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Wednesday, February 9, 1972
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Kansan Staff Photo by TOM THRONE
A Few Sour Notes
The troubles called to our attention by the February Sisters are real and the Sisters are, from all occasions, an extremely dedicated group.
It's a sad thing when an organization with such conviction and such a good cause leaves such an awful taste in the mouth.
Even as the group's anonymous representatives all weekend insisted to the contrary, it was evident that they wanted—and needed—publicity. They would not have troubled themselves for any other reason with such a flamboyant gesture as occupying the East Asian Center. Their seeking publicity is understandable. I do not criticize it.
What I do criticize is their iron-fistedness. The February Sisters demanded a right to which no newsmaker is entitled: that of dictating what the public could know about them. They sought to inform others, but they demanded University funds, yet they refused even to identify themselves. They sought to manage the news and this is inexcusable.
When several sisters attacked a Kansan photographer it was evidence of just how far they were willing to go in the interest of anonymity. The Sisters, like it or not, were news figures, and they were being photographed in a public attack, like it, and their attack throw in their jeopardy several hundred dollars' worth of photographic equipment
This from an organization which claimed to stand for nonviolence and nondestructiveness. The apology
that followed was sincere, but the damage had been done; it was evident that if anyone stood in their way the February Sisters were quite willing to employ the thug tactics they purportedly despised.
We could set aside the tactical errors of the Sisters' game plan and look at the demands themselves, but here again there is a snag, for in the instance of day care they are asking the right thing of the wrong people.
In addition to being expensive, day care is practically a necessity for many mothers who wish to function as students or in jobs. Lawrence needs better day care facilities. However, it is not this University's responsibility to provide them. Even assuming it were, the money simply isn't there. We all have seen too much cutting of the academic corners to try to make way for added expense of day care.
Yet despite the flaws in their tactics and their argument, the Sisters have achieved something. They have focused attention upon a situation that too long has been ignored and which now can be acted upon.
Publicizing the problem need not be a small achievement. There are ways to realize the goals of the February Sisters. Brash and theatrical as their methods sometimes were, they succeeded in using them about the pight of many other community. Resentment from either side should not preclude a united effort to reach a solution.
-Chip Crews Editor
Garry Wills
Hatred is always a dismaying thing—the anti-creative spirit, that which would undo things. That is why it was so very sad to hear Bernadette Devil say she would not weep for any British soldiers who fall in the aftermath of the bombings of massacre, and that she wished she had got Secretary Mundging by the throat.
Three Angry Women
Mawding was in the best tradition of Britain's treatment of the Irish question when the little spitfire was all over him, hitting and scratching—he simply ignored her. Better a slight scratch than a ruffled moment.
One of the worst things about oppression is that it makes its victims adopt the oppressor's ways, becoming more like them and worse. This is not really excusable.
And Miss Devin's fury was as understandable as such things can be. She was in the crowd that was fired on, and she was caught by a man she seemed convinced that the fusillade came without warning or provocation. Yet here, a day later, she must listen to the blair assurance of authority that the woman was all quite orderly and correct.
even when it is understandable.
I suppose a student from Kent State would have had a hard time restraining himself if he had been present at Mr. Nixon's or Mr. Agnew's smug first encounter. You've seen even better parallel might be the presence in our Congress of a villager of My Lai, forced to sit and listen to the Army's first vindications of that man; his Daskin's reaction was regrettable, she was overwrought, and with cause,
wave complimentary things at the President–remember the girl with her “Bring Us Together” placard—get kind treatment, to show the President is listening to his people. But those who bring the death's head of what we are doing abroad into official party-time are booed, insulted, and elected.
