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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Oct. 25, 1962
ASC Budget
The annual allotments provided in the All Student Council budget always receive considerable criticism. Most of this comment is from groups which are either given no money or had their request slashed considerably—or the uninformed. This year comment is somewhat different, but none the less interesting and important.
The principal complaint, both before and after passage of the budget, has been the amount which was given to the Peace Corps committee. The objection has been that such a group should not be given such a large cut from the students' money because of the purpose and the function of the committee. This argument cannot be denied. But the situation is more encompassing than just what the Peace Corps committee does.
It should be noted that most of the money given this committee did not come directly from student pockets. The University handed the ASC $2,500 and expressed a desire that about $1,000 of it go to the Peace Corps committee. This fact should quiet some of the noise against such a benevolent appropriation going to a branch of a national group which actually does the individual students so little good.
Possibly to assure the student body that money given to such groups as the Peace Corps committee will be spent as budgeted, a new measure has been announced. All expenditures must be cleared through either the student body
president or the ASC treasurer. This move should help in tightening the reigns on student money and act as a check against unwarranted or falsely reported purchases.
THE SAME NATIONAL-LOCAL argument might be declared in regard to People-to-People but the benefit which this group does in Lawrence and on campus negates any complaint that there is a seemingly endless source of funds flowing from Kansas City. Also, the People-to-People allotment was slimmed somewhat.
BECAUSE OF THE ELIMINATION of the AWS from ASC responsibility some of the requests were raised and considerable sums were given to such new groups as the Current Events Committee and the Radio Production Center.
Although the ASC budget is considerably below that of last year, it must be pointed out that the money formerly given to the Associated Women Students is no longer provided by the ASC, but by the University.
Looking at the entire budget, it looks like one of the fairest passed in recent years. There will continue to be disgruntlement in regard to the Peace Corps item and this may be justified. But the budget as a whole is one which should provide the student body with many worthwhile services for the coming year.
-Bill Sheldon
It Looks This Way
Hero-Worship Needs Revamping
This past week Princeton, Mo., belatedly got around to recognizing Calamity Jane — quite some years after she claimed the city as her birthplace in her autobiography. The Chamber of Commerce sponsored Calamity Jane Day, complete with a "Mystery Jane" and a "Mystery Bill" (Wild Bill Hickock) contest.
One cannot know how seriously the good people of Princeton took all this delayed heroine-worship. Could be the Chamber of Commerce planned it all with tongue in cheek.
BUT THERE can be no doubt that figures like Calamity Jane and Wild Bill have become an important part of the folklore of the "Wild West." One writer ranks Calamity Jane along with Annie Oakley as "one of our two chief Western heroines . . ."
What did they do to deserve this? Historians report that Calamity Jane was an alcoholic and
a prostitute. At the tender age of 24 she was the only woman among 1,500 men that left Fort Laramie with a bull train hauling supplies for Gen. Crook's expedition against the Sioux. She is believed to have worked as a teamster or bullwhacker, could ride and shoot, dressed like a man, had a strong physique and no inhibitions.
Hickok, it has been written, gained his reputation "by killing, from his hiding place, two unarmed men and then mortally wounding a third unarmed man who was running for his life."
AS WITH all heroes and heroines, these two became enveloped in myths as the years went by. But what is it about their lives that started them off on the road to fame if not fortune?
Leo Gurko, writing in "Heroes, Highbrows and the Popular Mind," observes that "It is the element of rugged individualism,
the independent gesture of defiance that is the seedbed of heroism" Whatever else they were, Calamity Jane and Wild Bill seem to have been individualists. Calamity Jane could have gone off on military excursions with the boys simply as a prostitute. But one historian believes it's not that simple. If she had been satisfied with that sort of life, she could have just settled down on a "hog ranch" in Wyoming.
As our country has become more industrialized, more urban, and more group-minded, we have looked back longingly to the days when a man was supposedly free to go where he wished and make his mark in life. This, in part, could explain our dedication to such early-day celebrities.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
BUT GURKO notes that intellectual or spiritual individualism just doesn't have the appeal in America that such action has when it's brought down to a physical level. "To the public at large Jesse James is a greater name than Willard Gibbs, Billy the Kid then Emily Dickinson."
SOME OF THESE FRESHMEN COME HERE WITH THE IDEA THAT COLLEGE IS JUST ONE GIGANTIC PART."
