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University Daily Kansan
Friday, Oct. 18, 1963
Just Raise Hell
KU is taking the Homecoming out of Homecoming.
Recently, the Homecoming committee announced that the traditional "All for Fun" theme for the annual weekend would be reversed to the Kansas motto, "To the Stars Through Difficulties" and "Higher Education—The Road to the Future." Evidently there is a choice.
The new theme calls for an aesthetic version of intellectual companionship throughout the Homecoming festivities with the opponent—in this case, K-State, no less.
THE COMMITTEE MUST have seen too much crepe paper in past years. The new theme is fine and should be pursued by all, but please, not on Homecoming. Higher learning is a vital part of KU. There are times, however, when a university must bring back some of the old Siss Boom Bah and just plain have a hell of a good time. Homecoming is one of these times.
The committee says the new theme should be emphasized in all the house decorations and other Homecoming ceremonies. This spells only confusion. Imagine the poor, unsuspecting alum who drives 1,200 miles for Homecoming, sees the campus full of giant papier-mache rockets, reactors, computers, textbooks and microscopes. He will think it's really Science Day and go back home.
The Pi Phis will never figure out how to build an Atlas rocket with wine and silver-blue trimmings. Those Betas will probably pull a double reverse and launch a missile and blow up Aggieville in Manhattan. God knows what the Fijis will do with the H-bomb they'll make. Who wants to go to a pep rally for more classwork? How are the fans down in Memorial Stadium
going to see the letters T—N—E painted on a rocket going 3,000 miles an hour? And what about all the (shudder) parties?
TO GET BACK to the alumni those who stay aren't going to want to attend joint panel discussions on higher education and talk intelligently with that K-State alum who broke a Cutty Sark bottle over his head 25 years ago. This is the weekend when the grads want to talk over old times and carouse a bit. Homecoming has always been a time for fun and memories, not deep thought, operas and tours through the chemistry lab. Alumni would rather have a headache from other means.
The new theme will never find a place at the football game. Higher learning will be the farthest thought from 22 minds out on the field. In fact, they primarily will be working very hard at knocking each other's brains out. The football game is the center attraction of Homecoming. There is nothing intelligent about 40,000 persons screaming for someone to plow someone else under. It never will be a form of higher education.
KU'S NEW Homecoming theme can ruin Homecoming. A successful Homecoming needs that special spirit that goes with such a celebration. Take away the elements of that spirit and there is nothing. Granted, there is a spirit for learning, too, but it has a place just as Homecoming does. Forced together, the spirit for both may be lost.
There are only two reversals needed at the KU Homecoming this year. One is on the football field for those who remember last year's disaster, and the other is to employ a more simple reverse, such as "Fun for All."
The Lucky Fifth
— Terry Ostmeyer
A national readership survey reports that while two-thirds of a newspaper's readers may look at the editorial page, not more than one-fifth regularly read the editorials.
This is discouraging, considering the millions of verbal pearls I have strewn in three decades of editorial writing. The bulk of them seem to have been wasted.
The situation appears almost as sad as the state of television advertising. A recent Wichita survey indicates fewer than one-eight of the viewers recall the sponsor's message.
On the other hand, The Journal's readership is upwards of 100.000. If the one-fifth proportion applies, at least 20.000 persons besides yourself are reading these words.
This is probably more than the number of persons who will listen to all the sermons preached in Salina today.
I hasten to add, of course, that the sermons undoubtedly have more lasting value. And more effect.
While the preacher's words may lead to salvation, mine often have reverse results. Those that are intended to evoke may only provoke.
Those written to illuminate may douse the glim, if not cause the subscription to be cancelled.
The editorial writer soon learns humility. The thoughtful piece on which he has spent hours of research and much sweat in polishing may be tee-totally ignored. But an idle confection rapidly spun off may fill his letter basket.
This may be why some editorial writers, such as the erudite ones on the New York Times, write chiefly for the President, the justices of the Supreme Court and the more literate members of the Congress. Or why down in the Balkans of southeastern Kansas the editors write mostly for each other and comprise a society of mutual flatulence. Or why the editor of a large Kansas newspaper writes exclusively for the proofreader.
It is the rare editor who, day in and day out, can be the goad in the ribs of progress, the lamp of learning, the thurifer of community accomplishment, the scourge of evil, the purificator of politics and the matrix of ideas. Sometimes he is just dull.
Perhaps he is lucky to get his fifth.
Dailij 17hnsan
111 Flint Hall
University of Kansas student newspaper
UNiversity 4-3646, newsroom
UNiversity 4-3198, business office
— In The Salina Journal
Founded 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.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Terry Ostmeyer, Trudy Meserve, Jackie Stern, Rose Osborne, Assistant Managing Editors; Kay Jarvis, City Editor; Linda Machin, Society Editor; Roy Miller, Sports Editor; Dennis Bowers, Picture Editor.
