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University Daily Kansan Friday. Nov. 16, 1962
China's Attack Perplexing
Among the explored but unanswered questions involving international affairs are the causes for Red China's territory grabbing attacks on India.
The land involved is apparently nothing more than a wasteland of desert and mountains with spots of jungle, and to get it China had to destroy the Nehru-cherished dream of perpetual Indian-Chinese brotherhood and to debunk the proclaimed yearning of the Chinese for peace and understanding.
IT IS TRUE that both Chinese factions, Nationalist and Communist, consider the disputed territory to be rightfully Chinese. It is true also that Red China, now in control of the mainland and territories adjoining the disputed area, did not have regular access to the United Nations as an avenue through which a peaceful solution could have been attempted.
But since the land is sparsely peopled and remote, and since it appears that the most pressing needs of the Chinese are economic rather than military victories, the question of why Communist China decided to attack India at this time is perplexing. No convincing explanation has come from the attacking Chinese, but experts offer the following bits of conjecture:
- Red China seeks the elimination of Indian presence and influence on territories the Chinese consider rightfully theirs.
- Red China seeks the political domination of the whole belt stretching from Ladakh through Nepal to Sikkim and Tibet to the Indian North East Frontier Agency. This would give the Reds a springboard from which to infiltrate and subvert India.
- Red China seeks the diversion of India's growing economic strength from the task of building a nation to that of defending a nation. This would be an effort to slow down India's
economic progress, which evidently has been faster than that of Red China.
If the reason for the attack is economic jealousy, it follows that India, with its parliamentary democracy containing capitalistic and socialist phases, is embarrassing Red China with its totalitarianism and regimentation. Perhaps China suffers by comparison to the extent that it considers India's advances too significant to remain undisturbed.
PERHAPS, HOWEVER, the Chinese miscalculated by thinking that India's ostensibly peace-loving Nehru would offer only token resistance and conveniently look the other way while China grabbed off this desolate and apparently worthless strip of land.
Perhaps, also, the Chinese were expressing a rededication to the philosophy that their brand of communism is dynamic rather than static and that, contrary to Russia's present and apparent disposition, communism must remain conspicuously expansive and growing at all times.
In any event, one effect of the aggression has been the turning of world opinion against the aggressors. Red China now has gained the reputation of being a nation which without provocation will cut the throat of a placid and friendly neighbor.
ANOTHER EFFECT has been that India was forced to turn to the West for aid and can hardly remain neutral in the East-West conflict. Russia has proclaimed its backing of Red China in the conflict and the United States and Great Britain are supplying India with moral backing and military equipment.
If Red China continues on this course and is estranged from Russia, Red China will be practically alone in a world of enemies. In this condition it would be a prime candidate for extermination resulting from decay from within and strangulation from without. —Jim Alsbrook
Critical Scrutiny Needed
Editor:
The spirited discussion attending the Eurich report across the state suggests that the future of higher education is of real concern to the people of Kansas. The referral of our future educational problems to objective study and recommendation by a panel of educators distinguished by their national prominence is a tribute to the Kansas Board of Regents.
However, does this mean that the Eurich plan should not be subjected to critical scrutiny? Are the objections being raised concerning the plan and its proposals only emotional reactions which will change to support when the plan's "opponents" turn to a "serious evaluation?" This apparently is the judgment of Daily Kansan writer Jerry Musil (Nov. 14) and it is implied by Chancellor Wescoe as reported in the Daily Kansan of Nov. 13. The Board of Regents, by adopting the plan unanimously the day after it was released, also seems publicly committed to a completely non-critical position.
IT COULD BE, however, that the report has been given some serious
... Letters ...
consideration by its "opponents." There was, for example, no official reaction to the Eurich report at the University of Wichita for several days after its release; perhaps that time was used in closely analyzing the plan as submitted.
Apparently the strongest objection is that the Eurich plan would convert the University of Wichita into an extension program for KU and KSU. Chancellor Wescoe on Tuesday protested that this conclusion could not be supported by the report itself. However, on page 27 of the report the panel characterizes the current operation of WU in this way: "In other words the University serves the same function that extension centers of universities generally serve." The panel flatly states that it views the present operation of WU as an extension-type function and nowhere indicates that it views the future potential of the school in any other manner. Perhaps the panel did not intend this "extension" conclusion as Chancellor Wescoe states, but at least part of the report leaves this impression nonetheless. What, then, is the difference between a "State Universities Center" and an "extension center?"
