PAGE SIX
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
100%
JANUARY 6,1947
Kansan Comments.
Who's Dumb?
While you were home, you probably heard some of your friends say something like this, "I don't think I'll go back second semester; I just can't get it; I guess I just must be a dumbie."
That person wasn't dumb; he's smart. He's begun to realize that he's one of the persons who's not fitted to go to college.
Some people eat up school work; others have to fight their way to a college degree; still others couldn't get a degree in anything, no matter how hard they worked. And it's nothing to be ashamed of if you are in that last category.
Those of you who were in the army remember that the army had a number of tests which it gave to determine what job you were best fitted for. Despite all the jokes about how the army fouled up in placing men in military jobs, the army usually managed to put square pegs in square holes and round pegs in round holes.
The army tests were based on the idea that everyone has a certain temperament, a certain set of latent capabilities which determined whether combat duty or rear echelon duty or stateside service was best for each soldier. A prizefighter might be temperamentally unfit for combat duty while a hairdresser might give promise of being a suicide squad soldier.
Everyone is entitled to spend some time finding out what kind of work best suits his capabilities. If he finds that he doesn't have the particular ability needed for going to college, he hasn't wasted any time because he's eliminated college from his list of possibilities.
The person who finds college isn't for him and so leaves school isn't dumb; the person who's dumb is the one who has that ability and wastes it or the person who doesn't have that ability and insists on continuing to waste time in a futile effort to buck his way through.
Hangovers
In a pre-New Year's Eve story, Hal Boyle, AP feature writer, suggested that suspending a Japanese war sword by a silk cord over one's bed would solve the question of whether life was worth living after an evening celebrating the coming of 1947.
While his article wasn't intended to be serious, he did put some good psychology in it. He realized that some strong stimulus must be used to break the lethargy which inevitably follows every period of high-pressure living.
Most of us, whether we realize it have been on an emotional binge ever since we departed from the University for the Christmas holidays.
The excitement of meeting hometown people again, of comparing notes with seldom-seen buddies, of changing completely one's routine of living for more than two weeks is an emotional binge; and an emotional binge produces just as uncomfortable a hangover as an alcoholic binge. It may not be as intense as a hangover born of alcohol, but it's a hangover just the same.
If a dangling sword can be the stimulus to make one decide he
wants to live despite his physical condition, then the thought of final examinations should make one decide to get rid of the effects of an emotional hangover. Less than four weeks remains before finals and if that thought doesn't make you decide time's awaisting, you're not just hanging over, you're past all hope.
Dear Editor----
Dec.18,1946
There have been two events lately that seem to give new hope to us incoming freshmen that the sorry state of student politics may improve after all.
First, the formation of the United Women's Council, if it carries out its aims, is a milestone in achieving a goal. The body with a broader frame of mind.
Second is the announcement of the Progressive party and its platform. The six fraternities are to be commended for their efforts to remove the Greek-independent barriers.
The next move seems to be up to the independents as to what effort they will make in the same direction. I hope that before our student leaders meet on a question concerning the nearly nine thousand students on the campus, they will check their I.S.A. cards and their Greek pins outside that meeting door, and that, in this way, the need of the student will be considered and judged in an unbiased manner.
I think that your paper has improved greatly in the last two or three weeks. You seem to have reported the news in as unbiased a way as could be desired or hoped to be achieved. You seem to be the official organ that we can present to others with pride and esteem.
One suggestion is that you might give a little more play to student-sponsored programs such as plays, lectures, and other similar activities.
Otis "Bud" Hill College freshman
Dec.18.1946
"If we could get rid of the engineers, we wouldn't have to worry about peace," said Prof. John Ise in a speech to an initiation banquet. . . . "The engineers," he said, "spend their time developing diabolic and complicated machinery that complicates our society. People just can't keep up with it."
It was with incredible amazement that I read the above excerpt from an article in the Daily Kansan. (Dec. 18) Amazement, yes! For I was dumbfounded that a supposedly intelligent professor of this great University would make such a stupid and thoughtless statement as that. I say stupid and thoughtless because I find it utterly impossible to excuse such a statement on the premise that it was a "slip of the tonue."
Let Professor Ise remember that, except for the engineer, he wouldn't have any "diabolic and complicated" automobile, or bathroom with hot and cold running water, automatic flushing stool and so forth.
If Professor Ise will take a few moments off from his speech making and read a little history (both ancient and modern) he will find that wars were being fought by money and power-mad politicians and economists long before engineering had shed its three-cornered pants. It is indexed unfortunate that the product of engineering labor should be turned to terrible uses. But by whom? Engineers? Hell no! Politicians and those peculiarly perverted human beings that we call economists.
Professor Ise's solution of the problem "How to preserve the peace," calls for the use of professors because, as he says, "They're cheap labor and generally honest." With only a few more statements such as he made, we can add the words "AND SIMPLE" in capital letters.
Engineering freshman (Editor's note—Professor Ise, who is sometimes called "The old curmudgeon of K.U.," has been known to speak with his tongue in his cheek.)
Jack Stines
Minneapolis, (UP)—That women still want to hang onto their regular weekly pay-checks is proved by the experience of a Minneapolis firm which discloses that 60 per cent of its factory employs today are women.
Women Get Foot In Door, Stay On Payroll
Minneapolis Honeywell Regulator company has employed women in its assembly departments for more than 23 years because of their proven ability to manufacture of small precision instruments of the type made by the company.
During the war, because of manpower shortages and the need for greatly expanded production, employment of women was increased until they comprised approximately 30 per cent of the company's total sayrolls.
That percentage still holds today
—15 months after V-J day.
Vancouver, Wash. (UP) — Two prowlers were frightened away when a neighbor shouted "boo" at them, Anna Oltjenbruns told police. The prowlers had stolen into her backyard to steal wood.
'Boo' Routs Prowlers
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