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Friday, October 8, 1971
Section 1 University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Welcome Home
"The times they are a 'changin'."
— Bob Dylan
Dear alumni.
This is your weekend, your homecoming. But home, you may or may not discover in your brief visit, has changed.
Beer drinking is as popular as ever, but marijuana smoking is also rising.
Joe College and Betsy Coed are still around, but their numbers are
Short hair is still to be seen, but lesions and bushy faces are more common.
Pep rallies still happen, but demonstrations draw anger crowds.
In short, the old school's still here,
but new institutions - we like to think
different.
We are more diverse. Our philosophies, our politics, our styles of living run the entire social gamut—from Karl Marx to Milton Bayle—from redneck to revolutionary, from sororites to communes.
We like to think we are more free than you. Free to choose where and how we will live, free to choose and shape and hopefully improve the lives of our lives, free to make our lives happy, free to make love and not war.
But we are under attack. The Kansas Legislature has cut our funding to the bone. As a result we
The Board of Regents keeps ever closer tabs on our activities, and thus our Student Senate has found that we very thin ice on several occasions.
We've seen other friends we've been and jailed for political activities.
And so we are a little disillusioned in the land of the free and the home of the brave, and we are a little scared too.
are overcrowded, underserved and understudied. Some of our best faculty have already left, and others are making plans to follow.
Our positions aren't quite as secure as they used to be. We know that comfortable jobs and nice homes don't necessarily await us when we graduate, but we're not even sure we want them. We know the work is taking place that is noisy, crowded, pollution-ridden and strife-torn, and we are not sure we want to embrace that society.
Yes, we are your sons and daughters, but we are a different now.
—Pat Malone
Our attorney general has gone after drug users with a vengeance, and don't kid yourself, he's not just after the "pushers" and the "hard drugs." We've seen friends pulled out of bed in the pre-dawn hours to be arrested for what we think are unjust reasons.
Hoopla Not Enough
As I write this editorial, a few brothers at a local fraternity are busy dyeing 200 athletic supporters and 50 brassieres crimson and blue and emblazoning each with "POPP."
And on Saturday no doubt someone will unfurl an old banner that says K-Straight, Nixon's Hilder High School and trot around the stadium with it.
Fraternities and sororites are constructing giant jayhawks out of coyotes.
Two weeks ago, a sturdy crew of KU students sneaked around Manhattan for two days busying themselves by changing the giant "KS" on a hill outside of Manhattan to "KU."
That one has been a favorite since last Fall when the President made a speech at K-State wearing a "purple pride tie."
That may seem a bit hypocritical coming from the same school that called K-State straight, and perhaps the same time the hypocrisy can be justified.
This has been a slim year for KU, the economic squeeze has injured the University at all levels. So members of the university community are on their best behavior in hopes that some of the lost support
Now outside Lawrence, waving above the Turnpike terminals, you'll find banners proclaiming "Welcome to our country, wear your blue to the games."
Sadly, many people's association with KU only comes in the Fall in Memorial Stadium. And consequently, if you take away from that festival--you hurt other segments of the community.
But, as Pat points out above, the university community is different. Students won't be satisfied with learning decorations and pompons.
You'll see KU fraternity men with long hair and beards who advocate liberal political yelling "Give 'em hell Big Blue" at the game.
The games are fine and we can all enjoy them, but there's got to be more. Certain traditions at KU run deeper in the minds of many present students than the win-loss record in the '71 season.
The scholastic standards that are now endangered, the facilities that have become crowded, the faculty that has become overworked and underpaid—these are important enough to KU students for them to welcome alums to the campus with all the tissue trappings of the past.
The students will wave the banners and cheer the cheers, but not forget their concern for the future of this University.
—Mike Moffet
In Humor's Defense
It is often suggested, by those older than me, that my generation has lost its sense of humor.
Any alumni, friends or visitors who receive a leaflet protesting the appearance of Bob Hope here have received a sure, have this suspicion confirmed.
If I would be so bold as to speak for my generation let me say that humor is far from dead on this planet or other campuses or in the generation.
to be freed. It comes at moments cataclysmic and mundane. It is ribald and discreet. It litters and forms solemnity into high comedy.
It is a humor, moreover, that has not forgotten a larger commitment. It is a humor that doesn't necessarily involve escape. It is dualistic. Often the line is so dim it hard to decide whether to laugh or cry.
