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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, October 11, 1961
Guest Editorial
Dawson Praised
Approximately 60,000 foreign students attend universities in this country every year, and according to a recent article in "The Wall Street Journal," "more than half will go home mad at the United States." Mostly these potentially influential friends for America return disillusioned and disenchanted with us because few people show personal interest in them.
LAST MARCH William F. Dawson, twenty-two-year-old engineering junior at the University of Kansas, discovered that of the 260 students from sixty different nations attending school there, few had any American friends, most had never set foot in an American home, none had ever seen for themselves how American free enterprise works, and many would have to drop out of school if they couldn't find summer jobs to take care of next year's tuition.
Deciding that something had to be done to change this situation, Dawson arranged for a number of the foreign students to meet with campus leaders so they could air their gripes. As a result of this meeting, a People-to-People Council was set up on campus to help foreign students become better integrated into American life and to help them in every way possible—a sort of stay-at-home Peace Corps operation.
DURING THE REMAINING months of the school year big changes took place. The People-to-People Council was given official recognition and office space in the Student Union. Committees were set up to arrange forums and social gatherings, home hospitality and tours to farms and businesses, job replacement and a brother-sister program to help orient new students arriving in the fall.
With the co-operation of the university and the local press, foreign students previously ignored suddenly found themselves the center of attention. Townspeople began inviting them to
their homes for dinner. Farmers had them out for weekends. Students were getting together over coffee to discuss world problems and exchange information concerning their respective cultures Everything was going along fine until school was about to close and fifty-six students showed up at the council's office seeking summer jobs.
FINDING FIFTY-SIX JOBS in a city the size of Lawrence, Kansas (pop. 32,858), presented an impossible task, but Dawson and Rick Barnes, chairman of the Job Placement Committee, went to work. They called upon a prominent businessman in nearby Kansas City and told him their problem. He promptly wrote thirty-seven leading firms there, urging that they try to provide jobs for these students. Only one came through, hiring two students.
When Dawson and Barnes learned what had happened in Kansas City, they should have been discouraged. But, instead of giving up, they hopped into a sports car and barnstormed the state of Kansas, calling on businessmen, newspaper editors, radio stations, chambers of commerce and anyone else who would listen to their story. When they returned to the university they had lined up the remaining fifty-four jobs.
IF THERE HAD BEEN MORE Bill Dawsons around when Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana, was a university student in Pennsylvania a number of years ago, perhaps he would not be the leading pro-leftist in Africa today.
Next year the students at the University of Kansas are planning a bigger and better program to make real friends of students from abroad. Our whole nation would benefit if the example set at KU were followed and People-to-People Councils were established on campuses all over America.
ca.
—From the Saturday Evening Post, Oct. 7.
Letter Writer Criticized
Editor;
Being members of a race of people which has suffered much abuse, mentally as well as physically, in this country simply because our skin is dark, we feel for the sake of decency as well as for the sake of good moral principles the necessity to comment on a portion of Mr. Schick's long vituperative letter of illogical reasoning which appeared in the October 9 issue of the UDK, and to ask an open question: "AND ARE WE YET ALIVE?"
Mr. Schick states that the "person's home is, in the tradition of a free people, his castle to dispose of at will," which is a good point, and this statement actually conflicts with the statements which follow in which he attempts to show an invasion of the landlady's peace of mind and freedom of choice. Now when this individual placed this room, or apartment as the case may be, up for rent did she not of her own volition choose to dispose of
... Letters ...
her castle as she saw fit?... And once the place was rented was it not only an invasion of her tenants privacy, but also an abuse of his freedom of association for her to attempt to dictate what guests he should have? Or doesn't Mr. Schick feel that this student had any rights that the landlady should have respected?
The action taken by the landlady was purely prejudicial and unmoral and cannot be justified by pointing to conditions in the countries of the individuals involved. After all, does not this country consider itself the world's leading democracy? How then can we send ambassadors of good will around the world preaching brotherhood, love and fellowship when such a cancerous growth as this exists here in the heart of America. It is quite apparent that Mr. Schick has attempted to cover a sore of large dimensions with a band-aid.
