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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Oct. 3. 1962
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Students Losing Out
There are choice seats left for the University Theatre's production of "J. B." this week, but they're not for students.
Unless they pay money in addition to their identification card, students are now segregated in their very own section—the balcony.
Last year all theatre seats were distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. This year's policy change was unannounced.
MEMORIAL STADIUM soon will be enlarged by 6,500 choice seats, but students won't be sitting in these seats either.
Two isolated incidents, perhaps, but they make you wonder: Are KU students becoming second-class citizens at their own university?
Who decided, and for what reasons, that students should be automatically relegated to the poorest seats in the University Theatre? Why does the University use the exploding student population as a device for drumming up support for the expansion of the alumni section of the stadium? Who will benefit from these two University decisions?
THE ANSWER IS obvious: the alumni and townspeople. The implications are frightening. The University, in its concern for its public relations, seems to be forgetting its students.
This is not to cast the alumni as the "bad guys," of course. KU could not function and could not have reached its present stature without its alumni. Alumni contributions provide scholarships, help build classrooms, and furnish
many other benefits seldom fully appreciated by students. Alumni funds, in fact, will cover one-third of the cost of the stadium expansion.
The point is that the University, in its desire to retain alumni and public good will, seems to be losing its perspective and forgetting its primary reason for being—the student.
INCLUDED IN EACH STUDENT'S semester fees is a $34 campus privilege fee. This fee is obligatory; except in the rarest of cases there is no way around it. The campus privilege fee entitles the student to hospital services, cultural and athletic activities, and other benefits.
Since the University obliges each student to pay the fee, it would seem that the University, in turn, is itself obliged to inform the students about new policies which affect the "purchasing power" of the fee. This was not done in the case of the University Theatre.
And because the expanding student population is an acute problem, it would seem that the University should consider student seating space in Memorial Stadium as part of this problem.
AT THE OPENING CONVOCATION two weeks ago, KU students were called a "driving force." It is a high tribute, but one which may seem a bit paradoxical to students watching "J. B." from the distance of their balcony seats.
Right now, it's a little hard to determine if KU students are driving—or being driven.
—Dennis Farney
Editor:
Against Recognition
I was disgusted with your obvious lack of insight and information in Thursday's editorial "Communist China." Would you please elaborate as to how such recognition would benefit the United States? Establishment of the diplomatic apparatus might make relations more convenient but it certainly would not be practical and advantageous for us.
Recognition would of course open Red China as a vast market for U.S. products, but we have made the sacrifice so far and we certainly can afford to continue refusing Red China the benefits of our trade.
SURELY THE FATE of the U.S. and that of the free world does not hinge upon our recognition of Red China, for such a faux pas would indeed aid the Communist world cause and would open the gates to years of fruitless negotiations, broken agreements and contracts, shattered at the whim of the Communists.
Morally or legally Red China is not entitled to our recognition and its attendant dignity.
Refusal to recognize is not equivalent to ignoring Red China or denying her existence as a world power, it is simply withholding the benefits she would receive if we were to accept her as a legal power. Lacking diplomatic relations certainly hurts Red China more than it does us, and her power is held in check because she cannot make demands at the conference table, and cannot force compromises and agreements compliant with her wishes.
Daily hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became bweekly 1094,
triviewday 1088, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, New York 21 N.Y.
N.Y. news service; United States International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University except Saturday and Sunday and theamination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Scott Payne Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Clayton Keller and
Will Sheldon Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martinez Business Manager
Daniel Sinclair Sales Manager
Farmer, Circulation Manager; Gene
Spalding, National Advertising Man-
ager; John Turner Classified Adve-
tion Manager; Jack Cannon, Promo-
tion Manager.
USINESS DEPARTMENT
...Letters ...
IF ADMITTED TO the United Nations, Red China would provide another voice to veto all policy not conducive to communist goals.
"We have made our point clear to the world," so why should we take the opposite stand now? Is the United States so humble recently that we must take up relations with murderers and criminal governments? No! We can and we should continue to treat such forces as evil and as enemies dedicated to the termination of our way of life. The more opportunity we give these enemies toward their goals, the sooner we fall at their hands. Recognition of Red China would certainly be a step in their direction, and would indirectly pave the road to our "eventual" and "inevitable" downfall.
Terry M. Wood Junction City junior
Cuba is a hot issue. Everyone is talking about it. Bull sessions with their heated passion and frightful ignorance cover the campus. But KU is not the only place guilty of sophisticated stupidity—one might look at Washington or Ole Miss or Wichita. Last week in Wichita our honorable Senator Carlson made a proposal regarding Cuba. He said the Organization of American States should reaffirm the Monroe Doctrine and the U.S.A. itself should endorse a Formosan-type "Cuban government in exile."
