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University Daily Kansan
Friday, Oct. 5, 1962
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Study Room Needed
The All Student Council recently recommended to KU officials that campus classrooms be left open during the evening to furnish students with additional studying facilities.
University officials answered the proposal by challenging the ASC to prove the need for leaving classrooms open.
IT SEEMS UNIVERSITY officials should consider the students' "proof." KU is cramped with a mushrooming enrollment. Living quarters are too crowded for all members to study there so students need additional space to study in the evening and it is then that they turn to the University facilities for accommodations. They find few. Watson Library, with a seating capacity of about 600, cannot handle KU's enrollment of nearly 11,000. Many department libraries do keep evening hours.
Where then can the students study?
Art majors are displeased with the late afternoon shutdown of classrooms, and thus denial of the use of equipment, on the third floor of Strong
Hall. Because the third floor of Strong is closed in the evening, art majors must lug paints, pencils, t-squares, chalks, brushes, poster paper, matting boards and exacto knives home with them. When they arrive home they are forced to work on the floor of their room, which is often poorly lighted and always cramped. In Strong, lighting is adequate, equipment is available and not makeshift. But students cannot get into Strong.
OTHER STUDENTS COMPLAIN of the noise encountered in Watson and their living quarters. For this reason they would like private rooms to study in so they could have peace and quiet without the "non-student" and the socialites to bother them.
Other students, especially math, chemistry and physics majors, as well as Speech I students, enjoy the availability of a chalkboard which they can find only in a classroom.
Therefore it is hoped that there will be some positive action taken in this area for the benefit of the student body. -Margaret Cathcart
Purchase Cuba?
Before we go to war over Cuba we should at least offer to buy the remainder of it from Castro.
In addition to what the Bay of Pigs flaseo has cost us, last week the Senate Appropriations Committee voted $70,110,000 for the assistance of Cuban refugees in the United States. This figure alone is more than we paid for the Louisiana Purchase, the Gadsden Purchase, Florida, Alaska, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippine Islands, and we still don't have title to Cuba—all we are buying is another economic problem in the form of displaced humanity.
In spite of his purported hatred of capitalism, Castro seems to have an affinity for money—he is always demanding ransom money or tractors. Even Castro must realize that he has had it. An offer to purchase Cuba would give him a lucrative way out of his lost cause. We could make millionaires out of his power elite and throw in an offer to haul his people to Russia. No doubt the Russians would welcome the members of the Cuban agrarian reform-indications are that even the Cubans are better farmers than the Russians.
Under such a plan Castro could retire in wealth to practice his speeches, his followers could live in Russia under the "Communist Freedom" they seek, and, best of all, we would have a new frontier for our two million excess farmers and our five million unemployed.
Before laughing at this preposterous idea, consider that any idea which places us at an advantage is better than nuclear war. So far no one has come up with a better one.
Bob Hoyt
Wants Action
Editor:
Life in the East is certainly interesting, ACTION is the key word in Washington, D.C. The President took ACTION in Mississippi because all Americans have failed to fulfill their duties. The Civil Rights Council wants ACTION to end housing bias, The American Nazi Party wants ACTION in the form of troops to invade Cuba, not Mississippi.
In fact, almost everyone wants some kind of ACTION. I was sorry to learn that at KU no one wants ACTION, not even Action. I, therefore, suggest that Action's name should be changed and its constitution torn up. It is a disgrace to the people who supported that party last spring to use the same name without the same devotion to justice and equality.
Charles A. Menghini
Charles A. Menghini
George Washington University School of Law
(1962 KU alumnus)
Identification Wanted
Editor:
I ask the person that wrote the letter why he or she requested the name be withheld. If you have a legitimate complaint, why don't you want your name to be associated with it.
This is in reply to a letter in Tuesday's Daily Kansan criticizing Kappa Alpha Theta sorority for songstests on their front lawn at wee hours in the morning.
Editor:
I am a member of one of the fraternities on Tennessee Street. I also am a member of the Daily Kansan staff. Since your letter appeared, I have been accused of writing the letter about 100 times by Thetas, my fraternity brothers, and other members of the Greek system.
Why don't you let your identity be known in future letters? Take the consequences for your actions,
... Letters ...
instead of leaving the door open for other to take them. Thanks in advance.
