aN , aYoqOI
Tuesday, May 25,1954
Make Buildings Taller; Save Students' Steps
In less than three weeks, more than 1,400 University seniors will file down the north slopes of Mt. Oread in a farewell, for the most part, to a formal education span of at least 16 years. These students will have memories of the past, but what will they have here in the future.
Most of the 1,400 will at one time or another return to the University. They will undoubtedly find it larger in enrollment, for population figures indicate that the probable University enrollment in 1960 will be around the 10,000 mark.
But what will they find in the way of a physical plant? The University is currently engaged in a long-range building program long range in both time of planning and construction and in the space of the building area.
Tradition is fine and its nice to have the University composer of 2 and 3-story buildings of native limestone and red tile roof. But it is getting to the stage of being highly unpractical. It already taxes many students to get from Myers hall or Blake to Lindley o the Military Science building in the 10-minute between classe period. Now with the construction of the fieldhouse in the south west corner and the contemplated Fine Arts building in that area the problem will be worse than ever.
Other Universities in this and other countries are coming up with modernistic structures of multiple-story type to take care of the expanding enrollment. Such a building might not fit into the KU scene, some would say, but possibly students and graduates would like to think that their school is keeping up with the times.
The University is crowding off the Hill. It cannot afford to go out much longer. There is only one direction remaining—up.
Bailey Chemistry lab is soon to be completely renovated for the School of Education. The cost of tearing out all but the shell of the building and putting in new facilities for normal classrooms will be quite high. What a chance it would be to put an imposing structure on that corner. One that would be suitable for handling many students in less ground space and that would add a touch of progressiveness to the Hill.
At least such a plan could bear consideration in the future.
—Clarke Keys
What's Liberal Education? You May Not Know, Either
What is a liberal education?
Many people have asked this question; many have failed to receive a satisfactory answer. Some might say that a liberal education is one that will teach you a little bit about a lot of things. Others say it is something that will equip the student to succeed "outside."
Still others, when asked the question, just look bewildered and scratch their head. It is a knotty problem which students should try to answer.
A liberal education does teach you a little bit about a lot of things; it probably prepares you to succeed. It is the sum of a lot of little things that add up to big things.
If we may define education as the process of learning, or acquiring knowledge, and liberal as broad, not restricted, we would have a clue to our problem. We might say that a liberal education is the unrestricted process of learning, or broad knowledge.
In addition there must be democracy, an indispensable ingredient in academic cookery. This university must be a laboratory for democracy.
What is a liberal education? It is the miraculous process that teaches students to think for themselves.
-Brigham Young Universe
I TRIED TO STEER THIS KANSAS DUST CLOUD I WAS RIDIN' ON TOWARD WASHINGTON TO LET 'EM SEE WHAT A REAL DUST STORM LOOKS LIKE ... THEN I SAYS NOBODY ON CAPITOL HILL WILL KNOW THE DIFFERENCE ...
ON ACCOUNT OF THIS IS
THE WINDY SEASON UP
THERE, TOO... ANYWAY,
THE CLOUD WAS HEADIN'
SOUTH-EAST, SO I WRITE
A LETTER TO THE EDITOR,
TO OL'TOM KIENE ...
BACK AT THE STATE JOURNAL...
I WAYS; TOM, LIS JAWHAVING
DON'T MIND SHAREN' OUR GOOD
STATE WITH THE UNDERPRESERVED
BUT, TAKIN' A LOOK AT THIS
BITE I'M ON, MEBE IT'D BE
A GOOD IDEA...
IF THE REST OF THE U.S. AND A.
WOULD GIVE US BACK THE CHAW
AND TAKE THE PLUG » WELL, SIR,
I POUND A POST OFFICE, BUILT
ON THAT DUST CLOUD BY A ABSTENT
MINED ADMINISTRATION ...AN'90
1 ...
Things'n Stuff
We were reminded in a class the other day that we were really quite lucky, since this school doesn't have strict rules set up concerning class absences.
Bv Don Tice
Now, we really appreciate this consideration. We would hate to have grade points or hours knocked off our transcript just because we couldn't quite make it to class occasionally. And this is done in some schools, you know.
But this little reminder brought up another thought, one that is quite dear to our heart: why require class attendance at all?
Most classes have something to offer most of the time, some classes have something to offer all of the time, and a few classes have very little to offer any of the time. So why does a student that is enrolled in a class have to attend all of the time?
In some class the lectures merely duplicate the class material—a situation that shouldn't exist but does. When this happens why is it necessary to sit through the classes when you can get the material at your leisure.
And another thing. We students are paying our hard earned cash, or our fathers', such as it may be, to go to the University. It would seem that it should be left up to us to get what we want out of that investment.
This point of view may have some validity, but we can't quite go along with it because a student should learn in college to assume some responsibility rather than being forced into them.
If a student doesn't want to go to class and get the material, and suffers because of it, "tough". As long as a student is held responsible for the material, it doesn't seem to matter what skill you have in difference to the University how he gets it as long as he does it honestly.
College students are supposed to be exercising their judgment, such as it may be, and this thing of required class attendance isn't giving the student much credit.
