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University Daily Kansan
Monday, Jan. 14, 1963
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YD's vs. YD's
The YD farce began last spring when attempts were made to hold a regular election of new officers. They held the election all right, and then the fun began. Aylward and company screamed "fix," and Bennington and company screamed back. Amid these indignant screams the pieces of the story began to fit together.
Will the REAL president of the KU Young Democrats please stand up?
Until recently this request would not have brought very enlightening results. Pete Aylward and Barry Bennington both claimed to be the only legitimate president of the KU Young Democrats, and each had a faction to back his claim.
NOW THE YD'S HAVE a three-man directorate to run their little side show. It remains to be seen whether the YD troika will be as inept in running the organization as the claimants to the YD presidency have been. Perhaps three can bungle the job even worse than one, or, hopefully, they may be able to create some semblance of order in the organization for a change.
It seems that someone was passing out free YD membership cards in a sorority house. According to the Aylward group, Bennington and friends offered the free membership cards with the understanding that the votes these cards represented would be cast for the Bennington slate in the election.
Finally the feuding factions of the Young Democrats seem to have called a truce, at least temporarily. The YD constitution has been suspended by a unanimous vote of the members, so they no longer have to worry about the constitutional description of their presidency.
SOMEWHERE IN THE SHUFFLE of free membership cards, the receivers of the cards forgot who they were supposed to vote for. The Bennington group cried "deal." Aylward replied, "Who, me?" And so it went, back and forth, with all the decorum of a Keystone Cops movie.
Regardless of the deals and counter-deals,
Bennington had been duly elected president of the KU Young Democrats, or so the king-makers claimed. The old officers backed Bennington and the rest of his slate to the hilt. He was their boy, he had been elected and he was going to stay that way if they had anything to say about it.
THE ONLY SURE WAY to stop the laughter was to present a unified front to the public. The new three-man directorate appears to be the YD version of an unruffled front for the masses. It is difficult to say just how unruffled the group actually is behind the front.
Aylward decided he also had something to say about it. He claimed the election was invalid because some of the voting memberships had not been paid for. His solution to the problem—hold another election. And he did just that, if a faction meeting to select a leader can be called an election.
AND SO THERE WERE TWO claimants to the throne. How to decide who was the real president of the Young Democrats then became the problem.
For a while it appeared as though the problem might be solved at the State Young Democrats convention in Kansas City. Bennington and his backers were leery of bringing in the state organization because Pete Aylward's father is a big gun in the state Democratic organization. Bennington's fear of outside pressure proved to be unfounded, however. The convention gingerly sidestepped the problem, thereby extending the hassle into this school year.
Somewhere along the line the KU YD's began to realize that KU students were more amused than concerned with the YD factional bickering. And if there is anything Kansas Democrats do not need, it is more people laughing at them.
If the activities of the local Young Democrats give any indication of how the state Democratic Party is run, it is no wonder Kansas is a Republican state.
—Dennis Branstiter
McIlwaine, Mud and Menghini
Editor:
with nigh hopes a group of KU students set out for the Big Eight Student Government Conference at Columbia last month. By the end of the session, the KU delegation was so disgruntled by the petty actions of the Little Seven schools that a plan was being formulated for establishing relations with schools outside the conference.
The ASC at KU recently moved to establish a committee to consider affiliation as an observer with the Big Ten Student Government. Since KU has made a move to go outside the conference, why not consider affiliation with other student governments on a national level? Relations with the Big Ten would be fine. Relations with even more schools would be better.
THERE IS ONE organization on the national level that is the official entity representing student governments. This is the National Student Association.
KU belonged to the NSA until recently, but as a result of controversy between two squabbling factions, one conservative and one liberal, a dispute developed and caused the ASC to vote by a narrow margin to disassociate itself from the NSA.
This letter is not designed to renew old feuds or to discuss the elements involved in the dispute—McIlwaine, Mud and Menghini. Rather, its purpose is to suggest that the NSA be judged on its own merits.
THERE ARE 350 universities and colleges in the NSA. The NSA is recognized by the national educational commission to UNESCO and by several other national and international organizations.
The NSA has a permanent reference service which makes available information on issues of importance to students all over the country. Cheap summer transportation to Europe is made available to students of schools that belong to the NSA.
... Letters ...
At the national conference of the organization, held yearly, students chosen by their own campus governments discuss issues of pertinence to their universities.
The cost of somewhat over 600 dollars per year to KU would be the equivalent of railroad fare for two trips taken by a four-man KU delegation to Big Ten Student Government meetings in Chicago. Which would be more beneficial?
