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University Daily Kansan, March 13, 1981
Opinion
KU's own Twilight Zone masquerading as library
Every town in America, it seems, has its own farmhouse. I used to visit Oklahoma City occasionally, and down there they had this place called the Crazy House, which was a wild and confusing building. It was, in short, a real adventure just to go through.
Here at the University of Kansas, we have our own Crazy House. We call it Watson.
You know Watson—the building that looks like Notre Dame from the front and Alcatraz from the back. (Lately, it's looked like a strip mine out front.) Well, this lighthouse of art is becoming a metamorphosis of sorts laterly. Removation, they call it. Architectural menopause.
Before it's all over, there will be several graduating classes of seniors that will leave the Hill scarcely remembering what a normal library is like. They'll remember Watson
Maybe you've noticed how the front entrance to the library has been fenced like over a fence.
DON
MUNDAY
Editorial Editor
putting in new stairs and doors. And after several months, they finally did something with that Evel Knievel ramp for the handicapped.
Since the Berlin Wall has been erected around the usual entrance, if you want to get into Wattson—and just for the sake of sheer speculation, we'll assume that you do-you-cover your shoes and use them to be used behind the buses. Once inside, you're faced with two alternatives as to how to proceed: You can ascend some spooky old stairs to the desired floor or you can hang a left into periodicals and take in the experience. You can command the latter. That's where the fun begins.
There is a proliferation of signs down there to lead you around. "Not a Public Entrance." "Elevator This Way." "Elevator Not This Way." "Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200." You get the idea, but don't pay any of the signs. Just follow the labyrinth of steps from concrete and steel, past the pillars supporting the great weight of the library on top of them.
The place is a dead ringer for the Battle of Britain, and every time I see a small group of people almostly wandering around the place, I worry that all of the survivors in "The Poseidon Adventure."
Above the mess of the basement is the main hallway—or what used to be the main hallway. No one goes there without an adventurous spirit and a generous life insurance policy. They won't let you in there anyway, so your best bet for finding life as we know it is to take one of the elevators from the basement to the second floor. Finding the basement in itself is not unlike taking a cruise through muda Triangle. Not everyone who looks for them is heard from again . . . in this dimension, anyway.
Part of renovation, you probably know, is moving things around so they're hard to find. Why is this $k^2$ Elementary, my dear Watson. If every place stayed the same, the challenge is to move all the stacks in the plains why, for a time, you could look out to where the center stacks used to be and see a life-size model of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canavaler. Supposedly, the book "How stacks are now crammed with wings" and wings. But those white wings were pretty check-fold to begin with.
The Periodicals Room, as I've mentioned before, is now in the basement. It used to be on the first floor, and now it enjoys about one-eighth of that space down in the bowels of Watson. The Reserve Room, Microforms and Copy Services, all of which used to happily reside in the basement, have now worked their way up to the second floor. And I understand why documents from the first level Documents from its classy basement niche, it was lost for several months until someone accidentally stumbled upon it clear over in the Spencer Research Library.
Two departments have—so far—been spared this jugging; Reference and Circulation. They're still where they always want to be, when he awaits your way to them without getting lost.
To keep you from getting lost, they've laid down these lines of red, yellow and orange tape running from the entrance to the various departments. I'd advise not following them, but if you must, you should want to leave a trail of bread crumbs behind you—just in case. There used to be a blue line next to the door where you would use our sheer curiosity. It led me to an exit-staircase one of those Gothic windows on the second story. The leap was tempting, but, unlike many others, I opted to go out the less direct but also less injurious route.
Anybody not made deaf by the library last fall will notice that it's somewhat quieter there now. "Study in Sensurround," they should have called it. Far be it from me to criticize, but with brick walls coming down, jackhammers, normal hammers, sawing, loudspeakers, and noisy noise. I concluded that Watson is everything you've ever wanted in a library, and more!
Gaze up at the mysterious third floor—I haven't had the guts to venture up there—and we'll have concluded our little tour of the library. As you leave, say "HI" to your friendly Gestapo agent, who'll gladly check your backpack to make sure you haven't smuggled out a set of 1921 Britannicas or a builder or something.
On one occasion, as I was leaving the building, I passed to inquire of the book-watcher. "When will all this lunacy end?" I got the same answer Michelangelo gave in "The Agony and the Ecstasy"—"When it's finished."
That comment notwithstanding, the lunacy is still scheduled to end sometime in 1982. But let me warn you now: Just when you think it's safe to go back in the library, you've got a double whammy coming right at you. Rumor has it they're planning to build a twin of Watson later this decade, one to house all the branch libraries.
And why not? Not even the Titanic had a sister ship. In fact, she had two.
The University Daily KANSAN
(USPS 685-40) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Monday and Thursday (USPS 685-41) Published except Sunday, Sunday and holidays. Second-class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas 60455. Subscription includes $15 for each year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $2 a semester, passed through the student activity. Postmaster: Send change of address to the University Daily Kansas Flint, Hall, The University of Kansas
Business Manager Terri Fry
America is the land where car is king. No other country has such a collection of freeways and drive-in convenience. There are drive-in restaurants, drive-in laundries, drive-in telephones and now,
Pot Shots
Editor David Lewis
for the first time, drive-in funeral parlors.
Where? California, of course.
This is one area in which Kansas can unashamedly remain behind the times, thank you. But one of these days, there will be a multiple-person pileup on this very campus unless the buildings and grounds boys repaint all the stirred crossings.