"The distortions of the whole man present in our national life have been reflected in our heroes," states Gurko. They have mirrored our tendency to value muscle over mind, instinct above brain, impulsiveness rather than reflectiveness.
Perhaps our heroes are most disturbing at times because they do reflect our culture and our values. If so, we should take a closer look. Maybe then we could do something about changing the original image reflected in our hero-worship.
—Elaine Blaylock
Daily hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889. became biweekly 1904,
triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Services and University of Kansas Press. 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. Accepts amination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
Telephone VIking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Scott Payne Managin
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Clayton Keller and
Olivia Edwards
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martinache .. Business Manager
Rhetorically Speaking: Variety, We Need
With a certain regularity suggestive of a campaign of calculated snobbishness, the work of some journalism student is briefly elevated from its mundane surroundings and lifted up, all the way up, to the rarefied atmosphere of the KU English department.
It happens every semester.
EVERY SEMESTER, you see, some instructor of freshman English with nothing better to do in class solemnly unfolds a Daily Kansan, selects an article or editorial and then, with gusto, tears the hell out of it while his captive audience cheers lustily.
Well, it's finally happened to me. Last week, my freshman friends tell me, an unidentified female instructor cut loose on one of my editorials. She didn't disagree with my conclusion; as a matter of fact, she didn't even notice it. It seems that my sentence structure wasn't right.
To be more exact, my sentence structure wasn't varied. The style of writing was simply too simple; the words were too short and the editorial, when you came right down to it, was little more than a stack of declarative sentences piled there like cordwood.
WELL, I DON'T suppose I have to tell you that criticism like that, coming as it did from a graduate student in English, really hit home. I mean, like what good is an editorial if all it does is give you the facts and state an opinion in simple declarative sentences, piled there like cordwood?
No good at all.
Needless to say, I've done a lot of thinking since last week, and I think I've hit upon a scheme to recoup my lost prestige and vindicate myself before the English department.
What I'm going to do today is to write another editorial, one calculated to please my unidentified critic.
But the subject matter will be inconsequential so the rhetoric can really shine through. I will write about the bitter coffee at the Kansas Union. Let us begin.
"Perambulates there a man today beneath the autumn-tinted, wind-tossed campus trees who has not, at one time or another, yearned for a really good cup of rich, mellow, savory and delightful coffee? No.
"Coffee is an absolute necessity for the KU student of today; he imbibes it upon awakening, he gulps it before classes, he studies everything from complicated calculus to sophisticated sociology to the beat of its caffeine coursing through his veins.
"COFFEE HE DRINKS on breaks while working hard; more over, he often drinks coffee while on a date or while goofing around.
"Of this vast quantity of coffee, much he drinks at the Kansas Union, where it is served awfully often, awfully hot and awfully awful.
"Is this justice? Is this fair? Is this the American way? No.
"The student deserves something better, something milder and something mellower; if he is not getting this at the Kansas Union he should protest. Pushed around the student should not be! (Perhaps this is a little strong, but for adding variety you just can't beat a back-running exclamatory sentence.)"
"HOW CAN THE student protest? He can organize. He can complain to the management. He can switch to drinking tea.
"Or, with the help of his English instructor, he can write a letter to the editor: a powerful letter with no two sentences alike and dozens of semicolons all lined up in a row."
—Dennis Farney
Editor
I we Larry Kansaing of For Page's man, most would wrong his who accore would
THE EDGE OF SADNESS, by Edwin O'Connor (Bantam, 75 cents).
It is a pleasure just to think about this warm, quiet, beautiful novel. The Pulitzer prize committee, which picked this as the best novel of 1962, should be complimented.
Whether "The Edge of Sadness" is as good as O'Connor's "The Last Hurrah" is difficult to say. The earlier book was about an Irish politician in Boston; "The Edge of Sadness" is about a priest who takes a reflective look at his life. Father Hugh Kennedy is a man who has gone through as much hell as a religious man can go through, but in a time of crisis he is able to examine the lives of others and see that they, too, have been touched by "the edge of sadness."
Warm and winning as Father Kennedy is, the real triumph of O'Connor is Charlie Carmody, an old Irish Catholic businessman who is at least 65 per cent soundrel. He is a fabulous creation, as likely to endure as the crafty old mayor of "The Last Hurrah." —CMP
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THE HUNTING SKETCHES, by Ivan Turgenev (Signet, 75 cents) one in the series of classics, and a new translation. The hero of these sketches is a huntsman who observes the people on all levels in Russia, peasant to master. The portraits are full and believable,