Kansas State Historical Society Topeka, Ks.
Daily Hansan
Thursday, Feb. 11, 1954
LAWRENCE, KANSAS
51st Year, No.85
Two Student Conventions Set For Weekend
More than 70 students and 35 staff members from 15 colleges and universities will attend the annual conference of region No.8 of the Association of College Unions here tomorrow and Saturday.
Region 8 is comprised of the states of Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas. Members of the Union staff at the University of Oklahoma will also attend.
Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy will open the conference with a speech of welcome at the opening luncheon tomorrow and Dr. Earl E. Harper, State University of Iowa, will give the keynote address.
The conference committee is Duane E. Lake, regional chairman and director of the University of Nebraska Union; Ernie Bebb, chairman of the student steering committee, University of Nebraska; Marilyn Hawkinson, college senior, president of Student Union Activities; and Frank R. Burge, director of the KU Memorial Union.
—Kansan photo by Rozanne Atkins
Mr. Burge explained that the purpose of the conference is to perfect techniques of operation so as to promote a better student union program on this and every campus represented.
Kansas will play host to the annual Big Seven Student Government conference this weekend.
Five universities are expected to send about 20 delegates. The representatives will arrive in Lawrence, today and tomorrow. The University of Colorado will not attend.
The purpose of the annual conference is not only to strengthen relations between Big Seven schools, but also to provide a chance for the Universities to pool their ideas on student government.
A banquet for the visitors will be held tomorrow at the University after registration. The first session begins 8 a.m. Saturday. The delegates will be divided into three groups and each group will be given a topic. Relationship of Student Government to Students, Relationship of Student Government to Other Student Governments, and Relationship of Student Government to the University will be the topics.
The second session at 2:30 p.m. will bring all the delegates together with the idea that some definite goals and principles for student government can be formulated.
The All Student Council, charged with the weekend arrangements, has invited the guests to the "Club Dixie" dance at the Union tomorrow, and has obtained tickets for the basketball game Saturday.
Coke Machine Robbed in Fraser
Vandals broke into a coke machine in Fraser hall last night during an intermission of "Die Fledermaus." This is the seventh or eighth coke machine robbery in the last two weeks, police said.
In an effort to halt the epidemic of robberies, police say they were maintaining a special watch on some buildings. The crime occurred while officers were upstairs watching smokers in the hall.
Police said they had no way of estimating the amount of money taken.
FELICITATIONS—Grove Patterson, principal speaker at the fifth annual William Allen White lecture, congratulates Charles Harger, editor and publisher of the Abilene Reflector-Chronicle. Yesterday, Mr. Harger was awarded the first annual William Allen White certificate for service to journalism.
ROTC Officers Deny Cutback
The Washington spokesman also stated that the Army might be unable to commission all of the graduates in its program, but Lt. Col. Justice R. Neale, professor of military science and tactics and commanding officer of the Army ROTC, denied any knowledge of this possibility. He declared that as far as he knows all 27 of his men eligible for commissions will receive them, with about 20 more becoming eligible after summer camp.
Col. Thomas B. Summers, professor of air science and tactics and commanding officer of the Air Force ROTC, said a statement issued yesterday by an Air Force spokesman in Washington that only half of the number of June graduates in AFROTC will be commissioned was "nothing new," and stated that plans have not been changed.
Both Col. Summers and Lt. Col. Neale stated their belief that the Washington story was actually a restatement of several previous policy announcements. Lt. Col. Neale pointed out that the Army had made public in January its plans for a cutback in 1954—a cutback which he said might reduce the number of commissions next year. He repeated, however, that he has no orders changing plans to commission this year's seniors.
Jayhawker Cagers To Speak at Rally
A rally for the KU-Nebraska basketball game will be held at 10:50 tomorrow morning by the east end of Strong hall. Dallas Dobbs and Harold Patterson, both starters for the Jayhawker team, will speak.
Weather
--got back on the job briefly. A hard freeze existed throughout state. No mini-ium higher than 24 degrees, at Chanute, was reported to t he
Kansas temperatures dropped to as low as 15 degrees at Goodland early today as a vacationing winter
state weather bureau in Topeka. An even colder night is expected to follow today's sunny but chill weather. However, the cold snap is due to begin departing tomorrow in western Kansas. The weather service said Kansas apparently escaped dust, despite rather sharp northerly winds which accompanied the insurge of cold air.
Editor Appraises Journalism Today
Newsmen Elect Parsons Editor
A critical appraisal of journalism today was undertaken by Grove Patterson, editor-in-chief of the Toledo Blade yesterday, in Fraser theater.
The worst that can happen in this drought period is the severing of
Clyde M. Reed jr., editor of the Parsons Sun, was elected president of the William Allen White foundation at the fifth annual meeting of the organization yesterday.
