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University Daily Kansan
Thursday, Oct. 29, 1953
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
by Dick Bibler
"Say, Coach, some of the boys feel you're makin' em warm up too long
Beware! Goblin Time Nears
PW 'Influencers' May Hinder Peace
In Korea recently riots broke out among North Korean and Chinese prisoners of war stationed in a neutral Indian prisoner of war village. The prisoners banged tins cans and shouted, "We will face death rather than the Red explainers." Faced with a mass outbreak the Indian troops fired into the compound killing three and injuring ten.
The waiting period in which each side is allowed to try to influence unwilling prisoners, who could hinder the Korean truce talks by becoming a propaganda show.
The central issue of the two-year truce talks was whether prisoners of war should be forced to return to their homes behind the iron curtain. The truce agreement conceded to the United Nations view and ruled that no PW should be forced to return against his will.
In order to get this agreement the UN agreed to let representatives talk to the men. The details were left to be worked out by the Neutral Nation Repatriation commission.
The UN believed that each prisoner should be free to listen to the talks in he wished. But the Repatriation commission has said, "the PW's must listen absolutely by necessity to the explainers." Many prisoners do not want to be forced to listen to propaganda.
Confusion and unrest lies over the camps. Indian troops wait and watch anxiously. The shots fired into the PW compound have been heard in every part of the world.
South Korea and Nationalist China which it inhuman, unneutral, and unjust and threatened to drive out the Indian troops. The Indians and Chinese Nationalist and South Korean leaders in the camps for the unrest.
An uneasy situation exists and will exist until the 90 days are up on Dec. 24. Christmas eve, 1953, will be a time of decision for many unrepatriated prisoners.
The scheduled Korean peace conference is potentially a keg of dynamite. The methods used in influencing prisoners could be the match seeting off an explosion disrupting all hope for a permanent peace in Korea.
Seashore sand at Beppu in Japan is black, hot to the touch, and gives off sulphur fumes. Thousands of people go there to lie for hours, even days, covered by the pulverized volcanic debris, which they hope will cure their ailments.
—Elizabeth Wohlgemuth
Halloween -- that season when youngsters the nation over threaten peace-loving households with "trick or treat" is almost upon us.
Since it seems only right that "youngsters" be defined, we shall call a youngster anyone who has a yen for excitement, that surge of yearning not reported in Dr. Kinsey's book, that wish to rid one's system of all the desires that, when cut loose in any other season, would brand one as needing psychiatric treatment.
It is that season when all the "old-sters" sit around and reminisce about old times when "we dumped over old man Jones" privy while he was inside it waiting for us," and "we put the neighbor's carriage up on top of his barn and it took a wind-storm to get it off."
In college towns, it is the season of parties at which almost everyone seems to have a new recipe for spiked cider and has "just happened" to bring some of it along.
It is the season when everyone who attends the parties has funny costumes, or at least they seem funny at the time.
It is also the time of soaped windows, flat tires, stolen garbage cans, torn-down fences, painted statues and sidewalks, and a conglomeration of other vandalistic practices, which at the time are taken with a grain of salt. Fortunately, Halloween pranks usually are not included in the nation's juvenile delinquent damage totals, which are already too high.
A local store advertises itself as "headquarters for those exciting stuffed animals." Sounds like competition for the Museum of Natural History.
Ah well! we must have some time of the year when we can safely blow off some steam. ___ —Ed Howard
Until the atomic era, uranium was merely a by-product of radium and vanadium mines, useful for coloring glass, pottery, and artificial teeth.
Honor System? - So What
What is this thing called "honor system?" So far, as regards the University, it has been just a nice idealistic topic to be kicked around in campus discussion groups. Once in a while there is a suggestion to have it adopted campus-wide, but the idea rarely gets beyond the discussion stage—there is always the skeptic who advises the group to "wait a while."
A few groups have made a stab at having such a system. One or two organized houses that we know of have taken the first bold steps toward running their houses "on the system;" several teachers in different departments boast of their classes being run "on the system."
(This means, usually, that the teacher has the class take alternate seats and alternate quizzes anyway. However, he does sometimes venture out of the room for a few minutes during the exam, after carefully putting the students on their honor not to cheat.)
Still other departments are run in the archaic "as long as I watch them there'll be no cheating, so why adopt an honor system anyway" notion. The instructors, perhaps rightly, think their classes are too large and not selective enough to make an honor system workable.
One of the finest examples of honor system on the campus is in the School of Law. Law students are on their honor, in using their library, not to take the books from the building and not to mark or mutilate the books in any way. Consequently,
their books remain in almost-new, un-dog-eared condition; their library staff is reduced to a minum, and still none of their books are lost.
"A step in the right direction" seemed the general opinion of the new open-stack, undergraduate reserve room opened this fall in the library. "At last, University officials are beginning to realize that we're old enough to be treated as adults!"
