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University Daily Kansan Friday, November 10, 1961
What Is School Spirit?
Tomorrow is Homecoming at KU and thousands of alumni will be returning to Lawrence to enjoy the pageantry that is part of the annual event. This is the weekend set aside for those returning to visit the institution that probably played a large part in placing them at their present station in life.
CAMPUS SPIRIT WILL BE at its high point this weekend. Everyone will be attempting to demonstrate their school spirit in the traditional Homecoming manner. The KU-Kansas State football game tomorrow afternoon will highlight the weekend of festivity. A dance will be held at the Kansas Union to assist in the celebration of Homecoming. It will be a magnificent display of school spirit.
But is this weekend of fun and frolic a true representation of the spirit of the University? We say nothing against football or dances, but the spirit of this University is much more than a show of exuberance displayed at an athletic contest on an autumn afternoon. School spirit goes to the very heart of the institution. And the heart of any university is the intellectual atmosphere it generates.
THE DESIRE OF THE STUDENT to receive a liberal education is just as good an indication
of his school spirit as his interest in the fortunes of the football team or his cheers at a basketball game. But the student does not have the real spirit of the institution if his interests only draw him to the classroom. The many extra-curricular educational activities available at a university the size of KU are too numerous for mention here.
The measure of student activity in forum groups, professional societies, student government and other student activities is in many ways the more accurate barometer of school spirit. These activities provide an opportunity for the student to become intellectually involved in an exchange of ideas with others.
THE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION, of course, is founded on an academic, intellectual foundation. Thus the true spirit of the university would be its desire to further the ideals on which it was founded.
Homecomings, athletic events and other social events should certainly be allowed a prominent place in the calendar of University affairs. But emphasis on these aspects of college life should not go to the extent that the real reason for the University's existence is lost in a parade of pageantry and spectacle.
Ron Gallagher
Educate the Educators
Will educators never learn that suppression degrades their institutions of learning, exposes them to the contempt of their student bodies and almost invariably gives exaggerated dignity to the opinions of the victim?
Rarely has all this been more clearly demonstrated than in the decision of the Administrative Council of the City University, which governs all the city colleges, that in effect bars Communist speakers from the campuses.
THE ISSUE AROSE over a speaking invitation extended by a Queens College student group to Benjamin Davis, executive secretary of the Communist Party. In the ensuing furor, the question of such appearances was referred to the over-all administrative body.
decreed that to "supply a place of assembly for known members of the Communist Party of the U.S." would be "acting contrary to law."
In a document as distinguished for its lack of logic as for its smallness of spirit, the Council
In fact the decision was a spine- less surrender to know-nothing political pressures.
ITS ONLY REAL result has been to endow Davis with the mantle of martyrdom and win him well-attended speaking engagements in many other places, including Columbia University, where resoct for the Bill of Rights remains alive.
Where Davis is permitted to speak, he must try to defend such indefensible madness as Khrushchev's program of nuclear blackmail and the U.S. Communist Party's unbroken record of subservience to Moscow.
To ban him is to spare him such self-exposure and to create the illusion that he has something original and daring to say.
EATON'S FRIDAY CARTOON
THE ADMINISTRATIVE Council's decree has given Davis a city-wide platform. It has converted a dreary Soviet apologist into a cause celebre. Undergraduates unable to subscribe to the timorous sophistries of college presidents have launched academic freedom protests and rallies; for this movement of protest the college digniaries can claim perverse credit.
"Who are you?"
We said recently that it was equally wrong for Hunter College to deny its stage to right-wing William Buckley Jr. as for Queens — and now the other city colleges — to exclude Davis or any other local commissars. We reiterate that stand. Ironically, both Davis and Buckley have argued that the ban on the other is justified; this mutual intolerance is the ailment of the authoritarian mind.
THE REAL SPIRIT OF "free inquiry" — to which the Administrative Council pays hollow lip-service — regards no voice as too dangerous for the ears of youth; it recognizes that suppression is the weapon of a sick, seared society; it remains confident that reason can prevail over the "fanatics of frenzy" in any free atmosphere.
Surely these are elementary principles; surely they should have long ago become the established credo and tradition of New York's city colleges.
(From the New York Post, Nov. 5, 1961, an editorial, "Who Will Educate the Educators?")
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16. 1912.
