper were wrapped around his feet.
"He's always fouling something up," Mencher said, still grinding away at the proofs. "What have you got for page one?"
"SAY." I said, in an informative tone, "it looks like Gabby Wilson's caught in the machine again."
I walked over to where Gabby was standing, and he gave me a sort of hopeless, confused nod. The flying keys of the UPI Special were typing out a bulletin from Topeka on his wrist.
"Looks like Docking is about to slice another million from the building fund," I said. "That ought to give us a top head."
"GOOD," the FA said, his pencil making furious slashes at the last of the proofs. "Who you got on it?"
I thought a moment. "Ray Miller." I hadn't seen him in a week and hoped, silently, that he still was in school. "He told me yesterday that he would be right on top of this as soon as he got the word."
I shut the machine off and pushed the release button on the rollers, freeing Gabby's arm. He looked at me apologetically, then began collecting the sports wire from the floor. Gab was our sports editor and worked pretty hard at it.
I walked over to the slot of the kidney-shaped desk which dominated the newsroom and sat down in my chair. After clearing the desk with a sweep of my arm, I sat back and lit a cigarette. Mencher threw the stack of butchered proofs down in front of me and started from the room. "You ought to put someone on that building fund story," he said "How about using Miller?"
I SAID that sounded like a real good idea and that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it. He left and I reached for the telephone book, turning slowly to the listings under M.
That's pretty much the way it went with the UDK in the first year of the Soaring Sixties. Ours was not what you would call a tight operation and few people ever bothered to show up before 10 o'clock. Somehow or other, we always managed to get the paper out and we succeeded in making a few authorities mad at us, but these achievements always were considered secondary to the maintaining of a stern code of individual freedom among members of the staff.
AND OLD John Husar, the permanent editorial editor. If he got to crusing on something a little bit delicate, you just let him rip it up a few days until the Chancellor called or the Board of Regents threatened to close the school. After awhile, it would all blow over, and everyone would be glad that John had done it, and there would be a victory celebration at the Jayhawk-toasting the fact that they couldn't put us down.
A FACULTY member knew better than to attempt to bust up a baseball game in the newsroom even if it was press time and the page one dummy lay unattended on the desk. With an eraser for a ball and a ruler for a bat, the crew used the game as a means of letting off steam. Jack Harrison proved to be one of the better hitters. Ron Butler probably the best chucker.
Or when Janet Juneau would write something about sororities. You just ran a pencil over it lightly to remove the pizza stains, laughed at the double meanings, and sent it out to the back shop. Janet, like the others, had a particular way of doing things, and if you tried to change that, the copy turned out badly.
Like I said, we made a few people mad. We didn't believe in putting out the usual sugar-coated college publicity sheet and eventually, made theists of everybody from the governor right on down the line.
By this I mean we respected each other and tried to get the job done without upsetting a person's way of life. For instance, an editor was frowned upon if he expected anything from Doug Yocom while he was on one of his research projects. If you would wait him out, he would decide there were other things in the world besides girls, show up for work one day and do the work of three men.
All this might sound as if we didn't do much work, but that isn't the case at all. I'm trying to show the way things were and that there was an attitude among us that contributed to the success of what usually was a pretty fine college paper. It was an attitude of mutual respect for each other's abilities and of understanding for whatever shortcomings should appear.
Or like the time Dick Crocker decided to bring his dog to live in the newsroom. Nobody fooled around with that. "Thirty" just sort of sat down and from then on, he belonged.
Harry Ritter, Carol Allen and a few of the others had been among the group that had more or less been thrown out of Gov. George Docking's office the year before, and they worked pretty hard at keeping tabs on his activities. They spent a lot of time calling to Topeka and listening for the click when the secretary up there found out who was on the other end of the line.
IN OUR TIME, we worked in a relaxed atmosphere and laughed a lot.
ON CAMPUS SUBJECTS, we stirred up controversy with our treatment of the loyalty oath requirement, the outdated disciplinary procedures at KU, suppression of news, death of the "Fowl" humor magazine, actions of the All Student Council and the lack of more than one political party on the Hill.
One time, after I had written an editorial knocking the ASC for the secretive way in which its end of disciplinary cases were handled, the student body president paid me a visit.
"Accusing us of being secretive." "Oh," I said, "maybe I'd better write a retraction."
