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University Daily Kansan Wednesday. April 18, 1956.
The ASC Again
Let's Have A Good Season
By the time this editorial is published, the students will have elected a new set of student council officers, and an entire new house and senate for the All Student Council.
The issue of who won the election is not important right now. Neither are past campaign promises, future plans for coalitions, or any other political affiliations or devices.
For the upcoming session of the All Student Council has a great load of responsibility which it must shoulder.
The officers elected today must not follow along the lines of councils of the past, and thus gain the reputation of a do-nothing group. This year's council must provide a positive record which will prove to the members of the student body that it is actually working for the benefit of the students.
Although this may not seem possible to members of the ASC, many students now regard the council as a body which provides its members with an impressive activity for the yearbook's senior section, and not much else.
A student voice in the handling of campus affairs, you say? Well, perhaps, but the only example remembered by most students is the fact that the ASC gave its approval to the increased rate of fines for campus parking violations. This approval, we'll wager, didn't jibe too well with general campus opinion.
A recent letter to the editor of The Daily Kansan from the ASC president also enumerated several other functions of the council which he deemed vital.
In addition to the previously-mentioned authority over traffic regulations, the ASC was said to have a voice in athletic seating, the hiring and dismissal of athletic coaches, social regulations, allocating funds to student organizations, publishing the student directory, etc.
We'll admit that these are all vital functions which are probably indispensable in the administration of the University. But these things are not what the students want.
What most students want from the All Student Council is some concrete evidence of accomplishment. Better seats at football games ...some sort of improvement in traffic conditions ..an improvement in the Jayhawker...and there are others.
And to what can the outgoing ASC members point with pride and say to the student, "There, that's what we did for you"？
Nothing, so far as we can ascertain. This is the reason most students regard the ASC as a sort of puppet group which functions at the beck and call of the higher-ups.
But KU students aren't interested in student government, you say? Sure they are, or most of them are. But interest in student government might well be compared to interest in a football team.
Students, like the proverbial Missourians, gotta be showed. If not, they gripe. In at least one school—the University of Chicago—the gripes became so sound that at this writing petitions are being circulated to abolish student government.
Lose every game, and interest will wane, with only the vehement critics paying any attention. Win half the games, and most students will be reasonably interested. A successful season draws the interest and support of almost every student.
Let's have a good season next year.
—Dick Walt
A Pair Worth Reading
The Modern Library, which with its beautiful bindings and printings surely is the best buy in books today, has added to its already lengthy list two books that are likely to have wide appeal. One is "Selected Poetry of Tennyson" (edited and with an introduction by Douglas Bush) and the other is three plays by Bernard Shaw, "Saint Joan," "Major Barbara," and "Androcles and the Lion."
The Tennyson book is somewhat of a surprise in these days of free verse and obscure meaning in poetry. Tennyson, who is almost a synonym for Victorianism, may be undergoing part of the current vogue of traditionalism. Anyone who read Tennyson in high school or college (the number probably is decreasing) will find some familiar memories in the volume.
There is, of course, "The Charge of the Light Bride", with its narrative pace and excitement. There is the highly romanticized story of the Knights of the Round Table, "The Morte d'Arthur." For this reader, however, one poem, with two memorable lines, would be enough. It is "Ulysses," with its
"It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles,
whom we knew."
As for the Shaw plays, it seems redundant to say that they are among the great dramas of our time. Or perhaps "comedies" is a better word, for even in "Saint Joan" there is comedy. Shaw, the iconoclast, sought to make living stories out of legends. He was especially annoyed with the romanticized Joan of Arc of Mark Twain, and his Saint Joan is an answer to that Joan. (Another Joan is now treading the boards: Julie Harris in Lillian Hellman's adaptation of Jean Anouilh's "The Lark.")
"Major Barbara" is that story of the Salvation Army worker and her munitions-making father. It's also a play with a twist, for one would conclude that maybe munitions-makers have a place, too. And that conclusion comes after a play filled with praise for peace and indictments of the warmongers.
Finally, "Androcles and the Lion." It's one of the slighter of Shaw's plays, in content, form and length. Shaw may have written this comedy in answer to such epics as "Ben-Hur" and "Quo Vadis"? It's certain, at least, that "Androcles" is not adapted to Hollywood spectacle size (a movie version appeared in 1953 and it was scarcely a success).
C. M. Pickett
See where students are still applying for editor of the Jayhawker. Looks like being appointed to the post would bring a thrill similar to learning you'd been selected as practice target for a firing squad.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler Dailu hansan
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Recent History
NEWS DEPARTMENT
John McMillion ... Managing Editor
Barbara Bell, Bob Lyle, Kent Thomas
David Webb, Assistant Managing Editors;
Jane Peeceovsky, City Editor;
Mary Jenkins, Dawson,
Assistant City Editors; Gordon
elson, Telegraph Editor; Robert Riley,
Larry Stroup, Assistant Telegraph Editors;
Felecia Fenberg, Society Editor;
Betty Jean Stanford, Assistant Society Editor;
Robert Bruce, Sports Editor;
Daryl Hall, Louis Stroup, Assistant Society Editors; Larry Holl, Picture Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Richard Hunter ... Business Manager
James Wien, Advertising Manager;
Mary Lue Wickersham,
Distinguishing Manager; Mary Lue Wickersham,
Classified Advertising Manager; Chifford Meyer, Circulation Manager; Walter Baskett JJ, Promotion Manager.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Dick Walt
Ann Kelly, Ray Wingerson, Associate Edith
On a sticky-hot night in August of 1949, 11 Boston hoods made the first plans. No one would dreamed that in 18 months these same plans would develop into a blueprint for the most daring robbery in history—a million dollar robbery.