It is interesting to compare her anger with that of another woman opposed to killing. Her name is Carol Feraci and she felt the American opposition to American killing had not got through the President. She took a "Stop The Killing" flag with her when she went to sing at the White House. Little girls who
Besides, they risk more female anger—in this case, Martha Mitchell's bellicose proclamation that Miss Feraci "ought to be torn limb from limb. Now there is a piece of petty understanding as excusable. When Miss Benjama grew that she would like to get Mauro up the throat, it is because she has seen death inflicted on her own. The anger at least proportioned to outsize human anguish. But Mrs. Mitchell, in party mood, would dismember a girl, not for inflicting death, but for opposing its infliction. That tells us a great deal about the etiquette indeed, of civilization. Communication with those of America's ruling class, Miss Devlin is not only a proper lady, but a model of restraint.
Copyright, 1972 Universal Press Syndicate
Have no fear, because that sister will change as soon as she
Readers Respond
Feminists; Wills; Review...
Spiro Sisters
To the Editor:
I would like to comment briefly about the actions taken this past weekend by a certain group of volunteers. We assuredly rate attention in future history books, slightly below the national golf shooting. I'm speaking of that ambiguous horde of athleticists, the February Sisters.
Somehow, I managed to stay calm through those few tense hours that they occupied the room. And it finally became inflamed upon overhearing some "girls" the next day who were well equipped with the latest slang by a bunch of bureaucrats "busters" as being "together." She was praising the fact that the group was well organized and that they had gathered out continual press releases.
Don't worry though, girls,
because I am fully prepared and
qualified as a male chauvinist pig
the human race is at fainting my half of
a little hard, though, when one of
yours in a tighter sweat and tight
jeans walks by. She must be one of
the uneducated sisters who is
working under that antiquated system, headed by marriage.
To the threat of sounding trite, I would like to say this about that.
I was watching all of this with baited breath because if their ploy worked, I was going to rally. But no, I had been bad heating in my room. Naturally, I've come to the conclusion that all of my friends have that stuff to heat, therefore, I am fully prepared to barricade myself in the men's john of the Douglas House until the city warms up me.
the confrontation's boiling point suddenly started to simmer when the whole matter turned out to be another 'lack of knowledge' in the dismay of these idealistic broads, their demands were already being worked on. But I have no fear that given time, a list of demands can be compiled. Long live the oppressed.
I would like to say this about that. Those women of the female sex were possibly the most untogether group I have ever seen. Most of them were about 30 human beings have taken it upon themselves to educate their half of the human race to the fact that they are oppressed and it's all the other half's fault, and that the women Kikas had better do something about it. With considerable haste.
gups down 30 minutes of hard sell from Robin Morgan. Look that cataclysmic catalyst used to make the Sisters, who were ready to castrate everybody starting with Chalmeris. I never open another bottle of wine.
Don't give up hope girls,
because I became educated by
this whole debacle. For one, I
learned that there is a South East
country andided and that, two, it's at 1332 Louisiana. And that's where it's at.
PS: Next week, I'm holding 117 press conferences just so that I can make two things perfectly clear: That I did accomplish something by writing this letter and that I am denouncing any Republican candidate seeking the Republican candidacy for governor of this state.
John Overbrook
Oskaloosa Special Student
Hef's Majority
I just wanted to publicly commend the February Sisters for repressing the cause of liberation for women and men on their behalf. In other way that would have been more successful in bringing the need for individual rights into the scope of public ridicule and scorn than their recent take over of the Asian House Studies Building.
Of course, there is a great deal of logic in seizing a campus but then putting forth the force of six demands, all of which were being dealt with in a concrete way. You can be sure that the seizure even hit the news. Done that way, you can be sure to know very well able to say that you succeeded.
There are many legitimate demands, being made by the females in their medical practice towards women, I know this from first-hand experience. The woman has been head of my family for 22 years. There are the legalistic problems to be sure, but the basic root of the problem is that of the woman's sexuality.
I am tired of hearing the blame for the problems of women being placed on the "male chauvinist role" and the "female chauvinist pig"; call them Hefner's silent majority if you will, who are more than twice as capable of being a role handed down by cultural generations. Equal rights for women would indeed be a good thing. It would eliminate the risk of living up to the masculine stereotype and let each of us become all that he or she is
capable of becoming.