Against Blind Orthodoxy Editor;
Carlson added courageously,
"Then we must help this government supply itself with overwhelming force — not merely three old boats — but hundreds of the latest vessels, fighters and bombers." His noble motive for such a stand must rise directly from our own Declaration of Independence;
"... That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."
HE DOESN'T SAY IT, but I would assume that Mr. Carlson would want this new government nurtured in the "Free, democratic, good ol' American way of life."
that is with color television sets and cocktail parties, with exploitive businessmen and greedy labor unions, with outer space technology and racial discrimination.
And logically following, I would assume conversely that Mr. Carlson would not want America to foster this government in any unamerican, communistic fashion. Forbid it! He would not want the Cuban liberation movement trained in innermereful, subversive, guerrilla-type warfare (for that would tend toward Mao-tse Tung, the Viet Cong, and Castro himself). He would not want their new economy structured by disciplined, mutually co-operative businessmen and laborers (for that would tend toward socialism, communism, and Castroism itself).
Carlson's proposal and the logical assumptions drawn therefrom have one very familiar and abominable weakness — their blind orthodoxy. Surely in America where personal ingenuity is not thwarted (in principle, at least: maybe this is our first delusion) — surely in American universities where great minds have academic freedom, here for sure, traditional orthodoxy can be examined to its roots and radical reappraisals can be made.
WHY NOT? Should not only the ROTC and the aerospace engineers be interested in war, but also the political scientists, the historians, the economists, the philosophers, and the so-called "Christians" on this campus?
Mulford Sibley of the University of Minnesota is interested in War. He has challenged the very root of our military policy, the idea of Deterrence, and has written a booklet, "Unilateral Initiatives and Disarmament." Here is an excerpt dealing with Cuba: "During the First Phase the government (U.S.A.) might well express regret for the invasion of Cuba and publicly recognize that this had been a grave violation of the rule of law in international affairs. The government could furthermore offer to pay damages to Cuba. Nothing could do more to demonstrate genuine devotion to the rule of law" (p. 29).
Our conclusions may or may not correspond to his, but an honest willingness to break loose from our dulled sensitivity, our blind orthodoxy, and our mental delusions formed by Madison Avenue and Hollywood could bring about some real answers.
Philip S. Rhoads
Overland Park sophomore
w-44
Thanks to the munificence of wealthy alumni, some reserves in the athletic fund, and an advance from the endowment association, the University of Kansas is to have another 6,500 seats in its stadium and a press box containing all the comforts necessary to insure the most favorable publicity. The cost will run close to a million. Such a sum would endow at least three new professorships.
But at the same time the additional 6,500 seats will contribute even less to higher education than would a 50-foot statue of the late Marilyn Monroe, gleaming in the sun on some conspicuous site atop Mt. Oread. And before the varnish has worn off them, they will have become a white elephant of amazing size.
THE ENLARGED STADIUM will be most valuable to the University as a status symbol. Because it will be bigger than the stands of most other members of the Conference, it will furnish tangible proof of how much more advanced KU is. Further, it will prove that in football there is a booming business, even if the chess team and the anthropology department are operating in the red.
Prior to that time, the 6.500 new stadium seats will be occupied six hours a year during seasons when KU happens to have a team which wins more of its games than not. Afterward the occupancy will be nil. Who in the Kansas City area will want to buck the crowds down to Lawrence and back on weekends when the Green Bay Packers are in town?
A White Elephant
IT IS STILL QUESTIONABLE whether Kansas City, so few miles away from the KU campus, can support a major league baseball team. The experience of other cities of comparable size, however, indicates that it could profitably house a professional football squad. This being the case, it is only a matter of a relatively short time before Kansas City offers this sport.
(From The Hutchinson News)
"The Fountainhead" is not as incredible as "Atlas Shrugged." But it is fantastic. Its hero is the architect Howard Roark, who fights all the forces of conformity in the twenties and thirties and succeeds in maintaining his individuality (like blowing up a building which he sees as a desecration of his art). Its heroine is Dominique Franon, as sturdily individualistic as Roark (she returns in "Atlas Shrugged" as Dagny Taggart).
One reads some books to see what the opposition is thinking about. Ayn Rand has become such a cult, so adored by people who call themselves conservatives and some who call themselves liberals, that it is well to see what makes her tick.
THE FOUNTAINHEAD, by Ayn Rand (Signet, 95 cents).
The trouble with "The Fountainhead" is that many give to it the wrong interpretations. Ayn Rand has not yet conceived of the possibility of democratic individualism. Her individualism is anarchy, and in "Atlas Shrugged" it becomes a kind of Daddy Warbucks fascism. It seems important to note that two modern architects of the Howard Roark stripe, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, were individualists, and democratically so, and that their "form follows function" was closely related to the democratic dream of America.—CMP