Page 2
University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Nov. 7, 1962
Inspection Policy Ironical
The loose ends of the Cuban missile situation are beginning to draw together on a note of irony.
Most of the Soviet offensive missiles that were springing up in Cuba are either back in the crates or soon will be. The JFK brand of brinkmanship has been quite successful on this point.
Although Cuba will hardly be neutralized by removal of these missiles, the offensive threat once posed will be greatly diminished. Khrushchev has by no means decided to pick up all his marbles and go home, but he has decided to back away from the edge of the cliff and think things over. The risks have exploded out of all proportion to the possible gains.
Castro was ignored when the instrumental decisions were being made. While the United States and Russia were playing power politics, Castro could only watch and wait. He could scream as loudly as he cared to, but the persons and countries that counted did not care to listen. The only things of consequence were Russian missiles, Russian technicians and Russian soldiers.
IN A SENSE Khrushchev's fingers have been stepped on. But the bearded man with the big cigar and the loud voice has been trampled. Khrushchev's loss of face seems almost insignificant in relation to Castro's.
Castro has found that there is more to being a Russian satellite nation than economic and military aid. Cuba has lost much of its political identity. It has not yet reached the status of a Latin American East Germany, but it is leaning in that direction.
Finally, after the most critical decisions have been made, Khrushchev has decided to bring Castro into the picture. Perhaps even this belated consideration would not have been made if Castro had been willing to come to terms with acting U.N., Secretary-General U Thant. Castro is worth talking to only because he has created a stumbling block in the path of otherwise smoothly flowing resolution of the Cuban missile question.
THE UNITED STATES demands inspection. Castro says no. Khrushchev apparently has sent Deputy Premier Mikoyan to bring Castro into line with decisions already made in Moscow.
Herein lies the irony. Castro is being forced by Moscow to accept a policy that has been repeatedly denounced by the Kremlin in the past. Inspection has been the final, non-negotiable blind alley that has stymied every attempt to reach agreement on disarmament. Russia steadfastly has refused to permit any effective form of inspection to guarantee good faith.
But what is good enough for Russia evidently is a little too good for a satellite nation like Cuba. Perhaps Russia should have maintained closer contact with Cuba during the crisis, for Castro appears to have forgotten who is making the rules.
The playing of power politics is for those who have the power. Castro does not. Perhaps he has forgotten this also.
Mikoyan will remind him.
Sound and Fury
On University Theatre
Editor:
Professor Beck employed some disquieting terms in the interview reported in the Daily Kansan of Oct. 4. By some intricate reasoning, he explained, I think successfully, why the University Theatre has instituted certain undemocratic practices in its new seating policies. "The public" he was quoted as saying, "including the university campus, wants to see bright, lively, and necessarily expensive productions."
I make no claim to being a representative of "the public," or even of "the university campus," although I have been here for four years. But perhaps I speak for a fairly sizable group of people (or non-people?) in expressing extensive and heartfelt disagreement with Mr. Beck's words (as quoted) and all of their obvious implications.
FIRST, WHAT I want of a university theatre is something distinctly better than New York commercial theatre. A self-respecting and reasonably free theatre is not beyond the means of a university as important as KU. We might reasonably expect uniform seriousness (not solemnity) in any production we see at a university theatre, and this consideration will permit selection of scripts in three categories: a) excellent plays of all times and places (there must be many hundreds of them); b) worthy experimental or amateur plays; c) second-rate plays freshly and brightly reconceived in creative productions. To estimate the proportion of third-rate, or worse plays produced at KU these four years would lead me to pointless argument. There have been far too many; not one seems to me to have been justifiable. And the obligation to rethink the possibilities in any well-worn script, and to come up with something tolerably effective, has often been shirked.
Second, the brightness, liveliness, and expensiveness of most KU productions is beyond dispute. But showy lighting, heavily drilled pantomime, and gorgeous costuming do not make an effective theatre. Nor do numerous busloads of high school students from far-off towns visiting our theatre
THIRD. THE NEW seating policy, whatever its commercial basis, calls attention to a vicious trend in University life, from which the KU Theatre may be less a beneficiary than a prime and spectacular victim. The theatre, like the library, belongs to everybody; a policy which needlessly and spectacularly designates the student body as inferior (if only in privilege) destroys something of the greatest importance in university life. There are more practical considerations. My own experience with balcony seats at the KU theatre has been uniformly depressing. How does a theatre as imperfect as ours hope to promote enthusiasm for theatre in years to come if it condemns all its most open-minded patrons to unsatisfactory entertainment? I suggest that the new seating proposals will speedily congeal an impression already floating vaguely through student minds that an evening at the KU Theatre is worth avoiding at all costs. The new policy would be far more defensible if the acoustics of the theatre were better and if our Speech and Drama people had better success in training actors in clarity and projection. These are
for a lark establish its success, much less its excellence. As larks go, an evening at a KU Theatre production isn't much. I can hardly believe that we are having much success in increasing theatre audiences. Broadway theatre has largely become an expense-account service to clients, an outing for ladies' bridge clubs in the suburbs, a "different" but usually inferior way to occupy a night out. It seems insane to imitate Broadway's notorious financial practices, and pure death to copy its production habits. As for me, I like ingenious, intelligent, "sincere," inexpensive productions. Any university theatre can offer them frequently and almost exclusively, however unavailable they may be to a commercial theatre. "The public," when it sees such productions, is likely to "want" them better than it wants what it presently gets, if only because the inevitable amateurism in a collegiate production is so much harder to bear in a context of meretricious glitter.
two problems which insiders may underestimate.
