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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Sept. 18, 1963
Proving the Wrong Thing
Since a non-conference game between Podunk U. and the College of Shanty Town can engender passions sufficient to cause fist-fights, it is not surprising that a careful combing of the nation's college campuses could produce a large number of recalcitrant hotheads who think nothing of defying a national code.
Specifically, the hotheads are those who ignored the State Department's ban on travel to Cuba, reportedly cheered motion pictures of an American plane being shot down, and then jeered the House Un-American Activities Committee's investigation of the trip.
NOW WE HAVE no love for HUAC, which seems to devote most of its time and appropriations to that grand old sport of witch-hunting.
And we are not about to lead an election-day parade for Congressman Willis, Democrat from Louisiana who is chairman of HUAC.
But we have even less love for a group of over-grown juvenile delinquents who refuse to recognize any laws except those they happen to like.
It is more than possible that the State Department ban on travel to Communist Cuba represents an infringement on the legitimate rights of American citizens to travel wherever they please. On that point, at least, the travelers have a right to complain.
IT IS ALSO possible that Henry David Thoreau, whom the bearded travelers are fond of quoting, had a valid moral point when he said
that some laws are so bad that they should be broken; otherwise those persons who obey the laws are prostituting themselves.
But in jeering HUAC and in creating disturbances in what is essentially a fact-finding process, the bearded boy-wonders are prostituting Thoreau.
The Castrophiles, when they read Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" and picked up the notion that they should not obey certain laws, should also have noted what Thoreau did.
Thoreau went to jail, apparently happily, because he refused to pay his poll tax, funds from which he felt were supporting the Mexican War, which he despised. Ralph Waldo Emerson visited Thoreau in jail, and asked what he was doing "in there."
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING out there, Waldo?.” Thoreau replied.
This is a long way from refusing to accept responsibility for defying the law, as the travelers are doing.
Far from landing a solid blow against what they consider to be a bad law, and we believe they are right, the Cuba visitors are proving just the opposite.
While no body, governmental or private, should have the power to take away the freedoms of any man, the Cuba-visit delegation is proving that there are people who do not deserve those freedoms.
Blaine King
Letter to a Freshman
So you're going to college. Your parents and their adult friends have told you you are lucky. And they are right. But a college education isn't what it was 25 to 30 years ago. It's better. And, generally, it's harder to achieve.
There are still a few easy schools, places where they are likely to pass anybody with a discernible pulse. But these are getting racer. The old-time "country clubs" that used to receive you with open arms after you'd been fired out of the Ivy League are getting pretty pecksniffish. They've got waiting lists.
Some of the big state universities still have to take anyone who has a high school diploma. And because some high schools are pretty awful the universities enroll a lot of freshmen who aren't ready. But they have a gimmick. They throw out the loafers and the staggerers after a semester. It's sad to be bounced out of college, particularly in these days when there aren't many colleges you can bounce to.
Remember this: The first 90 days are critical.
If you're on top of your work by Christmas you'll probably survive. Don't let the glamor get you.
YOU MAY NOT have made the college of your choice. Maybe you flunked the entrance exams, or perhaps your dad couldn't pay the freight. So you're enrolled in the home town school or in some little place so undistinguished that they still play football for fun.
Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Any college can be a good one. There's more information in the library of Hootenanny Tech than you'll ever get into your head. The great universities with their distinguished faculties are fine. It's exciting to sit in on a lecture by a world-famous professor, and a big-name diploma can be handy in job-hunting.
But ordinary quiz sections in the famous schools are often taught by assistants who know less than the full professors who would teach you in a small school. And if the great universities boast a disproportionate number of alumni in "Who's Who" don't forget that a lot of these grads and fathers with money and influence. The boys advanced, not so much because they were better taught, but because they had a running start.
YOU WILL SOON start getting acquainted with professors. Professors are human beings. They come in all sizes and shapes. Some are not very bright. Given enough persistence, almost anybody who is literate can eventually win a Ph.D. And some are marvelously intelligent and delightful people.
