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University Daily Kansan Monday, Oct. 15, 1962
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Convicted Without Trial
There's an old idea held in great esteem throughout the United States that one is innocent until proven guilty.
Apparently this doesn't hold true for KU. Last week, KU students were judged guilty of being so apathetic and so completely wrapped up in themselves that they wouldn't take an hour to hear one of the top Peace Corps officials.
THEY WERE JUDGED guilty—without any trial whatsoever—by the KU committee on convocations, which turned down a request by the KU Peace Corps committee for a convocation during the week of Oct. 29 to Nov. 2.
This will be the first week of the KU Peace Corps training project. Sixty-five KU faculty members will be directing the training program, which will be attended by 41 Peace Corps volunteers from throughout the United States. These volunteers will be taking their U.S. training at KU before leaving for service in Costa Rica.
The proposed convocation would have provided a fitting climax to Peace Corps week, which will include films, displays, forums, debates and speeches.
THE SPEAKER would have been Warren W. Wiggins, who will become acting director of the Peace Corps late this month when Director Sargent Shriver will leave for a trip to Africa.
Raymond Nichols, KU vice chancellor and chairman of the convocations committee, told the Daily Kansan the committee would have authorized a convocation if Shriver could have been the featured speaker. He said the committee felt that there would be an embarrassingly small turnout to hear Wiggins.
We don't agree with this pre-judgment of KU students. The Peace Corps has attracted wide attention throughout the world with the work accomplished in the short time it has been in operation. Many of its volunteers have been collegeage people. It has received the interest of students in universities throughout the nation and has attracted a number of volunteers from KU.
THE USUAL INTEREST IN the Peace Corps at KU will be increased during this particular week because of the other Peace Corps week activities, including the start of KU's Peace Corps training project. This project will train volunteers for service in Costa Rica, with which KU has had a study exchange program for years.
The KU Peace Corps committee, to its credit, did not accept this pre-judgment of KU students. It immediately began circulating petitions to persuade the convocations committee to reconsider its ruling. Several members of the convocations committee said they will be willing to reconsider the issue if a sufficient number of signatures are on the petition.
By yesterday evening, we understand, approximately 1,500 signatures had been collected. The committee plans to try to get at least 4,000.
IT WAS STATED that the University would be embarrassed if a convocation were held and only 1.000 students attended. This is true.
But the University should be even more embarrassed if it did not allow KU students the opportunity to attend the convocation in the first place.
Clayton Keller
Justice For An Odd Job Man
Down in southeast Kansas, in a town called Chetopa, there was a man named Richard A. Walker. He hadn't committed a crime for 15 years, but he was taken to prison.
Walker, an unemployed odd job and farm worker, was convicted of robbing a streetcar of $12 some 20 years ago and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He served five years and then escaped from a prison work farm.
AFTER HIS ESCAPE 15 years ago, Walker lived an inconspicuous life. As the Labette County undersheriff put it, "Walker never caused anybody any trouble." But he was taken back to jail.
Walker, a 54-year-old father of seven, hadn't established himself as a leader of the community. In fact, he had done very little except try to provide for his family.
The escapee married in 1948 and had one child by that marriage before his wife died. He then married a widow with three children, and the couple had three more children. Everybody around the Chetopa area liked their "odd job man."
TO MOST KU STUDENTS, content in their campus security, the question of Richard A. Walker is an unimportant one. But there is a basic question involved: When has a man repaid
his debt to society? When has he met the requirements to again become a citizen?
We have a penal system which says that when a convicted criminal has served his sentence, he has repaid his debt to society. Yet in many cases the "ex-con" leaves the institution only to return after a short time. This "ex-con" has not been rehabilitated. Perhaps he was never meant to be.
Then what is the purpose of our penal institutions? Do they exist to dole out punishment, or do they exist to rehabilitate? If they do not exist for the latter, our society is ill.
AND SO BACK to the man we know and care little about, Richard A. Walker. Has he served his debt to society? He has not broken a law for 15 years. He is married and has a family of seven. Commenting on his arrest, his wife Jean can only say, "I still love him." Walker himself says, "I have something that would keep any man straight—my family."
