WEEKLY University Courier.
The largest College Journal circulation in the United States.
PUBLISHED BY UNIVERSITY COURIER COMPANY Every Friday Morning.
J. SULLIVAN,
President. | F. T. OAKLEY,
Sec'y.
EDITORIAL STAFF.
C. S. METCALFEE, '80,
B. K. BRUCE, '81,
VICTOR LINLEY, '85,
NETTIE BROWN, '86,
F. W. BARREES, '85,
Ella HOPES, '87,
W. L. KERB, '88,
LAURA LYONS, '86
BUSINESS MANAGERS.
W. Y. MORGAN. | J. SULLIVAN.
Lock Box 251.
MOTTO. —Fraternity Rule Must Be Broken.
Entered at the Post Office at Lawrence, Kansas, in second class matte.
Cutler s Petroleum Engine Print.
Circulation 1,000
LAWRENCE, KAS., Aug. 1 To Whom it May Concern: For the six months past the regular issue of the WEEKLY COURIER has been 1,000 copies.
H. A. CUTLER, Publisher.
Four months ago we published the above with the claim of the largest circulation of any college paper in the United States. We called for certified circulations. In this time the highest certified list we received from nearly one hundred exchanges was 900. Until further notice we will now in large type attest THE LARGEST COLLEGE JOURNAL CIRCULATION IN THE UNITED STATES.
WANTED.—A medical department.
Our law department is the equal of any in the west.
Washington University has enlarged—500 miles.
The law department promises good attendance the coming year.
The local oratorical contest should be held before the holidays.
The prospect for next year is that the reins of discipline will be drawn tighter than ever.
There is no question but that the University can get and ought to have a military instructor.
--tion, the students' paper the best advertising medium, run by no clique, faction or fraternity. The wisdom of the owl, cunning of the fox, and cheek of a brass monkey, are minor requisites. He also has to be able to do all the work we have mentioned in connection with the editors when they are absent or indisposed.
The time is soon at hand when the students will gather in and go to work at their studies, managing elections and dodging washwomen.
It will not be long before there will be a medical college some place else in Kansas if such a department is not soon added to our University.
We wonder if the professors will get off that old joke of a Friday morning roll call. If so, wouldn't it be a good idea to mark the attendance of the professors?
We hope every student before returning to K. S. U. for the coming year will made arrangements with his or her local paper to furnish at least monthly letters during the year from the University. Do not neglect it.
The city of Lawrence annually receives from students attending the University, $150,000. Annual attendance exceeding 500; average expense in actual cash spent, at a low estimate being $300. Every year hundreds of people visit the city during commencement week, etc., because of its being the location of the State University. Yet notwithstanding the State has spent all the money necessary for such an institution at this place, the city has never given it a creditable approach to its grounds. Through the generosity of that staunch and patriotic old friend of the University, Gov. Robinson, the city now has an opportunity at a very low cost, of giving us such an approach as the generous liberality of the State would commend. Oread Avenue, in expense to the city, only requires grading. Few cities in the State but what would give many times this in addition to what the city of Lawrence has ever done for the State University for its location within its limits. The city of Lawrence owes this approach to the University grounds. An opportunity is now given which perhaps will never be extended again. Let her city council take immediate action.
It is a common experience with students who are questioned in regard to the University by those who contemplate sending their boys to our school, to meet with the inquiry concerning the extent of the moral and irreligious influence which prevails here.
There seems to be more anxiety on this point than any other, and the opinion appears to be current that Lawrence and the University are little short of a shoe.
As long as we have been connected with the University, we have seen nothing to indicate a character of this kind, and if there be any ground for such an opinion of our school, we fail to find it; unless you may, perhaps, have been talking with one of those bigoted pieces of anatomy who, filled with the idea that he has a little learning, takes every opportunity, by assaulting the established religion of hundreds of generations, to impress you with the idea that he is in advance of his age.
It is unfortunate that a few such imbecilatated minds go out from our institution; but if you will take the trouble to investigate you will find that there are few sets of students more orderly and religious than ours. While the State college has no connection with the church, the teachings of every professor are those of an honest, faithful Christian.
In regard to the city, certainly a more moral one cannot be found in the State. With a church on every corner, absolute prohibition, and built up by people intellectual, religious and hospitable; what city can lay a better claim to morality than Lawrence.
And yet, after all, it depends a great deal upon the boy himself. It is a test which must come to every young man sooner or later, for there comes a time when he must leave the influence of home, and it would better be in Lawrence than any where else. If your boy has lived uprightly at home, you can depend upon it he will remain so at the Kansas University.
What are the necessities of a college paper? Every student can give a prompt answer and tell exactly how a college journal ought to be managed. He has frequently explained the whole matter to us and wondered at our ignorance. As our successors in the green fields of journalism will soon be called to the front and given the power to wield the faber and the scissors, and the paste pot, it may not be out of place to speak of a few little things which will be required of them. The man who conducts the editorial department must be of considerable ability. He will be called upon to write stirring paragraphs, sarcastic double meaning leaders, heavy editorials on the marking system, appeals to the legislature for an appropriation, to the regents for a new department, to the faculty for a holiday, to the students to pay up their subscriptions; he must be up in the history of the university in order to make references, must thoroughly understand the discipline and management of all other colleges, must be in deep sympathy with the students, the faculty and the regents. If there is trouble between any of these parties he must carefully please all sides. No matter what his frame of mind, he must always be ready to supply copy, and must adjust his writing to the wish of his patrons, whether it be a plea for a new department soft soap for some professor, or asummer editorial on the girl question.
