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University Daily Kansan
Monday, Nov. 11, 1963
Memorial to Stupidity
There it stands—on all four legs in the lobby of the Kansas Union.
It is $4,500 worth of one inch to 100 feet scale model of the KU campus. All the present buildings and some proposed constructions are included in the display, which beautifully details even the trees and shrubbery on the Hill.
THAT DISPLAY, a gift to the University of Kansas from the Class of 1962, is a lasting monument to man's ignorance of himself and his needs.
What possible use can the university's family of faculty and students make of a miniature campus?
It can hardly be used as a teaching aid for instructors, because students must know where the classes are located before they can go to them.
STUDENTS WILL find it difficult to use, because although it looks very much like a pinball machine, it doesn't operate that way.
However, some foot-weary visitors may find it useful for viewing the campus in a less tiresome manner.
It's not very difficult, within a few minutes.
to think of beneficial ways that $4,500 could be spent. Study conditions are crowded all over campus. Watkins Hospital needs more space for rooms, storage, and admitting procedures. Equipment is needed for research and study. Scholarship funds are a necessity for many bright, but economically poor, high school students.
Herein lies man's ignorance. He is confronted with such examples of needy situations, and he simply ignores them.
HE WOULD rather be remembered for the unusual, the extravaganza, the only-one-of-its-kind.
The really sad ending to the story is that those 1962 graduates are scattered all over the world with their misconceived ideas of giving.
It's no wonder the U.S. foreign aid program gives bulldozers to countries which need only shovels.
The saying goes that ignorance is bliss. And what but blissful looks spread across people's faces as they admire the four-footed monument in the lobby of the Kansas Union?
— Carol Lathrop Knupp
See the Student Jump
See the girl. She is a pretty girl. See her checked, madras skirt. And cotton blouse. And Weejuns. And puffed out hair.
She is a college girl. She goes to the University of Georgia.
See the boy. He is a college man. See his tapered slacks. And Gant shirt with the loop. And cordovans. With no socks.
See them at a dance. Watch them twist and yell and wave paper cups in the air. It is hot and noisy.
See them after the dance in the girl's parking lot. They are in his car with the loud muffler. They are on the front seat and, no, on second thought, don't see them in the parking lot.
Now it is 12:30. See the girl run from the car. She must get inside her dorm on time. She is a big girl.
See them in class. The boy is slumped in his chair. He is asleep.
The girl is slumped in her chair. She is asleep too. The professor is very dull.
See them studying. It is 4:30 in the morning. They have a test today. See the little pills. They keep them awake. See the bottles under the boy's bed. They put him to sleep.
Now they are taking the test. See the little pieces of paper in their laps. They help them pass the test. It is hard.
They are college students. Their adult friends call them "Young men and women." And "Future leaders of America."
God save America.
— University of Georgia Red and White
We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.—Bovee
... Worth Repeating
The mind unlearns with difficulty what has long been impressed on it.—Seneca
Few things are impossible in themselves. It is not so much means, as perseverance, that is wanting to bring them to a successful issue.-Rochefoucauld
Oh! How impatience gains upon the soul, when the long promised hour of joy draws near. How slow the tardy moments then seem to roll.-Mary B. Tighe
Dailij Hansan
111 Flint Hall
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Women of the World Distorted, False View
By Bryon Leonard
(Editor's Note: "Women of the World" began its run Sunday at the Varsity Theatre. The film was produced, directed and edited by Gualtiero Jacopetti. The narrator is Peter Ustinov.)
The documentary has been around since the earliest days of the motion picture and the forms it has taken over this long period of time have varied. In the capable hands of a Robert Flaherty or an Alain Resnais the documentary can bring about a fuller, more profound understanding of the world in which we live. Aside from the travelogue, however, the documentary is rarely given a showing in United States' movie houses.
GUALTIERO JACOPETTI, the Italian producer and director of "Women of the World" and its predecessor "Mondo Cane," not only succeeded in getting his films shown widely but also at least in the case of the latter) enjoyed considerable box-office success.
Mr. Jacopetti's success is largely due to his particular conception of the documentary, which seems to be based on sensationalism and shock. His appeal is to that instinct which once made side-shows popular. Thus in his most recent film "Women of the World," he makes no attempt to present any accurate or meaningful conception of his topic (which after all is the aim of documentary film), but has carefully assembled his film clips in a way which will support his preconceived idea. What emerges from his various Technicolor glimpses at the women of the world is nothing more coherent than a copy of Ripley's Believe it or Not.
TYPICAL SEQUENCES deal with child prostitution in Hong Kong, the section of Hamburg where the prostitutes sit in the window, the efforts of Japanese women to westernize themselves by changing the shape of their eyes and increasing the size of their breasts by inflating them with paraffin. Occasionally, another extreme is inserted for contrast, as in the sequence dealing with two nuns in Africa who travel many miles in a Jeep to administer to the natives. But even this last episode cannot assume the proportions of a virtue in the context in which Jacopetti puts it. He seems to regard even this with suspicion.
IWOULD deny neither that there are many honestly unpleasant things in the world nor that they should be seen. But Mr. Jaco-petti's cynicism, lack of human sympathy and, most of all, his lack of understanding too seriously mar his film for it to be considered a work of objectivity or truth. And he does not ask us to understand, but merely to experience the same general disgust with humanity that he feels. In his own way, he has presented us with a view of the world as distorted and unreal as that in Walt Disney's Cinderella.
The People Say...
Editor:
WHO WASTES TIME?
The other night I felt very close to my living group—Hashinger Hall. I also felt very close to another group, the people of JRP.
Yes, I was "the poor girl who was on the other end of the line." I was the one who "could have suffered all sorts of traumatic feelings about being unwanted, unloved, and undesirable over the telephone."
Well, laugh again. The trauma is over, and it wasn't even the trauma so capably formulated by the imaginative editor. It certainly is too bad that he doesn't put his time to better use, and find something more important to write about. After all his sarcasm about the great waste of time, it certainly is strange that he would then waste his own time to write about it.
And then there is his version to publicity caused by the talk-athon. Why then, I ask, does he
waste 30 square inches of valuable, necessary editorial space to write about the talkkathon? Doesn't he realize that this is a form of publicity?
Also, I should like to set the capable, hard-working, non-time-wasting young editor straight as to the purpose of the talkathon.
Yes, it does give an opportunity for the members of the two halls to meet one another. However, a second and equally important purpose is that it unifies the people within the halls themselves. If the editor has any further questions as to why, why doesn't he ask me, as he did not do before?
Now I should like to say "Thank you." —Thanks to all who have been against our talkathon. You see—we now have much more to talk about.
Well, excuse me now. I don't really like to waste my time, so I'm going to go down to talk on the Talkkathon!
Susan Lawrence Great Bend, Junior
BOOK REVIEWS
THE JOURNAL OF JOHN WESLEY, with an introduction by Bishop Gerald Kennedy (Capricorn, $1.85).
History accords to John Wesley a preeminent role in the spreading of new faiths on two continents, and this is the famous Methodist's own journal, a book that has the significance of an autobiography, and one that is recognized as well-written and thoroughly recorded.
Bishop Kennedy, in his introduction, discusses in lengthy fashion the significance of John Wesley in the Protestant tradition. He also writes of the many breakaway movements in religion in the 18th century, discusses Wesley's contribution to the hymnal tradition, and describes what it must have been like to propagate a doctrine in a primitive world.