University Daily Kansan Page 2 Tuesday, May 17.1955 Western Kansas Denies Peasantry The Garden City Telegram's sense of "boostership" has been mortally wounded by a UDK editorial dated April 29. It seems that western Kansas farmers don't consider themselves peasants, and they don't like youthful editorialists who do. Youthful editorialists sometimes speak in hyperboles, and far be it from us to cast aspersions on the dusty part of the state. The editorial below is a reprint of one appearing in the Garden City Telegram March 4, and all apologizing aside, we'd like the answers to a few more questions. For instance, how many of the Buicks and Cadillacs go back to the dealer? How long will this land sell for more than it's worth? If bank deposits are bigger, then often is money deposited—and how big are the loans? How many public swimming pools are there in western Kansas? And how much did the rest of the nation pay for providing feed for livestock out there? —Ron Grandon editorial- Peasants Indeed! If Western Kansans were ever prone to the inferiority complex, which they aren't, they might well derive the psychosis from the University Daily Kansan. This student newspaper apparently has editorial writers who believe too much what they read in the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times, both of which are published in eastern ivory towers, and not enough of what they read in the Garden City Telegram, which is published in Western Kansas. In a recent discussion of marginal lands and how to return to grasses those which should never have been plowed up, the Kansan editorializes: "... People just aren't used to standing around watching other people starve to death. And these farmers in western Kansas and Oklahoma, and eastern Colorado are doing just that; they will continue to eke out a peasant's subsistence living scale unless someone buys that land . . ." The peculiar grammar and punctuation we will leave to Dean Marvin. The insult we will make note of herein. Western Kansans haven't been called peasants since the overly-literate Doc Halliday moved to Tombstone, and if Lawrence thinks she can get away with that sort of language, why then it's time to send for Quantrill again. Peasants indeed! Does this callow editorialist know that the third biggest selling car in Finney county is Buick, and the fourth is Cadillac? Does he know that farmland in this and adjoining counties has sold in the past 12 months for prices ranging from $150 to $267 an acre? Does he know that bank deposits in Garden City are a third higher than in Ottawa, to pick just one example of an eastern town of similar size although in a larger county? Does he know that, on a percentage basis, Southwest Kansas sends more youngsters to college including, unfortunately, KU, than any other section of the state? Peasants? As Georgia Gobel says, you can't hardly find them like that no more, at least not in Western Kansas. If this be the sort of thinking going on at KU, then perhaps, as the boys at K-State have been alleging for some time, the State University really has moved over into Missouri. Sen. George A. Smathers (D.-Fla.) said he would address the student body of Texas A&M college and "I'm going to tell those tall-talking Texas students about the only honest statement I ever heard a Texan make; "Of course, Texas doesn't actually have all those great attributes and virtues we talk about, but at least we have enough guts to stand up and lie about it." A young gunman in Chicago escaped unnoticed after taking $900 from a shop a few steps away from "the world's busiest corner"—State and Madison. ..Oh Well.. Every so often someone gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (I could go on for several paragraphs about how often in a person's lifetime a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity comes around). Tomorrow several hundred future gold bar bearers will get the same opportunity. Tomorrow there will be a war. . . on Campanile hill. By JON For sale: One large mortar shell to be dropped amidst the bells of the clanking calope. . . And while the ROTC lads powder the downfall of the singing silo, several hundred seniors prepare to fight a bottle-er, battle, that is—of a different type tonight at the senior class picnic. Picnic? Sure it is. But in case you're not a senior and you don't like war, you've still got an out: You can go to the Faculty Fossils-Senior class donkey baseball game this afternoon and watch all the jackasses run around. On second thought, you might as well go to the mock battle or the picnic. Odds 'n' Ends Department: Speaking of the melodious monstrosity Herbie told me the other night he was going to end it all by leaping from atop the cacophonous can . . . I told him he wouldn't . . . that he had ink in his blood. But he insisted . . . so I told him not to jump before I could get a blotter. . . . But Herbile really quite a boy . He's part lawyer . . . Of course that means puffing on an imported briar . Imported from South Africa, no less than four Do Herbile outlast and last names begin with "H" there's one in the middle. Add that to oxygen and what to you get? He had ink in his blood Herbie's quite a drip. My hillbilly-type friend won't like this but I hope to dig Stan Kenton when he's in this area over the weekend . . . I told my admirer-of-Ernest-Tubbs-type friend and he still Kent on-derstand it. Junk Department: Subject for the day-Signs of the Times. We Sell Hogs. Oh Well . . . The sculptured heads of four presidents on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota wear away at the rate of one inch 100,000 years. Right or wrong? YOU BE THE JUDGE! Crandall Melia President POGO I hope that next year, the students will take a more active interest in their student council. I hope by this time next year, the students will know the answers to these questions and will vote in the elections, and begin to take an active part in student government. I have had little training in journalism, but I do know this: When a person picks up his