4
Friday, October 30, 1970
University Daily Kansan
RICHARD LOUV COLUMN
(This is a—sort of—speech that was given at last Wednesday's student convocation. The writer is at loss for anything else to print right now, and besides, he believes this stuff ...)
Some of you have already made up your minds that student involvement is a bunch of potage. Some of you may have already decided you're going to blow up another bathroom. And some of you have doubts about what your education is worth, and why you're here. I would like to transcend the immediate question of 20 per cent representation for students on policy making committees . . .
There are two kinds of revolutions that fail most of the time; bureaucratic and political. We say we get 20 per cent or even 50 per cent. What will happen? There will always be the few students who work with the faculty, either as brown-users, or in a sincere fashion.
What has been lacking though, what we cannot do a thing without, is a groundswell of student discussion about our education. We must have a change of consciousness in this University. Since kindergarten
"... we would take responsibility for our education on ourselves. It would mean that we would no longer let someone else determine for us our set of academic values."
we've been taught to blame the teacher if we're not learning. What the change of consciousness would mean is that we would take responsibility for our education on ourselves. It would mean that we would no longer let someone else determine for us our set of academic values.
Twenty per cent is fine, Fifty per cent is better. But more important than that is whether a great number of us in this University confront the fact that we just might be niggers.
"It's ironic. Radicals dream midnight police raids, or sit around over coffee and talk with glittering eyes about Repression—about those interment camps that are waiting empty. And all the time Miss Jones does her quiet thing with the kids in third grade.
"People like to chat about the fascist threat or the communist threat. But their visions of repression are for the most part romantic and self-indulgent. And in the meantime someone stops another tenth grader for a hall pass check and notice that his T-shirt doesn't have a pocket on it. In the meantime the Bank of America hands out another round of high-school achievement awards.
"God knows the real massacres continue. But the machine gun isn't really what is to be feared most in our civilized Western world. It just isn't needed that much. The kids leave Miss Jones's class. And they go
on to junior high and high school and college. And most of them will never need to be put in an internment camp. Because they already there. Do you think I'm overstating it? That's what's so frightening; we have the illusion that we're free."
So while we moulded in the ivy tower, the community of scholars stands back in this state, and Wichita remains the third most segregated city in America, and a few miles north of Topeka an Indian reservation exists where children rot from mainnutrition, where there have been cases of the same disease seen in Blafra, where the child's belly bloats and his hair turns orange. The ivy tower just sits there and allows eight thousand migrant workers to come into this state every year, eight thousand migrant workers who can expect to live only until they are 49 years old, who are exploited and enslaved by good Kansans, and good Texans, and good Americans everywhere, who probably went to college just like us.
Jerry Farber wrote:
★★
So please understand, that the discussion which will go on for the next few weeks on this campus, in the dorms and fraternities and sororites and apartments and communes, has to consider more than whether or not the faculty is going to let the students have 20 per cent control over the committees. We have to use this as a stepping stone, to talk about what exactly KU has to do with the rest of the world and with our own individual lives.
The only other point is that when you call a man your enemy, he becomes your enemy. If this is to be called a movement, then it can't be an anti-faculty movement. Perhaps they're niggers too, slaves or an ethic that must be changed, an ethic that only encourages the generation gap. We've been forced by that ethic to give the apple, but they've been forced to take it, and we've both been demeaned.
I truly believe that education may be the last door in America which we have the power open. There are some times in history when all
LETTERS
"I truly believe that education may be the last door in America which we have the power to open . . . We have the key, here and now, and soon the lock will rust."
To those who are afraid of what lies beyond, I am sorry. To Dean Gorton I would say that perhaps we have not yet begun to participate, and you may yet learn to swim in this mess of potriage called student involvement.
the doors are locked. And there are other times when one door can be unlocked. We have the key, here and now, and soon the door will rust.
The Irrelevance of Extremism
To the Editor:
I've heard a great deal about student involvement lately—everything from calling it a mess of pottery to approval of some unnamed action if the University Senator doesn't replace our 20 per person representation. Everyone has an opinion and everyone should.
But there are different levels of opinion. These two are probably the least popular and precisely because they are so extreme. This is not an argument for middle-of-the-reading, but it says something interesting about the idea that the writer can usually be counted on to avoid the irrelevance of extremism.
