Tuesday, February 16, 1971
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
An Epidemic of Apathy
It's trite and overworked to speak of involvement and participation. It's easy to tell the story of the girl who got raped in full view of 30 people and no one moved to help her.
Apathy has apparently reached the epidemic stage here. The story is simple: there are some 95 seats in the Student Senate, the deadline for filling for these seats is 4 p.m. Wednesday (that's tomorrow), and as of Sunday night only about 20 people had taken the time and the five dollars needed to file for a Senate seat.
This is bad, but don't be filled with disgrace yet. There is the small matter of electing class officers. Wednesday is the deadline for filing for these offices and no one (yes, that number was zero) has filed for these offices.
Perhaps the meager few who take the 10 minutes to vote in the March 3 and 4 election will be surprised to find they have no one to run against. It would be interesting.
Last year's election drew nearly 200 candidates for the 95 Senate seats. Even with this turnout, many of the Senators won their seats by default, no competition.
If we work at it this year, every Senator will run unopposed and we will have dealt democracy its cruelest blow. (I've always heard complaints about the U.S.S.R. They let you vote but you can only vote for one person.)
I advise one to run for the Senate seats. It's too much trouble. You've got to have a declaration of intent, signed by your dean, saying that you are in the college or school you are in. And then
your wallet gets ripped off for five dollars.
The requirements are numbing. You must be taking at least one-half hours and your grade point average must be, at least 0.00.
No doubt some people are waiting to see what the competition will be like. But you can see now that the competition probably won't even be. There is no provision for write-in votes in the Senate election laws and if someone wins by write-in, a suit in the University Judiciary would probably follow.
You might take a chance. When you are in the voting booth and see no one has filed for the Senate seat in your school, take a chance, write your name in and you may be a Senator.
For those of you who plan to vote for the hesitant candidates, there is an extra bonus: a chance to voice your opinion on the appropriations amendment. This, in the long run, might prove to be the issue that brings out the vote. What issue is more noble than the dollar?
Yes, we are having elections at KU this year, although no one seems to have noticed.
Voters in KU elections fall into three categories: the student who, out of curiosity, sees the voting booths and is enticed into voting for a lark; the three or four who know the candidates and go to the polls to express their thoughts of them; and the voter who views the election as a multiple choice test (often the cleverest name is the best one to choose).
So the potage called student involvement may drown in its own broth.
-Galen Bland Editor
EDITOR'S COLUMN
Bullets from the Bush
"And the poor white's taught to shoot in the back like a dog on a chain he ain't go no name—"
Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in Their Game."
Been getting lots of comment on an anonymous letter. Quickly turn to last Thursday's paper. "Several KU LAWS," no names, an anonymous letter.
The letter has all the ingredients of an anonymous bomb threat. It has all the thoughtfulness of a sniper's bullet. The only trouble with the letter is that it is an opinion that all too many people have.
Perhaps by printing the letter, by dragging it out of the closet, we might have shed enough light on these views to wilt them in the eyes of thinking people.
And they are all anonymous. They are all afraid. But they still think their thoughts and call blacks niggers behind their backs and when they go to the polls they vote for their George Wallaces and their views are always in the upstairs closet. Locked from view, safe from the world.
They shot Medgar Evers down and the sniper was quite anonymous.
James Earl Ray
Just bullets from the back of a bush. I wonder if they are happy their letter was put into print.
thought the niggers were going too far had to stop them put them in their place and he was anonymous until he shot
Martin Luther King. And the world knows his name. James Earl is a superstar and in 30 years time there'll be a movie about King and James Earl will be as handsome as Clyde Barrow.
I haven't seen the KU LAWS on the streets passing out their literature. They are still anonymous. It takes a person to pass out literature and these ghosts probably can't muster any.
Other letters have reached us too. We've been called racists for running this letter. It was an exception. I wonder what the student in the middle—those who might lean toward the opinions of the KU LAWS—are thinking now. Could they see the bullet from behind the bush of anonymity?
We do not hold this letter up to mock it. It is, no doubt, a true opinion of these noones. The letter should draw response. But when the response borders on the same irrationality of the letter it is hard to understand. But at least they let us know their names.
Got a letter from KU EDS. They must be related to the KU LAWS. They had all the pat answers and everything is so simple to them.
But, just because the bush is thriving, should the rest of us take to that method, go beyond thought, use name-calling as our logic.
They claim it the blacks who are racists. And the EDS are anonymous, too.
The EDS and LAWS who prefer to char the name of a school rather than their own will probably never see that things aren't that simple and probably will always hide in the shadows and snipe from the bush.
