Page 2
University Daily Kansan
Thursday, Dec. 5, 1963
Conveyor Belt
Toying with a cheese-noodle treat in the Union cafeteria the other day, wishing the Hawk's Nest hadn't been so crowded, something occurred to me. It was the first time I'd really stopped to think about it, though I have read that card 50 times before without so much as batting a brain wave.
"Please return your tray and dishes to Conveyor Belt"
A stupid thing to have to say to college kids. Especially with those little guys in white jackets cleaning up after everybody anyway. What is this, a grade school?
Two bites later it dawned on me.
OF COURSE! These innocent-looking, 3-by-5 reminders don't mean what they say at all. Instead, they're the key to the whole university idea!
Listen.
Ideas are in a constant state of change. Just the other day Chancellor Wescoe was saying how the world's knowledge has doubled in the last ten years and will double again by 1970. He told a Governor's Conference in Omaha that since the schools help create this explosion, they have to learn how to handle it, as well.
The big question; what is worth knowing?
Getting back to the cafeteria, we can understand how some parts of man's knowledge, like trays and dishes, can be put on the conveyor belt of time, be washed off and used by later generations. But, in the meantime, the menu changes.
THE REAL PROBLEM seems to be that our educational diet can't be re-planned often enough, and the spoons and forks (the teaching methods) used to stuff the information into our heads lag still further behind the times.
A complication is the estimate that it took about 1750 years for all knowledge to double after the birth of Christ, then 150 years up to 1900 for the process to repeat itself, in another 50 years it had happened again, and since 1950 it has more than doubled still another time. The future possibilities are frightening.
Teachers and researchers do what they can to keep materials fresh and up-to-date, but with odds such as these it is hardly a race. Watson Library, for instance, has more than a million books within its expanding walls; but, by 1970, it will need room for twice that amount.
AND WHAT ABOUT students? Kansas college enrollments have doubled every 15 years
since the turn of the century, KU's undergraduate enrollment has redoubled in the last 12 years, and KU's graduate student population has more than tripped in the same time-span.
But, hold on, says the Chancellor: "This is not catastrophe; this is opportunity." By concentrating our tax dollars on the development of a single "great state university," he says, we can hope to overcome the many problems of expansion.
Be that as it may, the real core of future emphasis, aside from excellence itself, needs to be on the diversity of choices available to the student. And, much as pushing your tray through a lunch line, the decisions about selection must be yours, though you pay a price.
Clark Kerr. President of the University of California, says the modern university is a confusing place for a student. It "offers him a vast range of choices—the many opportunities and dilemmas of freedom—enough to stagger the mind. The casualty rate is high. The walking wounded are many," but "the principle of freedom of the student to pick and choose, to stay or move on—is triumphant..."
THE PRESIDENT of the university, says Kerr, must "move the whole enterprise another foot ahead in what seems an unequal race with history."
And so Chancellor Wescoe has recently urged that the state meet head-on the explosion by "yielding not an inch of the hard-earned progress we have made in the quality of our performance."
In Omaha, addressing the governors of Midwest states, he threw in the clincher. "I cannot overemphasize the importance of excellence. We must not thwart the finest instincts of our young people . . . We weaken our position . . . if we do not extend ourselves and our resources to build the kind of state universities which can compete for faculty, for research grants, and for the ablest students on an equal basis with the best (schools) in the nation."
And here we are in line, trays in hand.
The menu is redeveloped, the price for unwise choices must be paid, a few of the older plates wear out and are replaced, the spoons and forks are bent but seldom recast, and the University gropes ahead while the endless conveyor belt rumbles on.
— Larry Schmidt
Editor:
Student (?) Union
Let us do one of several things: Boycott the Kansas Union coffee facilities.
Request a change in the monopolistic regime now wielding power in our "living room away from home."
Get a clear definition of the reason for the existence of the Kansas Union; is it for the benefit of the student or is it a job pool for high school sophomores and College freshman-managers?
Find out if it is necessary for persons dealing with the public, as employees of the Kansas Union do, to be insolent, rude, unmindful of the wants and wishes of customers, to the point of exasperation.
Appoint a committee of the SUA to investigate customer-employee relations in the Kansas Union.
Et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
This action to be taken may be prompted by one of several things;
The People Say...
The Hawk's Nest closing as much as 15 minutes prior to the announced closing times.