newspaper in order to become informed, he should be able to find the whole story, not just a conglomeration of adjectives preceded by indefinite adjectives. Ifass Hilmer Miss Hilmer have a secret, why don't they let the rest of us mature students in on it? I wonder, for instance, how many of the students knew the control the ASC and the students had in the parking situation before this recent widely publicized problem arose. I wonder how many students ever inquire as to where the money they pay during registration goes. Do they know that several thousand dollars of the activity fee they pay goes to the support of their All Student Council? Do they then know what the ASC does with their money? Did they know two years ago when they were sitting in their various classes filling out teacher evaluation sheets that this was the work of the scholarship committee of the All Student Council? I feel that in 99 per cent of the cases, the answer would be no to the above questions, and I could ask 20 more just like the ones above which are equally important to the students and receive the same answer. I once worked for a year on a weekly newspaper under a woman editor. As linetype operator, I had to deal with many unusual ideas. I thought they were ambiguous. To the Editor: This problem has brought a very important point before the students of our fair campus: this point being that the ASC plays quite an important role upon our campus and I feel it is about time the students awoke, and began to show an active interest in their ASC. So a student was dropped from a course, after excessive cuts, with an F. Who was the student? What was the course? Who was the instructor? Which dean? It does make a difference, you know. An open letter to the students of the University of Kansas: John W. Bowers College freshman Tonight the All Student Council will meet for the last time this year in an emergency meeting to try to work out an acceptable solution to the parking problem on our campus. The problem has been thoroughly covered in the Kansan. I feel that the students understand the problem, and I am sure the ASC will arrive at a workable solution, satisfactory to both administration and students alike. Reflection on Cutting ASC Student Apathy Reflections on Compulsory Class Attendance In seven semesters at K-State I completed 136 hours 14 of which I flunked because of excessive absences. At KU I resigned from the freshman class in medical school by request because I set a bad example. I cut classes. Therefore, because I am a law student and consequences involved, I would like to offer these thoughts for your consideration. There are two kinds of people at Letters— this university, Group A is composed of the greater number of us. We are pupils, not students. We come from high schools which little prepared us for independent thought and action. We came to KU for social life, Greek life, and to win fame by outstanding performance in the gymnasium. We learn by reading what we are told to read, listening to what is said to us, and by memorizing both of these. We leave the university with a certificate of attendance and the mistaken assumption that we are educated and therefore eminently superior. Group B also loses as a result of the little black book of rules. These few expel half of their collective energy fighting to maintain their identity, their individuality, their integrity. Eventually they weary of wasting themselves and they leave KU seeking a university where intelligence is the rule rather than the exception. They are often bitter. They have been made such extreme individuals that they no longer make an attempt to relate themselves to their less understanding brethren. When this happens, everybody loses. Group B is composed of the few remaining. They are students. They come to KU to learn, to obtain a greater awareness of nature, human and otherwise. These few learn by the process of assimilation, which is merely the organization of facts and ideas into an integrated conception of the universe. These few think. They are independent. They even are occasionally seen reading books, perhaps even non-fiction. Learning to them is not merely a process of repetition. They leave the university with knowledge, sophistication, and maturity. Compulsory c l a s s attendance guarantees the state that Group A will passively be exposed to and "adsorb" (sic) the maximum; that the state will not waste its money. Group A gains perhaps a greater quantity of "stuff" to memorize, but may perhaps lose any chance to develop independence and maturity. Group A is hog-tied with rules and regulations. Group A is conditioned to conform. LOST POUNDUN! HEY? LETS BE THE RECRAISE RIES ON THAT…CATUPATE.35 BABY GOT HIS HEAD STUCK IN COFFEE POT-29; GRANDA MOCKED IN THE RE-FRI-GID/ATOR-1.0G NOPE, WE GOT NO SERVICE FOR FINDING HIS BURIAL FOR A DOME PARTED DUGONG, MARKER DOWN? A BUCK EVER. What is to be done? This depends on several things. Are the majority of us inherently capable of independent thought and action? Do we have to be treated as adolescents? If this is true, Group A should resign itself to the system, and Group B should seek enlightenment elsewhere. However, if the reverse is true, if pupils want to be treated as students, if we want to grow, if we want to become adult then we should let it become known in thought and action that we are ready, that we realize that the responsibility is ours, as well as the duty and the challenge. When we change so will the system. We must change it. The educators lack the youth, the idealism, the courage. They have already made too many compromises with expediency at the sacrifice of character. And when the change comes, only then will this university not only teach us how to make a living, but also how to live. Jim Beatty Medical student. Retired UNIVERSITY Daily Hansan University of Kansas Student Newspaper News Room, Ursul, UT 76201 Member of the Inland Daily Press association. Associated Collegiate Press association. 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