Thursday. Sept. 13, 1962 University Daily Kansan
Page 7
Ambassador Tour Called A Success
By Bob Hoyt
First reports from the members of the People-to-People student ambassador tour indicate that the project was a success in the eyes of those who took part in the summer in Europe.
Molly Ziegelmeyer, Shawnee Mission junior, termed her summer trip "wonderful," in spite of a bout with seasickness on the North Sea during a severe storm.
ONE HUNDRED FIFTY KU students were among the 335 Americans who spent the summer in Europe, studying, traveling and acting as student ambassadors under the P-t-P program.
Early in June the student ambassadors left Kansas City by bus. They traveled to Washington, D.C. for a two day orientation program by the State Department and the United States Information Agency, then flew by jet from Washington to Brussels, Belgium. From there they took buses to Germany.
Miss Ziegelmeyer and her group, which also included Anne and Sarah
After spending a week in West Germany as guests of the West German government, living in the homes of West Germans, the members of the tour split up into small groups, some going south to Italy, others to France and some to the Scandinavian countries.
Molly Ziegelmeyer
Graber, Hutchinson juniors; Joy Sharp, Topka senior; and Bonnie Bettcher, Wilmette, Ill., senior, flew from Berlin to Hamburg and from there they traveled by train to Copenhagen, Denmark. In Copenhagen they rented bicycles and took a bicycle tour of the city.
"THE PEOPLE everywhere were wonderful," Molly said, "especially in Germany." She added, smiling, "some of the Italian men were overly friendly."
The group visited London, then crossed the English Channel to
Bob Swan
France. In Paris the party rented a car and set out to tour continental Europe.
"Four of us spoke Spanish, and the other spoke Russian, so the languages we knew didn't help us much in Europe," Molly said.
Despite this she said that they had little communications trouble since most of the people they met spoke English.
emphasized that they were careful not to do anything which might antagonize the East German government.
WHILE IN Berlin, many of the student ambassadors crossed over into the Eastern sector. All of them
As a precaution against trouble, the buses were stopped before they reached the border and the ambassadors burned all the literature which had been given to them by the State Department and the United States Information Agency.
The American students took this action on their own as a preventative measure against trouble from the East German government.
Constance Hunter, Hutchinson senior, said of her trip that "it was a Saturday afternoon when my group went into East Berlin, but nearly all the shops were closed and we saw very few people on the streets.
"We talked to one group of teenagers. Outside of that, most of the
Miss Hunter said that in her talk with the East German teen-agers she noted that they seemed to have little incentive "to do anything."
people we saw were soldiers on and off duty, and old people sitting on park benches."
"VERY LITTLE of the part of the city we saw has been rebuilt since the war," she said.
She said it appeared that many West Berliners have given up hope that the city will ever be reunited to the extent that commerce can be carried on between the East and West.
A student who spent much of his time studying is John (Jaek) Fisback, Wichita senior. He studied German at a special summer institute for foreign students at the Technical Institute at Stuttgart, Germany.
"There were 90 or 100 studentsstudving German in the Institute,"Fishback said. "Most of them, about 15, 1 think, were French, ten wereAmericans, and the rest were from other countries in Europe and otherparts of the world."
Robert (Bob) Swan, Topeka junior, and Robert (Bob) Wall. Lyons junior, spent a month at Vienna University, studying German. Later in the summer they went on a tour into Hungary under the auspices of a Hungarian travel agency.
"GOING ON the agency tour cut a lot of red tape," Swan said. "It saved us a lot of time and gave us more freedom than we might have had if we had tried to travel on our own."
Swan and Wall made the most of the time they spent in the Communist controlled country. Swan said
that the Hungarian students they met were very anxious to talk to anyone from the Western world. The two American students stayed up all one night, talking to Hungarian students about the 1956 revolt.
Swan and Wall skipped one of the formal agency tours the second day they were in Hungary and met a group of Hungarian students who took them on a tour of Budapest, pointing out the scenes of the fighting in the 1956 uprising.
Former Instructor Gets Ph.D.
Virginia R. Huntington, former instructor in the School of Business, is one of the first two women ever to receive the Ph.D. degree in accounting at the University of Texas.
Dr. Huntington served with the KU faculty three semesters in 1957 and 1958. She received the bachelor's and master's degrees at KU in 1938 and 1958. She will teach at Arizona State University during the coming year.