KANSAN COMMENT
We Can Help
When football and fraternities were king at the University of Kansas, when Screw magazine was forced to fold and the SDS couldn't enlist enough people to start a chapter here, when there were "hippies" and Youth for Nixon-Agnew and athletes living with KU students, there was an easy sense of organization and of certainty about the campus.
The clamor for reform of the University, of society—was on the upswing; in loco parentis was the common enemy. While the University administration remained in loco, the path of reform was simple: cleave through the endless shackles that bind students, the poor and the disenfranchised, to the dawn of solidarity in authority.
Today students and the young have a measure of that authority. The Student Senate controls, nominally at least, more than $400,000 in student activity fees; the "street people" can provoke confrontations with police and the university where not long ago they could provoke only yawns; schools of the University have voting student representatives; student feelings are felt all the way to the governor's office.
Yet with the triumphs of authority come the cares and failures and tragedies of responsibility.
The Student Senate Executive and Finance and Auditing Committees have labored summerlong to formulate an equitable allocation of the student activity fees. A few members of the Board of Regents have emasculated their power, in part, by freezing athletic department fund recommendations at last year's level and by sending a special subcommittee to investigate the Senators' recommendations. Many campus groups that are student-controlled have lost all or a portion of their activity fees; they are understandably miffed at their peers' forsaking them.
The street people have created an everescalating squabble with police. Although no cause-and-effect relationship has been or can be determined, the conflict of mentalities led to the clashing of bodies and involved the deaths of two youths in July.
The chancellor was selected partially by a group of students and is influenced greatly by students' ideas and actions. Yet a vote to fire him has failed narrowly in a Regents meeting. This falls' election campaign, which may become hot enough to involve Chancellor Chalmers, portends ill for the students' backer in Strong Hall.
The agonizing realization of the impact that power has can quickly bring the powerful and the semi-powerful to humility. And the realization that power is never total can bring a taste of exasperation to the romantics who imagine that, once rhinestones are forsaken, diamonds are theirs.
Both of these conflicts, which are inherent in assumption of power, will affect KU this fall. What the outcome will be is uncertain, and to many students it is no doubt immaterial.
But for those students who believe that our microcosm will be the prototype of the colliding forces in the future, the Kansan will attempt to be a guide to understanding.
We will try to report, analyze and moralize about the news of KU and the news that bears on KU.
Our analysis and moralizing you may accept or reject; our reporting, we hope, will be complete and factual, so that you will rightly trust our news pages.
In that way at least, we can help you to resolve the conflicts of students' waxing authority and to understand the inevitable concomitant disappointments.
—Monroe Dodd Editor of the Kansan
The Lighter Side Whither the Bard On Women's Lib?
By DICK WEST UPI Writer
WASHINGTON-According to some scholars, William Shakespeare was something of a woman hater.
That being the case, I made a search of the bard's works for clues to how he might have felt about the Women's Liberation Movement.
Then, as my contribution to Wednesday's demonstrations, I pieced them together into a Shakespearian news conference:
Q. Mr. Shakespeare, what is your opinion of the Women's Lib protest strike?
Q. And what is your feeling towards Betty Friedan, who organized the strike?
A. "In the gross and scrope of my opinion this bodes some strange eruption to our state. I know my place as I would they should do theirs."
A. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks. She speaks yet she says nothing. Though she be but little she is fierce. A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing."
Q. Well what kind of woman do you prefer?
A. "A maiden never bold of spirit, so still and quiet that her motion blush'd at herself. A woman moved is like a fountain troubled—muddy, it seeming, thick, bereft of beauty."
Q. Are you suggesting that Miss Friedan is too militant?
A. "She speaks poniards and every word stabs. Zonds: I was never so bethump'd with words since I first call'd my brother's father dad. Fie, fie upon her. There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip."