Every time I try to cross the campus roads—in the right places—I almost am bowled over by a maniac driver who can't see where the pedestrian crossing used to be. My record for near-misses is outside the Kansas Union; there you take your life in your hands trying to cross the road. I'm sure there is a sinister plot by professors to see how many F's (fatalities) they can give out, but, according to the rules of the road, we foot-togglers have right of way at a crossing. Not on this campus—there are no crossings.
Some people will leave the sidewalk and walk across the grass as a short cut.
Other people, presumably rock-ribbed believers in the sanctity of sidewalks, will plant trees and shrubs across the shortcuts so that
everyone will stay on the concrete and the curse will run smoothly along its appointed route.
Somewhere, people are marking cans and packages "Open this end." They are designing little packages of ketchup and mustard that say "Cut or tear along the line" and squirt their contents all over you when you are reduced to ripping them with your teeth. They are making child-proof caps that endlessly turn around in a circle and click instead of opening.
It's just a theory, but I think the world is shaped by it. People and people and people to circumcertain the obstacles.
I refuse to be intimidated. I will smash the child-proof bottles against the wall, open the package at the wrong end, use an ice pick on the ketchup package and walk around the trees on the footpath. For every petty obstacle, there are a thousand small acts of defiance.
Think of television and think of "Nova" and "MASHI," "Masterpiece Theatre" and "Sixty culture," cultured akkenh has resulted from the taming of VIF. The inventive Renaissance that would have turned Leonardo's
da Vinci's cheeks red with passionate envy
Think of television's young but brilliant legacy: man's crown triumph on the moon, the straightforward reportage of the Vietnam war, the Olympic celebration of America's young hockey team. All for the price of a few hundred bucks. This Renaissance is not reserved for the weakly or intellectual elite; nosirree Bob, TV is everyman's land.
Thus we have J.R. of Sav-on and "You bet you boots" Colonial Billy, Slim Whitman's greatest hits and Popel's pocket fisherman. No nobile craftsmans or creative genius these, nor do they possess the masteries pure and simple, as much a part of the human condition as Shakespeare's "Hamlet."
Television has become the human mirror in which to call it. Call it h哄 call it sh哄 but as the Bard said,
. . ” Have a rosey day.
TV journalism flaunts superficiality
Exactly one week ago, Walter Cronkite spent exactly no time behind his cluttered desk in the CSN newsroom.
And without Cronek, America's favorite
aichman, many television viewers seem to
hate him.
That's the way it is. And that is probably the way it should be.
Cronkite, the CBS anchorman for nearly 20 years, was an experienced, conscientious newsman, and he looked like the third grandfather we never had.
However, at times, that trust seemed to resemble blind faith, and that probably was bad
He inspired trust, and that was good.
However, at times, that trust seemed t
B blind faith in the CBS Ewing News, or m other source of information, is dangerous, but it is a valid belief.
VANESSA HERRON
known to forget that their duty is to inform the public, not to rope it into their own third of the
For example, a few years ago, ABC decided to jazz up its nightly news with a high-tech newsroom and a passle of scrappy young entertainers to amplify the day's events in 50 words or less.
ABC also offers "20/20," a news magazine that sources Gerald Rivera, the scrappiest young reporter.
Who could forget the sight of Riviera chasing a pusher down the mean streets of Los Angeles, with ABC's "hidden" microphones and cameras in tow?
NBC, which usually projects a more dignified image, also had a fling with hidden cameras this week. A network news team covered an FBI investigation of the connections between organized crime and organized labor in New York.
Apparently, the reporters were on the right track because those labor bonuses obviously were cut. The managers were the ones who
The men were overweight, they were rumped suits, and in answer to NBC's questions about their Mafia contacts, the men made memorable statements like this:
"I am only acquainted with doze gentlemen," the boss said in thick. Brooklynes. "I am a republican."
NBC certainly bagged some live ones this week. The fact that many of the subjects of the network's week-long coverage had not been formally charged is a technicality.
Trail by television is much more efficient than
it. And it makes it so much easier to meet deadlines.
The television news medium has many advantages. It can disseminate information
that it can make hard-hitting visual
statements.
However, television's 30-minute broadcasts (after commercials) often give an abbreviation.
B
Television reporters also find it awkward to attribute statements. Consequently, many newscasts are scattered with unattributed editorials.
For instance, there seems to be an unwritten law that after every presidential speech, television news reporters should be granted time to present their personal views of the event. So within 30 seconds, the season's Washington correspondent assembles a truncated summary of the speech that usually is colored by his own brand of skepticism.
Roa said budg mula
O
Presto! Instant analysis.
No reporter, in any medium, can be expected to remain objective at all times, but he should be able to accurately describe events.
Law conne
Lawr
Ave.
The American people probably are more intelligent than we think they are.
To a great extent, the major networks decide what will and will not be an issue for the millions of people who are online.
However, most people may not be aware of the media's power to set the national agenda.
The run of static
He fell to
The and three
For example, when Jimmy Carter lusts in his heart, that's news. The problem is that it's also entertainment. And in the monthly ratings race, it's sometimes hard to tell the two apart.
Television newsmen, and all newsmen, should be watchers closely when they report the停播 of the television.
Luckily, it is relatively easy to watch out for reporters like the ABC hot dog squad.
But the trusted, family doctor-type newsman, like Cronkite and John Chancellor, the NBC anchorman, are not obviously opinionated. In their own way, they are more threatening
Anyone who has the power to broadcast his view of the world to millions of people should be challenged every now and then. There should be no unimpeachable sources—especially in the news business. And that includes Walter Cronkite, America's favorite patriarch.
It seems to spell trouble when millions of men go down and the way it is, "every morning—and they believe."
One man's father figure is another man's Big Brother.