But even the reserve room had it's hitches. An editorial in the UDK (Sept. 21) pointed out one—the turntable at the one exit from the room. Leaving the room means going past the desk, presumably so that each student can be checked and thus cannot walk out with books that he shouldn't have,
We consider "the thing" an insult to our intelligence and honor then; the skeptic laughed knowingly.
However, after visiting the reserve room to find a book to read for a mid-semester exam this week, we'd almost reverse our previous stand.
A spot check showed this: of 25 copies of a supplementary text for a beginning government course only two had not gone AWOL. The same situation existed in regard to books assigned for speech and American history courses. Two out of 19 copies of a history text remained on the shelves; three of 22 speech books had not been taken.
Perhaps the turnstile wasn't such a bad idea after all. Maybe a "frisker" for arresting "snitched books could be added.
Letters
Mary Betz
Western Civ, Comanche Again, Pep
To the Editor:
An item in a recent Daily Kansan referred to a "rumor" that the Western Civilization course may be dropped as a requirement in the College. The rumor is an "old friend" of the Western Civ staff; it has appeared several times in the past, usually in connection with some minor change in the course (it is perhaps significant that the present one appeared only shortly after an announcement about Western Civ discussion groups). As in previous cases, there is no basis for the present rumor. At least neither the Western Civilization committee nor Dean Lawson knows of any contemplated change in the requirement.
Since Western Civ has had its share of the abuse poured upon required courses, I would like to give a few little-known facts in support of the program. A year ago a questionnaire was sent to a large sample of graduated students who had taken the Western Civilization final. Results from the more than 300 questionaires returned showed that
Member of the Kansas Press Assn., National Editorial Assn., Inland Daily Press Association, and National Advertising Represented by the National Advertising Service. 420 Madison Avenue, N.Y. City. Mail Subscription rates: $3 a semester or two, plus postage and mailing费 (Lawrence). Published in Lawrence, Kan. every afternoon during the University of Kansas annual conference on university holidays and examination periods. Entered second class matter Sept. 17, 1910. at Lawrence, Kan. Post Office
the content of the course (men and ideas) was regarded by 66.1 per cent as having been definitely or highly valuable, 31.2 per cent as having some but not great value, and 2.2 per cent as largely a waste of time.
Concerning the method (self-study, with procter help) 51.3 per cent regarded the course as definitely or highly valuable, 30.5 per cent as having some but not great value, and 5.7 per cent as largely a waste of time (a small per cent did not answer the questions on content and method). It might be interesting to compare these results with similar questionnaires on other courses required at the University.
An erroneous impression left by the Daily Kansan item was the notion that most students do not bother to read the Western Civ material. Many do use "short-cuts" in preparing for the final (a practice hardly unique to this course), but the number is far from "most". In the past we proctors have estimated that well over half our students read all or nearly all of the material, while only a few—less than ten per cent—apparently read nothing.
under act of March 3. 1879
Perhaps the Western Civilization course, depending as it does upon the student accepting much of the responsibility for his own learning, should expect the appearance of notes, cramming sessions, and the like. But it would seem that the existence of such short-cuts is less a commentary on Western Civ than upon the students who use—and promote—such "learning" techniques.
Harrison Madden Graduate student.
To the Editor:
1 00 wish the Lewiston, Mont., Kiwi-
wanians would come off their high
horses about Comanche. Whatever
dubious fame Comanche may have
earned at the Battle of the Little
Big Horn certainly does not entitle
him to be returned to the country
where he spent his worst days.
If the Kiwians are really sincere about their efforts to preserve the fame of that battle, they might part
the smoke of that engagement and put up a monument to the real heroes of the battle, the some 400 men of the 7th cavalry regiment who survived on Reno's Hill. Not all of Custer's command perished that day, in one of the worst defeats the U.S. Army ever suffered during the Indian wars.
A look at the excellent collection of private publications in Watson library will show that Custer's battle was a horrible error in military judgment. Custer divided his command into four parts despite the advice of his civilian and military scouts who told him he was facing the greatest array of Indian tribes in the history of the North American continent.
Official records will show that Comanche was a remount bought in Kansas in 1866, and spent most of his life here. Let the Kiwanians go whistle for the horse. We'll keep him in our museum where he won't be exploited, and give him a little of the peace and quiet he justly deserves.
John Stewart Smith, '48 Managing editor. The Alumni magazine.
To the Editor:
After seeing the game Saturday I would like to express some of my humble opinions.
It seems to me that it's not necessarily the football team that lacks spirit. The students also lack spirit and I think the answer lies partially, at least, in the way school spirit is "dished out."
The tradition of the Rock Chalk yell and the reserved, unfery Alma Mater are in need of revising not replacing. We need a fiery, bouncy repertoire of yells and songs that will draw the enthusiasm of the students. It seems evident that the great tradition won't.
If nothing else, we could put the cheerleaders in shorts, but that would be much, much too informal for this school.
Robert Egbert College sophomore.