Then too, Mr. Schick not being black, can never understand the
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Tom Turner ... Managing Editor
Linda Swander, Fred Zimmerman, Assistant Managing Editors; Kelly Smith, City Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor; Barbara Howell, Society Editor.
Managing Editor
We must say emphatically and with much disappointment that the position that the Chancellor of this University takes on segregated housing does not give NONWHITE students any peace of mind either.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher ... Editorial Editor
Bill Mullins and Carrie Merryfield, Assistant Editorial Editors.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
turomil, the mental anguish that goes on in the mind of the black man in this country from day to day: the refusal of landlords and landlades to rent rooms or apartments to you simply because you are black, the refusal of service in restaurants and barber shops, the inability to acquire decent jobs, all because of the color of skin. Reiteration: "AND ARE WE YET ALIVE?" And he has the audacity to state that the peace of mind of the landlady has been done harm. What about the peace of mind of the STUDENT involved?
Tom Brown Business Manager Don Gergieck, Advertising Manager; Bonnie McCullough, Circulation Manager; David Weins, National Advertising Manager; Charles Martinache, Classified Advertising Manager; Hal Smith, Promotion Manager.
When we look back over the years and think of the blood, sweat and tears that were put out by such black men as Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, Benjamin Bennaekar, George W. Carver, Dorie Miller, and numerous others in helping to make this country great and safe for such persons as this landlady to live and carry on such unmoral and ungodly discriminatory practices we cannot help but wonder why after all these years the black man cannot make his white brothers understand the basic thing that he desires in this country that he helped build, and that above all else is human dignity. Once again we ask, "AND ARE WE YET ALIVE?"
When Mr. Schick and all persons adhering to the ideas set forth in his letter become truly magnanimous enough to really grasp this problem, then we feel that we can truly move ahead. But right now, to adequately describe them, we must borrow a line from the book of Job: "YE ARE PHYSICIANS OF NO MORAL VALUE."
letters to the editor
A. W. Smalley Ivory V. Nelson Shreveport, La., graduate students
Angry Words
What is America to me?
Editor:
How do I respond to such a question—how should I?
America says to me that I should say she is the greatest country in the world—she says to me that I should be patriotic, and should state her cause without hesitation.
How very much I should like to do so, how proud I should like to be, feeling her soil beneath my feet, and not being a bumbling, hesitant Negro when someone asks the inevitable question: How do you feel as an American?
I can point to her material wealth, her material gain—I can point to her skyscrapers, her many automobiles, her wealth; but I do not answer the question. And even when I am unable to answer the question I also realize that skyscrapers and wealth are not the sum total of a country's greatness —I realize all too often that I have not an answer and cannot offer much of an argument in defense of the America for which we endlessly fight to belong.
It could very well be that the University of Kansas might help me to find an answer—for the University of Kansas shares a unique position among American colleges today. Thanks to the People-to-People organization and the responsible work of Bill Dawson, KU is in the national spotlight as a friend to the foreigners.
Having met Mr. Dawson, the program which he is behind is not merely a patronage organization. Nevertheless, the work of such an organization is being threatened by the ugly vein of prejudice. Prejudice which manifested itself when a landlord in Lawrence stated she wanted no Africans or Negroes in her house. No one denies this lady her views or says that she should be forced to do the opposite. On the other hand, the embarrassing incident need not have happened—it need not have been a threat endangering the work of well-meaning organizations or even the good thinking of those few Lawrencians who do rent to Negro students.
It would honestly seem that since the University approves housing in which students must live—it would seem that one of the requirements would be that landlords rent to persons regardless of race, color or creed, and that if such landlords feel differently, then they may rent to whomever they may desire, but would not be on a list APPROVED for housing by the University. This is all one asks. Is it too much?