If KU LAWS are wrong, and I think they are, then would not it be better to let the truth beat them, with logical thought, than to yell "fascist pig," to the night, from the night, anonymously.
Galen Bland Editor
Hear it? Over and over... this! Faint! price: Mostie... Mostie... Mostie!
By DUKE LAMBERT
Often someone says that there is nothing as unpredictable as the Kansas weather, and you laugh because you are going along with the joke. But after three years the storm becomes an joke, it becomes a headache.
I mean, it is a pleasant headache, if there can be such a headache that 50-degree weather is much more enjoyable than 10-degree weather but as much fun venturing out of your house with only a light coat when there is the possibility that you'll be shivering in the next two or three hours.
Scientists tell us that this world is supposed to be cooling off as each year passes, and the Mid-Atlantic has hell no!" to that bit of theory.
Life's Like That
I almost froze to death when I came here in the winter of 1968. Imagine me, fresh from my childhood in the calypso music, which pushed the temperature into the 100's even with the cool ocean breeze to cool me. I could cry my way through winter at a time wishing that I had left my
fingers and toes at home. So I braced myself for this winter.
The thing is, I probably would have made it with my old battery—give or take a few jumpers here and there—but instead I know the knowledge that bright ideas can sometimes be expensive ideas.
I went out and bought a new battery for my car, knowing that the warranty on the battery is $100, but the car, but knowing also that there says no to Mr. Freeze when he refuses to allow your car to start. So what happens? January was 50-degree weather and having 50-degree weather
I have a sneaky feeling that
you're coming through, though,
I'm in holding out my hand.
I stop me on the road and ask for a
jump, and I'll have my
I like little old ladies. My mother would have been one if she were alive today. Besides, they were once little young buds. But you are courting total excavation to keep to take on their puzzles.
I was listening to the radio in the wee hours of Monday morning when the disc jockey received a telephone call.
On the other end was an old lady who knew she'd been skipped so old, her voice said me so—who, heaven knows, did have been睡 at that time.
"Why, hello there. You're up rather late. How are you?
"Hello Bob."
"Oh, I here with my nose, my nose, my nose, neighbors. They are all in the D.J. hang on, waiting for her to tell you the latest episode of neighborhood wait. We等待. I wait. He waits. I wait. He waits.
"Ah, I want you to play that lovely theme from 'The Umbilicals of Cherbourg for me' by The Knot," he added to take in the juicy details!
Anecdote to top all other anecdotes. This one about the battle and the controversy over a recent showing in Kansas City:
A lady calls in and says very indignantly, "It is a disgrace. It should not be shown."
A gentleman calls in and says
that as far as he is concerned, let
the be presented, and let
him to think it may have
something to do and go see it,
and vice versa.
The disc jockey decides to add his little bit. "The only thing I have to say is, hair gets dandruff, so keep it clean."
The Lighter Side
By DICK WEST
HINGTON (URL)
WASHINGTON (UPI)—Radiant, with intellectual intelligence, my son George burst into my study, where I was annotating an anthology the beloved poems from the Congressional Record. 1933-66
"because Congress has made it
because Congress has made it
impossible to celebrate
Washington's birthday on
Washington's birthday," I
replied.
"Father," he said, "why are we celebrating Washington's birthday on Feb. 15 this year?"
"It set the third Monday of
federal holiday, when we
washed Hanesh and Mrs. B.
either Feb. 22, 1732, or Feb. 1,
1731, depending on whose
responsibility it is."
"but neither Feb. 22 nor Feb.
11 can fall on the third Monday of
February, regardless of whose
calendar you use.
"Washington himself figures he was born on Feb. 11 because she was the date on the Julian calendar and was throughout the British Empire."
"But in 1750 after ne he celebrated his 19th birthday, the parliament adopted the Gregory law that things were never again the same.
"The big difference was that in the Julian calendar, New Year's day came on March 25. But in 1751, after adoption of the Julian calendar, the year ended earlier than March 24. Therefore days between Jan. 1 and March 24 were dated 1752.
"As you can see, Washington was 19 on Feb. 11, 1750, but his 20th birthday was on Feb. 11, 1752. Nowhere else the hard part!"
"Since the vernal equinox had been displaced by 11 days in the summer, the calendar need to make up the difference by removing 11 days
The trite answer to this complaint is, "But it's the thought
in 1752, there were no days
"in 1752, three to 3. Sept 13, which
made it necessary to add 11 days
later to compensate. So in 1753,
his first birthday on Feb. 12,
infested on Feb. 11, clear "after."
"All clear," said George, crawling out from under the desk.