Charles Marvin Lawrence junior
Lawrence junior
** **
A freshman can be paralleled to a small child. As the child grows he learns to live from examples set for him by others around him who criticize and praise his actions. An overabundant use of either criticism or praise creates ill effects on the child's personality and hinders his opportunity to profit and, in turn, set examples himself.
In the same manner, a freshman adjusts to his new college life by observing those around him and conscientiously adhering to criticism and praise. Above all, a freshman is anxious to become acquainted and to demonstrate his enthusiasm for school spirit. However, when a new student is continually confronted with written criticism about this enthusiasm for school victory, he begins to conclude that all his energy used in cheering is wasted or not appreciated.
School Spirit
The most recent example demonstrating this type of criticism appeared in the Jan. 4 article under the title "Along the Jayhawker Trail" which degraded the cheerleaders and the KU fans at the Christmas basketball tournament. I wonder if the writer of this article could have been cheering, himself, at the tournament since he was so preoccupied in figuring out the ratio of KU fans to Kansas State fans.
IN THE FUTURE, by his example, a freshman will be responsible for promoting and improving student school spirit and pride. How can he be expected to do this when the Daily Kansan publicly states that it has no faith in our athletes.
Kris Bergman
Kris Deignan
Webster Groves. Mo., freshman
UNIVERSITY
Daily Hansan
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Scott Payne
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Claxton Keller and Bill Sheldon
Clayton Keller and Bi
Managing Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martinache
Co-Editorial Editors
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Ponderables
It has been suggested in a letter to the editor (Jan. 8. Who Lacks School Spirit?) that the Daily Kansan "quit playing the role of the Kansas City Star or any other independent newspaper and start to function as an instrument of the student body, as stated in the ASC constitution."
What the letter's author was complaining about was a "negative toned sermon" that deprecated the efforts of the KU cheerleading squad to rally the spirit of the school. As head cheerleader, the complainant felt his crew had been done wrong by an "objective" sports writer. He called for a little "public relations" work.
Since it is obvious the letter-writing head cheerleader has no vested interest in wanting a public relations story on school spirit, it is only fair that the request be granted.
SO HERE IT IS—a shot in the arm for school spirit.
"The cheerleading squad is to be commended. Never be'ore in the long and glorious history of our beloved alma mater we have had the dynamic, spirit-inspiring leadership that is found in this year's cheerleading squad.
"Despite the incumbent hardships that are built into stirring the sports fans into a high-sudsed lather, our cheerleaders have shown an eminent ability to produce results. Their devotion to duty is worthy of being held up before the athletes they cheer as a gleaming, spotless, magnificent example of perseverance.
"Like the postman and other heroes of American folklore, our cheerleaders are undaunted by rain, sleet, snow or enemy rifle fire. Why, just the other night one of our Spirit Inspirers bolted between two monstrous visiting-team players as she dauntlessly steered a course to her post on the basketball court, where she joined her seven friends in a death-defying acrobatic act where, with chorus line precision, the girls twirled their skirts and the boys executed a faultless two-step that won the tittering admiration of all modern dance enthusiasts.
"AND FURTHERMORE. at no time have our cheerleaders failed to grasp the magnitude of their obligation to maintain the school's image. No man, woman or even subversive foreign agent could doubt for a minute that the University of Kansas is filled with buxom, pert, gay-spirited girls and clean-cut, close-shaven, wholesome young men who never fail to write to their mother once a week and send her candy on Mother's Day. The conduct and appearance of our cheerleaders has been at all times, under even the most triving circumstances, impeccable.
"Words fail me when I think of those devoted, self-effacing, noglory-for-me cheerleaders of ours who are such an important, indispensable part of our athletic program.
"A measure of their worth can be found if we try to imagine what life at the University of Kansas would be like should they be summoned to greater challenges such as modern dance recitals or auctioning off used furniture.
"JUST TRY, IF you will, to imagine what a football or basketball game would be like without our Spirit Inspirers. No, on third thought, don't; it conjures up visions too deplorable and heart-rending for any but the stout at heart to endure.
"Why, we would be left in a vast wasteland. I'm certain that no one would go to an athletic event just to watch the players play; this would lead to the deplorable situation of cheering only when there is something to cheer about.
"So, as we pass through our life here at KU, let us be mindful not to take our wonderful cheerleaders for granted. If we do, they might get pouty, pack their uniforms and look for a university that has a student paper with a sports writer who is more cognizant of just how important it is to have a devoted group of cheerleaders such as we here at KU are presently blessed with."
— Terry Murphy
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
ACTUALLY HE'S DONE PRETTY WELL—HAGN'T SMOKED FOR A WEEK.