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University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, Dec. 11, 1963
Moral Man
It is good to be reminded now and then that even in a world struggling with the momentous issue of war and peace the individual has problems.
That reminder is Albert Schweitzer.
HIS ADULT LIFE of personal service and help to the native Africans of Lambarene in Gabon province of French Equatorial Africa is a daily reminder to all men's consciences. He chose not to solve man's problems with words, or religion, or works of music, but rather with personally administered medicine to the sick people of one village in Africa. His battle is waged with his own hands and a driving force toward perfection and a love for life.
Schweitzer entered his fight in 1905. Family, friends, associates, and casual acquaintances thought him to be an absolute fool, a man who would be wasting his genius on a handful of individuals. They told him that if he wanted to be a do-gooder, he could do it better by staying in Strasborg and continuing his work in philosophy, theology, and music.
Nevertheless, Schweitzer resigned his university appointments and became a medical student to qualify himself as a mission doctor to the primitive natives of Equatorial Africa.
HE EXPLAINED his simple motive from the parable of Dives, the white man endowed with all the benefits of culture and science, and Lazarus, the Negro exploited and oppressed and lacking even medical treatment for his disease and pain.
And he never ceased his long fight with leprosy, with sleeping sickness, and with the host of tropical diseases.
There has been and probably will continue to be much criticism of Schweitzer, the man, and his work. He has been called "arrogant" and "lacking in love." He has been accused of ruling his tropical mission as a benevolent dictator; of allowing the most unsanitary hospital conditions in Africa; of being more interested in the welfare of animals than that of human beings; and of clinging to a tradition of big-brother colonialism.
YET OTHERS HAVE quite another attitude and opinion. They feel that if Schweitzer had done nothing else in his life than to accept the pain of those African people as his own, he would have achieved eminence.
His place in history will rest on something more substantial than an argument over an unswept floor in a hospital ward in the heart of Africa. It will rest on his willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice for a moral principle.
It has been said that history is willing to overlook almost anything — errors, paradoxes, personal weaknesses or faults — if only a man will give enough of himself to others.
THE GREATER the ability to identify and serve, the more genuine the response. In the case of Schweitzer, future generations will not be bothered with petty reflections about his possible faults or inconsistencies. In his life and work will be found energy for moral imagination.
For Albert Schweitzer has done more to dramatize the strength of the moral man than anyone in contemporary Western civilization. No one in our times has taught us more about the potentiality of a human being.
- Carol Lathrop Knupp
'It's The Christmas Season-Time To Hang Up The Legislation"
And Suddenly, There Were Control Stations
By Linda Machin
With the coming of the Nuclear Age to KU, the building of the Reactor; the rise of the two great brick monoliths, Hashinger and Ellsworth; months before the installation of the Centrex telephone system, up popped the traffic control stations.
Almost before anyone could protest, station attendants began darting in and out of the boatlike stations blowing their whistles to bar more than 5,000 University-registered motor vehicles (including motorcycles, motorscooters, and motorbikes) from the campus.
TRAFFIC CONTROL represents just another of the pacemakers in the race for progress that by 1965 will overtake Fraser, KU's century old cornerstone, leaving it in the dusty, forgotten past.
Yet despite complaints, traffic control is necessary, with the sharp increase of student driven cars in recent years. Nearly two million automobiles will work their way through U.S. college campuses this year, a recent survey by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. concluded. Further, 44 per cent of the nation's 4.5 million undergraduates reported to classes on wheels in September.
KU'S SYSTEM of handling its portion of this college traffic actually has many advantages lacking at other schools — the relative proximity of off-campus, zoned parking lots. In contrast, Rutgers in New Jersey must operate 26 buses to shuttle students to and from off-campus parking lots.
Parking facilities are virtually non-existent at many colleges in metropolitan areas, the study found. The 10,000 daytime students and 14,000 night students at the College of the City of New York either ride the subway or race parking meters. Some of the more daring faculty members commute through the New York streets on motorbikes.
As at other schools, here at KU the traffic problem has not just suddenly appeared. Rather, it has developed parallel to a century of University development. In 1867, it could hardly have been said that Mt. Oread was congested. Then just two years after Quantrill's raid, a photograph was taken from a point east of where the stadium now stands. Only a vast treeless, prairie with a fence in the foreground and a Conestoga wagon behind is shown.
