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University Daily Kansan
Thursday, Dec.4, 1952
Wilson's Charge Lacks Evidence
ASC President Bill Wilson at a Pachacamac meeting Tuesday night found it necessary to bring up the issue of the editorial board again. As far as the editorial staff of the Daily Kansan was concerned, the issue was closed.
The new board has been working efficiently for the past three weeks. It is not purely arbitrary as Wilson contends. His attack on the Daily Kansan was made without any checking and without any evidence to back his statement.
The board, consisting of the editor-in-chief, his editorial assistants, the city editor, the managing editor, the Kansan Board chairman, the editorial faculty adviser and the dean of the School of Journalism have met every Tuesday since the board's inception to discuss the editorials for the coming week.
At these meetings the editorial policy for the coming issues was discussed and, if necessary, voted on. The board and vote is completely in the hands of the students. Neither faculty member has a vote on any editorial decision.
Rather than being arbitrary, the board has proved an aid to the editorial staff and the dean of the school. It has relieved the dean of the task of reading carbon copies of all the editorials written, and it has given the editorial staff a chance to have a broader coverage on the editorial page of the paper.
Wilson in his blind attack has not only condemned the editorial board but also the review board which is not supposed to function until the Spring semester. The function of this board will be to get an all-student consensus of Daily Kansan news coverage and their suggestions for improving the paper.
Rather than give either board a fair chance, he has felt it his duty to stir up the agitation which spread through many newspapers all over the country. As ASC president, Wilson seems to feel that it is his duty and privilege to spread as much discontent as possible in the Daily Kansan issue.
The Daily Kansan does not mind criticism that has some basis, but an attack such as this is pure nonsense.
We feel that with the setting up of the board the issue is closed; we hope to keep it closed. But anytime that we are blasted with as unjust an attack as that of Bill Wilson's, we will find it our duty to answer it. Don Moser.
Housing Reporting Is Based on Fact
Bill Wilson, president of the ASC, has accused the Daily Kansan of carelessness, incapability, inaccuracy, and inefficiency in relation to the treatment of the recent housing situation. In fact, he even advised Pachacamac not to pay any attention to what the Daily Kansan has to say.
This writer is indeed surprised that such a statement has been attributed to Bill Wilson, and it is sincerely hoped in the future that he, too, will be sure that his observations are not based on little fact.
The Daily Kansan based its entire coverage of the housing situation on specific facts and figures. The pictures taken were not put-up jobs, but accurate representations of actual conditions. A visit to any one of the halls where these pictures were taken will reveal the true facts.
Wilson seems to have missed the fact that unless the Daily Kansan had begun a campaign, there would have been no recognition of the problem, and no chance of a possible solution. The status quo would have continued, perhaps indefinitely. Maybe Wilson thought of this, and perhaps his thinking was influenced by the inconvenience of having to attend housing meetings, appoint committees, and hear factual statements.
The Daily Kansan has done its best to present an even-keel picture of the entire situation. Students who live or have lived in below adequate housing are best qualified to give facts concerning the housing situation. Their letters published by the Daily Kansan proved that they didn't think the paper's treatment was based on "a little fact and heresay."
It is the purpose of a newspaper to report facts as they exist, and it is the privilege of the editorial page to comment on these facts as the individual editorial writers interpret them.
—Mary Cooper.
Short Ones
Read in the paper the other day that Gen. Harry Vaughan has asked for "inactive" duty.
★ ★ ★
The much-publicized whooping crane is one of a very rare species, almost as rare as two prominent campus birds, the Sour, Owl and Jayhawker magazines.
Many students became concerned for the first time this year over the University when they realized they might not be able to leave it for Thanksgiving.
- * *
The Army is considering general installation of "spud peeler" machines, and it would have no trouble deciding for the machines if the votes of KU senior men were counted.
Bv CHARLES BURCH
The ASC has finished another typical example of its work. This time the Council showed its great speed and ability at analyzing campus problems and situations. And as usual little if anything was accomplished. Even the two campus political parties, at least part of their leaders, have taken time out from their continual feud to condemn the ASC housing committee's report.
It took the five-man committee appointed by the Council almost a week to compile the facts and figures obtained from supposedly extensive research and to come up with the startling conclusion that, "the present housing problem exists because increasing enrollment forces more students into already over-crowded houses and some into substandard houses."
In all fairness to the diligent members of the committee, I think anyone who had sat down and thought about the situation could come up with the same conclusion. The students have been aware of this problem for quite some time, even the freshmen and new students realize the housing problem, so it really wasn't necessary for the ASC to have such an "exhaustive report" compiled.
The committee, however, should be given some credit as its members, at least according to the report, "recognizes the fact that only new University housing would alleviate these crowded conditions and improve the housing situation."
However, it seems the committee members did have trouble finding time to work on it as only three of the five members were present at one of the committee's main meetings.