If there is such a thing as justice in this nation Walker will not be forced to remain in prison. The decision, however, is not ours; it is that of the courts. But to deny this man the freedom and responsibility he has proved he is willing to accept would be a desecration of the very principles of justice of a free society.
Arthur C. Miller
Daily Hansan
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Richard Bonett, Dennis Farney, Zeke Wigglesworth, and Bill Mullins, assistant Managing editors; Mike Miller, City Editor; Steve Clark, Sports Editor; Margaret Cathcart, Society Editor.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor
Clayton Keller and Bill Sheldon Co-Editorial Editors BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martinache...Business Manager
Dan Meek, Advertising Manager; Doug Farmer. Circulation Manager;
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EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Short Ones
Judging from the number of paddles in evidence, the frats are leaving no stern untoned in their search for conformity from the pledges. —Bob Hoyt
It is simply not possible for small oases of prosperity in the world to continue to exist amidst vast deserts of poverty without engendering storms that might engulf those oases. —B. K. Nehru
The mind is its own place and of itself can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell. —Milton
The price of justice is eternal publicity. —Enoch Arnold Bennett
America is a land where a citizen will cross the ocean to fight for democracy — and won't cross the street to vote in a national election. Bill Vaughan
"ARE YOU SUPE THIS IS WHAT THEY MEAN BY HIGHER EDUCATION?"
It Looks This Way
An Expensive Plaything
Waste in the United States foreign aid program is something like the weather—everyone talks about it, but no one does anything about it.
This may be in for some revision. Last week Congress cut almost a billion dollars from what the President had requested for foreign aid. Foreign aid programs have never been popular with many Americans, and those who oppose them most vociferously have often been accused of being reactionaries or die-hards who fail to realize the importance of this instrument of foreign policy.
IN THE HOUSE RECENTLY it was brought out that more than $3 million in foreign aid funds were used to buy an air-conditioned yacht for Emperor Haile Selasse of Ethiopia. No doubt the gift of the yacht had political overtones of some sort which, stripped of euphemism, amounts to blackmail by, or bribery of, a despot.
This money came from American taxpayers to buy a plaything for an emperor. If our big taxpayers footed the bill, it cost 300 of them $10,000 each. If it came out of taxes paid by the little man, it took 10,000 paying $300 each to buy this amusing little trinket.
This outrage should not be allowed to negate the value of other aid programs in the eyes of the American taxpayers, but it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people if they are expected to overlook such flagrant abuses in the handling of their money.
WE HAVE BEEN GENEROUS with our foreign aid. Most Americans realize that in the end we benefit by helping our less fortunate neighbors, and most are realistic enough to realize that we must always tolerate a certain amount of corruption.
But it is asking a little too much for the taxpayers to swallow this $3 million pill without some grumbling. We have many places we could use that three million dollars within our own country.
Bob Hoyt
APE AND ESSENCE, by Aldoux Husley (Bantam Classics, 60 cents). TOMORROW!, by Philip Wylie (Popular Library, 50 cents).
These books are herein paired because of their prophetic themes. It is doubtful that the first is a classic, no matter what Bantam wants to call it. And the second—well, it has become outdated by knowledge of fallout.
S S
Take the Wylie book first. It takes place in an atomic war which destroys the great cities of America, and eventually Russia. There is a lesson here. One city, which believed in Civil Defense, survives. The other (let's say that the two could be Minneapolis and St. Paul), which didn't, is devastated.
It's swift-moving and really quite ordinary and not nearly so critical of American society as the younger Wylie was known to be. Now, as for "Ape and Essence," this pretends to be a screenplay by one William Tallis, but a screenplay never produced. It takes place in southern California centuries after atomic warfare has pretty well taken care of everybody except the folks in New Zealand.
It is a civilization in which sex is regulated, chiefly because the products of sexual encounters are likely to be six-fingered monstrosities. Those who know Mr. Huxley's fantasies can depend on "Ape and Essence" being horrifying, shocking, and amusing. But great book—no.—CMP