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Wednesday, January 27, 1971
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Election Rhetoric Nears
Lord, what fools these mortals be.
Midsummer Nights Dream
Student Senate elections will be held March 3 and 4.
It is time then, for those few students that do vote in this election, to begin stealing themselves against the onslay of promises and accusations this election holds.
The all too fecund womb of political sensitivity at this University usually begets a strange clutch of issues that linger for the duration of the election, then merely fade into the rampant bureaucracy of the Student Senate.
Most of these issues should be taken for what they really are—CRAP.
The only students who were taken in last year by the talk of improving conditions for KU's foreign students, or declaring war on the "slumlords" on the east side of the campus, or nurturing the relationship between KU and Haskell
were a few freshman, who, with a certain maudlin fever, still dust the jacket of that first Beatles album once a year. They were wearing wigs weren't they?
To this year's candidates—If you thin you can get elected because you have a black running mate, or better yet, a black female or whatever other ostensibly liberal mixture you can conceive—forget it. If you are privy to the present oligarchy I would be especially wary of the usual campaign pap.
I doubt that the rhetoric-weary-electorate will tolerate much of the usual ballyhoo and bull, now de rigueur in senate elections.
Arson, bombings, killings and strikes do wonders to mature unabashed idealists.
We ask for more than stylized pubescent politicians—and will accept no facile compromises.
Tom Slaughter
The Kennedy Debacle
Edward Kennedy forgot that support in his constituency and support on Capitol Hill are bred in greatly different climates. A short lapse in judgment, perhaps, but it was a costly lapse. And now, not only is he painfully aware of his party's rejection of his services as Senate Democratic Whip, but he will have to pay greater attention to the undercurrents of dissatisfaction with his possibilities as party leader.
His chances for the 1972 Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1972 were considerably clouded by the Chappaquaidick affair. The rough seas created by such an unfortunate affair were difficult to navigate, but from all outward appearances he had ridden the storm well, and had managed to retain some measure of his appeal both in and out of Congress. He was no longer the glamorous third-Kennedy-in-line for the presidency, but he had negotiable value.
There therefore seemed to be no real reason for him not to enjoy a comfortable margin of support in the race for party prestige. But the reasons for many actions are never really clear until afterwards, and in a situation where the person involved was reasonably confident of victory, then to be rejected, not by one or two votes but by seven, then a fact becomes clear: there are more uncertainties in politics than even the politicians are aware of.
Certainly Kennedy should have been aware of the mood of the Senate. But admittedly he was not alone in this. He was stunned by his defeat, but the surprise and gloomy reaction of most members of the House in some measure compensates for the poor judgment. Also Kennedy should be no stranger to the vagaries of Senate vote practice; he himself won the post from Russell Long of Louisiana two years ago riding on a wave of sentiment.
That he should now be washed aside by an opposite wave seems to be poetic justice. But it has happened. In a little while the agony of defeat will have subsided, for Edward Kennedy the future spells more uncertainties.
—Duke Lambert
If one approaches the concept of a column as a personal indulgence, then the idea itself is even more complicated. One dictates a starlike rode.
Column Offers Variety
By TOMSLAUGHTER
BY TOMS LAUGHLER
Kansas Stiff Member
I would not be so presumptuous as to assume that something I might say would be any more impressive than the kings of my friends and enemies.
The editorial policy of the Kansan is that of a forum rather than a pulpit. We don't feel as though we can take an
A column intrigues me because it offers an escape from the third-person style of good editorials. This style demands that the writer retain a certain aloofness in the guide of fairness.
unrelenting stand on any issue—
reserved for the publisher of the
particular newspaper—and is in
the ideal, the student body.
So, to write an editorial for the Kansan I must walk the painful path of the non-editorial and sign a third person philosophy.
This is especially painful because, I not unlike many journalists, have a penchant for night with my sympathies showing.
For me, a column realizes the opportunity to vent much of my peculiar spleen, known to some as "muddlest prose" and to me truths, musings and passionate philosophies.
I would ask of everything I write, "Does it present a new side
LETTERS Feeding Feedback
To the editor:
Mr. Womack's view of significant issues (i.e., the degree of support the Student Senate gives athletic programs, rather than whether we, the student, give anything at all to the largest, and most corrupt entity on this campus) is bull-shit.
In this age of death through genocide, pollution, war, etc., etc., ... I give Mr. Wormack my most sincere sympathy. His mind has been sucked out by the great metallic-kid, and replaced rapidly, without his knowledge, by oatmeal.
George Laughhead Student Senate College Dodge City senior
To the editor:
Bob Womack neglected one point in his editorial concerning student fees for athletic events. If students are currently paying half of their activity fees toward the support of the Athletic Department, then the withdrawal of fee money from athletics should reduce the activity fee to $6. If a 60 cents per student fee were leveled to support the "minor" sports, then the fee should be $6.50. But the Senate proposes an activity fee of $1.80 and the activity fee in the amount of $1, not to mention the increased prices sport-lover students must pay for their football and basketball tickets.
In other words, who choose to attend "major" athletic events must pay $3.50 for their tickets to the basketball and football games, plus $7.50 in activity fees for whatever else the Student Senate chooses to support. A grand total of $18, as compared to $21 in previous years. Those who do not choose to both football and basketball games, but buy tickets for one of the sports, also get stuck—to the tune of $40 a ticket per game. In fact, those who attend neither football nor basketball games. Perhaps they should roll Student Senate members to see which category they're in.
In reference to the above letter from Mr. Laugheed (which I happened to read while loitering in the Kansas newsroom—a boat over from being on its staff for two years), it should be pointed out that the senate itself is concerned with the degree of support provided by students to the Athletic Department. Did they not propose continued support to the so-called "minor" sports?