The Local editor should be different. He is to be the wide-awake, get-up-and-dust young man of the University. He must attend all entertainments, hops, parties, exhibitions, societies, class meetings, base ball games, keep track of student exploits, write all up in an interesting, concise manner, with humor, pathos, and eloquence. He must be well up in almanacs and the funny papers, quick at puns, ready in wit, and always ready to supply any amount of side-splitting humor on demand. It will be seen that the local man has a soft snap. The Personal editor must merely learn the history, prospects, weaknesses and actions of the students, faculty and regents. This office is a sinecure. Any one can do it after fifteen or twenty years' study. The Views manager has the fun. He writes mean articles and signs other people's initials. The doctor takes out the bill in advertising and gives reduced rates.
The Exchange man has an easy task. He only has to clip the old jokes and bad poetry, and writes stinging paragraphs about other papers. It is generally supposed that he writes with blood, but it is merely red ink. The blood is in his eye.
The Business Manager comes last, and as this is considered a very nice position the applicant should be a very nice man, one everybody likes. He should always be ready for a fight, and never take anything but a front seat. He must rustle advertising, attend to printing, read proof, write copy, get subscribers, sell stock, stand in with the regents, keep the faculty in awae, distribute papers, fold and mail, stand off the printer, collect bills if he can, be meck under the reproaches of the merchant, and brazen before the ire of the professor, and at all times and places keep up a general howl about our enormous circulation, the students' paper the best advertising medium, run by no clique, faction or fraternity. The wisdom of the owl, cunning of the fox, and cheek of a brass monkey, are minor requisites. He also has to be able to do all the work we have mentioned in connection with the editors when they are absent or indisposed.
This is a slight sketch of the staff of a college paper. If the Courier has not had all, it has had some of these geniuses. No monument marks their work, but they will not soon be forgotten by the creditor, printer and the delinquent subscriber. Candidates for positions on the Courier will scrutinize themselves and see if they have the qualifications.
To the business men of the city of Lawrence, who yet have bills unpaid on the Athletic Association, we have to say again, at this late day, that the full amount due was last June subscribed, and the Courier was promised, in consideration of its not publishing the names of the officers thereof as it threatened, that the bills would all be paid before the close of commencement week. This promise, through carelessness alone, is unfulfilled. A considerable amount of cash has been in the hands of a prominent member of the association since the first week in June, and as the Courier, in its glorious mission of moral reform, having the interests and reputation of the students of K. S. U. nearest at heart, is again on the warpath on this disgraceful affair, and unless the matter is attended to soon we will "a direful tale unfold." Young men, pay the cash on hand at once, and give the collecting of your subscribed money immediate attention.
The fact that college songs tend to produce a spirit of loyalty, cannot be denied. It is to be regretted that the State University has never had any songs of her own. We have had in the past hundreds of students who, as they only remained a year or so, never became imbued with that love for their alma mater which is so noticeable in the students of eastern colleges. Their university life has been merely a season of drudgery, which, unenlivened by meetings in which song was indulged in, has nothing to which the student can look back with pleasure.
Song can be indulged in by the most of our students; they all enjoy it. To recall old college songs to an eastern graduate, recalls many of the pleasantest incidents of college life. What Harvard man can hear the strains of "Fair Harvard" without a sense of pride? What would his college life have seemed without the college songs?
We of Kansas have many occasions which would be much enhanced by song. Our college days would be brighter, and we would have fewer men leave our halls after a short sojourn, who would say, "I had no pleasure."
Let the work in music, so nobly begin by our energetic professor, be extended. Let us add college songs; let us sing them, and if the spirit of music does not draw our students together, then I fear nothing will. The Courier wants songs. We will publish all that are written, and if we are not much misaken we have men in school who can write us some good rousing songs. Let us have them at once.
We understand that the establishment of a chair of the Spanish language has received some attention of late from the board of regents. If there is any possible way for providing the necessary support therefor, the Courier places itself at once on the list of hearty petitioners for it. The opening up of the great South-West in the last few years has made a demand which promises to continue for many years to come, for a knowledge of the Spanish language, which our enterprising institution should not be slow to grant cognizance.
The Spanish departments of Eastern colleges in the past few years have been crowded to their utmost, growing every month. K. S. U., on the pathway of this new elysium, should act at once.
Our readers will be pleased to learn that there will be opened this autumn a worthy rival and successor to the magnificent World's Exposition held at New Orleans last winter and spring. Those whose good fortune it was to visit that grand affair will never forget the world of wealth—the rich and rare exhibits—the startling evidences of undeveloped and heretofore almost unknown resources of this hemisphere, there represented. It was the first practical opportunity of the people of this country to become thoroughly imbued with a knowledge of the great, almost unlimited extent of the agricultural, horticultural and mineralogical resources of the Western Continent.
Such knowledge becomes the basis of enterprise, the forerunner of the institution of new lines of traffic and exchange, the opening up of new markets for our products and manufactures, of new fields of industry and development.
To realize the full fruits of the work inaugurated by the World's Exhibition, a new exposition company, composed of leading, enterprising citizens of New Orleans and of the Mississippi Valley, has been organized with a capital of $500,000 under the name of the North, Central and South American Exposition. They have purchased the plant of buildings and property of the World's Exposition and will open on the 10th of November, 1885, closing April 1st, 1886
The new company begins its work under the most favorable auspices; with a property complete for exposition purposes originally costing $1,-400,000, purchased and paid for, with ample funds in its treasury, and with applications from old exhibitors and new ones already flowing in.
Railroad fares will be arranged on the basis of not to exceed one cent per mile from any point. Accommodation in the Crescent City, thanks to the experience of the past season, will meet the requirements and satisfaction of the visitors. Good crops and the good times will encourage an immense attendance.
The Courier would like to repeat the remark that the literary societies would do much better work if occasionally recognized and visited by the professors.
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There ought to be a boarding hall in connection with the University. We should not always be left to the tender mercies of the town people. Board is getting higher and worse every year.