UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
PAGE SIX
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1947
Guest Editorial
If The ASC Had Power—
Whenever the All Student Council is mentioned, the discussion inevitably ends with, "Oh, well, what difference does it make? ASC doesn't have any power anyway." But few students realize why the ASC has so little power.
Any student governing body is delegated the power it shows itself capable of using judiciously, and our ASC has more power right now than it should have by those standards. It is weak, and rightly so.
The members of the ASC are not capable of carrying out their duties. And yet this is not entirely because of petty campus politics. As a whole, the Council is made up of honest, well-intentioned, intelligent students. Why, then, are they so grossly incapable.
In the first place, their election did not show the confidence of the students. Only 30 per cent of the students voted last spring. The Council is hesitant to ever voice a strong opinion, and the administration is reluctant to accept the Council's suggestions, for both realize the ASC is not the "voice of the student." No one is quite as incapable as the person who knows he should not speak for himself, and is afraid to speak for anyone else.
Secondly, only the organizational representatives (who may be, and frequently are, disenfranchized in meetings by the objection of 25 per cent of the "duly elected representatives") have any sense of responsibility to constituents. Elected representatives are accountable to no one except perhaps some "political boss" in their party. No record of the vote is ever taken, and the Daily Kansan seldom credits the sponsorship of the few motions it reports.
Students seldom come to the Council meetings to find out what their representative is doing. A voting record could be published after each meeting, but economy-minded Council members decided against it recently. At the same time, they voted money to make a certain organization national, though this organization affects at best less than one per cent of the student body.
Want To Be Good?
Penitentiaries are on their way out. We deduced this startling bit of information from a recent news story. A man who couldn't break himself of visiting people when they weren't at home and taking everything not nailed down, had that part of his brain which made him do such things removed.
Think of what that means! Judges in criminal trials will no longer say, "I sentence you to Alcatraz island." Instead they will say, "I sentence you to the Makumgood hospital, where you will remain until you are pronounced cured."
Some of our good old American traditions will die out. At baseball games we will give up throwing pop bottles at the umpire and hollering, "Kill him!" Instead, when we throw cushions and bottles, we'll yell, "Remove his frontal lobes"
We won't have to worry about our bad habits now. When we get conscience-strenken about our breaking the law, or the ten commandments, we can simply go to the family surgeon. He'll fix us up.
Science is truly wonderful. Who's next on the operating table?
Wendell Bryant.
The third, and perhaps greatest problem, is that no one has any issues. Honest, well-intentioned, and intelligent Councilmen cannot vote wisely on an issue that is never brought up. Council members, like all other students, are busy, and as they have no time to interview 25 to 50 students each week in quest of problems, very important issues often go unnoticed. In the meantime, small groups through skillful lobbying can attention for such petty things as the "Drum Ceremony" or the freshman cap franchise.
These three shortcomings of the All Student Council can be remedied only by the action of the students themselves. If the average "little cog" on the Hill would (1) vote in each election, whether general, primary or caucus, (2) attend Council meetings when possible and show an interest in voting records, and (3) find out who his representative is, and constantly plague him with suggestions, questions, problems, and issues, every time he gets a chance (and make a few chances) the ASC would become the most powerful body on the campus, bar none.
Councilmen are friendly people. Most of them would appreciate it greatly if someone would tell them what the students want. If a student has a legitimate gripe, the ASC can take care of it better, and correct the situation more rapidly than any other group on the campus. With each problem it solves, the ASC would gain in ability to take care of future ones.
The only sure-fire formula for better student government is for each student to know, write, see, and phone his ASC representative whenever he can think of anything at all which the representative should know.
—Duane Postlethwaite ASC Representative
The Heavens Above
From the days when our ancestors lived in trees to escape the marauding animals on the ground, heaven has been the symbol of hope and escape from the terrors of the earth. From gazing at the sun and the stars, man first discovered a spiritual element in his nature, and discovered or invented gods and spirits.
Man now fears to look at the sky for fear of seeing enemy planes, rockets, or other terror spread by his brother man. Man is losing his ancient belief in and wonder of the heavens above him. And in a measure he may be losing his belief in a spiritual element above somewhere, and thus losing faith in his very self.
The Jewish religion and other ancient religions made the sky the abode of the gods as well as the place to which good men went after death. In looking upward, man escaped from his physical kinship with other animals.