As for the "most corrupt entity on campus"? ...? The Student Senate itself is guilty of a lure of that commodity, but of course you may
Griff & the Unicorn
Laughheart's point (whatever it is) might better be made without maligning individuals or referring to the "great metallic-kid"
Cass Peterson Lawrence graduate student
Cass Peterson
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"Copyright 1971, University Daily Kansan"
to an issue, and will it make someone think about something foreign to their realm of experience?"
Quotes in the News
If I fail in these criteria it then can no longer justify asking your time, not allowing myself this indulgence.
LOS ANGELES - Dr. Albert Sabin, developer of the oral polio vaccine, commenting on space NASA尼克森100万捐 to find a cure cancer: $100 million to find a cure cancer:
By United Press International
"Money is raw material. Unless you get good people to use it, it will not achieve its goal."
BRIGHTON, England—Jerry Masters, owner of a worm that Sunday won what was called the world's first worm race:
"Everyday for three weeks I've been telling him 'You're great, You're the champ,' and I think it sunk in."
Those Were the Days
55 Years Ago Today
The Kanas announced that daily weather predictions would be announced via flags at Fraser Hall. Several flags of different colors would be used to indicate the various weather conditions.
Mrs. Amy D. Winship, who KU's oldest student, "who keeps the university after another" according to an article in the Kansas, left Lawrence to attend Fisk University in Nashville,
Coach Hamilton announced that preliminary tryouts for the track team would begin the next week.
45 Years Ago Today
An article in the Kansas quoted
Sinclair Lewis, who had been a
According to estimates of various heads of KU schools, 240 students were expected to leave their grades. However, George O. Foster, KU registrar, estimated that more than half would enroll for the spring semester.
guest of the University for the two previous days, as comparing KU with a monastery. Lewis suggested to the University Club during his stay that the University students went to school only because it was "gentel" to do so.
Several announcements concurred that the wore made. H. H. Ball, superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, said the second floor of the building was made.
would be finished Feb. 15, at which time the first floor could be completed.
Work on the new union building was progressing rapidly. Foundation walls were completed to the sub-basement level floor, and even to the basement floor at the east sector of the building.
P. O. Olmstead, Lawrence contractor, announced that work on the cement foundation of Watkins dormitory for self-supporting women was completed.
20 Years Ago Today
A Saturday "extra" of the Kansas reported that Chancellor Deane W. Malot would leave KU to become the sixth president of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
Airplane' Changing
By KEN CUMMINS
Kansan Reviewer
After the initial moon landing (Apollo 11) all the improbabilities of science fiction not only became possible but immediately real. People saw documented on their television screens what they had paid for in the movies or movie houses during the 1950's.
Thus, the idea of being able to travel through space, from planet to planet and star to star, by the end of this century has become as acceptable as the communications satellites.
Aid the possibility of the young persons of this nation, or this planet, hijacking the first interstellar or interplanetary country but to another world is not that unbelievable, either.
That's what Paul Kantner, the author of *The Airplane*, is talking about on the album, "Blows Against the Empire," by Jefferson Starship.
THE ALBUM is a combination of the talents of the Jefferson Airplane, David Crosby and Graham Nash of Warner Bros. Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and a few others.
Kanter is a devout science fiction fan and should be credited with the lyrics on the now-classic song, "Wooden Ships." I have much preferred the Airplanes version of the
But mostly the album is the Jefferson Airplane. The unifying idea behind the record belongs to Kantner, and he and his female vocalist for the Airplane are most of the lyrics and music.
AT FIRST HEARING I is somewhat disappointed. Although the team lost to the Airplane from "Volunteers" it is original and innovative. "Blows Against the Empire" is a logical step from "Heartbreak."
song, (on the "Volunteers"
and "Young & Young," that is why I bought this album. I had expected it to be an extension of
Anyone unfamiliar with the Airplane and expecting to hear that unstoppable machine that ushered in the summer of love and the nouveau hippe movement (1966) will be surpassed by one of the Airplane's music has
"We're not the way you used
The music on "Blows Against the Empire" contains jazz and pop music, with blues. The lyrics and music are free-flowing and unrestrained, creating surrealistic images. The instrumentation rises to an importance equal to the guitar in rock music, is used extensively throughout the book.
evolved into something much more subtle and sophisticated and, at the same time, more bizarre and violent.
The album opens with "Mau Mau," a vibrant espousal of the ideology of the youth movement. In the midst of this youth's faint presentation of youth's attitude toward President Nixon.
to be—When you were very young—We're something new. We don't quite know what it is, but it's particularly careful. We just do it."
This side closes with "A Child Is Corning," a song about a couple worrying how to protect their yet-unborn child from Uncle Sam. The song builds slowly and easily, then rebuilding and fades again, creating swirling images of a wondrous journey to come.
THE JOURNEY comes on the second side with the hijack of the starship. Kantner's purpose in the album appears twofold: describing a science fiction improbability that may become probable, and he is urging young people who want to change things to "let go" guiding them to the coveted fantasy worlds within their minds.
I have always thought of the Airplane as the vehicle for the ideas of the revolution. The vehicle communicates the ideas of revolution to confrontions such as at Columbia University in the spring of 1968. When the group incorporates the ideas and techniques of music, the ideology takes on a new freshness and "itality."
"Blows Against the Empire" is lyrically and musically a beautiful album, but it appears to have been buried in the year 1960. The market (Harrison, Lennon, JC Superstar, Creedence ...). But when students of American culture turn to study the 1960's like they did today, they look to the music of the Jefferson Airplane for ideas.