Fifth, the University Theatre plainly suffers most acutely from the problem of adequate casting—a problem which doubtless has some connection with the autonomy of Speech and Drama. With a talent pool of 11,000 students and some gifted faculty members, the number of candidates for crucial roles must be pitifully small each time a production gets under way. How else can one understand the high frequency of poor casting? I do not know how to dispel the normal feeling of students in, e.g., the Arts College, that theatre work is a normal thing for students in Speech and Drama but a highly abnormal thing for anybody else. But it seems clear enough that only grossly stage-struck students in other schools are likely to have much interest in trying out for an average KU production. The choice of script, to begin with, will all too often promise nothing in the way of time well spent. I must add that this year's scripts are less exceptionable than usual.
MR. BECK KNOWS very well that the KU faculty includes many who, like myself, avoid open quarrels with the Theatre division despite major reservations regarding its operations. In four years I have seen perhaps twenty KU productions and regard myself as intensely apathetic to the whole thing, although I must be a real commercial asset and, in your books, a regular booster. I am not apathetic to the idea of a university theatre, and ours might be a great one. In fact it has come close, at its best, to real distinction.
A candidate for the University of Colorado Board of Regents attacked the Colorado student newspaper recently in terms that remind me of Mr. Beck's (as quoted): "The paper should reflect the views of the campus majority — and it hasn't. I don't think it should try to educate them politically" (Daily Kansan, Oct. 4, page 2). This is not the language of a university, nor, perhaps, was Mr. Beck's.
Edward Ruhe
Associate Professor
of English
Wage Increase Needed
Editor:
Among the world's most poorly paid workers are the peons of Spain, the coolies of China, and the student workers in the dormitories of KU. I can certainly see why workers in Spain and China are underpaid; the countries are poor and the laborers are illiterate and unambitious. But what about the student help at KU?
I BELIEVE that the administration can afford to pay more money in wages, and that if they did they would get a better quality of labor. Even a small raise in wages could make these student jobs competitive. America has long been known for its reliance on competition to get good results. One problem that this would help solve is the high rate of labor turnover. No one minds quitting or getting fired from an 80-center-hour job.
Let's assume, for a moment, that the administration actually cannot afford to pay out more money in wages. Student wages could still be raised significantly, with no further outlay, by reducing the inefficiency which permeates the student help working schedules.
As an example of this, I reported to work last Saturday morning along with three other workers. The four of us were given a job that two people could have handled easily. The result was that half the time we should have been working, there was no work to do. We had to be there nevertheless, for unexcused absences are rewarded by firing.
**THIS IS ADMITTEDLY** the worst example I can bring to mind, but there are many others. I would say that a conservative estimate of the student labor wasted would be from 10 to 20 per cent. If this waste were irradiated, the student help could get a corresponding wage increase. This letter is being written with one of two objectives in mind. I think that the administration should (1) explain its low wages, keeping in mind the large waste, or (2) do something about these wages. I am waiting for a reply.
Al Piercey
Oslo, Norway, junior
* * *
Not Orthodox Christianity Editor:
This is in reply to Mr. Shobe's letter of Oct. 29. Mr. Shobe declares as an opening statement that Mr. Page began his logical chain (in opposition to legalized abortion) from false premises; that is that a fetus has a soul. Mr. Shobe then goes on to prove dazzlingly that the soul does not exist.
His only substantiation of this bold assertion: "because I don't believe in it."
It is Mr. Shobe's privilege to disbelieve in the existence of an immortal soul, but he goes on to assert with no proof whatsoever that such an opinion is "theologically sound and orthodoxly (sic) Christian." Such a view's being theologically sound would depend upon one's Theos—probably some one of the gods invented by man's imagination would admit to creating Man's nature no more transcendent than that of a dog; Jehovah has never been quoted as upholding the idea.
Then to say that such drivel is orthodox Christianity is too much. There is no sense in using up newsprint to list scriptures refuting this idea. It is simply out of harmony with the entire teaching of the Christ. None of the Apostles taught that man is a "unified (integrated) organism which decomposes in its entirety soon after death." In fact the Apostle Paul repeatedly condemned this doctrine. The view is foreign to the Apostolic Fathers (Christian writers of the second and third centuries.) No theologian from the Roman Church has supported it. The Reformation brought forth many differing opinions, but none so unorthodox as this. This view became widespread only after the Tubingen scholars and the proponents of the social gospel began to whittle away at Christianity in an effort to do away with the miraculous.
Call this heresy anything you please, but do not call it Orthodox Christianity.
Robert A. Barrett Amarillo, Tex., graduate student
UNI UNIT RESIST
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, trieweekly 1908,daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 726, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Press, 18 East St 50 St, New York 22, N.Y. Mail subscription rates; $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and holidays. Postage and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT Scott Payne Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Clayton Miller and Co-Editorial Editors
Bill Sheldon
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martinache .. Business Manager
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"THIS IS MORE LIKE IT!"
"LET'S GO SOMEPLACE WHERE WE CAN STUDY—"