Dailu Hansan
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news rooms Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service. News service, United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence. Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and weekends. Second class examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher...Editorial Editor
Bill Mullins and Carrie Merryfield,
Assistant Editorial Editors.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Tom Bridges, Advertising Manager
Don Gerrick, Advertising Manager;
Bonnie McCulloch, Circulation Manager;
David Wiens, National Adver-
tising Manager; Michele Mach,
Classified Advertising Manager;
Hal Smith, Promotion Manager.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Tom Turner ... Managing Editor
Linda Swander, Fred Zimmerman, Asso-
city City Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor
Barbara Howell, Society Editor.
On Other Campuses
CLEVELAND—Two sociology students at Ursuline College, Cleveland, checked their northern city to learn what jobs were open to Negroes there.
"The majority of $8,000 employed Negroes are manual laborers," reported QUILL. "Very few are to be found in such professions as law and medicine. And why so few professional people? The answer is simple—discrimination.
"However, various degrees of discrimination are practiced by different Cleveland firms. Showing least discrimination are federal agencies. City and state government agencies also employ Negroes in high paying jobs without discrimination."
In department stores and several industries they found an "intermediate policy." Negroes were employed as clerks, stock boys, elevator operators.
Private banks, some local unions, real estate firms and private hospitals have the "worst discrimination policy," and "the 'ew Negro professional men are frequently denied office space. In Cleveland, Negroes cannot be orchestra conductors, airplane hostesses, pilots, or printers."
QUILL adds an editorial note: "And yet the Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal."
YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio—Two views on "Operation: Abolition," the House Un-American Activities Committee film on recent student demonstrations in San Francisco, were reported in RECORD, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio.
The Rev. Robert O'Brien, minister of Cincinnati First Unitarian Church and president of that city's American Civil Liberties Union chapter, said the film's message is "false" and relies on "gross distortions" to make its point.
He felt that HUAC's permitting "disrespectful" student protests within the hearing room was calculated to be merely useful in later propaganda moves.
In another auditorium, M. Stanton Evans, editor of Indianapolis NEWS, said an FBI report had clearly shown the riots were communist organized and inspired.
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"While he admitted there are two errors in the film (which HUAC concedes)," reported RECORD, "Evans said he believes the 'film is vindicated.'"
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GETTYSBURG, Pa.—Gettysburg College has instituted a new class schedule, effective with the present 1961-62 academic year. Uniformity now makes the new schedule easier for both students and faculty to follow. The first three morning classes of each cycle are held at the same hour every morning—7:50, 8:50, and 9:50.
The period from 10:50 to 11:15 is open for chapel services on Monday, Wednesday and Friday while on Tuesday, the period will be free in order that various organizations may meet. At 11:25 on the Monday cycle a fourth class has been scheduled. The 11 o'clock Tuesday classes have been abolished. Instead, a worship service is now scheduled for Tuesday and the hour from 11-12 on Tuesday will be set aside for assembly programs. Saturday classes end at 10:40. The college's afternoon schedule is not affected by the new change.
After campaigned to drive out the whites, subversive groups initiate tribal warfare, he said, reported the RAMBLER. To provide native agents, Russia annually pays for the education of approximately 500 African youths, he learned during a recent African trip.
ROSEMOUNT, Pa.—Speaking at Rosemount College, Rosemount, Pa. His Excellency, Most Rev. Fulton J. Sheen, outlined the two-point program Communists employ in underprivileged areas of Africa.
Edito
Editor
I bad least can torial public of the and the H inclu I've who one fesso stim cerne the s
Congratulations are due the University Kansan, a few determined students and a very few valiant faculty members for their successful moral position on University housing. Despite the rationalizations, the criticisms and the attacks by the people who want to cover up this glaring weak spot in our society—race relations—I'm proud of what you have done, and I think I speak for many others. It's good to know that the University finally heard your pleas.
WITHOUT YOUR CONSTANT ATTENTION on this weak spot, nothing would have been done. I know that this must have been a costly victory for some of those involved. One of the local newspaper editors has been unremitting in his personal attacks on those who believe in democracy, and I'm sure there were many on this campus who urged, begged and pleaded that the whole business be covered up.
But as Moses Gunn put it, these fights for the right must be waged. Incidentally, it seems to me that there is one basic lesson in all this—that right does not win simply because it is right. This should be a lesson to all those who felt progress would be made if the issue was never opened up.
Sound and Fury
IN PAST LETTERS TO THE NEWSPAPER I have been critical of the timid ones on the campus here. I withdraw that criticism, now that I have seen what happens when battles are waged for the right, for the moral way of life. The obvious pressures on those who seek the right are so great perhaps only the tough-skinned should be doing the fighting.-GS