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Wednesday, March 8, 1972
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Rock Chalk Rift
I read with some interest editorial comments in the Lawrence Daily Journal-World concern the cancellation of a Rock Chalk Revue presented in last week's Rock Chalk Revue.
The Journal-World's particular brand of hyperbole assumes, first, that the skit in question was, in fact, "off color" and second, that students themselves axed the skit, demonstrating the "independent judgment of young people."
The second assumption is, flatly—false. Jess H.MeNish, adjunct professor of business and chairman of the University Judiciary Board, finally ruled against the skirt after the case was appealed to him. In a bland circumlucubration MeNish said he "did not favor censorship" but seemingly did in this instance.
Acting in its traditional role as conscience of the University the Journal-World bleit on this issue. Whether it acted out of its own will or in consequence, it never perceptions-only the editor of that paper knows. Whatever the case, the editorial distorted the facts, styling the student reaction as "beneficial" at a time when many students were still maximum in legislation and public support."
The first of the Journal-World's assumptions--that the skit was "off-color" is just as perplexing as the second and potentially more dangerous.
demagogues, prudes and parsons have been looking for a good definition of what is obscure for men and don't seem to be any different. Consistency law is vague and difficult to define.
Was the skit, indeed, obscene and in bad taste?
Certainly the toilet humor pandered in certain of the other acts could be called
obscene and in bad taste. Yet these acts continued with impunity.
The line here between obscene and near-
obscene, beindiscernably thin.
A professor who had not seen any of the productions finally decided one was so tired that she left.
Was this rank censorship?
In a production where actors and help are salaried the producer can operate by flat. In this case the actors were amateurs who played on stage in agreement with the production staff to perform.
The production staff had seen the script before performance and, simply, broke their agreement with McColum at the last moment. Andy Bukaty, producer of Rock Chalk, called the skit "appalling", Still, Bukaty had approved the skit.
The skit was censored.
Bukaty broke his agreement and McNish denied those that were to attend Rock Chalk their right to judge the skit on its merits—for themselves. No doubt the audience could decide for themselves whether the skit was in bad taste, as I'm sure they did for the other
In the end, this censorship has the potential to do more harm to Rock Chalk than any of the references to sex or religion in the skirts. The censorship is more befitting a high school principal than a college professor and producer.
The Journal-World's distortion and the last minute cancellation of the skit were both justified in part out of what was called in part for the reputation of the University.
Great universities are not made, though,
out of timidity—but out of honesty and
forthrightness—elements missing in this
affair.
—Thomas E. Slaughter
Readers Respond
Close Larry, But No Cigar
To the Editor:
A letter to Chancellor Chaimers:
I am writing this letter in appreciation of your concern for the university campus (make that plural, campuses. Not until giving the keynote speech at the American Association of the Higher Education Convention did I extend to this magnitude. I am sure it is with a certain degree of trust you have on question today on this question knowing that things on the home front are looking up as women could more could the woman grapes at us.
The Affirmative Action Board has been appointed and they have already met once, three and half weeks. The proclaimed executive order.
Even though out of the more than fifty dean, director and vice-chancellor posts there are no special degrees dedicated to Marilyn Stockstad has been appointed an assistant dean of Liberal Arts and that a woman will be chosen for the position. A Affirmative Action for Women.
Because there are two vice-chancellorships to be filled, we are quite optimistic that the search committee (two women) will be considering female candidates for those positions.
We are impressed that the University has stopped calling child care facilities a "very low standard," and endorsed the efforts of any who would establish such centers—but we do not feel the Student Senate will be willing to finance such programs, so feel somewhat less assured by the way the University has put three possible child care programs into competition with the same inadequate space.
We are pleased that there are six courses offered that deal with the achievement of women looking forward to the day when the achievements of female individuals are incorporated, and with the course work in all fields, and the day when the subject of women is natural, rather than an exotic study.
