PAGE SIX
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1950
The Editorial Page-
Kansas state legislators are underpaid.
Political Peanuts
Until the 1949 session of the legislature, Kansas lawmakers received $3 a day for their efforts. In 1949 their salaries were raised to $5 a day payable for a maximum of 50 days, but actually the sessions last about 70 days.
In no case can legislators receive more than $250 plus a paltry 15-cents-a-mile allowance for traveling to and from Topeka. But even this traveling allowance can't exceed $240, so they don't break even on it.
In 1945, a page received $2 a day—$1 less than his father in the house of representatives.
Before the salary increase, the people of Kansas had defeated five times a proposed amendment to increase the $3-a-day allowance. A member of the legislature once facetiously proposed that a log cabin dormitory be erected on the capital grounds for the convenience of the lawmakers; that the cabin be equipped with wooden bunks; and that fresh, clean straw be supplied from time to time.
Obviously, anyone who is a legislator has to have some sort of income other than his state salary. We might ask what kind of men are willing to work for such peanuts.
Many lawyers, usually relatively young ones, experience no particular difficulty in getting away from their clients for the session and lose no large volume of income in doing so.
Some legislators are farmers, most of whom are retired. There are merchants, manufacturers, bankers, clerks, real estate men, salesmen, and possibly even a few professional politicians.
All play a part—the able, the mediocre, the selfless, the selfish, the incorruptible, and the men who have a price.
There is a high turnover in legislative personnel which does not improve the legislative process. This may be due to unsatisfactory remuneration.
It is argued that if the salary of legislators were raised to a decent level, professional politicians might compose the legislature. But would you not rather have professionals making your laws than amateurs gathered in Topeka having a good time?
Raise the pay, and get men who make legislating their full-time business. —Marvin Arth.
Freedom's Veil
Tito's government in Yugoslavia is particularly proud of the rights it gives to women. It is particularly indignant toward the old Moslem customs, such as the veiling of the face, that it looks upon as denying women their rights. There are about 450,000 Moslem women in Yugoslavia. So the government has passed a new law. Its purpose is "to make it easier for Moslem women to make full use of their rights" they have won under communism. The provisions of the law? If the Moslem women refuse to take off their veil they will be put in jail for three months or fined seven months' wages—St. Louis Star-Times.
"Law students know what they are here for," said a professor to his class, and anybody can see this truth exemplified each time a coed walks by Green hall.
Little Man On Campus
By Bibler
"Must be a graduate student—I think they have to maintain a "B" average."
Today's Mail
Letter By Four Puzzled Teachers Called 'Agonizingly Cute
Dear Editor:
In regard to that agonizingly cute letter written by the four fearless—however, anonymous—teachers on the subject of football players, I would like to say to them: Thank you so very much for informing us, the undergraduate peons, of the "frightful" situation existing in the American educational system today.
I would like to suggest that in all probability the bull, occasionally at least, fertilized the sod on which he trampled.
You (the four teachers) quote a "famous sociologist" who "in about 1895," said: "Football has the same relationship to physical culture that bull fighting has to agriculture." From your vantage point high in your ivory tower, I wish you would shout down to me what relationship you think that you, the educators, have to education.
You of the teaching hierarchy might wield "the handle end of the academic spoon," but unfortunately the spoon, all too often, contains academic cod liver oil. To illustrate, allow me to quote Dr. John Ise, professor of economics, who says in his pamphlet, The Sales Problem In Education: "We try to sell education as elaborated in text books, which are commonly the dullest, deadest, drearist, most laborious, soulless, perfunctory type of literature offered for sale—the type that no one would conceivably read without compulsion."
"Education as elaborated in text books"—is that the characteristic nature of formal American education? It seems to be, doesn't it?
Jacques Barzun, in the Oct. 16
Love-making seems to be a problem at the University of Wisconsin where a sociology professor proposed that the school set up benches for supervised student necking on a lover's lane along the wooded shores of Lake Mendota.
The dean of women and dean of men vetoed the idea, but the student board president agreed with the professor that college men and women should be allowed to "smooch" under standards of courtship drawn up by university leaders.
Students at the University of Oklahoma will have an opportunity to show off their postures Tuesday night when representatives from campus houses compete for the title of best-postured man and woman. The contest is part of a program called 1950 posture week and stressing the relationship between posture and personality.
"As is is now," said the student president, "campus policemen go sneaking around trying to catch students in the act."
Thirteen Michigan State students stand a chance of serving two-year prison terms or coughing up $1,000 fines for their "celebration" of Michigan university's defeat.
Minnesota university students and faculty teamed up for a bit of robbery. The loot was classical records valued at more than $700, and the felons were described as "intellectuals" with a taste for classical music.
Two northern colleges are having some practical experience with statute books.
Professors at the University of Southern California are said to have fought a losing battle when 25 co-eds took the negative side in a debate over the question, "Are Professors Human?"
issue of Life magazine says in an article entitled, The Educated Man: "Actually, everybody would be happier if the plain fact were admitted (as Jefferson admitted it in his plan for public education in Virginia) that no amount of industry or even acquired knowledge will make an educated man. The specialist knows a great deal and is not educated. The pedant knows more than enough and is not educated." (Pedant? What does he mean, "pedant"? Surely you fellows aren't pardic.)
What then, Fearless Four, does education consist of? Does it consist of memorizing knowledge from those "dull, dead, dreary, laborious, soulless, perfunctory" objects called text books?
You suggest in your letter that the game of collegiate football has grown all out of proportion to the institutions which foster it. That idea is not entirely new to the coaches either, as witness Coach Carl Snavely of North Carolina who says, "The tendency is to dip into gate receipts to go out and get more players to build bigger and better teams, then build bigger stadiums to get bigger crowds to get more money to spend on more players to build bigger and still bigger teams"
One athletic director, quoted in
the Oct. 16 issue of Life, says in referring to big-time collegiate football: "We have created a monster that nobody knows how to slay."
The problem then, is to somehow slay that football monster in order that we may devote more time to the text books, because, as you say, "no responsible person interested in American education can view these corrosive influences with sympathy."
Yes, by all means, let's get back to those text books. And whatever you decide to put in those "academic spoons" will be all right with us. We'll swallow every bit of because after all it's good to the last drop, isn't it?
Perhaps the happy day will come when football players are truly amateur; when coaches are paid less, not more, than college presidents; and when the only alumni demonstration after a losing season is the shedding of an occasional restrained tear.
But, Fearless Four, that happy day must be preceded by an even more joyous day—the day when students are no longer "spoon-fed" from those "dull, dead, dreary, laborious, soulless, perfunctory" objects called text books.
Arthur E. Schaat Journalism Senior
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