Page 2
University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, May 20, 1952
.
Editorials
An Incident ...
Charley Harris is a freshman.
Charley Harris is colored.
Last Friday, Charley was one of 488 University students who gave a pint of blood which will be sent to Kovea for use by the armed forces. Charley's appointment was originally for 4:30 p.m., but because of delays in the waiting line, it was 6:45 p.m. before he finished donating his blood.
Four private-owned restaurants are located right on the campus. This Charley knew. He also knew these restaurants serve complete meals. But not to Negroes. Although in his first year at KU, he had been reminded of this fact many times, and not only by classmates and restaurant owners.
Charley was hungry, dead hungry. He hadn't eaten a square meal since breakfast, because giving blood requires a rigid diet before the blood is taken. And the extra waiting only increased his appetite.
He was well acquainted with the usual little sign hung on the walls of most of the cafes which read: "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone." He knew "anyone" was not just anyone, but someone, someone with dark-colored skin just like himself.
He found the Student Union cafeteria closed. To be sure, he could still get a sandwich and coffee at the Hawk's Nest, but that is little salve to an empty stomach.
Today it's over. It wasn't really very important. It wasn't a big old ugly wound like in Cicero and Detroit and Macon. Just $a$ little cut. Just a little scar.
Return of 'Anvil' to Campus Urged After Students' Arrest
This is Lawrence. In Kansas, 1952.
Dear Editor:
On May 14 two students, Ann Mari Buitrago and Dan Gallin, were arbitrarily seized and imprisoned in the police station. At the time of their seizure, both were selling Anvil and Student Partisan on the edge of the campus, with the permission of the city clerk. They were held two hours before any explanation of their arrest was given.
At the station the two were threatened, intimidated, searched, questioned separately, fingerprinted, photographed—all this admittedly without charge or legal basis whatsoever. When no case could be construed against them or against the Socialist Study club, they were released without bond. They were told the action of the police department was started because of a complaint.
The action of the police was characterized by a deep disregard for civil liberties and for individual freedom. These attitudes are denounced as totalitarian when they occur in the administrations of fascist states. They are just as totalitarian when they occur here.
The administration refused the Socialist Study club permission to tell its official publication on the campus because Anvil is not published by the club alone. It is not considered a student publication andence cannot be sold on the campus. the ruling is based on the Faculty Landbook designed to keep peddlers if mass-circulation periodicals, like life, Time, and Look from flooding县 campus with sales campaigns.
It is important for every student at KU, regardless of political opinion, to recognize the threat to this personal freedom inherent in these procedures. It is a threat to freedom of thought and freedom of research.
Clearly these reasons do not apply o Anvil which is endorsed by a student organization. It is unlikely at Time or Life would be endorsed v KU political organizations. More- ever, there is a demand for Anvil; o f every issue has sold out.
The Socialist Study club publicly notests the action of the police department and encourages the free circulation of ideas. It welcomes
student support to campaign for the return of Anvil to the campus.
Harry J. Rose.
Comments
YOU THINK YOU'RE SMART . .
(A student letter to the Northern Illinois, North Illinois College)
When our educational system reaches a point that in a teachers college, certain members of the student body (and I will not dignify them by calling their students) have copies of the final examinations long before they are given, something should be done and done quickly.
... Some of the students say that if they are smart enough to get away with it, we should not complain. Well, I am complaining because these people are in my classes, and I am sure they are in yours. They raise the curve a few points ... I am complaining because these people are preparing to go out and teach your children and mine to be the same crooks that they themselves are.
Can college instructors be so naive as not to see what is going on, or is it that they don't care? Have they developed an attitude of indifference toward what their students get out of the course? Have they forgotten that there are yet a few who come to college for an education? If they have, then education is doomed to utter failure.
Smart? No, they aren't smart, and
they aren't fooling anyone. Sure,
they get the grades, . . . and the jobs;
but how long can they keep them?
How wrong we are, because nothing can be more unethical than stealing a college diploma, which says you have been graduated from a higher institution of learning on the basis of your academic achievements . . . It could not go on if we did not permit it.
... Many of us sit back and watch these people walk in class and breeze through the exam for which we spent hours of preparation, and we say nothing because we think it unethical to expose them.
Since such a great value is placed on grades, why can't the professors whose tests are circulated change their exams quarterly?
Letters:
Librarian Answers Daily Kansan Editorial
Dear Editor:
An editorial in last Thursday's Daily Kansan contains certain statements concerning the library: (1) undergraduates are not allowed in the stacks regardless of their needs; (2) graduate students must be accompanied to certain stacks by staff, and (3) books charged to a student for 14 days are recalled when assigned for class reading.
Like most large university libraries, the book stacks were not designed to accommodate a large number of students, their main object being to afford shelving space for books and desk space for graduate students and faculty. The larger the number of students in the stacks, the slower the service at the loan desk.
For years an upperclassman who brings a note from his instructor certifying to his urgent need is given a stack permit. On the day of the editorial, such a permit was approved by the library director.