Most students are non-vocal but nevertheless seem to be dissatisfied with the opinions of his classmates, fortunately another position that makes a great deal of sense. The beginning of this position was given to him by a meeting by Prof. Arthur Skidmore of the Philosophy Dept. His idea has a kind of logical force which can make many of you non-extramens.
His point is simply that representation is not participation. This means that, if you are presenting your position to Senate by elected representatives, then you are not yourself participating in the decision making process. In other words, he has no choice but to make decisions, either directly or indirectly. Here Prof. Skidmore stopped. But, if this seems confusing, I will just try to think of the names of your senators. If you don't know
them, then how can you think that you are being represented let alone involved yourself?
Now, if you grant this point,
that you are not involved in
making the decisions that govern
you, then you must grant that
you must grant that there is a
To the Editor:
Open Zones At Night?
possibility of those decisions being irrelevant to you particular intentions. If you then feel that the possibility of taking are not relevant to your intentions, the possibility of making mistakes has become a reality. If
As a concerned parent, I am writing this in regard to the restrictions put on University life and because there are no classes being held.
I have a daughter attending the University of Kansas and her course of study requires a great deal of research and review in University buildings. Because of recent incidents, both on campus and off, she is afraid that she will not be able to reach her destination. She has a car, but because of the restricted zones, she is unable to walk under high unlightened, unpatrolled areas.
It would seem to me a solution to this problem would be to open up the room and let students park at night, to student-prepare your attention to this problem as soon as possible as only a few students only student that feels this way.
You might suggest that buying a permit is the answer but undergraduate students so seldom possess the permits for these restricted edition, that would only provide parking in one zone and if study was necessary in another area on campus, you would have invalid and the original problem
would again arise
I hope the University realizes the seriousness of this matter and is as concerned about it as much as the parents, and will take immediate steps to do something about it.
Mrs. Mary Firner Albright Kansas City, Mo.
Gutter Cheers Disgusting
To the editor:
Mrs. Fern Childers Kansas City
As an alumna and firm supporter of KU, I feel I have a right to express my total disagust and dissatisfaction with the filthy, unclean students are being taught to yell in the stadium at football games.
I will not take my family to any more events where the children are on the ground, fathly ways of healing our land and beading no wonder we can't fill the room.
If this is the only way they have to get the enthusiasm going, we are certainly losing our touch with God and decent living.
case, the next step is to realize that because many of your courses are irrelevant and the degree you seek is nothing but a representation of these courses, the next degree is also irrelevant.
If this seems plausible to you, I would submit that you have only one consistent course of action, regardless of the requirements, which seem irrelevant to you just as you now and in the past have ignored all those non-required courses that you have not read, words, the only real student involvement is to decide your own course of study for yourself. This is the only way to make your own education relevant to yourself. You should be important and that's the only way you'll ever be satisfied with it.
Jim K. Swindler Pratt sophomore
As for representation on policy making bodies, the only real function such representation can serve is as a member of the members of the necessity of the autonomy of student decisions concerning their personal experience.
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"That's one Canadian we're separated from."
The Real Sex Revolution
By PATRICIA McCORMACK
NEW YORK (UPF)—The real revolution, where women are concerned, has nothing to do with the birth control pill, contraceptive injections lasting a month—or free love.
What it has to do with: Admitting that sexual relations are not always that great. Among some women, mainly radical and militant women liberators, even the benefits of celibacy are discussed seriously.
This view of the latest sex revolution, female style, comes from Dr. Jessie Bernard, who aired it during a discussion of "changing lifestyles for women." It happened at the annual meeting of the American Home Economics Association.
She said more married women as compared to single women are depressed, passive, phobic, and though the number's not large, more show psychosomatic symptoms.
A report on her views of the forces changing contemporary women appears in the current Journal of Home Economics, the association's official publication.
The fact that women are willing to pay this price for marriage shows that they need
Dr. Bernard, a former professor of sociology at Pennsylvania State University, is a member of the Advisory Committee on Uniform Marriage and Divorce Legislation of the National Commission on Uniform State Legislation.
Another boat Dr. Bernard rocked was the homefront itself, the so-called privatized household. She said it is not a natural phenomenon. It hasn't been with humanity since the beginning of time. It emerged about the 16th century and now appears destined for the chopping block.
and want it, but does it have to have such a negative effect on them," Dr. Bernard asks.
"Suggestions are now being thrown into the hopper for ways to provide families with enough privacy so that they can enjoy their intimate relations but not so much isolation that contact with others becomes too hard to enjoy spontaneously and informally," she said.
Ah, sociology!