Indeed, it lives and thrives. It begs
So, if you are visiting, enjoy yourself—we will.
—Tom Slaughter
Readers Respond
Viet Vets; Register; Blacktop...
To the Editor:
Open Letter to Rob Hope
As Vietnam veterans we wish to welcome you to the University of Kansas Homecoming and to express our appreciation to you and your troupe for your time and efforts to entertain us at Christmas when we were in Southeast Asia.
However, we also wish to express our disagreement with your statements in support of President Nixon's policies in Southeast Asia. In particular, we do not agree that United States military forces are in Southeast Asia "fighting to keep this country safe" nor do we agree that Vietnamization is working.
From personal experience we oppose this unjust, illegal, and immoral war and call for an immediate unilateral cease fire to subsequent withdrawal of armed forces from Southeast Asia.
Jon Burdsall, President
Lawrence Vietnam Veterans
Arains the War
Having formally established my required 30-day residency in Lawrence, I treated down to the First National Bank building last week and needed information to the clerk. I felt compelled to make conversation, so I did. "I bet you be pretty busy down here," he said. "I'm going to mean what with the election over and the registration books open again, you must be seeing a lot of students, you know those kids are not acting rioting, etc." (And other related activities of Consciousness III.)
To the Editor
"No," she replied again. "It's actually been slower than we expected, although you never know about them, they could all be swamped." "Could they could be swamped?" "Plausible, but not too probable," I replied.
Walking out of the Bank building headquarters of City, Inc., I reflected on the realities. There is the crusade of the bankers to prevent employees against rampant crime in the state. (Anyone care to bet on the quick indictments of the Great Bend Gamblers?) Many people think that the possession of the nefarious weed, marijuana. A veritable prince of the free speech movement, Ren Shultz, has, I find upon returning to Lawrence, moved on to the House and then to the House. And last, but not least, the possibility of the Governor trading places with one of the Congressmen for a chance to better represent the student's views in the weed. A seat on the Education committee, perhaps?
Hodge judge, I thought as I passed the "counter culture" headquarters. Anyone care to trade a pair of faded 1938 bell-bottoms for your right to vote? Mr. Mason's keyet of the Midwest," I thought.
Imagine the alternative, 2 million college students registering and voting in 1972 versus ah yes, the perennial Nixon, Agnew, Mitchell syndrome. Tough decision, I thought. Consider even further: 17,000 screaming, socially conscious students from 'K. U. on the Kaw' demanding for poor clerk demanding their vulnerable right to . . . "Not very busy at all," she said.
"EIDETIC FEELINGS AMERICAN," I thought, and the red light changed.
Lawrence, Special Student
—Mark Bedner
To the Editor:
The trouble with "TwoLane Blacktop," perhaps, is that it is not "a car vehicle." It is not a James Taylor movie, for instance, the way every John Wayne movie is a JOHN WAYNE movie, and every Presley picture an ELVIS PRESLEY picture.
No, it just so happens that James Taylor is in this movie, and it just so happens that the role he plays, that of "the driver," requires him to do neither any singing nor any dancing. He walks and talks like every long-haired American kid on campus today, and that's enough to make him effective for this film.
Then again, perhaps the trouble with "Two-Lane Blacktop" is that it is not a "racing picture" — the same way that John Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix" was an n-o-nense-now but ob-so-dull (dull dull) dull. Leuchus' "A Man and a Woman" was a racing picture (with romantic dripping).
But why should moviegoers expect "Two-Lane Blacktop" to be a racing picture starring actors in the same publicity for the film has been neither dishonest nor misleading. The one line that is being used to promote the movie "You can never go fast enough!" is lifted right out of the picture and, taken with the context of the movie, it works.
Like Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider," the four main protagonists in "Two-Lane Blacktop" "went looking for America—and couldn't find it." The point of the film, perhaps, is that young people in America today are so fast, catch up with their own country; or, looking at it another way, that perhaps America can never go fast enough, to catch up with its young.
However, to suggest, as Mr. Alan Lichter does (UDK, Oct. 2), that "Two-Lane Blacktop" is a failure because Monte Hellman (the director) "has no feel for the movements and rhythms of the road, would be like saying that of Foob" is a failure because the feel for the pitch of ocean liners, little sensitivity to the possibilities of vitality within a ship's internal combustion engine, no regard for the movements and rhythms of life, and no fear of failures, they are so for other (more disturbing) reasons.
