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University Daily Kansan
Monday, Dec. 3, 1962
Ban the Barn?
Noses are getting blue around KU—and it is not because of the weather.
KU is re-asserting itself as one of the last bulwarks of the ostrich theory of morality—insert head in sand and let the rest of the world go on its merry, degenerate way.
The current manifestation of this theory is taking shape as a ban-the-barn drive.
WE ARE TOLD barn parties are tarnishing the University "image." Randy Rushee is returning home with throbbing head and tales of cigarettes, rye whiskey and wild, wild women at KU barn parties.
Kansas parents who would not think of partaking of "la dolce vita," except within the cloistered confines of a key club or a Leavenworth gambling den, are writing letters of protest to the administration.
Alumni are writing letters about student drinking with almost as much spirit as they carry in their hip pockets when they come to football games, laugh off the state law against drinking on University property and litter their side of the stadium with hundreds of empty liquor bottles.
THE ADMINISTRATION is reacting to these Letters by passing the demand for reform on to the students. It cannot allow the precious University "image" to be tarnished—at least not by the students.
All the bad words about the barn parties have not come from the administration and alumni.
The vice-president of the Panhellenic Council says KU coeds are getting tired of barn parties. She says some of her flock have attended as many as two barn parties a week so far this semester.
WE WONDER who has been forcing these poor girls to go to all those parties. Evidently the rigors of social climbing are too much for this year's crop of campus queens.
Cheer up, girls. There may be easier climbing elsewhere.
Last Thursday's meeting of the Dean's Advisory Council came up with a few mediocre alternatives to barn parties. Informal parties in school dress were suggested.
There is nothing like a half-way approach to take the guts out of a party. If we are going to raise hell—let's raise hell. If we are going to have formal parties—then let's have them.
ALL IN ALL, the Dean's Advisory Council came to only one solid conclusion. They don't like barn parties but they don't know what to do about them.
Dean Alderson and Dean Taylor know what to do about them, even though they have not yet brought their plan into the open. They would like to ban barn parties altogether. Of course, this would not stop such parties but merely force them into secrecy.
We could protect the "image" by making the hour-long jaunt to Kansas City. Then we could see the stripper at King Arthur's or the female impersonators at the Jewel Box. Surely this would be better for our tender, impressionable young minds than going to a barn party.
Perhaps the best solution is to ban the barn. After all, Kansas is the home of Carrie Nation—we must remember our heritage. Forcing this kind of party underground would both protect the University "image" and conform to the ostrich theory of morality. —Dennis Branstiter
Contest Poorly Attended Editor:
... Letters ...
Now gray-haired and a speech and drama professor, Buehler still maintains the importance of his
Thirty-seven years ago an enterprising young speech instructor succeeded in establishing at KU a project dear to his heart. In 1925 he received permission to institute a speech contest he had developed which had all the qualities for successful and perpetuating operation.
Instructor E. C. Buehler had devised an annual event, democratic in that it was open to all KU students, and entertaining because it gave anyone an opportunity to publicly air protests and advocate changes. It caught on. Sometimes as many as forty students would enter a crowded try-out room. Five to eight of the best speeches were presented a day later in grand auditorium-type style.
contest. But the turnout this year was poor. Few contestants took the opportunity to editorialize, and a Daily Kansan reporter was the only witness to tryout speeches.
Apparently more is required than trophies and posters. It probably takes forty young people sure enough of themselves to say something out loud.
The contest has never changed at all—the studentry has. It will bespeak unfavorable things if lack of contestants and an audience forces the Campus Problems Speaking Contest to fold after so many years of success. I cannot believe that an outstanding university could collect that much apathy on one campus. The event merits good support next November; and a few letters of backing directed to the speech department would definitely help the cause. We will always need this contest. It has
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Alan Gribben Parsons junior
something to do, you know, with free speech.
"AN ON A CLEAR WARM DAY WE HAVE A MOST LUNGUAL VIEW OF ALL TH' SUN DECKS IN TH' NEIGHBORHOOD."
Editor:
ASC Supported
For the last two months the All Student Council has received much criticism for passing a resolution supporting the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi and urging the student council at Ole Miss to assume leadership in solving the problems of resulting racial unrest. Critics have maintained that the ASC went beyond its boundaries with such a resolution. In an editorial in the Nov. 29 Daily Kansan, Dennis Farney expressed this position by saying, "It's so easy to take a firm stand on someone else's problem."
This statement might be contrasted to one by Dr. Martin Luther King in his book "Stride Toward Freedom," an account of the Negro's struggle for desegregated buses in Montgomery, Ala. Dr. King writes, "The racial issue that we confront in America is not a sectional but a national problem. The citizenship rights of a Negro cannot be flouted anywhere without impairing the rights of every other American. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
Certainly, the ASC must not use its resolution as a means of avoiding racial problems in Lawrence, but it is a narrow view which cannot see reason for the ASC to consider such a resolution. It is irresponsible to pass the issue off as "someone else's problems."
