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University Daily Kansan Thursday. October 12, 1961
KU Students and Politics
Recent deliberation over continued affiliation with the National Student Association has uncovered the question of what is the political viewpoint of the average KU student. Is he liberal or conservative?
MANY PEOPLE ASSUME that KU, nestled in the heart of reactionary Kansas, could be nothing but conservative.
But the truth is that there seems to be considerable activity on both the right and left sides of the fence and a great deal of inactivity in the middle of the road. The average student certainly seems to be unconcerned about the issues that normally divide political thinkers into liberal and conservative groups.
IF ANYTHING THE LIBERALS seem to be the more active in campus organizations. Certainly most of the members of the Civil Rights Council could be considered liberals. There is also a liberal majority on the National Student Association committee.
But the conservatives cannot be counted out. About 30 campus conservatives met last night to organize a KU chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). There are also conservatives in other campus groups such as NSA and, of course,the Young Republicans.
BUT THE TASK OF categorizing KU students into liberal or conservative is complicated by the large uninterested group that remains undaunted in the middle. This is the group that more truly represents KU's political viewpoint. Most KU students seem to actually be immune to the occasional bursts of political controversy that enshrouds certain campus issues.
This middle of the road group goes without a spokesman. It is characterized by unconcern and inactivity.
THESE ARE THE PEOPLE who do not come to Current Events Forums, who are not interested in the Presidential Forum, who do not take part in People-to-People, who could not care less about the University's housing policy and who are not sure where they stand on disaffiliation with NSA.
So the average KU student is not actively concerned with civil rights, nor is he violently opposed to Social Security or medical aid to the aged. It is more likely that he has not crystalized an opinion supporting either the right or the left.
—Ron Gallagher
Red Chinese Expansion
An increasing number of factors indicate that the Southeast Asia area is going to be an even hotter trouble spot for the United States than it is now.
THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT has reported that large numbers of reinforcements are joining the Communist guerillas already operating in that country. Because of the confusion in adjoining Laos, Communist guerillas are able to slip into South Viet Nam through that country. This has aided the Communists greatly in their stepped up activities and they can be expected to take full advantage of the situation.
This increased guerilla activity is due partly to the basic Communist policy of expansion and partly to the internal difficulties of Red China. Communist China has experienced bad crop failures for several years. This has led to widespread malnutrition among her nearly 700 million people. The commune system proved faulty and had to be modified. There are also signs that the enforced drive for industrialization has begun to wear down the people's nerves and endurance.
The Communist Chinese leaders want to
distract the attention of their people from these domestic problems and focus them elsewhere. A conflict in Southeast Asia is one way of doing that. And a basic long-range reason for the Communist offensive in South Viet Nam may lay in the fact that Southeast Asia is a food surplus area. It could help alleviate the food shortages China suffers from.
THE UNITED STATES HAS COMMITTED itself to the defense of South Viet Nam and is engaged in a program of military and economic assistance to that country. American military missions are training the South Vietnamese troops in the use of the American weapons they have received and in jungle warfare.
If the Communist guerillas continue to infiltrate across South Vietnamese borders, they might become too strong for the South Vietnamese forces to hold them back. The United States is working hard to avert such a situation. If it cannot, it faces the unpleasant choice of backing down or aiding the South Vietnamese forces and probably contending with Communist Chinese forces as well as the Red guerillas.
—William H. Mullins
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"YOU CAN KEEP THE 'A'—BECAUSE YOU WERE SO CLEVER THAT NO TIME DURING TH' EXAM WAS I ABLE TO DETECT HOW YOU WERE CHEATING."
Letters
To comment on the letter of John Ise concerning his ridicule of conservatives who are concerned that only one point of view is being taught, it must be pointed out that the refuge of the left wing liberals is always ridicule. When facts will not stand up and support their case, they must resort to ridicule and completely confuse the issue so that no one can understand it.
Love on Liberalism Editor
CONSERVATIVES ARE sometimes considered "stuffy." Perhaps this is because sticking to the facts is not always as funny as Dr. Ise would like to be as a way out liberal.
He has had his way for the last thirty some years in the welfare state, and still President Kennedy is talking about the millions of people who are going to bed hungry every night. Talking about the precariousness of old age and the need for more Social Security, when, as a matter of fact, the whole problem was supposed to be solved when we passed it back in the Thirties, seems somewhat inconsistent to me. They say we must have more of the entire liberal program. The only thing we are not getting more of these days is people who want to work hard enough to pay for all the liberal programs. Why work, if you can get something for nothing. Political Science, as a college subject, is a
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THE UN-AMERICANS, by Frank J. Donner, Ballantine Books. 60 cents.
This is the paperback condemned so heartily by an official of the John Birch Society who spoke at KU recently. It's easy to see why. The book, a documentation of the "notorious House un-American Activities Committee," would make anyone who believes in those present day saints, J. Edgar Hoover, Martin Dies, Joe McCarthy, J. B. Matthews, and Francis E. Walter spit blood.
The book begins with the story by a New York Post correspondent, Mel Wax, who describes the San Francisco City Hall riots when students protested the HUAC's hearing there:
"I SAW IT HAPPEN. Never, in 20 years as a reporter, have I seen such brutality. San Francisco police hurled women down staircases, spines bumping on each marble stair. I saw one woman dragged through glass from a broken front-door pane.
"Two big cops seized a thin, gray-suited student from the University of California. One held him while the other hit him, again and again, in the stomach."
But wait. This Mr. Wax once went to Harvard, and Harvard, as everyone knows is the place where they preach and teach socialism. That fellow Frankfurter once taught there, too. Now, I'm not saying Mr. Wax is a communist. But if he congregates with ducks, talks to ducks and has his stuff printed in the Daily Duck's Advocate, well he must be a . . .
Sound familiar? We went through this about 10 years ago with a fellow named Joe McCarthy. In those days it was, "Kremlin dupe," and "fellow traveler." Now it's ducks.
Duck, non-duck or anti-duck, "The Un-Americans" might interest you.-NR
By Calder M. Pickett Professor of Journalism
INTO THE FOREST, by Roderick Thorp. Random House, $4.95.
This is trash. It reads like a book that someone has paid to get published. These are harsh words, but I feel they are true ones. Roderick Thorp gives us only a book full of sex and sensation and confusion. I don't grasp what he is trying to say, so I can't comment on whether he succeeds in saying it or whether it was worth saying.
He has a fixation on college fraternities, but he obviously paints only the grimier side. His story possibly is a personal one; Thorp himself may be the hero, Charlie Cumberland (I suppose Charlie could be called the hero).
We have become accustomed to descriptions of sex, thanks to O'Hara, Cozzens and others. But Thorp gives us sex that has the impact of messages written on lavatory walls. Why a reputable publisher sent out this junk is the literary (I hesitate to use the word) mystery of the year.
A Friday meeting of the Kansas governor's committee on economic development brought to Lawrence a number of topflight state leaders, among them President James McCain of Kansas State University.
President McCain recently turned down an offer to take a high educational position for the state of Oregon in favor of remaining at KSU. KU was ever so fortunate to have Dr. Wescoe, then head of the Medical School, to elevate into the chancellor's office when Franklin Murphy went to UCLA.
One needn't be around men like McCain and Kansas University chancellor Clarke Wescoe for very long without realizing how fortunate this state is to have such men at the head of its two largest schools.
McCain's visit here Friday again reminded many of the excellent leadership KU and KSU are blessed with.—From Sept. 30 Lawrence Journal-World
LO
Guest Editorial
Wescoe and McCain
Daily Hansan
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