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University Daily Kansan Friday. Sept. 22, 1961
For Traffic Plan
Next September KU will enter a new era that of the carriage-less campus.
A long-needed traffic regulation program has been initiated by the administration and approved by the Board of Regents. It will be presented to the Kansas legislature for approval and appropriation of the necessary $30,000 to install necessary buildings and construct adequate turn-around areas.
THE PROGRAM PLAN INCLUDES limited access to the congested core of the campus. Five control stations will be placed at peripheral points around the congested area.
Traffic will be admitted on official business or by parking permits to zones inside the campus. Visitors will be provided with maps and given directions to the office they wish to visit.
Traffic limitation during specified hours during class days will increase safety for the walking student.
STUDENT SAFETY HAS BEEN A MAJOR concern of the administration for several years. As the number of automobiles operated by students increases, the safety factor decreases. The
limited access program provides the maximum safety with the minimum regulation.
The minimum regulations in the plan are not aimed at the number of automobiles owned by students, but at the number of cars jammed at intersections and down the streets between classes, making walking a hazard.
So far, this city of 11,000, perched on Mt. Oread has been fortunate—no major automobile-pedestrian accident has occurred.
BUT THE PLAN WILL NOT GO INTO EFFECT until next year. Until then, there is still a problem, and little can be done, except to issue hollow appeals (which probably will not be heeded) not to drive to class or to ask pedestrians to be more careful.
Of the two, asking pedestrians to use caution and crosswalks seems more logical.
But the whole question of asking college students to listen to a third grade safety lecture is a bit ridiculous.
It is too bad the limited access program is not in effect now, but the administration and Board of Regents deserve praise for taking needed action.
—Carrie Merryfield
College Days Are Here Again
Except for a fortunate few who own productive oil wells or who have inherited, or married into, substantial sums of money, parents of college-age offspring lately have been going through a worrisome period. It is a period that will last through the first weeks of June, 1962, when the parents can relax briefly before beginning a shaky climb toward another September. For the past few weeks the average parents of average students have been watching their checkbook balances anxiously, inquiring cautiously of bankers concerning the possibilities of refinancing loans which, as loans go, may be of too recent date to merit such handling, and computing the loan value of certain life insurance policies.
***
FOR VERY SOON now — all too soon — young men and women going to college will face treasurers of those institutions who, quite understandably, will desire money. At many institutions the amount will be larger than it was in the
fall of 1960. The mails this summer were heavy with letters going out in all directions, beginning: "You are reminded that the tuition fee for the 1961-62 school year **** represents an increase of $50 per semester over the fee charged during 1960-61 * * *." They continued with a cheerful paragraph which began, "In addition to the above * * *" and concluded with another "reminder" that the student activities fees also are payable at the opening of the first semester.
At this time it is not easy to say who is in the more unhappy position: the parent of a student about to enter college for the first time, who is making brave estimates of college costs, or one whose son or daughter is a rising sophomore or junior and who has learned at first hand today's costs of higher education. As for the parent with more than one offspring in college, his situation is too pitiful to contemplate.
The university magazine has not been heard from, but it will be.
***
The Toggery Shop and other shops established to outfit young men in acceptable campus attire are being heard from, "charge accounts invited." Here, the parent of an upperclassman has the advantage of his less experienced fellows: his son knows, by now, what not to buy. He will buy, to be sure—but he will buy more wisely and less well than he did in that first, golden September of college. Then there will be books, which are not inexpensive; the board bills for the food which will be complained about all term, especially around February when the student's spirits are low, the bill for room, which doubtless includes the cost of redecorating it in the summer of 1962. There will be many other expenses as the months go by. Now, the parent hopes only to survive through September. Soon he will be worrying about how to meet the second semester's fees, due in January. It is going to be a long, hard winter.
(From Topics, New York Times, Sept. 12, 1961)
the took world
By Ian C. Loram Professor of German
BRECHT: THE MAN AND HIS WORK, by Martin Esslin. Anchor Books, $1.45.
It has become the thing to do to write about Brecht; books are appearing at the rate of three or four a year in Germany alone. For the serious, but non-specialized reader, who does not want a detailed literary or technical analysis of Brecht's work, Esslin's book is probably the best which has yet been written. Too much of what has appeared so far is one-sided. Schumacher and Mayer can consider Brecht only from the Marxist point of view, while Otto Mann condemns him outright for having created nothing new. It is to Esslin's credit that he presents by far the most objective study of this controversial and problematic poet and dramatist.
THE BOOK IS DIVIDED INTO FIVE PARTS: The Man; The Artist; Pitfalls of Commitment; The Real Brecht; For Reference. This last section consists of a valuable bibliography of Brecht's works (with English translations listed), and a useful selective bibliography of secondary material. In his preface, Esslin states that "my concern is to explain the relationship between Brecht's poetic genius and political convictions through an analysis of the psychological foundations of his personality revealed in the imagery of his poetry..." This he has done, and, incidentally, in a style far less formidable than the example just quoted would indicate.
Part I gives us a succinct, and, as far as this reviewer knows, an accurate picture of Brecht's life. We follow him from his childhood and youth in Augsburg to his studies and early dramatic and poetic attempts in Munich and Berlin. Here he became famous for some, notorious for others, and controversial for all. There were the years of The Threepenny Opera, St. Joan of the Stockyards, The Measures Taken, to mention only three of the early works.
Then came Hitler's rise to power, the burning of the Reichstag, and Brecht's flight into exile in 1933, to Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and finally America. Four of his finest plays, Mother Courage, The Good Woman of Sezuan, Galileo, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, were written during this period.
IN 1948 BRECHT WENT TO SWITZERLAND and later in the same year to East Berlin, having first been cautious and clever enough to obtain Austrian citizenship. Here, as master of his own theatre, he was for many "the grand old man of German literature." Despite almost continuous opposition and criticism from the political and cultural authorities of the regime, Brecht supported it — cynically perhaps — until his death in 1956.
Part II is an extraordinarily lucid discussion of Brecht's poetic (hence also dramatic) language and its sources, and an exposition of his theatrical theory and its practice. This section is a "must" for those who wish to understand what Brecht's goals really were and how he tried to achieve them. But it is Parts III and IV which are the most fascinating. Here Esslin shows us the paradox of Bertolt Brecht—the poet as Marxist, whose plays are relatively unsuccessful as Communist propaganda, but enormously successful as dramatic literature.
ESSLIN COMES TO THE FOLLOWING CONCLUSION about Brecht's relationship with the Communists: "To make effective use of Brecht the party had to give him the means to do his work according to his own ideas. By displaying that work to the West while barring it from its own orbit, the party thought that it was making use of Brecht for its own purposes. By accepting the party's lavish support and stubbornly sticking to his own ideas Brecht was equally firmly convinced that he was making use of the party to further his own artistic and political objectives. And so with mutual cynicism they mutually used one another."
The "real Brecht," as Esslin sees him, was a tragic paradox, complicated by his inability or unwillingness to see or acknowledge that his best work had a far deeper meaning than he intended it to have. No matter how hard he tried, he was never able to discard emotion and instinct, any more than he was able to follow the dictates of a narrow political ideology.
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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