Some may say that if a student isn't taught to meet all his classes in college, he may not realize the importance of getting to work every day after he is out in the business world.
In many of the schools outside the United States, not only is class attendance not required, but there aren't even any quizzes required until the final, and in some cases until the student is ready to take tests for a degree.
Is it that the young people of other countries are that much ahead of us, or is it that our elders are afraid to find out if we are responsible?
Short Ones
A reason for one of our tracksters' success is described as due to his breathing, which is like a "rural telephone signal in his home town of Spring Hill . . two shorts and a long." This, no doubt, leads to his opponents getting the wrong number.
Job time nears for seniors—and they're boasting of five-figure incomes they've been offered. But they never specify where the decimal point is placed.
Joe says he fears a "stacked deck" in the resumed Senate hearings. Perhaps now he won't be so eager to call and raise.
The Danes tell us they won't change the sex of any more Americans. Denmark—where men are men are women, and the Danes want it kept that way.
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas Student Newspaper
News Room KU 251 Ad room KU 768
Page 2 University Daily Kansan___
Member of the Kansas Press Assn., National Editor Assn., Inland Daily Press Representation by the National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Avenue, N.Y. City. Mail Subscriptions rates: $3 a semester or less. Mail to Lawrence, Published in Lawrence, Kan. every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays and examination periods: 1910, at Lawrence, Kan. Post Office under act of March 3.1879.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Biber
"Worthal and I broke up—I got a "C" average this term and he said he just couldn't go with a girl smarter than he was."
Book Reviews
The Cobweb, by William Gibson (Knopf): The Cobweb is a tangle of human relationships which in two short weeks drives an unhappy marriage over the brink of failure, wrecks one career and nearly brings another to an abrupt end.
Gibson's raw materials are ordinary enough—the familiar ingredients of the institutional conflict between discipline and disorganization, spiced with four-letter vulgarity and uncommonly explicit treatment of some of the more offbeat phases of sex.
Asylum the Setting For Gibson's 'The Cobweb'
The institution in this case is a plush insane asylum, rather than the more usual reform school or women's prison, but the familiar stock company is present en masse — the medical director (warden principal) who is losing his grip; his assistant, fully-versed in the latest methods of the nursery school; the assistant's wife, who does not understand him, and the assistant's pretty assistant, who does; and last —but really the most! the crazy, mixed up kid whose case proves the value of the assistant's theories.
Readers who have been seeing movies lately may be tempted to throw up the book before finishing the first of its three parts, convinced that they could write the end blindfolded. They should read on—if Gibson's kaleidoscope contains only the same old bits of glass, under his skilled hand they assume some surprising patterns, and sometimes it is hard to escape the feeling that they might be diamonds . . .
No Other Gods, by Wilder Penfield (Little Brown): Penfield is internationally known as a surgeon scholar, and Director of the Montreal Neurological Institute. In this novel, he turns to history at the time of Abram or (Abraham).
Dr. Penfield gives most of the credit for the novel to his mother who did research for 15 years but was prevented from writing it because of the infirmities of old age. Penfield finally wrote it after her death. But it was largely her inspiration and not her words the author used. He too became interested in life in those days and visited the land of UR in Southern Mesopotamia along the Euphrates.
Though as historically accurate is Dr. Penfield could make it, No Other Gods is a love story rather than a history of the Hebrew nation, a story of Abram the iconoclast who returns to Ur to lead his peleo to their own God and land of their own.
Abram grew to manhood in a land where the cult of Nannar the moon god was the chief deity. Abram was a priest of that cult. This is the story also of his love for Saral, a wise and beautiful woman, and his confused thoughts toward Princess Shub-Kudur, both beautiful and powerful. In the end he leaves Ur and becomes the great Hebrew prophet . . .
Starvation, bitter cold weather, insufficient clothing, crude sandals instead of shoes, and the continuous British and American bombing attacks made bare survival a bitter struggle.
In The Book of Famous Escapes (Norton) Eric Williams approaches the same subject from a different angle. Williams, whose own prowess as an escaper was recorded in The Wooden Horse, also is an avid collector of books on the subjeet.
With Chetnik help. Inks and the others lived constantly on the run at first but later began posing as Chetniks themselves and mixed boldly with the retreating Nazis.
It's exciting reading. The author and his fellow crew members parachuted from their crippled bomber in 1944. They were picked up by the late Gen. Draja Chetniks who were in the paradoxical position of fighting both with and against the Nazis.
Eight Bailed Out, by Maj. James M. Inks (Norton) is the diary of a ten and a half month struggle by American airmen to stay alive while hiding out from the Germans in wartime Yugoslavia.
Inks came out of Yugoslavia convinced that in backing Tito instead of Mihailovich the Allies were guilty of "betrayal of a great ally" and a great mistake.
The Chetniks were fighting a losing war against Marshal Figo's Red Partisans who were backed by the Allies.
This book is an anthology of history of escape, from Casanova to each story is told by author's own notes, with other introductory notes.
Although wars, from Napoleon's day to the present, provide most of the subject matter, Williams also includes some examples of escapes from the religious prisons of Reformation Europe . . .