Managing Editor
Mike Miller
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Blaine King Editorial Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bob Brooks ... Business Manager
Joanne Zabornik, Advertising Mgr.; Alice Rueschhoff, Circulation Mgr.; Brooks Harrison, Classified Adv. Mgr.; Jim Evilsizer, National Adv. Mgr.; Donald Dugan, Promotion Mgr.; Jerry Schroepfer, Merchandising Mgr.
Editor:
The People Say . . .
I refer to Thursday's UDK editorial by Dolores Orman. Miss Orman's gung-ho dissertation on the wonders of organized physical recreation was quite good and I agree with her entirely that there is a need for a strong intramural program at KU.
Nevertheless, she did leave the definite impression in the third and fourth paragraphs that "... since the University of Kansas has no compulsory physical education program ..." the curriculum is somehow deficient.
May a footsore freshman inject a weary comment at this point?
Personally, I think there are already enough "busy work" courses I am required to take without adding another to the list. I figure that if any student can take a typical schedule—a 7:30 in Malott, an 8:30 in Dyche, a 9:30 in Haworth, a 10:30 in Summerfield and an 11:30 in Strong—they are in GREAT physical shape.
Jacke Thayer Ellsworth, Kansas freshman
1963 HERBLOCK
THE WASHINGTON POST
Atlantis Sank Into Sea; Mu Too, Apparently
With the weather, politics, and everything else the way it is, it's high time we considered the lost continents of Atlantis and Mu.
You've probably never heard of Mu. For some reason, it doesn't seem to have as good a public relations crew as Atlantis.
Everybody knows that Atlantis was situated in the Atlantic Ocean. Exactly where in the Atlantic is up for grabs. Educated guesses have been made of sites ranging from the North Sea to Crete. Wherever it is, we'll let it lie there.
Mu was located, according to men who went to college, in the Pacific Ocean between South America and Burma. Most of the experts, let's call them Mueans, believe wholeheartedly that the Pacific Islands are the last mountainous vestiges of the lost kingdom. Of course, the Atlanteans claim the Azores were once Atlantis.
Of course, the Arabian lands both sides claim that their beloved islands supported vast civilizations, superior to our own in most respects, and that we owe them lots. Both islands claim to have been the original home of man.
STRANGELY ENOUGH, there are Mueans who refuse to accept Atlantis, and Atlanteans who say Mu leaves them cold. What's more, there are even a few rebels who refuse to be committal about either one.
The legends of Mu are extremely old ones, especially in South America and the Pacific Islands. Most of the basis for modern man's curiosity is derived from groups or unquestionably ancient tablets unearthed in the past 50 years or so in Mexico and India. These tablets, of uncertain origin, tell the story of the "lost home of man, Mu, which sank beneath the waves of the Pacific 50,000 years ago.
Atlantis has even less basis for its authenticity. The whole legend of Atlantis started with Plato about 400 B.C. In a book called "Timaeus," he describes an island, "... larger than Libya and Asia together," which lay "... opposite the columns of Hercules (Giralta), in the Atlantic." Plato states that the island disappeared, "... swallowed by the waves." In a later book, "Critias," Plato says the destruction of Atlantis occurred about 9600 B.C., and he gives descriptions of its temples, palaces, wealth, and government. It is clear, from a careful reading of the works, that Plato set out to do no more than tell an allegory, in order to illustrate his conception of a perfect political state. He pointed at a moral but the mythical conception was preferred. Thus was born the legend of Atlantis.
NOW THAT I HAVE shattered one of our favorite myths, let's look briefly at the other ocean. I have no other basis for Mu than what Colonel Churchward says, and that is none too clear. He bases his arguments for Mu on some tablets found in temples in India and ruins in Mexico and South America. The tablets are interesting, if you like that sort of thing, but they don't prove much to me since the translations are his only and I have heard of no other collaborating translations. You can believe what you will.
As far as modern science goes, experts tell us that first glances at the ocean bottoms of the questionable areas may seem to confirm the former existence of continents. However, they state, any disturbance of the nature of whole continents sinking would have occurred hundreds of thousands of years ago.
One must admit, though, that Atlantis and Mu are fun to think about. Wouldn't it be grand if continents had once existed in the oceans and these continents had supported mighty civilizations? The whole thing is part and parcel of man's folklore, and, as such, should be kept alive along with King Arthur and the rest. Atlantis has furnished us with something to waste our time on and what, I ask you, would we do without anything to waste our time on?
— Larry Knupp