Daily Hansam
University of Kausas student newspaper
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1004, triweekly 1008, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Clayton Keller and Bill Sheldon ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUT WHAT IS wrong with being an extension? For one thing many university "branches" or "extensions" service part-time students primarily. The Eurich report deals with this matter by submitting data to support the contention that WU is currently functioning much like a university extension. Their data indicates that only about 5 per cent of the students are taking full course-load at WU; most of them, on the contrary, are taking only a few hours of course work.
Charles Martinache ... Business Manager
This finding is both surprising and consistent with the panel's proposal that the Wichita campus be a branch of KSU and KU. However, the data that supports this finding is based only on the 714 graduate student population there. But why describe a university that is oriented to undergraduate training by characteristics of its graduate student population? It is not probable that the ratio of part-time to full-time students in the graduate student population is considerably higher than that of the undergraduate population in any university in the state of Kansas? Would it not be advisable to look at the panel's proposal in terms of data on the entire student population of Wichita University rather than on that based on an unrepresentative strata?
IN MY ESTIMATION these are questions worthy of consideration. They are critical, yes, but which of the distinguished panel members would be offended by these or other questions that critics might muster? Any man who prides himself on his credentials as a scientist takes honor in having his work subjected to empirical criticism.
The Eurich plan is both imaginative and far-reaching and its implications for the future of higher education in Kansas are impressive. But again the question: Why should such an important public document only be "understood" and "sold" to the public? Does not higher education in the state both now and in the future have something to gain from critical scrutiny of the Eurich report as well?
Robert Simpson
It Looks This Way
Frankfort graduate student
Why Not Practice All of Our Rights?
In a recent editorial, this writer defended the Constitutional right of every law-abiding citizen (fraternity members included) to practice bigotry and discrimination if he so desires.
That same editorial blasted the Civil Rights Council for playing hob with the fraternity members' privilege of practicing their inalienable right of being bigots.
BUT THE EXERCISE of the right of bigtry is nothing for the fraternity or sorority members to be especially proud of. In fact, the practice of racial discrimination is pitiful.
Fraternities (sororities, too) supposedly seek to improve through the pledging and initiation of persons who will work to make brotherhood something much more than a word to use in songs and rituals.
The fraternal members have another right which they have not exercised quite as vigorously—the right to associate with anyone.
The state of Kansas is not stultified with a caste system. There is no legal code which forbids the pledging and initiation of a Negro.
IF THE ACTIVE members of fraternities (sororities, too) were to apply a little eye-opening logic to the question of considering pledging a qualified Negro, there might be some hope. Logic alone should sink the sorry theory of superior brotherhood (sisterhood, too) through racial "purity."
Individually, not many fraternal brothers or sisters would deny the possibility that somewhere on the Hill there walks a Negro who is "as nice a guy or girl as you'd ever hope to meet."
But, collectively, the members think in stereotype. The test is how many have the courage to stand up in chapter meeting and suggest that the house even so much as consider the pledging of a Negro?
And at this point, a note of caution might be in order. The fraternity (sorority, too) which pledges a Negro without requiring that he meet the organization's standards of excellence (grades, social decorum, etc.) is also missing the boat.
A HUMAN BEING'S RACIAL characteristics should be neither a pass key to undeserved opportunity nor a closed door to deserved opportunity.
A fraternity or sorority has made the crucial step when it awakens to the fact that a Negro just might happen to have something to contribute.
If the Negro meets all the other qualifications for membership except skin color, and the members still refuse to tender an invitation, the fraternity or sorority will be the biggest loser.
—Terry Murphy
BOOK REVIEWS
THE OLD MAN AND THE BOY, by Robert Ruark (Crest, 50 cents) best-selling book, in much more benign mood than one usually encounters in Ruark, about growing up in the South, especially growing up with a gun in your hand.
THE CHESS PLAYERS, by Frances Parkinson Keyes (Crest, 95 cents)—popular fiction by one of the most popular novelists about a handsome young chess player who served at the same time as a spy and conspirator for the Confederacy.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
" — IN CONCLUSION, WE LOOK WITH HOPE AND COURAGE TO TOMORROW WHEN WE BEGIN TO PLANT OUR ROOTS AND TO TAKE OUR PLACE IN OUR COMMUNI — COMM — COMM — "