This lack of time or interest may explain why the report is almost a duplicate of the report compiled recently by FACTS. The only difference is that FACTS did a much more complete and detailed job.
The ASC committee did such a poor job of organizing the information that it had "gathered" that a journalism student not on the committee had to organize the facts and actually write the report before it could be printed.
When the committee had completed its job the report was a jumpled mass of facts and details collected from the dean of men's office, dean of women's office, the housing office, the chancellor and mainly, if not entirely, from the FACTS report.
The committee no doubt worked in good faith but what did it accomplish? Actually nothing was gained from it except that the members of the committee, none of whom were from the "critical housing areas" probably became a little more aware of the acute housing situation that exists.
Again this looks like another example of the caliber of work that can be expected from the present ASC. Lots of noise but what has it really accomplished? One might also ask, "What can it do about housing even if it wanted to?"
Comments
A question on our favorite professor's weekly current events quiz was, "Who was named most valuable player in the American League?" The Kansan Sports editor missed it.
Greeks Defy Reds in Papagos' Popular Win
Dick Tracy shot himself out of another close call Sunday. Evidently his shooting arm wasn't impaired by his long illness.
Another military man, who also campaigned on the theme "It's time for a change," won an important election recently.
Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year (add $1 a semester if in Lawrence). Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturday and Sunday. University holidays and examinations occur. Class missit September 17, 1910, at Lawrence Kan., Post Office under act of March 3, 1879.
To this veteran of the battlefields the Greeks have now turned in their hope for their first stable government since the end of World War II and an end to ruinous inflation and unemployment.
time for a change, won an important He is 69-year-old Field Marshal Alexander Papages of Greece, scourge of Greek Communists, twice a hero of Greece and staunch friend of the United States.
Besides being a personal triumph for Papagos, it also was a victory of far-reaching consequences for the west.
Not a single Communist won a seat in the election, despite Iron Curtain support via clandestine radio broadcasts and a last-minute effort on the part of the left-wingers to join up with the Progressives and Liberal parties in a popular front.
Papagos' Greek rally party, which is only a little more than a year old, won approximately 240 out of 300 seats in the Greek parliament and polled more votes than the Progressive and Liberal coalition and the left-wingers put together.
Among the milder epithets applied to Papagos by the Communists during the campaign were "traitor," "executioner," and "agent of Americanocracy."
But despite their poverty, the Greeks wanted no part of the siren call of the Reds.
The Papagos victory cements more firmly than ever the 185,000-man, highly-trained Greek army into Western defense plans and, with Yugoslavia and Turkey, presents the Reds on their southern flank with about 1,000,000 of some of the toughest fighting men in Europe.
Internally, Papagos faces his greatest task. Economically, Greece's situation could hardly be worse. Approximately 40 per cent of her meager incomes goes into armament.
She imports more than five times the amount she is able to export, and actually has been able to exist only through American help. But that American help, in turn, has been reduced because as the Greek economy sank lower and lower, the Greeks were unable to carry their share of the burden. Inflation, blackmarkets and unemployment have flourished.
American aid now, however, may be increased.
Papagos is the type to appeal to the American business man. He knows he needs help, but he has been a constant critic of inefficiency in previous Greek governments and he believes the Greeks must not
come to rely wholly and forever on U.S. help.
As Greek elections go, this last one was a rather tame affair. The Greeks had gone through three elections in three years and they were tired of them. The chief issue was Papagos himself.
—United Press.
Letters
Jayhawker Raises Okay Poor Work
Pachacamac, in pushing through an all Student Council bill for praises to the Jayhawker editor and business manager, has expressed its thanks for an editorial program of mismanagement and mediocrity.
To The Editor of the Daily Kansan:
Even the Jayhawker staff says that last year's issues left something to be desired. Editor Kenneth Dam boasts, in publicity preceding the first issue, that "the fall issue
Despite hints of past financial corruption and general editorial inability (enhanced by the Jayhawker's "caste" system of promotion), Pachacamac lifted the heavy cloak off its coffers of student money and dolled out $100 pay raises to the present heads of the yearbook.
The reward came despite a vaguely explained 50 cent rise in price to the purchaser of the 1952-53 editions, and the harshly proclaimed inadequacies of last year's book.
... features a picture coverage of University students doubling that in the first issue of the previous year's annual."
This improvement would seem (to this critic) to bring the "cover age" to just below normal.
But Pachacamac, ever faithful to its own, has rewarded good intentions. Overlooking a past tainted with ill-planned, Greek-heavy editions, and the yet unfulfilled promise of a policy clean-up, Pachacamac has put its time-dulled stamp of approval on the 1952-53 Javahawk and those to come.
It is a donation that is best accompanied by criticism from those who care where their money goes.
William B. Dickinson III college senior
Little Man on Campus
by Dick Bibler
"How come the faculty has so dang much parking space when they can't even afford cars?"