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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, Oct. 18, 1955.
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Human Factor Doesn't Improve
In the year 1954 great advances were made in the nation's guided missile program. Our scientists have learned how to control projectiles flying through space directing them against predetermined targets with amazing precision. The basic ingredients of this program are care, accuracy and the mastery of mind over machine.
There is another program, however, which can be termed the nations "misguided missile" program. Statistics on automobile accidents indicate that our motorists have not yet learned how to control automobiles traveling along the highway, directing them against undetermined targets with amazing wantonness. The basic ingredients of this program are carelessness, inaccuracy and the failure to exert mind over machine.
At first glance, the statistics might seem encouraging. In 1954 only 35,500 persons lost their lives as opposed to 38,500 fatalities two years ago. But injuries since 1941 have increased 32 per cent. Except for modern medical techniques, many of these injured would be among the dead.
What the statistics reveal after careful examination is that the rate of reductions have come about, not because of our drivers, but in spite of them. A study of the 1954 accident report shows that excessive speed, failure to grant the right of way and driving on the wrong side of the road constitute 75 per cent of the driving errors which resulted in death and injury. As these percentages are not substantially different from the figures, of previous years, the conclusion is unmistakable that the rate reduction is due far more to mechanical improvements rather than to a fundamental change in driver attitude.
The modern automobile is a triumph of engineering technique. It is a sleek, powerful machine, quick to respond to the will of its driver. Unfortunately, the design of the driver has not kept pace. In a variety of traffic situations, he fails the crucial test of judgment and skill. Violating the rules is the prelude to his disaster.
The conclusion seems obvious that neither gigantic publicity campaigns, nor improvements in highway engineering of automobile design can accomplish more than a token improvement in the grim results of our nation's misguided missile program. The human element remains unchanged.
Engineering progress must be coupled with individual determination and skill if our misguided missile program is to show any dramatic turn for the better. No matter how good the road or how mechanically perfect the car, it is the driver who can, in a moment of carelessness of complacency, transform the road into a scene of carnage, and the automobile into a missile of destruction.
Syracuse Daily Orange
..Short Ones..
The University of Tampa has introduced a new football seating arrangement. On the Monday before the game, all seniors and juniors go to the business athletic office with their activity books and get seat numbers. If the senior or junior wishes to take a date, he must get a date ticket. Freshmen and sophomores get their tickets on Tuesday before the game. Here is the clincher: "If any student purchases a date ticket, the date must be someone of the opposite sex. This will be checked at the Business Athletic Office." When are athletic offices going to stop fooling with our social system?
Colorado A&M says it is experiencing a "first" in class scheduling this year. In order to relieve the problem of classroom space and campus eating facilities, classes will be held in the noon hour. Noon-hour classes are designed for freshmen and students not having 11 a.m. or 1 p.m. classes. Classes at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. must be getting popular.
If the Russians continue their seemingly peaceful gestures, and lift the Iron Curtain, who will be on center stage when the Curtain goes up? We have a hunch it may be the Armenian, Mikoyan.
We wonder if the $64,000 questioneers would be interested in someone who can remember the names of all those who voted for Alf Landon in 1936.
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Archie Seconds Motion For Hollerers
I was so happy to see those freshmen join Mr. Allaway and me in calling loudly for more hollering at football games. (UDK, Tuesday, Oct. 13). They say to us: "We're up here to play football for you and the University." That's showing a singleness of purpose that is often lacking in college students. I asked Cousin Superior, for example—remember, he's the one I recommended as a Kansas hollerer—and he said he couldn't honestly say he was at KU to play badminton (he's high-net man on the team, you know). He says that at least up to last week he had mostly in mind learning how to take his place in Western Civilization. In fact, he says if Western Civilization collapses, he's going east to school—Far East
But these boys know what they're here for, and 16 out of the 27 have come a long way to do it. Surely we ought to be able to go along with them a way. All they're asking for is noise! I gather from their letter it's all the backing they get. I'm sorry; I didn't know that.
Just a word of comfort to the boys. They say that the hollering in the stands means to the footballer "that he's not alone on the field." He isn't, fellers. There's his team mates too. They should be there with him. Then there's generally the opposing team. They're against him, but they're there too. There there, that's enough comfort for now.
Hand choke, Rock Chalk, shift!
Peace Pact Is Wasted Effort
Again this year, the All Student Councils of the University of Kansas and Kansas State College are going to sign a peace pact. A nice gesture, but really a waste of time and gasoline.
Last year, when former All Student Council President Robert E. Kennedy walked out to his car on the Manhattan campus after signing the pact, he found his auto painted with "Beat KU" signs. And not with water color, either, but with good old oil-base house paint. And later in the spring, KU sent K-State a bill for work and materials involved in cleaning paint off Jimmy Green and various sidewalks.