However, since men are in charge right now, they will hang on very tightly to their financially and authoritatively superior and until all the women, including all of them, are majors, majority are ready and willing to take on equal responsibilities along with their equal rights.
Sisters, if you want to do something really worthwhile, help with teaching buildings and attacking Kansan photographers, why don't you go and work with the Commission on Human Rights to create a fantastic educational program? Why don't you join your Partners in Humanity! In information technology and there are some around; and work with them in solving the many problems concerning sexual abuse in schools; and make all males "chauvinists" use.
Perhaps then, you can say you struck a real blow for the freedom of the individual—female and male.
Darras L. Delamaide Pittsburg, Sophomore
War
To the Editor;
The war is still winding down.
Paul Lewis
Topeka Sophomore
Nixon's Owls
To the Editor:
Your story and picture about White House staff man Dolf Droge talking in Topeka alarmed me of three possibilities: the man is no White House guitarist giving talks on Vietnam; the guy is mythical, a possibility suggested by the photograph. The second possibility is of an impostor: Droge is really a declacate, or non-university representative of the White House, infiltrated into the United States, the White House, and Kansas in order to lead people down the hill. When he happens when guitar-playing begins. The third possibility is the most alarming of all: The man is indeed is giving us signals of what he has done before, before have mostly flown away, but the Nixon Administration is substituting predator birds for prey, before as owls and eagles are being loosed around the dovecote. Moreover, something worse: man can be able to wind up an man to be able to wind up an own guitar accompaniment. But think of Henry Kissinger a rendition in German of an aris from Gоттердамеринг, and o
Richard Nixon concluding every press conference with a couple piano selections.
Anyone want to buy a used T' cheap?
Thomas B. Larson
Wills
To the Editor:
I wish to express my deep appreciation to the *Kansan* for printing *Garry Wills*. My wife, Wills has a first name, he writes in an incursive, nonnonsense fashion, and above all manages to arrange for storage to express his convictions.
The last column which I have had the privilege of reading, is now a declaration of War; it is an masterpiece. It reveals Nixon's so-called peace proposal to the United States in 1965, which is—a new declaration of war.
—Leland J. Pritchard Professor of Economics
To the Editor:
War Rap
From your letter to the editor, Kenneth Lucas, (Kansas Feb. 4) it is evident that you don't understand statement about Congressmen and members of the press allowing themselves to be "used by the enemy to stir up division in their own country on which you base your argument is that it is a "myth" that if the United States withdraws of its troops from Vietnam the Communists will release American prisoners of war. "Neither the North Vietnamese nor the National Liberation Front ever made a formal proposal to attack at the Paris peace talks."
I refer you to point one of the seven point statement submitted by the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Viet Nam before 1971, which states: "If the United States Government sets
terminal date for the withdrawal from South Viet Nam . . . the agreement on . . . the release of the totality of militarymen of all parties . . . including American captured in North Viet Nam "
I further refer you to the final sentence of your own letter: "Is it too great a request to ask that you confine your editors to a logical discussion of reality and emotion on emojis?" "response to a statement you viidently do not even understand?"
Byron Edmondson Lawrence senior
It is unfortunate that the Kansan reviewer of four plays wrote a shallow review of this collection from black theatre. In attempting to assess how an appreciation for戏画 has been presented as a genuine simulacrum of, rather than a travesty on the Afro-American. In attempt to assess Horace Kansan's work in "Three in Black," the Kansan reviewer failed to consider: 1. The subtle implication of reoccurring themes and the use of foreshadowing in run as fine threads throughout the four plays. 2. The uniqueness of Experimental Theatre in allowing the audience to become part of the contemporary views of blackness in America. 3. And the interrelationship of "jive" talk and "intellectual" conversation with "four" by Three in Black.
To the Editor:
Review
In claiming the black KU production, mediocre, one wonders if the Kansan reviewer actually 'saw' the play. If indeed there is something bad in production, it is not the acting, staging or directing, but in the Kansan review.
Michael L. Edwards
Kansas City Graduate Student
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"Copyright 1972, David Sokoloff."
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