JIM'S CAFE
838 Mass.
GOOD FOOD
DAY and NIGHT
"You're all wrong," he said, propping his feet on my desk.
"Good idea," he said, lighting his pipe.
"WHILE I'M AT IT. I might as well explain how the disciplinary setup works," I said, "so everyone will understand. What's the procedure?"
"Oh," I said again. "Well, then, who's on the committee?"
"Can't tell you. We're not authorized to give out that information."
"That's classified, too."
"And the names of the students brought before the committee?"
"The by-laws do not permit us to reveal the . . ."
"BUT THERE'S nothing secretive about it. You've got us all wrong there," he said, getting to his feet. "That retraction is a good idea."
"I see," I interrupted.
I told him I'd think about it and pulled the blank sheet of paper from my typewriter as he was putting on his coat.
We didn't run too many retractions that year. We said that we were seldom wrong, but actually, there was another reason. Jack Morton, the overall managing editor and the UDK's answer to Yul Brenner, thought they were bad for morale.
ON THE OCCASION when a typographical error accidentally linked a woman professor romantically with a visitor from Iran (actually she had only introduced him at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs club — I think that's how the typo came about) Jack stood firm and would not listen to complaints of injury. Jack simply told her that what she did was her business, but that if she wanted to keep her name out of the papers, she ought to be more particular about whom she was seen with.
Other than that one incident, though, we were pretty accurate, as I recall. We called 'em as we saw 'em. Chancellor Murphy used to call Mr. Mencher up to his suite in Strong Hall every once in awhile, and MM could be heard cursing under his breath for several days following, but he never told us to lay off anything, and we hung right in there. I've often credited whatever confidence I have in myself as a reporter to the fact that my faculty adviser believed in me.
THERE WERE some people working in the newsroom at the turn of the decade whom I haven't mentioned, among them Robert Harwi, who sharpened axes with the elderly women of the Kansas State Censor Board, Joanie Jewett, probably the best woman writer ever to quit the school, Larry Miles, resident student, Saundra Hayn, Brenda Starl-like beauty from the West, and several others, but I just can't remember them all.
None of the people I've mentioned had showed up at the newsroom by 10 o'clock on that winter day I was writing about at the beginning. I was sitting at the desk more or less wondering what to do with the four blank page dummies that were left
(Continued on page 5)
Monday, January 15. 1962 University Daily Kansan
A. A. Abdul-Rahim, Syria graduate, defeated Brian Cleave, East-bourn, Sussex England graduate, 80 to 66 for the presidency of international club in a lengthy, dissension-filled meeting Friday night.
In other elections Cleave was chosen vice president; Suzanne Runnells, Greeley, Colo., sophomore, secretary; Arthur K. Spears, Kansas City freshman, treasurer and Patricia Price, Bartlesville, Okla., sophomore, social chairman.
THEY CONTENDED the club is ineffective and disorganized because it has only one business meeting a semester. They said the problem was worsened because the club's executive committee (the officers) meet too infrequently to accomplish anything.
International Club Elects Officers
As Shafiq Hasan Hashmi, Hyderabad, India, graduate and out-going president of the club, opened the meeting, three members jumped to their feet demanding discussion and action on club business procedures.
His statement was greeted with jeers and groans from the club.
Hashmi refused the discussion motion saying time was short (the meeting began late after a film at Hoch auditorium) and that elections were the main order of business.
Hashmi asked for a voice vote.
After the chorus of yeas and nays, he announced the club would proceed with election of officers.
HE WAS hoooted from the floor again and was informed the matter must be decided by a counted vote and that a two-thirds majority was necessary to change the agenda.
Hashmi consented and the club voted. The vote to change the agenda was defeated 81-30.
Hashmi then announced Manouchehr Pedram, Tehran, Iran, graduate student, would take charge of the elections and the remainder of the meeting.
THE APPOINTMENT argument was carried out in the face of so much talk and laughter it was nearly impossible to understand what was being said.
A member of the club challenged Hashmi's right in appointing Pedram the international Club's All Student Council representative. (Pedram's ASC appointment was made earlier in the semester — the challenge had nothing to do with Pedram's temporary chairmanship Friday night.)
Hashmi's antagonist finally conceded that Hashmi had been acting within his rights as president.
Finally the meeting was restored to order and the elections were concluded by midnight.
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