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University Daily Kansap Wednesday, Nov. 14, 1962
'Busy Work' Abounds
Any day now, doctors in the Lawrence area should begin to notice a twice-annual phenomenon.
There will be requests for Benzedrine and Dexedrine, two drugs with a number of uses and at least one thing in common: take enough of them and you can go without sleep for days.
There will be another run on tranquilizers. Tranquilizers, of course, calm you down.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
THESE DRUGS will be desired by students. Some of these students will be tired, some of them nervous and irritable, a few of them dangerously overwrought, and all of them weighted down with the same problem—KU "busy work."
"Busy work"-that descriptive term for work neither stimulating nor worthwhile, only time-consuming-abounds here. The University seems to specialize in it.
HE'S TOO BUSY cramming for the next quiz, worrying about the next round of hour exams, and grinding out the latest hurriedly-done and superficial term paper.
So proficient has the University become, in fact, that the typical KU undergraduate rarely has time for any reflective thinking or serious scholarship.
It's hard work, this "busy work."
Sometimes, in the process of running the academic obstacle course, the KU student falls behind, which calls for a quick dose of Benzedrine
to speed him up, or he becomes tense and overanxious, which calls for a quick dose of tranquilizers to slow him down.
Unless he's careful, he may go through the semester, alternately slowing himself down and speeding himself up, and all the while girding himself for the supreme obstacle—final week.
IF HE'S LUCKY—if he bluffs his way through a dozen or more hour exams, if he hacks his way through the underbrush of countless quizzes, if he grinds out several term papers under deadline pressure—he may make it through the semester.
But how much does he learn?
More important, to what extent has he been able to reflect on himself, to gain insights through unhurried study into today's world and his place in it, to gain an appreciation of and an attitude toward life?
PERHAPS IT IS unrealistic to expect this or any other American university to do anything more than reflect the fast-paced, competition-oriented society of which it is a part.
Perhaps it is even desirable that this University train its students for the hectic pace of a complex industrial society by viewing the educational process as a Darwinian struggle with the stress on stamina, not scholarship.
But it's a pity that KU students must enter the "rat race" before they've even had a chance to learn of the alternatives to it.
—Dennis Farney
Aylward Criticized
... Letters ...
If I can consider myself a representative member of the student body who has been able to affiliate himself with Mr. Aylward's club. (I joined the organization at the beginning of the year at the Activities Carnival) I shall advance the proposition that Mr. Aylward and his organization are not representing the true feelings and beliefs of any of us so-called members.
This letter is the result of my interest in the Democratic Party in the state of Kansas and particularly here at the University of Kansas. I have wondered, and I am sure that other interested young Democrats have raised the question: what has happened to the KU Young Democrats Club, and how does one affiliate himself with it? The answer to the first question is simple, it does not really exist. To the second question, however, a slightly more complicated answer is forthcoming.
Inasmuch as a true KUYD Club does not exist, it is apparent that it is impossible to become a member, but there is an organization headed by Mr. Pete Aylward which has been selling memberships, fifty of them at SI apiece, in an organization which he calls the KUYD's. This is not a recognized organization. The faculty advisor, Professor Hobson, does not recognize, nor does any other member of the administration recognize, the existence of any such club.
Aylward's organization claims to represent the young Democrats on this campus, but as was stated before, he had only fifty memberships to distribute. This seems to be a rather limited number. Mr. Aylward claims to be representing the University's entire young Democrat population, but his organization is only fifty strong. This means that not all interested people can join.
Since I paid my dollar last fall, I have never been contacted, no meetings have been held (this seems odd particularly in an election year), and no action has been taken by the club. It would appear that Aylward's organization is really not interested in the club as
TO FURTHER COMPLICATE this question. Mr. Aylward seems to have chosen most of the members of his club from members of the old organization who have supported his previous attempts at gaining control of the KUYD organization. The conclusion here is that you cannot join a legal organization, and to even join a non-recognized one you have to be chosen.
a part in the over-all Democratic organization in this state, but only in what he (i.e., Pete Aylward) can do with control of an organization which purports to be our representative.
The following are a few facts pertaining to the situation:
1) Mr. Aylward's name does not appear on the roster of the KUVD's officers filed in the Dean of Men's office. (Presently there are no officers.)
2) Mr. Aylward is not recognized by the faculty sponsor of the KUYD's as the president of the organization. (No one is.)
4) The official state convention of the Kansas YD's did not take any action towards recognizing Mr. Aylward as the official president of the KU club. The state treasurer of the KUYD's suggested on the floor of the convention when seating the KU Club's delegation that this should not be construed as giving the convention's tacit sanction to the officers who had appointed and sent the KU delegation.
3) MR. AYLWARD did not win the official election held last March, which was elected by the president and the treasurer of the Kansas Young Democrats, as well as the chairman of the Collegiate Council, Mr. Aylward. A slate of candidates headed by Mr. Barry Bennington won this election, but later was not recognized because of certain irregularities that took place in the issuance of membership cards. Bennington's ticket was not recognized as the lawful officers of the organization. (No one was.)