We are glad that after only two years of pushing, pulling and
meeting with the health service officials, women students can receive a certain amount of obstetric and gynecological care, if they know how and are not too embarrassed to ask for
We are everlasting grateful that women are, by and large, allowed to enroll at this college, given the account of their low hiring potential, expected career interruptions, and problems with attending school full time with students overloaded day care centers.
We are comforted that women are allowed to hold so many jobs and can afford the average salary of $2044 per man, men in unimaginable positions.
We realize that in your position you are doing all you can to see that these women’s privileges are acquired and maintained. Thank you again for this valiant effort, and help support you in your crusade.
P. S. Have a Happy International Women's Day (March 8). Take a woman out to lunch.
ROME—The President flew west to China. I flew east to Italy. He was looking for normalization there. Let me report that everything is in normalization in Italy is like a normal situation in the Army.
Alice Petty,
Nashville sophomore
The government that fell the other day, pasted together provisionally by Premier Giulio Andreucci, was either the King or a monarch who had been in power, so to speak, for only nine days, and may count as no more than an asterisk in the record books. In any event, its failure will result in new elections, when the game begins anew.
Italv's Frustrating Way of Life
James J. Kilpatrick
Italy's political problems hold a dazzling fascination for an American who takes pride in our own confusions. We have trouble understanding liberal run together; it is often hard to tell the Democrats from the Republicans. But our difficulties pale beside the tints of the political spectrum. From the Communists on the left to the neo-Fascists on
the right, it sometimes appears that there's not a lira's worth of difference among them.
The country is still turn up over the issue of divorce. In any orderly approach to the question, you would expect to find the old Catholic, as well as the old divorce, and the old-line Catholics all opposed. Nothing is orderly around here. Communist women, by and large, have been allowed to vote in a law; a great many well-to-do Catholic men, eager to be freed of marriages that collapsed years ago, tend to support the old line. The church held in June of next year on repeal of the law permitting divorce; if the referendum carries, as expected, the situation will return to status quo peacefully, back to the normal confusion.
pieces together since August of 1965. The Colombo government didn't exactly fail; it sort of understated the threat of the saber. The district-coalition came apart at the seams, and when President Leone looked at the Chamber, no答案 could be seen.
Andreotti's abortive government minister to a governors headed by Premier Emilio Colombo he resigned on October 15.
The divorce law was one factor in the collapse. There were many others. By general agreement, parents must be messy. So is higher education. In the whole country, a visitor is often the rank of full professor; the overcrowded universities, once among the finest in Europe, have now been turned into Elementary schools also are suffering for want of adequate funding, but adequate funding from the government party is no willing to support.
Italy's powerful trade unions are no more arrogant, perhaps, than the unions themselves. The United States, but they seem to be less
predictable. A traveler who goes to Rome's airport, expecting to catch a plane to somewhere, is in danger of beingDriver drivers—without the slightest warning—have proclaimed an eight-hour strike. Why the strife? It is a matter of what he knows. It is part of a way of life. It can be a frustrating way of life. Many Italians, it is said, are afraid of losing a job or a little more order, a little more discipline—a small cappuccino, if you please, of stability. As one Italian writer wrote, "When we stir, one hear much talk of the MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano), the neo-Fasci party, we claim only 4.5 percent of theMSI."
Catching Father Dan
At one point in her letters, the nun tells how she asked the well-known theologian William Stringfellow if he would be able to tell her about disobedience action, risking jail. She reported to Father Phil that
FBI. At first he gave the agent only photo copies of the letters, in which the Berrigan family was referred to as "the bloodiness," and then asked him if he or "little bruv." In these letters, being read by the FBI, the nunt told who was involved in Father Daniel's "surfacing" sermon, Garmontown, Pennsylvania, and referred somewhat condescendingly to those sheltering Daniel. Daniel responded that they must be "over cautious" liberals. It is clear that the group caring for Father Dan was largely distressed from that working with Father
BY GARRY WILLS
HARRISBURG, PENN — A bit of a loophole in the summer for the peace activist, Rev. Philip Berrigan; was in jail for destroying draft records. His brother, Daniel, convicted on the same charge, was a "fugitive living under arrest" for four months, alluding the FBI with surprising ease.