IN THE 1880's, when KU's fraternity life began to flower and Professor Bailey of the chemistry department originated the Jayhawk yell one night at a meeting of the University Science club (Rah, Rah, Jayhawks, K.S.U.), and in those days when electricity first allowed Friday night meetings of the YMCA in room 11 of Fraser, there still was no traffic trouble here. Possible exceptions were, of course, occasional collisions of riding horses and the horse-drawn streetcar down on Massachusetts.
The People Say . . .
The subject of this letter is probably quite trivial, but I just wanted to point out a small error in the sports page of Monday, Dec. 9. The article concerned the exciting Kansas upset of Cincinnati. In order to stress the importance of the upset, a parallel was drawn between the teams as they were last year. The article went on to say that Kansas tied for the Big Eigh cellar last year. This is, however, not true. Nebraska was the last place team, while Kansas and Missouri, both with five wins and nine losses, tied-for sixth place. True, this is not very impressive,
About the time the "shimmy" was banned officially from the campus in the 1920's, and its accomplices, the "camel-walk," the "toddle" and the "shuffle" were looked upon with shock, model-T's began to line what is now Jayhawk Boulevard.
Not the Cellar
Editor:
However, due to the lean years of the Thirties and World War II, the traffic problem didn't materialize until much later. Beginning in the early Forties, the campus as well as its traffic began to take its more familiar, contemporary shape. A 1941 photograph shows the law school students perched on the steps whistling as women students paraded by. Another picture the same year at the library corner shows a policeman directing traffic and students during the change of classes.
but it still was not last place. Well, again this may sound quite trivial, but I think it needs correction.
How about having the whole student body attend the games!
Mike McCrann
Thoughtless
Kirkwood, Mo., sophomore
Mr. Hill:
your letter was thoughtless.
Paul Lerner
Missoula, Mont,
graduate, student
(Editor's note: Mr. Lerner refers to a letter entitled "Reality Is Here," which appeared in Monday's Kansan.)
SINCE THEN, along with the steady stream of campus-bound automobiles, an equally long string of parking tickets, prohibitions, zoned lots and registration regulations culminated in 1962 with the 7 a.m.-3:30 p.m. weekday traffic ban.
The new system, less than two years old, has effected profound changes on student life, according to some, and to others, caused a re-emphasis of the historic past. For instance, men students no longer can admire the female half of the campus by riding up and down in their cars in the early afternoons. But, somehow, they have managed to adapt. The steps of the law school behind the statue of Jimmy Green get even more use than in the past. And, the railings in front of Bailey and Strong are popular "beaver shoots."
Yet, the days before traffic control are too closely tied to nearly 100 years of KU tradition to be forgotten — at least, without considerable regret and complaint.
There was a time when a visitor could depend on driving down winding Jayhawk Boulevard and enjoy the ivy-covered buildings with their red-tiled roofs. Alums could recall the bygone days they spent studying in Watson, note its new addition, and chuckle once again at the rivalry between the "laws" and the engineers.
SOME STUDENTS, particularly women, now find it more difficult, if not impossible, to make it on time to 7:30's and 8:30's, have adapted, too, adapted, that is, to bus riding. (The economy of the Lawrence Transit Co. has taken a corresponding adaption as more frequent buses criss-cross the campus.)
Nevertheless, some rational and valid complaints about personnel and regulations of the control stations can and have been raised.
NOT SO ANYMORE. These visitors — many of them females reluctant to park off campus and walk around in heels — are stopped at the entrance stations. If they are not riding in a University-registered car with a zone sticker, or do not have a class-bound student in the car, they may get a pass after some delay; otherwise, they are told to detour the campus.
Students have complained of the discourteousness of the uniformed attendants. "It's poor public relations," complained one woman student. "My parents only wanted to pick me up after class one time. He (the attendant) didn't have to be so rude about it."
SOME OBJECTIONS to the control stations are centered around delay. A wife of a campus administrator complained about being delayed needlessly at the stations even though her car displayed the appropriate pass sticker. One male student complained about being delayed when taking an injured friend to Watkins Hospital. "I nearly had to prove he was dying before they'd let us through," he said.
However, as with most newly initiated systems, improvements must be made to allow for unforeseen conditions. KU's traffic control system is no different. First of all, in regard to the station attendants, themselves, a coaching on basics of good human relations, plus a little tact, might be a big help.
Understandably, with more than 5,000 registered vehicles and no doubt numerous unregistered ones, a definite problem is posed. Granted, traffic control is needed.
Dailu Hansan
111 Flint Hall
University of Kansas student newspaper
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