Yet the Negroes at KU are not asking that the lady be denounced. They are only asking that the administration take upon itself as its responsibility NOT TO HONOR ON ITS APPROVED HOUSING LIST those persons who will not rent to people because of race, creed of color—whether such person engaged in such a practice be BLACK or WHITE.
Clearly the case was that a foreign student asked another foreign student to the apartment but the invited student was not the acceptable, the desirable — he was BLACK!
Just what would have been the situation if the invited foreigner had been WHITE. Being a Negro myself I know the answer, and so do you as well as I know the answer if a white foreigner had been involved instead of a black man. The administration would have been up in arms in denunciation!
Can it be that the administration (which is not here accused of prejudice) is afraid of losing housing in the wake of mounting student enrollment? But in the wake of such, more BLACK AMERICANS and Africans will be coming to KU in the future, and will be denied housing because of discriminating practices on the part of people who feel that one race is more undesirable than another.
What then is the answer when I, as a Negro, am asked to state my views about America? What in all honesty am I expected to say? Of course the truth is that I can only speak the truth—it hurts because I would want to tell another truth
that could be, but which in too many ways does not exist. And yet, strangely enough, America expects me to be a GOOD NIGGER, the laughing Uncle Tom who knows his place and with a smile on his face and his white teeth gleaming—LIES. But, thank God, the dav of the so-called GOOD NIGGER HAS PASSED.
Moses Gunn,
St. Louis
graduate student
Logical Reasoning
A
Not being a native Kansan, perhaps I just do not understand Kansas Logic. If that is the case, please excuse this attempt to reason logically.
I am full aware of the fact that our Cancellor inherited a lot of the problems that he is confronted with now (as the Democratic Administration claims every time they get into office). But it would seem to me that some positive action is needed to help clear up a very serious problem that we share with the rest of our country.
Of course I am referring to Chancellor Wescool's comments on segregation in yesterday's UDK. I live in private housing and the other day as I entered the apartment house I saw a big notice framed in glass. I will not bore you with all of the little do's and don'ts that were expressed, except one that I think is quite relevant to the problem at hand. It said that drinking or possession of alcohol on these premises is forbidden by the University of Kansas. Then at the bottom it said in compliance with the above regulations, the landlord is allowed to have his house registered with the University of Kansas Housing Bureau.
a f me
Undoubtedly this law is left from the age when the WCTU ran Kansas, many hundred of years ago. I propose that if the University of Kansas can make one regulation (where in fact they have made many), then why do they not make another regulation that might have world wide implications?
NS
Here is an area for the NSA and the ASC to really go to town.
Matt Cabot Jr.
Honolulu Hawaii, senior
SIP #2
Editor:
Editor:
The John Birch Society, like Communist party leaders, is using dramatic means to attain an end. Even though we may not agree with their way of thinking we must admire them for their willingness to fight for their idealisms.
The J.B.'s, like Russia, have definite beliefs and goals. They are quite willing to work to accomplish them. Russia's master plan is moving along steadily and at this present rate it will, no doubt, accomplish its end soon: world domination. The U.S. master plan seems to be "keep up with Russia." We will never be able to score if we don't start playing offensively.
America — its people — have reached an era of complacency. We have the idea that the uppermost peak has been reached and now we are content to sit and enjoy the view. Meanwhile someone else is climbing that same mountain to take over this lofty perch. "Somebody's gada go."
Instead of ducking the blows and rolling with the punches we've got to strike back, with force if need be.
The organizers of SIP have certainly proved to the KU campus what can be done when a little effort is put forth. Perhaps a similar effort would be as successful in organizing SIP #2 only instead of SIP representing a swinging, twisting group of future leaders of America known as "Students Interested in Fleasure," it could be called "Students Interested in Self-Preservation."
Leo C. Bouchard K.S.T.C. graduate
Short Ones
Home is the dearest spot on earth, and it should be the center, though not the boundary, of the affections—Mary Baker Eddy
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