An appropriation of $2,500 was made to continue the current foundation program. This includes the annual William Allen White memorial lecture, the case book of newspaper problems, the editorial conference, and the bringing of practicing journalists to the campus for classroom lectures.
The trustees voted an appropriation of $4,000 toward remodeling of the William Allen White Memorial Reading room into a historical center of journalism. The University will furnish the additional funds to provide storage, cataloging and display facilities.
The trustees also directed Dean Marvin to expand the editorial conference into seminars in many phases of journalism.
Other officers chosen were Rolla A. Clymer, editor, the El Dorado Times, first vice president; Dwight Payton, editor, the Overbrook Citizen, second vice president; Dolph Simons, editor, the Lawrence Journal- World, third vice president; Karl Klooz, bursar, secretary-treasurer, and Dean Burton W. Marvin of the William Allen White School of Journalism, director.
Kansas Water Shortage Serious, But Humorous
The foundation will again award prizes of $25, $15, and $10 for the best editorial written during the year for the University Daily Kansan.
"Water, water everywhere, nor any drop . . ." the mariner said many years ago, but when he spoke these words he didn't know what the situation was going to be in Kansas in later years.
Bv JACK LINDBERG
cater.
The water problem is not as bad as it sounds though. The El Dorado chamber of commerce asked the local citizens to limit their bathing to one bath per week. This wouldn't bother "moonbeam McSwine" or "Bathless Groggins" of comic page fame or most of the grade school kids, because these people are notoriously opposed to water that is applied to the exterior portion of the body. Personally, I never knew anyone took more than one bath a day as it is.
Not only is there a lack of water everywhere, but it looks as though in the near future there won't be any to drink either. The lack of drinking water won't have any effect on a couple of people I know because they haven't tasted water in several years anyway.
Perhaps, in the future, we can return to the European custom of drinking wine and beer with meals and on other occasions and using the H2O very sparingly in the cooking of what little food will be eaten.
the KU-MU rivalry. If Kansas keeps drying up and blowing eastward into Missouri, pretty soon there just won't be any Kansas any more.
Down at Paola they are praying for rain. Back in the spring of 1951 they were praying for it to stop raining. It certainly is hard to keep people satisfied these days.
In Springfield, Mo., they are starting to seed the clouds with whatever they seed the clouds with to produce rain. As yet, there have been no results. These people probably think they would be pretty smart if they did make the clouds rain, but as soon as they figure out how to make clouds too, then they have accomplished something.
Two western Kansas wheat farmers were talking last week about the scarcity of rain and one said to the other, "They had a rain over in Goodland the other day, but I was pretty busy and didn't get to go."
Which just goes to prove that no matter how bad a situation can be there is still someone who can find a little humor in it.
Giving the fifth annual William Allen White lecture, Mr. Patterson aimed his talk at journalism students, boiling his appraisal down to six major topics.
Stressing journalism as a calling rather than a business, the newspaper veteran asked journalism students to "not consider going into a newspaper career to make money." He saw "no need to abandon the ideals of decency, service, and justice."
The function of the editor was accentuated by Mr. Patterson's statement, "A free press is not a meal ticket for editors and publishers." Newspapers have created the "giant, public opinion" and by doing so have incurred a tremendous responsibility to develop a 'greater concern for national conscience."
"Our editors need desperately the fifth freedom—the e freedom of imagination," stated Mr. Patterson, asking editors to assume this freedom. "The press has the right to be free but the more freedom it has the greater is its need to be right."
He went on in the same vein to state that, "Too many papers have become the victims of tradition." He mentioned the custom of right-side placement of lead stories and the fact that the most common size of print used today is too small for easy reading.
"There is no crime, not even inaccuracy, that is more subversive than the policy of slanting the news to meet the demands of the publisher." Mr. Patterson went on to endorse interpretive writing as long as it did not further the opinion of the newswriter.
A need for more and better copy readers and less copy reading rules is shown, according to the veteran newsman, by what he calls "journalese"—a process responsible for practically meaningless headlines. "Many news readers can and do learn to read it," said Mr. Patterson of journalese, "but I would rather see merely label heads than the acrobatic routine prevalent , , , today."
Calling for an "economy of style" in the writing of news, the editor asked for a simple style, short words and sentences, and clear copy "naked of masquerade."
As an example of several points which should be improved in the newspaper itself, Mr. Patterson cited the "muddy, murky, meaningless" pictures of football action. "I consier football art a waste of space," he said.
To escape the trivialities which clutter our newspapers, Mr. Patterson asked for a "new sense of news-value perspective. We need a new brand of reporter who doesn't know that it builds circulation to write about second-rate doings by second-rate people."
College Enrollment Closes Saturday
Saturday will be the last day for college students to change sections of courses or enroll in new courses, Dean Paul B. Lawson of the college announced today.
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