Now the picture is changed. Man thinks in terms of caves and hiding places. The soldier in combat looks for the safety of a hole in the ground. Civilians resort to air raid shelters underground.
More than 50,000 people participated in the race for farms in Oklahoma on April 22, 1889.
My Vote's For Jazz Dear Editor,
Bud Hill, president of Student Union activities, certainly deserves the congratulations of all University students who appreciate jazz. Through the efforts of Hill, University students will have the opportunity to hear Norman Granz's famous Jazz Philharmonic group perform.
Dean Swarthout wouldn't have Granz and his musicians on the concert course. He probably thought that such an organization could not produce any music which would appeal to students or benefit them in any manner.
But the good dean failed to consider the hundreds of students who have no interest in the concert series the University is presenting. Perhaps the students don't know a good thing when they see it, but the fact remains that there are many students who never attend the concerts sponsored by the University and never will.
Though Dean Swarthout couldn't see it, Bud Hill fortunately could. I for one am glad that the Union activities committee signed Granz to a contract and is thus offering to students who appreciate this type of music a chance to hear the best.
Name withheld by request, College senior.
Television At KU Dear Editor.
I noticed a recent article in the Kansas City Star about a television station which is to begin operating at Kansas State college in about a month. This same article explained that the station there will serve only an area including Manhattan and a radius of 22 miles.
What about the Kansas City, Lawrence, and Topeka areas? My idea is that the University is located on Mt. Oread, one of the higher peaks in the area. Wouldn't this be a logical mid-point to erect a television station having cooperating network stations in both Kansas City and Topeka?
Here, I believe, is a great opportunity for the University electrical engineering department to establish
University
Daily Hansan
Student Newspaper of the UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
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Public Postcard
Gardeners,
Campus
Dear Friends,
This is to express our appreciation of the many beautiful flowers we have been able to enjoy on the campus this year because of your efforts.
Sincerely yours, University Daily Kansan.
progress as well as entertainment in this area. Why should we let Kansas State college get so far ahead of us? I just can't believe that K-State would have a television station and we wouldn't.
Name withheld by request.
Letter From Germany
(Editor's Note: The following are excerpts from a letter written by a student in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It was received by Dean Frazier, a student here.)
Dear Dean.
Today is the last day of vacation. In the next few months time will be very short because it is my last semester at the university and the preparations for graduation take very much time. But I am very happy that I can do so.
I like to leave the university as soon as possible. You might be astonished at this hurry. But it has a good reason.
In former days the university has been the center of intellectual life in Germany. But this situation could endure only so long as the university had its foundation in a real scientific sense. But these times are "gone with the wind."
The time of Nazism shook the building of real science. The university as all things, was forced to only one aim, "the national-socialism ideal." A professor who didn't want to follow the new banner had to choose between leaving the university or falsifying the ideals of science by weighting them with political ideas. And thus the university was divided into two parts.
The German university of today is ill. She has not yet found her way back to the aims of every science.
The shocks she got by Nazism have been very heavy and the recovery will be slow. My convictions as to the university are not so firm. It cannot be my intellectual ground. I must find that myself, and I only hope my practise (law) will help me.
Now is harvest time. After a long period of heat, now rain falls. But our crop is very sad. All men are desperate and fear the winter. Officials say it will be a starvation winter.
One fact is oppressing me and my family, too. By the bad nourishment and the great heat this summer we all have infections of the sfomach. Perhaps too much vegetables and the bad bread we get. You could give us a great help if you could send us a package of flour.
Now I must close.
Sincerely,
Eberhard.
Automobiles are subject to greater chassis depreciation when they are driven on rough, sway-backed streets. Tires wear, motor mounts loosen, rattles develop, and even the newest car soon sounds as unreliable as the ancient student reconverted models seen daily wending their weary way up Mt. Oread.
Bubbles
Red brick pavement, vying with the gobblestone streets of European cities for quaintness and with trails of the Central Congo for effectiveness, is still in use in most parts of Lawrence.
Progressive action is needed to make Lawrence a first class city in reality as in name. Why doesn't this town make one of its first projects the remodeling of its impractical streets to ones comparable to the advancements in the automobiles driven over them?
A first class city, with 20,000 population, which has an exceptionally heavy amount of traffic on all streets, allows antiquated pavement to remain in use. A town which depends mainly upon college students for its existence, Lawrence fails to provide decent streets for these students' use.
Larry Funk College junior
Dear Editor,
Quaint Streets
by Ward's Flowers
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