Steve Clark
Coffeyville junior
Kansan Sports Editor
Song Words Needed
Editor:
Last evening, I was compiling a songsheet for our hall to use when serenading the women's residence halls. When I came to our Alma Mater, I was not certain my words were correct, as far as the University and tradition were concerned, so I called the library of the University to confirm them. Following a rather lengthy period, I was told by some young girl that Watson Library personnel are far too busy to handle such things. She then returned the telephone to the receiver before I had time to continue with my questions.
One wishes that the University might be a place where ideas are respected—where ideas are accepted or rejected on the basis of the logic supporting them, not because they are popular or unpopular or because one is emotionally attracted or repelled by them. That such is not always the case has seldom been better proved than by CMP's review of the novel "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand, published in Wednesday's Kansan.
I ask you, is it too much to ask that our library have on hand a copy of the words to the Alma Mater of our own university? If this is any indication of our school's willingness to encourage the student's support, then I have no questions as to why the spirit of KU is so low.
Criticizes Book Review
Editor:
This review is most remarkable for what it does not contain: (1)
Paul Young
Shawnee senior
* * *
any criticism of literary style and (2) any significant criticism of content. There is one statement worthy of an intellectual response, the rest is mere name-calling — "fascism," "anarchy," "cult," etc. Miss Rand writes in an extraordinarily vigorous manner about extremely radical ideas, and it is to be expected that she will arouse strong emotional responses from her readers. However, it is part of the discipline of the scholar that he reacts with his mind, not his "heart."
Unfortunately, the one statement of "thought" in the review seems to contain a self-contradiction. It expresses the opinion that "Ayn Rand has not yet conceived of democratic individualism." What does this mean? Democratic government is rule by the majority. An individualistic government would be just that, individual government or self-government. We find it impossible to conceive of an amalgamation of these two states which would leave both concepts intact, and, therefore, be a state of "democratic individualism."
In the interest of gaining enlightenment, we invite and would appreciate a serious discourse by CMP on "demonocratic individualism" or objectivism, Miss Rand's philosophy.
The Committee for the Politically Disenchanted Marick Payton, chairman
Short Ones
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.—Edward Gibbon.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man. —Mark Twain
$ ^{ \textcircled{9}} $HOW CAN YOU BE SO ATTENTIVE TO LECTURES AND FLUNK ALL MY TESTS? $ ^{2 1} $
THE IRON HEEL, by Jack London (American Century. $1.45).
Since this book appeared in 1906 it has been the novel that has carried the name and reputation of Jack London throughout the world. In Soviet Russia, especially, it has been popular.
It is difficult to see why "The Iron Heel" is so frequently passed over in dealing with either the utopian or the proletarian tradition. It is a landmark in either. "The Iron Heel" is ostensibly the story, uncovered centuries later, of how a fascist oligarchy stamped out a rising socialist movement in America early in the 20th century. London's story is frightening; his predictions are uncanny, for he forsees something akin to Nazism, and he even has an incident comparable to the Reichstag fire.
The hero, Ernest Everhard, young socialist firebrand who has majestic dash and superman tendencies, must be London himself. The story is told by Ernest's wife, Avis, daughter of a University of California professor; the setting is chiefly San Francisco, except for a brutal and vastly overdone depiction of blood and violence in the "Chicago Commune."
"The Iron Heel" also should be read as a social commentary on life in turn-of-the-century America. Reformers all over the land were uncovering incidents similar to those depicted.—CMP
It is interesting that her most un-representative novel should stand today as Edith Wharton's best. "Ethan Frome" may be one of the best-known of American novels. It is certainly one of the grimmiest and unhappiest.
Miss Wharton must have been influenced by the drama or "Wuthering Heights": people living together and loathing each other and being unable to leave each other except through death. "Ethan Frome" has few tender moments. It is mainly a novel that suggests cold and unfriendliness and the gloom of endless New England winters.
ETHAN FROME, by Edith Wharton (Scribner Library. $1.25).
And it is a true classic. No one can really know American literature without knowing this remarkable novel, which is short and crisp and little more than a long short story.—CMP
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Vlkong 3-2700
Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
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.
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