5) The Collegiate Convention likewise took no action towards recognizing any KU officers.
2) His election to the office of president at an illegal "rump" session held last Spring. This election has been declared illegal and is not recognized by the faculty advisor, by any official, or by any official organization at the present time.
1) The refusal of the faculty sponsor to certify the convention delegates elected at the Spring election last year.
6) Mr. Frank McDonald refused to recognize Mr. Aylward as the president of the KU club.
3) The recognition afforded his slate of candidates by the Collegiate Council of which Mr. Aylward is chairman.
PRESENTLY MR. AYLWARD bases his claim to the presidency of the club on the following facts:
4) The recognition of his delegation to the state convention.
None of Mr. Aylward's claims stand the test. He bases his claim
on half-truths. From this, one can deduce that there must be some reason for his desire to be the president of an actually non-functioning, non-recognized organization. I wish he would inform everyone what his purpose might be, in order that the club which he calls KUYD's might be appropriately renamed.
I FEEL THAT IT cannot be contested that the majority of the young Democrats on this campus are not availed of the opportunity of doing anything for their party, and God only knows it needs all the help it can get. I feel that a major reason for this is Mr. Aylward's seizing the power over the KUYD's in a period of confusion and ignorance.
On the surface Mr. Aylward's KUYD's is the young Democrat organization on this campus, and is afforded this recognition in state circles subject to some modifications. His organization can get delegations seated at the state and collegiate conventions and yet these bodies do not recognize the officers of the club. It is apparent that the state organization desires to give representation to our school, but yet recognizes that fact that there is something amiss in the KU Club. The state organization apparently has hoped that the Democrats here could solve their own problems, and I think we can.
The young Democrats have not taken a stand yet because they have been ignorant of the facts. I hope that these facts are a little more clear now, and I call upon Mr. Aylward to meet with the Faculty advisor and try to work out a solution to this mixed-up affair. The KUYD's should hold a new election and try to get our representative body into a functioning organization.
Max Logan Holliday junior
Dailu Hansan UNIT PRINT
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'HELLO, LOUISIE?' WOULD YOU MIND PULLIN' YER SHADES?
I GOT AN O-B-OClock CLASS TOMORROW!
SET THIS HOUSE ON FIRE, by William Styron (Signet, 95 cents).
One could charge William Styron with overt sensationalism were it not for the tremendous excitement generated by this novel, the remarkable style, the incisive drawing of portraits. This is one of the most shocking and most consistently exciting—though not really believable—novels this reader has managed to plow through in recent months.
Mason Flagg at first seems to be the hero—Mason, the rich boy, the dissolute, the superficially charming, the ultimately vile and degenerate. Soon we realize that the hero is Cass Kinsolving, who, an American artist in Italy with a taste for liquor and a family too big for one man to handle, becomes the emotional victim, the slave of Mason. It is cannibalism, in a sense, and there are some almost obscene scenes as Mason uses this essentially fine and decent boy from the South.
We get some grimy views of Italy, of a film colony there, of the decadence of Americans both here and abroad. We can only cheer at the ultimate climax, even though it has been arrived at in such a brutal fashion. This novel is not for the squeamish, the easily shocked, or the prudish—CMP
* *
ALICE ADAMS. by Booth Tarkington (Signet Classics, 60 cents).
Tarkington, as many readers know by now, doesn't date well. He holds up about the way Sinclair Lewis does. The world of "Alice Adams" is a world we don't recognize today.
Alice is the small-town girl whose parents and their social position keep her quite out of local high society. So Alice has to conjure up a social world for herself, and dream and imagine. She continues her fantasies when she falls in love with a young aristocrat, and her world is rudely shattered, as it should be.
The conclusion of "Alice Adams," by the way, represents one of the strengths of Booth Tarkington. Though his situations are romantic, they seem cloaked in realism. Always, at the end, he brings his characters down to earth, in this novel, in "The Magnificient Ambersons," even in "Seventeen." He knew small town America of 40 to 70 years ago, but he never knew it deeply enough to write a first-rate novel about it—CMP
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A MODERN INSTANCE, by William Dean Howells (Riverside, 95 cents).
American literature departments should pick up a course sometime called The Forgotten Novel, and present this fine book. For it is one of the best that Howells wrote, and it is a sharp and discerning story of manners and morals in the Gilded Age.
This edition has a good introduction by the playwright William M. Gibson which stresses "A Modern Instance" as a pioneering novel about divorce. True, it was, and this was quite an accomplishment in 1882. It is not anti-divorce, but it is anti-shallow morality. The young people whose lives are shattered in this tale were not greatly different from many in America of the seventies and eighties.
Its hero, if one can call him that, is Bartley Hubbard, a smooth, glib, irresponsible young journalist who captures the heart of a village belle in Maine, takes her to Boston, and slowly makes her life a living hell. Meanwhile he is caught up in the sensational journalism of the period, and the one-time newsman Howells makes some telling observations about newspapers in the period when yellow journalism was about to emerge.
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