Comment 2 is difficult to understand. Owing to lack of space, books in the Kansas Collection are shelved in two places and must be obtained by the librarian or attendant in charge. Sometimes graduate students ask to be shown the location of certain sets such as newspapers.
. . They are getting their grades at our expense~yours and mine.
ANOTHER OATH . . .
The Massachusetts legislature has passed a law banning the Communist party and making a party member ineligible to teach in either public or private institutions.
The House is now considering a bill instructing "the presidents of the several colleges and the several schools . . . of Massachusetts to expel Communists or Communist sympathizers from their teaching staffs."
Commenting on this bill and on similar moves in other parts of the nation, the Wellesley College News declared;
"We believe that academic freedom is basic to this country. Only through the full exercise of this right does man have a right and a claim to the truth, does America have a role for the future."
CAMPUS RACIAL ISSUE . . .
Two new developments on the question of race prejudice took place on southern campuses last week.
At the University of Tennessee graduate schools were opened to Negro students who can't find equal facilities elsewhere in the state.
And at Piedmont college, Ga., the dean of the school has resigned in protest to his school's accepting money from an avowed racist and anti-Semite.
This new policy is in line with the recommendation made by the federal court in Knoxville last year. The court ruled that the university had to admit four Negro college graduates training in such fields as chemistry and law.
This association is headed by George Armstrong, a cattle and oil millionaire, who has publicly expressed his feelings against Negroes and Jews.
Dr. A. R. Van Cleave said in his letter of resignation, "I fear fascism as much as I do Communism." For more than a year now Piedmont has been getting $500 a month from the Texas education association.
WELL RED HEADLINE . . .
(From the Peptomist, Wisconsin State College)
"Red is Red When Read is Red."
As for comment 3, books issued to students and faculty are always subject to recall if assigned for class reading. Why should 20 or more students be forced to wait 14 days for a book?
Watson library, designed about 1922, follows the most advanced plans of that period. Later libraries, like those at Colorado and Nebraska, follow the divisional plan: a number of smaller reading rooms containing open shelves for the books most used in that particular field.
C. M. Baker library director
Jim Sez 'T'aint Fair'
dear editor,
i gotta complaint. i used to like your little paper til a few days ago when you started carryin all this malarky about segregashun in hilltop cafes, now i dont mind a occasional remark about how discriminahum aint no good but fer gosh sakes have the deceny to keep them remarks occasional and fer good gosh sakes keep em off the front page.
yuh see mr, editor I'm purty dern shore of somethin yer only guessin at and that being that if a conserved noospaper (like yourn) keeps a issue like this here in front of a bunch of pepel (particularly students) for jist a little while then them pepul is most apt to do something about it.
and i no what it is most apt to do, cause ever since old Horace Greeley got his foot in the door a longtime ago i been loosin ground, the next thing you know one of your snoopin reporters will dig around in the law books of this here state of kansas and find out that what exists in lawrence cates is again the law or at best exterlegal.
yuh know if yuh keep up your present policy (of makin your noo-spaper a organ of human dignity) yuh'll force me off this beautiful hill, yuh see I'm a tired ole cuss an jist ain't got the vim an vigor no more to put up much fight against crusaded journalists.
Blood Flows at KU
Dear Editor:
The Defense Department blood mobile completed a successful collection on the campus last week. Details of the recruitment, except for actual assignment of hours, were in the hands of a committee of students.
Only 61 students were rejecte for minor health reasons; 488 were accepted as donors. This contribution, together with 860 successful donors on the previous visit in January, puts the University well over the 1,000-donor margin.
jim crow
We want to thank all students whether they helped as donors or as workers. They must have a feeling of satisfaction for their contribution to the defense effort.
But why burden the rest of the audience? It takes but a small amount of courage to decide either to grin and bear it or bet, to walk quietly out. There's sure to be a cowboy picture down the street.
Ralph I. Canuteson M.D.
Douglas county cler-
American Red Cross.
Perhaps the answer is six hours credit in a compulsory course on good manners, with a 2-hour field trip every week. No, that would never work. There would be too many failures.
For the adult population of Lawrence, it is indeed a gloomy prospect to know that a good movie will be spoiled by a few ill-mannered, egocentric adolescents.
Betsy Murrill
I can readily understand the astonishment and terror felt by the undergraduate who expects to see a western and finds he has to sit through an opera. The ensuing emotion must be well-nigh unbearable.
1925 Rhode Island
Student Conduct Misfires in Movie
I wonder if anything can be done about the behavior of some students in the movie houses. I refer specifically to the Thursday night performance of "The Medium" at the Jayhawker.
B W
Rif
Dear Editor:
POGO and his friends
Marks Women in lented to line Eddi and Maid Miss highest top scoop Miss Di spring won to troop The club's la given Lawner patrick
Miss
mouncee
have h
year: I
Helm,
bank,
Dearkri
Nor
last y
1950.
This y
000,000