Page 2 University Daily Kansan Thursday. January 13, 1955
ASC Representatives Need Responsibility
Maybe it's time all of us stopped and thought for a minute: Are our criteria for electing and choosing student representatives good ones?
At least one organization, the All Student council, hasn't borne out the supposition that they are sound criteria. Three times this semester the group has failed to have a quorum in the Senate—the group that represents the student body from the schools of the University.
Tuesday night, several students gathered in the Student Union to accomplish something for the University and to be loyal to the students who had elected them. More, however, did not.
Thirteen members must be present to constitute a quorum, not including the president. AGI has 14 Senate members. POGO has 5, and the Married Students Party has 4.
The following persons did not attend: POGO: Merl Sellars, business senior; John Hertzler, college freshman; Charles Kirkpatrick, freshman in medicine, and Forrest Hoglund, education junior. AGI: James Stamper and Alice Wiley, college juniors; Jack Rogers, education junior; Kendall Hay, education senior, and Sam VanMeter, fine arts junior. MSP: Stan Hamilton, journalism senior, and Bob Bradstreet, 3rd year law.
Not only are students who stay away from council meetings injuring the prestige and power of the council, they are being disloyal to the group or school which elected them, and they are being grossly unfair to those council members who are in attendance but powerless to act because the remainder aren't there.
We asked one student why he was not in attendance, and he replied that the council can't do anything—that the Chancellor runs the University. If this were so—which it necessarily must be to a degree—then how can he help the situation by staying away? When students do not show themselves capable of governing themselves, it is necessary and proper that the privilege of self-government will be taken away. This particular student—and many like him—are inviting the very thing they criticize about the council.
Ask yourself: Why did I vote for this fellow or girl to represent me? Did I weigh his merits. Did I know for my own satisfaction that he is responsible; that he wanted the post because he wanted the council to act, not that he wanted to put in the yearbook that he belonged?
Keep these things in mind for the coming council elections. And, if you're considering shooting for a council membership, formulate your opinion of what you want to do **for** the council—then do it!
It's time somebody did.
—Letty Lemon
Poetry Hour Entertaining
Coeds sitting on the floor with their shoes off, young gentlemen sprawled on divans or propped against the wall—such a scene seems incompatible with a poetry hour. Yet, on second thought, that informal setting reflected the complete enjoyment and relaxation of those who attended the poetry hour Thursday afternoon.
The English department is sponsoring the series of weekly programs being held at 4 p.m. Thursday afternoons in the Music room of the Memorial Union. Four poetry hours have been held, but many more are scheduled. The last for this semester will be today. A
highly entertaining program can be anticipated at that time when Professor Allen Crafton, of the department of speech and drama, will read some of the poems of Vachel Lindsay.
The poetry hour will resume Feb. 3, and will continue for the remainder of the school year, Prof. Carroll Edwards will read from the works of Christopher Fry Eb. 3. Some of the poets to be considered in subsequent programs are Carl Sandburg, Robinson Jeffers, W. H. Auden and T. S. Eliot. Interesting readers are assured and the programs are open to the public.
—Joyce Neale
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
University of Kansas Student Newspaper News Room, KU 251 Ad Room, KU 378 Member of the Inland Daily Press association. Associated Collegiate Press association. Advertising service. Advertising service. 420 Madison, Adams, N.Y. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year (add $1 a semester in August). Inland Daily Press. Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays University holidays and examinations. Office address: 600 Lexington Street, matter, Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879
Daily Hansan
Editorial Editor Letty Lemon
Editorial Assistants
EDITORIAL STAFF
BUSINESS STAFF
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Mgr. Bill Taggart
Advertising Mgr. David Riley
Nat. Adv. Mgr. David Conley
Circulation Mgr. Kenneth Winston
Classified Mgr. Leonard Jurden
Business Adviser Gene Bratton
NEWS STAFF
Executive Editor. Elizabeth Wolghmith
Managing Editors .. John Herrington,
John Meyers
Nancy Neville
News Editor ... Ron Grandon
Assistant News Editor ..Gretchen Guinn
Assistant News Editor ..Dana Lloibengold
Wire Editor ..Dana Lloibengold
Society Editor ..LaVerle Yates
Assist. Society Ed. Mary Bess Stephens
Assist. Society Ed. Karen Hilmer
News-Editorial Adviser
Calder M. Pickett
"Don't worry about those chapters we skipped — I believe I've covered them adequately in the final."