In the aforementioned drug store, men were lined up at the counter buying boxes of chocolate. An abnormally epidemic was forecasted. And the quality of the chocolate was atrocious. Florists everywhere made a hail last week selling flowers that won't last two weeks.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
An All-American college newspaper
Maybe we should follow the example of the federal government. Major national holidays, as Washington and Lincoln's birthdays, are being moved around on the calendar to occur seek a weekend.
The Valentine Massacre
Published at the University of Kansas during the academic year except in certain periods. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester, $10 a year. Second class students must have completed all required goods, services and employment advertisement offered to all students without previous experience in the original origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas.
again nauseated by the untastant commercialism inherent to the noble event of Valentine's Day. It is simply shocking how a woman could be emotion for all has been debased by the stone-hearted, money-hungry capitalists in the nation's businesses. Everyone cries about Christmas, but what about commercialized Valentine's day?
Every husband or beau in
America who feels feels
obligated to purchase re-
benances for loved ones, and
females to some extent suffer
I made the fatal mistake of walking into a drug store Saturday afternoon as the last drop was for Valentine presents was on.
NEWS STAFF News Adviser . Del Brinkman
that counts." Fine. Why not express the thought with feeling and sincerity instead of with starecandy or a box of stale cigars?
Valentine cards are not lumped in the other with trash of the day, because they do serve a useful purpose. You can press their feelings better with pen than with spoken words. But cards are the only valuable thing in the class of otherwise work-ready red-heart-shaped garbage.
Perhaps the time of year has something to do with it. It's too cold to do anything else, so we buy candy and flowers.
The holiday needs more general practice, and less commercialism. How many love-ins have been scheduled on Valentine's Day? How many marriages? How many first or honeymoments? Let your imagination toy with other examples.
NEWS STAFF
Editor
Galeen兰恩
Assistant Editor
Robin Bewar
Campaign Editor
Editorial Staff
Ted fluff, Duke Lambert, Bob Womack
News Editors
Dave Barrel, Nickila Nailer
Copy Chiefs
Melissa Herg, Ann Mottler
Sports Editor
Creekship Michael Mooter
Art and Arts Editor
Manage Editor
Chip Cweeps
Assistant Campus Editor
Mike Moffet
Jewett Sock
Assistant News Editors
Katin Goff
Jooodie
Jim Forbes, Dave Henry, Jim
By Sokoloff
Griff & the Unicorn
BUSINESS STAFF Business Adviser . . . Mel Adams
If the date is to be changed,
now is the time. We have the full
sunshine, but now it's not.
Not long ago they purged S
Valentine from the heavenly
rolls, so we are no longer bound
to the sunrise, setting the
date of his celebration.
"Copyright 1971. University Daily Kansan"
Let us all be determined next year not to let commercialism spoil our Valentine's Day.
I suggest the end of May. This is the marriage season; students are getting out of school, and the weather is nice. If we changed the day, maybe people could go to a museum, or aspects of the holiday and thus avoid the mundane, expensive aspects now plaguing us.
Business Manager
Admin Business Manager
Assistant Business Manager
Assistant Business Manager
National Advertising Manager
National Advertising Manager
Circulation Manager
Circulation Manager
David Huck
Jim Huck
Carol Young
Mike Boddy
Mike Boddy
Jim Lange
Candice Wong
If something as concrete as a man's birthday can be arbitrarily relocated on the calendar, why should I be nebulous as Valentine's Day?
Letters Policy
—Ted Iliff
Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation, according to space limitations and the editor's judgment. Students must provide their name from town, faculty and staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.
Those Were the Days
The economic situation was making it difficult for students to find jobs to stay in school, Warren Blodgett, secretary of the University Y.M.C.A., said.
50 Years Ago Today—1921
The Women's Student Government Association discussed a new constitution for women. A major point in the discussion was the abolition of rules that allowed women who went dancing to keep later hours than those who did not.
35 Years Ago Today—1936
The Kansan reported that a surprising increase in the weights of inmates at the state school for the feebleminded at Winfield was brought about through the help of the KU home economics department.
The Jayhawker basketball team continued its march toward an undefeated season by swamping the Kansas Wildcats, 52-34, on "Naismith Night."
KU's Glenn Cunningham lost a mile enceke of the University of Pennsylvania.
A date bureau was thriving. The cost on a date with a specific individual was 25 cents and 10 cents was the price for a date with anyone.
Members of the ATO fraternity were being kept under quarantine because of exposure to scarlet fever.
10 Years Ago Today-1961
KU's Associated Women Students organization sponsored a foreign women's panel. The panel concluded that dating systems differed because of difference in customs, school organizations and the trust parents had in their daughters.