Don Warner
Topeka senior
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Scott Payne Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Whatever may have been the former attitude of France towards Algeria, I think we should acknowledge the fact that France and De Gaulle are trying to aid this new country in its efforts toward a healthier economy and a higher standard of living, even though often against French interests.
As far as I am concerned, I think that we should find in the Daily Kansan the friendly spirit that we find on campus, and therefore that any arguments in this paper which stand against this spirit also stand against the purpose of this paper. In spite of this, I should like to tell you a few things since I believe that your article on the relationship between France and Algeria ("Galling the Gauls," Daily Kansan, Nov. 27) went far beyond the limits of courtesy.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Clayton Keller and
Co-Editorial Editors
(An open letter to Zeke Wiggle-
worth)
Dear Sir:
Sound and Fury
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martinech . Business Manager
Wigglesworth Answered By French Students
LET ME REMIND you that seven hundred thousand French people left their homes in Algeria to start a new life in France this very year. Most of them had their families settled in Algeria for more than a hundred years, when Kansas was inhabited solely by Indians. We French did not eliminate the indigenes we found in Algeria or place them in a reservation (I apologize for this very painful and unfair allusion).
Let me remind you that the French army itself had to fight against Europeans in order to get rid of the last opponents to an independent Algeria. French and French history were taught to the
young Moslems, but taught by French teachers in schools built with French money, and this might be better than no school at all. (By the way, do they teach Indian history at the Haskell Institute?)
As far as elections are concerned, I would like to remind you that several of the southern states of this country still use poll taxes and residency restrictions to discourage Negroes from voting.
In writing this letter, I by no means intend to criticize the past or the present of the United States, which I am now enjoying very much. I only wanted to answer a man whose unexpected and puerile aggressiveness against France seems to require a psychoanalist more than anything else. I wish to extend my apologies to anyone whom I might have offended in the course of this letter.
WITHOUT DETAILED study of a given situation one is not justified in taking a strong position, to which you seem to be addicted. Before passing judgment on foreign problems you should be more careful and consider the fact that there are many critical problems in the United States, as in any other country in the world.
I hope the teachers of the University of Kansas will help you allay the confusion which is momentarily present in your mind.
Michel Depin
Paris, France, graduate student Ingenier Civil de l'Aero-
nautique
Officier de reserve de l'Armee de l'Air
Editor:
We do not expect our American allies to approve of all we do, and we are conscious of our very real responsibilities in the Algerian disaster. However, there is a difference between fair criticism and unfair attack. For reasons of his own, Mr. Wigglesworth has by means of subtle insinuations and palpably false statements tried to make the French government appear both utterly ruthless and incredibly stupid in its dealings with the Algerians.
MR. WIGGLESWORTH is full of righteous indignation at the alleged confiscation of Islamic Mosques by the French government in 1947 and the subsequent transformation of these Mosques in Catholic Churches. Unfortunately, it never happened, and I defy him to quote one single article of any newspaper, including the Arab press menting* this supposed desecration of Muslim temples. The French, whether in Algeria or in France have always respected the Muslim religion, and the Muslim soldiers in the French army have always been offered all the facilities they needed to observe their faith.
(*'Editor's note: Zeke Wigglesworth gives as his source for this statement, Edmund Stevens, "North African Powder Keg," New York, Coward - McCann, 1955, page 210).
Mr. Wigglesworth also expresses his surprise that in view of the French record in Algeria, the rebellion was not bloodier than it was. I sincerely hope that he has no idea of how bloody it really was, and of how many Algerian Muslims died under the French flag and for a French Algeria. For incredible as it may seem, 600,000 Algerians chose to serve in the French army during the rebellion.
it is very easy when one looks from the outside and does not know the facts to be sanctimonious about other nations' shortcomings. At the risk of being a little unfair myself, may I remind Mr. Wigglesworth of the proverb, "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones out of the window."
WE ARE NOT trying to say that France was blameless in her dealings with Algeria. We are merely trying to remind our American friends of the fact that Algeria had been French for a hundred and thirty years, and that over these years a million Frenchmen had settled there. Our problem was not an easy one. Through bitter opposition on both sides, the French government under the leadership of Gen. de Gaulle managed to reach a mutually acceptable settlement.
Michele Barbezieux
Paris, France, graduate student Licenciece en Droit Diplome de l'Institute d'Etud
optimee de l'Institute d'Etudes Politiques de Paris.
BOOK REVIEWS
REPORT FROM RED CHINA, edited by Robert E. Evans (Bantam, 75 cents)—a volume that purports to "lift the mask from the face of the Chinese Mainland." An introduction is by Tillman Durdin, Far East specialist of the New York Times.
- * *
AFTER THE SEVENTH DAY: THE WORLD MAN CREATED, by Ritchie Calder (Mentor, 75 cents)—an account of man's achievements on earth by the professor of international relations at Edinburgh University. This describes man's mastery of his environment from prehistoric times to the atomic era.
INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN EDUCATION, by S. E. Frost Jr.
(Doubleday College Course Guides, $1.75)—one in a new series of outline studies. An original designed to give the student, teacher or parent a view of various facets of education in America.