Daniel was finally caught,
served time, and has just
recently been paroled. But how
he was captured has not come to
notice, that it, until last week,
when the man was untravelled in
a courtroom.
While Father Dan was on the run a Catholic nun was smudging letters to her nephew Lewisburg penitentiary. What she did not know was that her courter gave her money for the Agent Delmar Mayfield of the
New York, O'Connor, she wrote:
"Stringfellow may not be usable because he is part of bruv's next move."
That letter reached the courier August 3, and he mailed it across town to the FBI office—which reached the FBI bv August 4.
The Communists, meanwhile, seem to rock along with about 27 of the country's most troubled by divided leadership, and harassed by a Maistrump faction, but they are marvelously well-educated. That's about the only efficiency, come to think of it, in a position where gloriously normalized, fully fouled up.
There was an increase of interest on Agent Mayfield's part at just this time, and he copied of copies now, and so when another letter came from the nun, the agent could read in the original that William Stinkey mixed up with brux. somehow impressed with brux, the "drones around him." That letter was postmarked August 8. On August 11, Daniel Berman signed by the BAI at the house of William Stringfellow.
vote, but in recent by-elections, it has shown spectacular growth. Come May, the neo-Fascians probably will double their seats and expose of the Christian Democracies, and may do much better.
Copyright, 1972, Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Copyright, 1972. Universal Press Syndicate
By ED LALLO
Kansan Staff Writer
Passing PoliticsByInStatehouse
Picture and Story
In the final week of the legislative session there is one man in the statehouse that doesn't care which bills are passed. Brown quietly minds his three-seat shoehose stand with the
outlook that "this is my business, and politics is theirs."
"The stand belongs to the
The 67-year-old Brown, despite his notion, is actually a part of the political makeup of the statehouse. For many years he has minded the stand for the Senate and the House members.
legislature, see. When they are in session I'm here! when they leave I go home", explained Brown. "The state doesn't carry me on the payroll though. This is their responsibility in business for myself, see."
The price of a shine for the legislators has gone up in the past few years. What used to be a two-
bit business now has risen to 50 cents a shine.
Brown comes to work each morning at 7 c'clock. His dress is black with a white bow. He pants gray and black suspenders. He has a large, toothless smile. He works every day in the statehouse for two years now, ten of them spent as a custodian
for the Justices of the Supreme Court.
"The justices not only come do the right thing, they proudly point out, "but when I was sick they'd come to the hospital and to my home to make sure we were fine."
The legislators' modern dress trends haven't affected Brown's stand in the least. The new boot styles, like the wide white colors are all taken in stride. Brown said the women legislators brought their shoes to him to do in his spare suit. All of them had gotten on his stand.
Brown has never been back to his airbuckle Bomb, Miss Heirn. She was coming to Topeka. Married and retired, he matured retired and lived by himself.
Despite the continuous opportunity to keep up with the important happenings in the statehouse, Brown leaves politics
"I don't keep up with the bills, see," said Brown. "I'm here to help them service. I never want one of them chambers even."
Brown rides the bus to work each day because of his age.
"I ride the bus to work," he said. "If I miss the bus at night I'd have to stay up here all night or else call a cab.
"I too old to walk home, and besides the doctor doesn't want me to. I not supposed to do anything, according to the doctor."
When the shine stand is put away after the legislature adjourns, Brown will return to work on the television at home or watch television.
Griff and the Unicorn
When asked whether he would go next year Brown said, "If I were going to go next year I'll be here next year. You never know about these things at my age."
By Sokoloff
"Copyright 1972, Davtd Sokoloff."
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