Q. Are you intimidated by her?
A. "Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humor?"
Q. Some women have been burning their brassieres as a symbol of liberation. Would you comment on that?
A. "Let them hang themselves in their own straps."
Q. Women have been urged to abstain from sexual relations on the day of the strike. Do you think they will do so?
A. "Have you not heard it said full out, a woman's nay doth stand for naught?"
Q. Aren't you at all in sympathy with what the lib leaders are trying to accomplish?
A. "Old fashions please me best. Such duty as the subject owes the prince, even such a woman oweth to her husband."
Q. Thank you Mr. Shakespeare.
SenEx on Campaigning: No Recess
To the students and faculty of the University of Kansas:
The concern for the future of this country has motivated many student and faculty members to a new level of political consciousness and to a higher degree of political participation. This year's election provides, once again, an opportunity for the strengthening of the concept of responsible citizenship. Members of the University community, realizing that it is essential that a sizable percentage of citizens participate in choosing public officials in order to insure the responsiveness of its officials, have been planning to work for the candidates of their choice in the coming elections. This intention to participate in the political process has produced, on the part of some, a suggestion that the University of Kansas declare an official "political recess" from mid-October through election day; or, if the recess is not declared, then it is suggested that the University grant immunity from academic sanctions to all who leave the campus to participate in the political campaigns.
As an institution dedicated to the promotion of education and as a state institution responsible to the people of Kansas, we cannot fail to provide those educational opportunities that constitute our stated purpose. To provide for those educational opportunities the University of Kansas must be open and in operation. We cannot, therefore, declare an official "political recess," a declaration that would have the effect of closing the University for at least two weeks. Furthermore, we cannot change the academic calendar, either by shortening it or by rearranging blocks of time, without approval by the Board of Regents.
Moreover, the University of Kansas has endeav-
ored to cease acting in loco parentis. There is no University policy, for example, which uniformly and rigidly requires class attendance. Conversely, there should be no policy which creates a blanket insurance coverage for those who do not attend class by granting immunity from academic sanctions or relief from academic requirements. Each student must decide for himself the best uses of his time. In short, any student who absents himself from class must do so on an individual basis, assuming the usual responsibility for demonstrating his mastery of the content of each of his courses.
Ruling out the declaration of the political recess and the granting of immunity from academic sanctions, does not, however, exhaust the possibilities for the concerned individual. Students who are interested in working for political candidates in other than their "spare time" should propose arrangements to their instructors, as soon as possible and preferably at the time of enrollment, for making up such class meetings, examinations, or deadlines for other assignments as they choose to miss in order to undertake the political activity. We urge all faculty members to consider seriously the educational value of such proposals as well as their own educational responsibilities when making their decisions on the propriety of substitution, postponement, and making up work. We would also expect each instructor to make clear at the outset those arrangements acceptable to him along with his policy regarding absences. The propriety of an accommodation must not, of course, rest on the particular beliefs and political loyalties of the instructor, the student, or the political candidate. It must be realized, however, that both logic and logistics may rule out completely such arrangements in certain types of courses.
We believe that the University of Kansas must continue to provide wide and rich educational opportunities for all those who wish to take advantage of them. The choice of whether, when and in what manner to avail oneself of such educational opportunities is now, as it always has been, a decision for the individual responsible member of the academic community. To provide for that decision, the University will be open and active, as planned, throughout the coming school year.
The University of Kansas believes that one of its major objectives is to educate men and women about their responsibilities, rights, and privileges as citizens of the United States. To achieve this objective there will be some courses offered in the fall that will be timely in their analysis of the political system, and several schools intend to encourage and sponsor non-partisan and balanced programs of forums, seminars, lectures, speeches, and other forms of interaction that will facilitate appropriate political involvement by all interested segments of the University community.
University Senate Executive Committee
Executive Committee
William J. Argersinger Jr.
Karon Baucom
Russell N. Brandt
M William M. Lucas
Ross E. McKinney
John S. McNown
Bradley Smoot
Richard L. vonEnde
Paul E. Wilson
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