The shutting down of the grille in the Hawk's Nest as much as 45 minutes prior to the announced closing time.
The hostesses at the main desk carrying on a conversation with each other, ignoring a customer making a purchase or seeking information.
Inability of male "hostesses" in the evening to answer simple questions regarding events scheduled in the building.
An apparent "holier-than-thou" attitude engendered by apparent job security.
Et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
Lawrence graduate student
No Smoking
The following news item appeared
Patrick M. Prosser
Editor
111 Flint Hall
DailyTransan
University of Kansas student newspaper
"A warning against the dangers of smoking was posted on cigarette vending machines at Columbia U., New York City, by the school's student health service. The notice says, in part, that, 'There is medical evidence that cigaret smoking impairs health. Because it is believed that an informed university student has the right to determine the state of his health, this cigaret machine and this information are here for his use.'"
I wonder what the sentiment would be among the students about the posting of such a warning on each cigarette vending machine in the University and at the places in the Union where cigarettes may be purchased across the counter.
rounded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
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.
UNiversity 4-3198, business office
UNiversity 4-3646, newsroom
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
in the American Medical Association News Bulletin on November 11.1963, and described the action of Columbia University in posting a warning against the danger of smoking on each cigarette vending machine in the University.
Professor M. Erik Wright Ph.D., M.D.
Director, Clinical Psychology Program
Business Manager
Blaine King ... Editorial Editor
NEWS DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Mike Miller ... Managing Editor
Thank You
Editor:
This is a short word of thanks and deep appreciation for Dr. McClure and the rest of the staff of Watkins Hospital who attended Soliman Akil.
L. as well as many of Akil's friends were greatly overpowered by their kindness, consultation and sincerity. This sincerity has always been demonstrated to foreign students as well as patients they visit.
Ismail Shaltuni Jordan junior
Book on Film Art Traces Development
THE CONTEMPORARY CINEMA, by Penelope Houston. (222 pages; Penguin Books; $1.25)
Books dealing with the cinema, intelligently written, yet accessible to persons with little or no background in the field, are relatively few in number. But Penelope Houston's book may be considered one of them. In it she surveys (in a necessarily brief manner) the international cinema as it has manifested itself since the war. In an attempt to give as complete a view as possible she considers both aspects of the film: the art and the industry.
In addition to tracing the modern development of film art in the world, Miss Houston comments on the problems that the film faces as an industry: problems such as television, diminishing audiences, rising costs, distribution, financing. Though all of these problems are primarily economic in nature they are not without direct bearing on the cinema.
She discusses, for example, the Italian neo-realist movement which grew up just after the war and the contributions made by such directors as Luchino Visconti ("Obsession"), Vittorio de Sica ("The Bicycle Thief"), Roberto Rossellini ("Open City"). Miss Houston concludes her discussion of the Italian cinema with comments on the most significant director of present-day Italy, Michelangelo Antonioni, ("L'Avventura").
FOR, AS MISS Houston notes, "no one who writes about the cinema can afford for too long to ignore what it costs to make a film, or where and how it must look for its audience."
HER CONSIDERATION of the French cinema takes into account both the newest directors and the older ones, such as Jean Renoir ("The Rules of the Game"), René Clément ("Forbidden Games") and Robert Bresson ("Pickpocket") who preceded the so-called "New Wave." The large number of young directors who have been making films only since the mid-Fifties have been grouped (merely for convenience and without other justification) under this term. The directors most often associated with this "New Wave" are Jean-Luc Godard ("Breathless"), Francois Truffaut ("Shoot the Piano Player") and Alain Resnais ("Last Year at Marienbad").
The contemporary cinema is likely to seem somewhat incoherent to the increasing number of people who are now becoming interested in it. Even a person who frequently reads film reviews may not find it easy to fit what he reads into a meaningful picture of modern film.
Of course the American cinema could hardly be overlooked, nor could that of England with its "British Free Cinema" movement and directors such as Richardson and Reisz. And the film industries in Poland, Japan, India and Russia are not without importance in this survey.
Thus it is that Penelope Houston's book can be of significant value in coming to terms with the exciting diversity which is the mark of contemporary film. The selected book list and the check-list of directors and their films which it contains increase the book's usefulness. Her presentation is not an historical one, rather she has attempted to present "a commentary on a period, to indicate a framework and a context." In this task she has admirably succeeded.
— Byron Leonard