KANSAN Comment
Good times, bad times
by Joanna K. Wiebe
The KU students are walking down Jayhawk Boulevard today, lugging shopping bags full of books, wearing summer tans, new clothes and first-week-of-school smiles.
Those smiles are a little weak in some cases.
Many students just barely made it back to this educational mecca this year. And some of our friends didn't make it at all.
Uncle Sam spent his summer vacation hi-jacking college-aged men to serve in Vietnam. In spite of Nixon's celebrated troop withdrawals, the U.S. still maintains the highest number of armed forces in Vietnam on record. These troops are composed of men from places like Overland Park, Seneca, Marion, Garnett, Lawrence.
Men very much like you except that they lack the student deferments you clutch.
A large group of students have had trouble collecting enough money to finance another school year.
Loans are hard to get. Banks are withdrawing from government-backed low-interest loan programs, to seek higher yields elsewhere. Federal loan programs such as the National Defense Student Loan program, have been sharply cut back.
Dollars earned this summer will lose value as inflation continues to boost prices for rent, food, utilities, clothing, books, and the miscellany of college life.
Some of our friends are not enrolling this
semester because the University suspended them for political activity considered undesirable. If you were on the field during the ROTC Review demonstration May 9 and escaped detection or suspension by virtue of your political anonymity, you also are only here at KU this semester by the skin of your teeth.
But in spite of the economic hard times, the draft and political suppression, KU is still well populated. Now that you're all here, stroll around the grounds until you feel at home.
You'll learn that the collective, massive traumas of a behemoth operation like KU often become quite personal neuroses.
Outmoded business methods will mean that thousands of students will stand in endless lines, queuing away time that could be spent living.
Mounting University operating expenses will mean that you will pay more than a hamburger is really worth to the voracious machines in the Union.
The seeming immobility of the power structure may lead several hundred students to demonstrate and perhaps be suspended from school.
Depersonalization becomes the kind of loneliness that will make many students weep and a few commit suicide.
The bad times are crowding in on the Jayhawk Boulevard orbit. Let's get together and roll them back down the Hill.
Opera flourishes
After only one year on the KU campus, the Mount Oread Gilbert and Sullivan company has become enough of a success story to boast financial solvency and plans for two operettas this school year.
Founded exactly one year ago by John Bush and Sandra Carson Jones, two instructors newly arrived from Northwestern University, the company raised funds through private donations and a loan from Student Union Activities (SUA) and produced "The Mikado," which received excellent reviews and public acclaim.
Now the company is beginning work on the first production of the 1969-70 year. It will be "Iolanhe," a satirical confrontation between British Parliament and the inhabitants of a fairy queendom.
Auditions for the production will be from 1 to 5 p.m. this Sunday, Sept. 14, in the Forum Room of the Kansas Union.
John and Sandra Jones, who will direct the troupe again this year, point out that the auditions are open to all classes and majors. They say for "tolanthe," they will need actors, singers and dancers.
"Iolanhe" will be shown some time in October or November, depending upon the completion of the New Union auditorium.
KANSAN
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
An All-American college newspaper
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester, $10 a year. Second semesters: $7 a semester. Special packages, goods, services and employment advertised to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Courses are processed once the course of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Referees.
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Donna Shrader, Steve Haynes
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A different weapon
Fire surrounded the bus as the Flint Hills burned in the night. The bus moved like a shell through the flames. The farmers and ranchers burn away the grass on the hills and leave black areas without life, preparing the land for the summer cattle grazing. It is an old cycle. There is something magical about the ritual.
by Richard Louv
Beside me sat a tiny girl, Ursula, eight years old, with thick glasses and crystalline hair that shined under the reading light. And behind her, next to her silent grandmother, sat her sister Cecelia, also small with thick glasses.
"Are we really married?" Ursula was suspicious.
"Well, if I can't get your ring over my knuckle, we won't be. I don't really want to get married anyway." I gave her back the ring.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because I'm too young."
Cecelia popped up. She had been reserved and quiet, and was older than her sister.
"Besides, Ursula, you'd have to give up Elvis Presley and Ernie Morton," she said. Ursula clutched her thin chest and her eyes went starry.
We were quiet for a while. Around us in the dark the hills burned. The strings of fire stretched around us on all sides now, like a ring...
"When I grow up," said Ursula softly, "I want to be a pick-pocket."
"Catch-22."
"What are you reading?"
"What is it about?"
"War."
"Vietnam?"
"Yes . . . it's about all wars."
"Can I read to you out of it? I'm a good reader." I handed her the book and she flipped through the pages, picking out a passage. She took a deep breath and read, stumbling twice on the words, her hair shining in the thread of light from the ceiling:
"Captain Black knew he was a subversive because he wore eyeglasses and used words like panacea and utopia, and because he disapproved of Adolf Hitler, who had done such a great job of combating un-American activities in Germany." She looked up and smiled.
"Very good. You read well," I said.
"Thank you," said Ursula, then her sister spoke again, peering over the back of the seat.
"We read a magazine," she said. "We read a Life magazine story about a girl our age who lost her leg in Vietnam."
"But this little girl," continued Cecelia, softly, gently, "was just walking along with her mother and father and sister, and they got hit by a rocket. Now she hasn't got any family."
"What?
"Was it an American or Viet Cong rocket?" I asked.
"Was it American or Viet Cong?"
"I . . . I don't know. I never thought about that," she said. And she looked at me strangely. "Anyhow, we cried, Ursula and I."
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