Just remember Will Rogers' remark: "Everybody is ignorant, only along different lines." Professors are not all-around oracles. One of the greatest of modern minds, Albert Einstein, probably came to more naive political conclusions than the corner bootblack. If you cover yourself with a doctor's hood you can stand out in a heavy rain of facts and never feel a drop.
BUT AN ABLE PROFESSOR is a joy. If you really want an education, avoid the cloats. If someone tells you that Professor X is an easy grader, try Professor Y. The best teachers do just that. They teach. They are not interested in providing day nurseries for young men who have retired prematurely and for young ladies who are merely husband-hunting.
College is a bringing-out process. It will not make a bad person good or a good person bad. If you are born intelligent it will bring out your intelligence, and if you are born a bum it will bring out your bumness. There are no "college drunks." There are only people who revealed themselves as soon as parental restraints were removed.
BUT COLLEGE CAN be a shocking experience. Some youngsters are brought up with a lot of beliefs that won't stand the light of academic inquiry. The first class in geology or sociology or political science can be pretty upsetting.
Look at it this way. You climb a hill. The world looks different. But it is not a different world. What you see is merely an enlarged horizon, a broadened perspective. The points of the compass have not been repealed. There are still eternal truths and lasting values and good things worth fighting and dying for. The fact that all Greece can be seen at a glance from a jet plane hasn't rendered obsolete what earth-bound Plato taught in Athens' little Agora.
And out of this upset is born the college radical who seeks to compensate for his confusion in hot-eyed activism, or the college cynic who sneers because he is, for the moment, without convictions. Time usually cures both diseases.
COLLEGE IS NOT the only way to get an education. The world abounds with effective self-taught men and women. College is merely the easiest way to get an education. It hands you carefully programmed and in logical sequence the fruits of man's discoveries.
College is a great privilege. Don't just accept it. Seize it.
—Jenkin Lloyd Jones
Editor, The Tulsa Tribune
"It's Not Practical —— There's No Assurance That It Wouldn't Also Save The Russians"
best wishes
Dinna Start Nothing, You Aberdeen People
We hope the Fischers of Aberdeen don't set a trend. The problems inherent if other people follow their lead seem insurmountable, if not inconceivable.
First, the extra population might eat up the farm surplus, and then Barry Goldwater couldn't complain about anything except the deplorable fact that we have not started a war with Cuba.
Too, the debate over birth control would wax hot. People would have to think about the moral questions involved, and that would be the first time in years anyone has thought about any morals at all, except those belonging to other people. The nation's morale would be shattered.
P
Dr. child the c bow t life.
The tax laws would have to be rewritten, mostly the parts pertaining to dependents. Perhaps we could allow a $27\frac{1}{2}$ per cent deduction from income for each dependent.
Dr.
who
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realiz
Chi mississie
Dr. C satch
Lake and
dren.
AND LOOK at income tax. With an increased number of people paying taxes, federal income taxes could be reduced-except the Administration wouldn't want a tax cut in an off year, and the Loyal Opposition wouldn't allow one in an election year.
AT met friend each
THE SOCIAL SECURITY office would go quietly mad, foreseeing the day when the third-born of some set of quints would have to be given 15369712437956100434 as a social security number. They would have to hire a flock of new clerks to handle that one account.
That's what the oil companies get, and after all, what's good for business is good for the nation.
Newspaper editors would become frustrated, bitter men if they ever had to try to convince a nation of readers that Vietnam were more important than quintuplets.
The news media would go insane. If quints became commonplace, newsmen would have to find something else to warm the hearts of Aunt Tillie in Dubuque.
Or maybe we could call babies capital gains, and allow deductions if you kept them more than 6 months.
Oh, let us hope the Fischers don't start something. The new generation would have to solve the problems, and everybody knows young people don't know what is going on. Unless their votes are needed.
Pla um o patie
Dailu Transan
The is dif able verba
111 Flint Hall
University of Kansas student newspaper
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Dr. C
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"I been said.
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