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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Dec. 6, 1951
by Bibler
Kansan Editorials Eureka!A Solution For Hour Examinations
After much deliberation and considerable bickering, we have arrived at a solution for all campus ills. It is the closest thing to a quiz-free school life yet to spring from the minds of common journalists. Even our most bitter critics admit it may revolutionize the American system of collegiate study.
What we propose is designed to take the burden off the student and at the same time allow him an immeasurably better chance at making better grades. Perhaps it sounds like a Utopia and in its own small way it may be.
Our proposal is this: "Be it resolved that all teachers, instructors, professors, deans, janitors, milkmen, and lawyers, who deem it necessary that their pupils should be given periodical examinations, should henceforth post, in a public place, regularly visited by their colleagues, the proposed date and time of any such mental torture."
One must excuse the extremely legalistic verbiage used in the resolution. It was deemed necessary by the Daily Kansan legal advisers. What it means is precisely this: We need some sort of a plan which will eliminate students having three and four hour quizzes on the same day. With so many days in the week, is it necessary for the tests to all be on one day?
If this sounds like sour grapes, forget it. It is. But such a proposal does have its merits. There really is no justification for such a situation in the middle of the semester. A few days difference one way or the other isn't so terribly important. And it would make it so much easier on the student, both physically and mentally.
Wouldn't it be possible for each department of the curriculum to make some arrangements to avoid this totally undesirable plan? Perhaps a simple list on the office bulletin board would alleviate the situation. Or even more simpler, a brickbat might work.
And so we ask you of the faculty, can't you take some steps toward remedying the situation? If done only on a departmental situation, it would help some. An entire school of the University would be even better, and eureka, the whole damn University would be wonderful.
(Drop curtain as editor slumps to the floor, a
jeweled dagger through his heart and a crimson cup at his lips.) —A.G.M.
Saturday's clashes between such good old rivals as Army-Navy, Kansas-Missouri, and others ended a tough and troubled season for college football.
Football In '52?
And almost immediately people will begin to wonder how the alma mater team will shape up next season, what's going to happen to the two-platoon system and the substitution rules—yes and even what will be the fate of our old favorite, honored and traditional American sport—football.
This year seemed to climax all the attacks that have ever been made on the game. Almost everyone, including college presidents, professors, and even Hollywood, has been out to slam that "primitive, uncultured, uneducational, and demoralizing" sport from our American way of life.
Thank goodness there are two, and even more, sides to the controversy. To quote, "When it comes to criticizing football, the nation's college presidents seem to be divided into offensive and defensive platoons."
We're wondering just how long it will last. Football games could no more be thrown out of our list of traditions than Thanksgiving day, fireworks, or Santa Claus.
If the time comes when it's proven that football has more bad points than good, Okay, proceed with the changes. But the sight of thousands of people of all ages thoroughly enjoying themselves on Saturday afternoons in stadiums all over the country—win or lose—is proof that the time hasn't come yet!
—Kansas State Collegian.
But in all their attacks these authorities have overlooked one important part of the game—the fan. Or to be specific, the people who sit on the sidelines and shiver or swelter, and the people who stay glued to their radio and TV sets at home.
Editor's Note: The Collegian editorial is printed for two reasons. First, to provide a topic of discussion with a relatively new angle of approach. And second, to present "the other side" of the controversy. We have taken no definite stand on the subject. Our only comment is that most controversy seems to center about deemphasis rather than abolishment, although a few schools have done the latter. —A.G.M.
Letters To The Editor
American Imperialism And The Quakers
Dear Editor:
Little Man On Campus
The drift away from reality which has characterized our Asian policy since 1945 has turned into a pell-mell flight into nightmare, if Hanson Baldwin's thinking can be taken as any index of State department opinion.
We have wont to regard post-war events in Asia from the confining perspective of the sand in which our ostrich heads are buried. Yet Mr. Baldwin wonders why our strategic position in Asia worsens year after year.
Americans see the revolution of 1776 as the successful attempt to get the British off our backs. But when Asians, smoldering under three centuries of Western colonialism, show the same contempt for their rulers, we conveniently (if blindly) label their hostility as being "foreign-inspired," and rush into every bristling area to prop up the status quo. The fact that Asia's status quo is represented by such rotters as Bao Dai, Chiang Kai Shek, and Synghman Rhe has not the least impression upon us.
How is it that America, who, throughout the era of British and French imperialism, fought the concept of the "white man's burden," is now guilty of defending it all over
When Hanson Baldwin spoke to a schoolwide convocation recently, he had just returned from an extensive tour of Asia. He reported that things are so bad for "us" in Indo China that French officials can no longer sit chatting at their sidewalk cafes in Saigon without fear of a grenade being thrown in their midst.
But no. People like Mr. Baldwin are ready to extend the Korean war to include bombing of Manchurian bases "and take the chance of this involving us in World War III." The rearming of Japan is a quiet, respectable reality to him. What puzzles me is that he doesn't seem to
Asia? To make the struggle palatable to the American people, we call it "the defense of the free world against Communist aggression."
This might be ironically amusing, were it not true that our nation is the main source of material for France's continued subjugation of the people in this rich colony. Where is the anger of the American people, who have studied in their history books that colonies are simply a source of cheap labor and raw materials for an already rich nation? I should think that we would accord to the Asians the same right of revolt against economic oppression that we accord ourselves.
It would seem self-evident that a continent of people sitting in daily fear of being bombed out of existence would show hostility to the nation who threatens the bombs. Not to mention the disturbing effect which our Operation Killer—20th century Christianity in practice—has had on all of Asia. How can they feel friendly, knowing of the deliberate annihilation of North Korean civilians by napalm and other enlightened weapons of the Great Democracy?
I would welcome a schoolwide convocation, with a speaker from the American Friends Service committee, who would present the thinking of the Quakers on international events.
understand why we won't have any friends in Asia.
What are we coming to? More napalm and an atom bomb to settle their acid indigestion?
Sue Buckingham Freshman Medicine
I read their pamphlet, "Paths to Peace," which was quoted in a recent Daily Kansan editorial, and their analysis seems sober and constructive. It is imperative for all of us to have peace. Let us hear from the Quakers, who are leading proponents of that doctrine.
"I guess Worthal won't be running down Battenfeld steps for a while!"
News From Other Campuses
Something Different In Polls New Type Of Debate
Students named Aristote, Washington, Jackson, Jefferson, Taft, Marshall, Lincoln, McCarthy, Hamilton and Harding were interviewed at the University of Wisconsin in an effort to find out student views on a proposed compulsory American history course there.
Students Seek Jazz Course
A student-inspired agitation to add a jazz appreciation course to the music curriculum at the University of Washington is in progress. Among reasons given by students for the new course was that jazz is one of the few arts truly American.
Debates by mail is the latest thing at Iowa state college. Tape recordings are made and sent to the competing school. The new plan is proposed with the idea that it might eliminate some of the malpractices of the present discussion contests.
Mail subscription: $ a semester. $4.50 a year, (in Lawrence add $1.00 a semester postage). Published in Lawrence, Kans. every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. Unattended classes. Entered as second class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at the Post Office at Lawrence, Kans., under act of March 3, 1879.
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