Elmer Davis Analyzes 6 Aspects Of This Country's Fear, Disunity
The dominant emotion behind congressional investigations, the first issue discussed, states Mr. Davis, is fear—misguided and uninformed (although shrewdly disguised) fear.
Elmer Davis brings six new points of view to the fight against McCarthyism and allied encroachments on the first amendment of the Constitution in his 1954 book "But We Were Born Free," published by Bobbs-Merrill of New York.
Although it is the fear and emotion of a minority, it does exist, though, and the men who are winning at the game of politics because of this fear are being underestimated.
Mr. Davis mentions the qualifications of the men, notably Sen. Jenner and Rep. Velde, who are trying to get in on the act by naming Communists. Sen. McCarthy seems to be the only dangerous congressional investigator because he is the only one astute enough to carry out the tactics of the "Big Lie" indefinitely.
He says of the Wisconsin senator:
The nation is confronted on the outside by a Communist power which threatens to crumble the institutions of the Western world. Instead of presenting a united front to this power, the United States is split by fear and disunity, created by men who are putting motives of personal power above the good of the nation.
"I regret that I have to mention McCarthy; I regret that he exists. But he does exist and not to mention him would be as if people in a malarial country refused to recognize the anopholes mosquito. (There is a quinine that can neutralize his venom; it is called courage. It does not seem to be widely distributed in the upper ranks of our government.) This campaign would exist if McCarthy did not exist, but it would be much less effective; his extraordinary and too long underestimated talents as a rabble rouser have earned him his position as Master of the Revels."
"What I never expected to see, till it happened, was the Senate distrusting the Senate. Yet that is the meaning of the famous Bricker amendment, in whose introduction Mr. Bricker persuaded no less than 63 of his colleagues to join him, limiting the treaty-making power. . . .
Certain segments of the government itself are doing their best to weaken this Constitution by the "frontal attack" of constitutional amendment.
The second of Mr. Davis' perspectives concerning the problem of how to preserve freedom of thought in a nation that is fast coming to admire conformity is the Constitution itself.
The proposed Bricker amendment is an example. Of this amendment Mr. Davis says:
"The Bricker amendment is of course aimed at that clause in Article VI of the Constitution which provides that laws made in pursuance of the Constitution, and all treaties made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, anything in the Constitution or the laws of any of the states notwithstanding."
Mr. Davis gives the arguments pro and con, painting a convincing and logical picture of a reactionary senator trying to destroy the concept of federalism.
The third perspective which Mr. Davis brings to this fight against the reactionary segment of our population is his view of the failure of the press to see through such tactics as the "Big Lie" and official statements by unofficial speakers.
Two of the most commendable merits of the American press, says Mr. Davis, are its striving for objectivity and its competitive nature. Yet these merits are also drawbacks.
In essence Mr. Davis says that the press needs to go one step further in objectivity, printing not only what a senator or other high official says, but the truth of the matter too.
The fourth perspective in which Mr. Davis places the problem of possible elimination of our freedoms is his discussion of the professional ex-Communist, a particular breed of person who, because he was completely wrong 20 years ago, now thinks he is completely right on the other side of the fence.
And the press can never print the third dimension of truth unless the duress of competition and the emphasis on speed is lessened.
Because they look upon communism and the reaction from communism as the important events of their life, they assume that this same process is the swaying which preoccupied a "whole armyf of intellectuals." The findings simply do not support the conclusions of these "ex" party members.
The fifth perspective of Mr. Davis' plea for the freedoms concerns the process of growing old and the coincident search for security.
The prospect of being unable to provide for their families sometime in the future if they speak the truth as they see it now has made cowards out of some of our young men, says Mr. Davis. He is right. It can be seen on college campuses. The philosophy seems to run that it is better not to think than to run the risk of losing a good job later in life
In his sixth analysis, Mr. Davis asks if Western civilization is worth saving, and if so, why?
And the only thing Mr. Davis thinks can beat us is the encroachment on this method by men seeking personal power who persuade every neighbor to look over his shoulder and distrust his neighbor.
He concludes that what we do have to offer is freedom of the mind and a method of exploration which has been responsible for almost all human progress.
Providing the U.S can still beat Russia and satellites in war, Mr. Davis is probably right.
Ron Grandon