And the same year, Manhattan police and highway patrolmen were kept busy one night tracking down the abductors of Touchdown IV. the K-State wildcat.
Members of our student council knew who took the wildcat, but did nothing because it was done in the name of school spirit. Doubtless, the K-State painting crew was protected by similar mores, although they did accomplish actual physical damage. Anyway, the signing of the peace pact was a farce.
As long as Jimmy Green stands in front of Green Hall, and as long as K-State keeps a live wildcat for a mascot, council members can sign all the peace pacts they want to, and they'll be useless. This is a dim view of college mentality, but a realistic one.
Some would argue that this situation is not necessarily bad. Pranks of this sort, they maintain, are a normal part of college life.
These people possess the dim, realistic college mentality just mentioned.
Now that the Army ROTC is calling drill "leadership laboratory," we wonder if inspections will be known as "commanding officers' get-to-gather hour." And the annual training camp sojourns might be named "summer excursion tours—all expenses paid."
If the All Student council drives clear to Manhattan to sign a paper, the least the students represented by the council could do is to back it up. Likewise, the council itself should not stand by tongue-in-cheek and let the thing be violated. We can't expect K-State to meet these standards, but we're always saying that we're more civilized than they are.
Larry Heil
Gone and long-forgotten department: Joe McCarthy, and we don't mean the ex-Yankee manager! And what ever happened to Gene Autry?
And if we can't sign a pact we can stand behind, let's not tell ourselves than we're more civilized than we are.
... Letters ...
The Student Union committee which spawned the idea of bringing the Dave Brubeck Quartet to this campus and then toiled long and hard to make the event the happy success that it was is to be congratulated. Without taking anything away from their efforts, let me say it's about time.
Editor:
Isn't it strange and a bit ironic that here we sit in the middle of the land which possesses the world's great jazz artists, and yet here was an audience most of which for the first time was savoring its first taste of the real thing—minus the record scratch and the limitations of remote radio broadcasts? Surely the quartet could not have asked for a more sympathetic audience, one which hushed to aew silence during the quiet softly-swinging moments and applauded vigorously when the occasion demanded. I have little doubt that many would still be sitting there if the group were still playing, glutting themselves in frank realization that it might be the last time. I hope it is not.
If the committee members saw it the way I did, then the conclusion is inescapable—KU's student body contains a sizeable number of students sufficiently interested in jazz music to justify the booking of subsequent groups for concerts.
versity in a facet where it has been woefully inadequate.
I will here concede that in an probability no group would ever draw the crowd that Brubeck's quartet did. Unfortunately this can only be attributed to the fact that in the casual jazz-listener's experience Brubeck's name is the only familiar one (at least in modern jazz). As one critic put it—the average school age jazz listener believes that jazz began with the quartets of Dave Brubeck and Gerry Mulligan. Unfortunately this statement is embarrassingly true, yet it is perfectly natural, for the recently affected jazz fan has been exposed to the music of these two groups to the near exclusion of the many others which offer equally if not more thrilling experiences in jazz listening. All I can say is, what a challenge! What a chance for a group such as the one which brought us Brubeck. They have a chance to widen immeasurably the growing audience of jazz, to give the eager potential jazz followers more of what they obviously desire, and to broaden the cultural entertainment program of the Uni-
KU's geographic position is unfortunately not the best for booking some of the most important jazz groups which are so easily available to coast schools. Nevertheless there are still a goodly number of organizations which regularly traverse the area and doubtless could be attracted by a good audience.
Ones which come quickly to mind are:
The Oscar Peterson Trio, Gerry Mulligan's Quintet (which has actually expressed a desire to play concerts on college campi), the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, the Johnny Smith Quartet, Errol Garner's Trio, Chet Baker's Quartet, Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Count Basie, and perhaps even the Modern Jazz Quartet although the latter group plus many others are for the most part confined in their roamings to large eastern and western cities. Among the traditional jazz units, those of Louis Armstrong, George Lewis, Turk Murphy, etc., are possible candidates. All of these artists are managed by musician booking agent corporations whose addresses are easily available and who I am sure would be only too happy to discuss the possibility of KU appearances for their artists. Well, I've said my piece and perhaps I'm asking too much. Maybe I'm the one person on this campus who really wants these things. Maybe not.
-Graduate student
Daily Bansan
University of Kansas Student Newspaper News Room, KU 251 Ad Room, KU 376 Member of the Inland Daily Press association, Associated Collegiate Press association Represented by the National Advertising Association Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year (add $1 a semester if in Kansas, University of Kansas, every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays and examinations, first class matter, Sept. 17, 1810 at Lawn Ridge, second class office, Sept. 17, 1810 at Lawn Ridge, office under net of March 3, 1879
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