Brink's Holdup Now Solved- But Where's All The Money
With months of practicing in a series of "dry runs" at the scene of the actual crime, creeping in stocking feet over every inch of the route they would take on the appointed night, the men began perfecting their timing.
Anthony Pino, 48, an alien from Sicily whose criminal record ranged from molesting a young girl to stealing a dozen golf balls, and whose oafish manner covered a keen intelligence, led them. All were veteran criminals.
Under the noses of Brink's guards they planned escape routes, learned where the money was kept, determined the exact schedules of all the employees, and even observed which way the doors swung.
A stolen truck in November, and a car a few weeks later, then careful rehearsing—going over every detail for possible loopholes. The object-Brink's Inc., a nationwide armored car service that handles $235 billion a year, and whose name was virtually synonymous with the impenetrable safety of Ft. Knox.
The Final Plans
Every lock barrel on every door was removed by the gang during its nightly visits, fitted with keys, and reinstalled in the doors before morning with such skill that he was supposed to bolt the Halloween masks, crepes, soiled shoes, navy pea jackets, and black gloves. Now, they were ready.
On the night of January 17, 1950, the gang met in the Roxbury section of Boston and entered the rear of the stolen Ford stake-body truck. Of the 11 men only went to the court room. Of the two not present, one was left at the hideout, the other was a lookout.
It was 7 p.m., quiet, windy, and cold, and while most people were doing dinner dishes and watching their favorite television comedy program, a black truck approached Prince Street. Its occupants, grim and intent, looked for a signal from the lookout posted on top of a building directly across the street from Brink's.
Time To Act
The truck came to a quick, silent stop, the men paused long enough to put on Halloween masks, looked nervously around them, then opened the outside door, and entered Brink's. Inc. They moved swiftly now, their crepe shoes making only an occasional squunching sound. Time was an element. Up stairs through the second door carelessly left unlocked. Now turn left and through two more doors, both locked, but both quickly opened with the duplicate keys.
Now, they slowly, silently as night, approached the steel mesh which enclosed five Brew's guards in Brink armor. Ultimately $2 million. It was 7:10 p.m.
Taking the guards by surprise, the forced them to unlock the door, threatening in hushed voices to shoot them through the iron mesh fence which separated them. At a command a Brink's man unlocked the fifth and final door. The gunmen entered, tied up the guards and began to stuff them with sandbags until fifty minutes later, frightened when an unsuspecting garageman rang a buzzer to signal that he wanted to come in (he got no answer and went away), the robbers departed.
As they left one of them eyed a medium sized black box sitting on the floor, but because it was heavy and might slow them down, he left it there. Had he noticed the look of panic in the eyes of the Brink's men he probably would have investigated. The box contained the General Electric payroll which contained an additional $1 million.
A Smooth Getaway
At 7:27 p.m. one of the guards untied himself and gave the alarm, but the gang had made a smooth getaway, and after 20 minutes they arrived at the home of Adolph "Jazz" Maffie, 44, with $2,775,395.
They couldn't count all the money in one night, probably because they were laughing and boasting, but, at the same time, they were businesslike for they knew that they were far from being out of hot water.
Joseph McGuinness, 52, took the clothes they had worn, along with $100,000 in new, traceable currency, away to burn. After dividing the money, the gang dispersed, leaving virtually no clues. McGuinness, gang treasurer, had spent the evening in a restaurant talking to a detective and establishing a fool-proof alibi.
Police set up road blocks for the get away "sedan." A garageman in New York thought he saw it, and police searched for it in the Bronx. It also had been reported in Connecticut and Maine.
Brink's loss in cash was repaid by the Commercial Union Assurance Co., Ltd, but the loss in prestige could not be quickly made up. Brink's was denounced for shockingly poor security, and police and the FBI, which was called in because the robbers had taken federal funds, including $98,000 in bills whose serial numbers were not known, had few solid clues. They guessed it was an inside job—someone familiar with Brink's routine must have had a hand in it.
1
They had a chauffeur's cap left by one of the robbers, an idea that the getaway car was a big sedan, a fake confession from a drunk, a sinister bit of conversation over-heard on a train by a redheaded lady author from Brooklyn, and a handful of empty money bags picked up in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Georgia.
First Real Clue
Brink's president, John Allen, offered $100,000 reward for their capture, announcing that more reward money would be paid for them dead than alive.
It was not until two months after the crime that police found the remains of the truck, carefully minced by an acetylene torch and buried in a dump near O'Keefe's home.
Police had nearly given up, for it was only a few days before the Massachusetts statute of limitations would have expired.
Then Specs O'Keefe, a member of the gang who had been in jail for the last 16 months, began thinking. He had been arrested in Springfield for carrying a gun and violating parole. Sixteen months is a long time to brood and he had decided that the gang had gyped him out of $62,000. He also was bitter because John H. Carlson, a close friend and confident of his suddenly vanished, apparently the victim of a "ride." Regardless of the reason he decided to sing, and sing he did.
After listening to Specs O'Keefe, a Suffolk County grand jury speedily indicted the entire gang on 148 counts. The indictments came just four days before the statute of limitations expired.
There is only one gimmick, one piece which is still missing from the puzzle. Not one penny of the money has been recovered.
Ann Kelly