"Two-Lane Blacktop" does not always work successfully as allegory, and the microcosm it
presents of American society is not nearly as satisfying as it might have been, but still, a lot of went into work in its making.
Certainly, it is a much better film about America than, say, either Antonion's "Zabriskie Point" or Hopper's "Easy Rider." One might compare the "trick" endings in all three films, for instance, and decide which is the most viable.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss "Two-Lane Blacktop."
Paul Stephen Lim
graduate student,
English Dept.
Manila, Philippines
to the grim, not-at-all-fungi mediocity at which they are now written. I was faithful, however. I weeked, disgusted no, week in, week out.
To the Editor:
For the last three years, I have watched Kansan movie reviews descent from a laugliable level of sophistication. I light laughs my freshman year,
Therefore, imagine my happiness and relief last week when I read Alan Lichter's witty, lucid novel "Two Lane Blacktop." The language humor entertaining, the general comments on script, acting, and direction very useful. Get a hold of this guy Lichter. Ask him to give you a film you can national awards, you need him. You see, he may not have had Reporting I and Reporting II, but he has something your movie company have never had—a geniusine for movies as an art form.
Gerry Shapiro Kansas City, Mo. Senior
Gerry Shapiro
Garry Wills
Lee's Legend Lives
GETTYSBURG, PA- I just spent eight grey days in Gettysburg, walking its battlefields for a book I am working on, getting muddied with dismal memories. This is the place where thousands of men, mainly teenagers, mucking about in the woods, invented modern warfare.
It is worth all the time you can spend here. The U.S. Park Service has marked out the fields, recreated the action (by on-the-spot photographs and recordings), and maintained all reasonable access to important areas. It also included a broken fence. If one cannot actually raise the shabby unwilling heroes (so poorly suggested by
monumental statues), one can startle deer and pheasant just off the road at Devil's Den.
Unfortunately, most of those who stop briefly in Gettysburg see mainly or only the town itself, a terrible jumble of cheap commercial shops and souvenir "museums." The fake is piled on the fake. Pelons upon Ossas of phoniness. There are Hollywood-facade "old streets" inside the clucked actual old streets, cement "statues" of marble statues, plaster dummies standing in yards. Now the Governor of Pennsylvania holds a right "observation tower" of bright commercial exploitation. (The Park Service has discreet free trees for those who have to see what the men who fought there never did.)
Poor Lincoln comes off worst. The house he stayed at before delivering the Gettysburg Address is private property, a drustore below and "museum" above. When you pay your way into the museum, you find an intruding dummy seated where he worked on his improvements for the
speech, and taped message dispelling the inevitable反映s by trying to enforce them. It is Disneyland invading Gettysburg. Better stay out in the fields, and give the town a wide bethr. The best general rule is this: only go into free places, not those that charge money.
While Lincoln is exploited, Lee is spared; his military loss has meant historical reprive. The only monument to him is the state of Virginia, a statue on Seminary Ridge where he saw his all-or-nothing miscalculation fall as Picket's charge down, ending the invasion of the North.
But if Lee is not directly exploited, the same cannot be said of the flag he fought and lost under there. The town is called the "Bombing Village" by people buy them. A boy scout troup showed up at the site of Lincoln's Address under a great bedsheet of stars and bars carried by the troop's colors and considered what Lee would think of this.
He was not in any deep way proud of a sectarian flag. He opposed secession,
thought it mad—though he felt obliged to defend his fellow Virginians in their mistaken course. He was glad to sheath his sword, to lower it arm. It stood for courage and strength; another, and whatever gallant things were done under it once, it can stand for nothing honourable now. I felt like someone had insults, "In Lee's name, take it down."
Lee was born and died under the United States flag, served under it, and died living his whole country—though, sad to say, he did not die a citizen. The rights taken from him for rebellion were never restored. He wrote no books, was absent from bitterness in defeat. He could not feel abused when he thought of all who died his command; not feel hostile when he thought of those dead on the other side. Few might have complained as justly as he of wrongs done in the Reconstruction time. Yet few were as wrongly accused of wrong words, what most men did not practice, Lee embodied to the end. with malice toward none...
Copyright, 1971, Universal Press Syndicate
Griff and the Unicorn
By Sokoloff
"Copyright 1971, Davtd Sokoloff."
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