3, 1941 hes
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1941
discussings."
PAGE THREE
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Purpose of the College Newspaper
College Paper Is Completely Open Activity
If we should go back to the origin of the college newspaper we would find that it was, in general, the same as that of the commercial or professional newspaper. The college newspaper was born because there were college students who wanted to know what the people on their campus were doing, and there were other college students who were willing to work at the job of telling them about it. There was a need for a central source of student information and opinion which was not being provided in any other way, and there were students willing to provide it.
After its beginning, the college newspaper inevitably assumed rather quickly and by imitation many of the practices and policies which the professional newspaper acquired over a long period of time and in a natural way. In other words, it came to have a multiple
place and purpose. And insofar as the additional functions met real needs among its readers and were not mere apings of the professional press, they have been justified. The point is that there is today no one acknowledged exclusive purpose of the college newspaper any more than there is an acknowledged single purpose for the commercial newspaper.
A Student Activity
One thing is certain, however, and that is: the college newspaper is a student activity. Apparently, also, it remains today, along with intramurals and forensics, one of the few most completely student activities. This may seem surprising, in view of the whole publicity annually given to some cases of censorship and other conflicts between college editors and others. However, a group of student leaders at Stanford University, assisted by Prof. Harold C. Hand and sponsored by the Associated Students of Stanford University, recently made a national survey of campus activities including the college newspaper. Most significant to me among the results of this survey, which covered 90 campuses and one-third of the college and university enrollment of the United States, was that more than 80 per cent of the editors reported that they had
no faculty assistance and no form of faculty control.
With this in mind, I propose that if we are going to find any new way of stating the multiple place and purpose of the college newspaper, we try to do so from this point of departure: that the college newspaper is a student activity on hundreds of campuses in the United States.
The "Overall" Function
There is nothing new — nothing original from me—in the philosophy, principles, or basic interpretation from which I proceed in defining what I believe should be the "overall" function of the college newspaper. It has been explained and described in hundreds of different ways by educators of the modern school for a number of years. It just happens I have never myself heard anyone use it before a group of college newspaper men and women.
In order for you to understand that I am projecting toward a somewhat ideal state, I'll have to say first that colleges and universities on the whole have adopted no such attitude as this proposal assumes toward their college newspapers, and that neither have the advisers nor student editors. Student activities in general and throughout the years have been first opposed, then tolerated, and finally regulated by our institutions of higher learning. They have not been made a part of a unified program of learning
Nose red? Does it run? Does your throat feel like it had been rubbed against a carrot grater? Do your eyes water as if they had just witnessed a gruesome tragedy? Are you having an exam? Don't you like your date tonight?
Temperature Normal? Cold Facts
Then the place to go is Watkins Memorial hospital, which may become the most popular place on the campus if Old Man Weather keeps up his hot and cold flashes.
There you will be welcomed with open arms—and kept if you have that nasty little thing called a fever.
Anyway, it might be a way to beat the draft.
After this come nosedrops of a repulsive nature which are inserted in your nasal passage by a dropper so long that it tickles the top of your tonsils. You are annoyed by a nurse every ten or twenty minutes who stops any questions you might have to ask by promptly sticking a thermometer under your tongue. After taking your pulse, she may insist upon you taking some horrible medicine with a vitamin which you always thought was to prevent night blindness.
You will be ushered upstairs and plopped unceremoniously into bed where you are deluged with several staff members who pound you on the chest, poke a stick down your throat, and ask your life history.
Next comes lunch and things begin to pick up. You begin to realize it's not so bad lying around and having people wait on you. Besides the staff members often get so congenial they will let you do almost anything but play checkers in the linoleum with the ash trays.
either by the colleges or by students.
Alumnus Loses Necktie To Collector
Now our psychologists and educators today tell us two things particularly important to our brief discussion: first, that we learn by doing, and second, that we learn life attitudes, as well as such skills as that of writing a good news lead, by the way in which we do things. In other words, we are learning good or bad attitudes or skills all the time.
C. L. "Red" Burt, University graduate, made another addition to his famous necktie collection at the Alumni Association picnic held on
his farm near Hutchinson yesterday. Burt's latest victim was Art Hudson, only alumnus daring enough to wear a tie in front of the collector. Burt employed, with complete disregard for the welfare of his victim, a butcher knife in removing the piece of wearing apparel from the neck of Hudson. Hudson portrayed the role of Coronado in the Coronado Entrada held here in June.
His tie now joins a collection which includes those of former governor Walter Huxman, Chancellor Deane Malott, and other prominent alumni.
Chief speaker at the gathering was Justice Hugo T. Wedell, president of the Alumni Association, F.A. Russell, professor of engineering, and Frank Stockton, dean of the School of Business, also spoke. George B. Smith, dean of the School of Education, attended the picnic, and later addressed a meeting of the Reno County Teachers association in Hutchinson.
WEATHER FORECAST Mostly cloudy with showers possible.
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Furthermore, we happen to live in a democratic country. So far as we know, graduates of our colleges and universities are going to practice life — whether they practice journalism or not—in a democratic society for a long time to come. In fact, so far as we know, that is the best form of society. Certainly, in any case, as Doctor Fretwell of Columbia puts it, "The business of education in a democracy, it seems, is to enable people to learn how to live in a democracy and in turn how to make a democracy a fit place in which to live." A Medium of Learning
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You will note that I am assuming that student activities are—that the college newspaper is—as much a part of the learning process as any laboratory or classroom course in the curriculum. If this is true, and if the business of our educational system is to help people to adjust to life in a democracy, then it would seem that the enveloping purpose of a college newspaper is to provide a medium congenial to many students through which the students may learn more about how to live together successfully in a democracy.
to provide a medium of learning how to live effectively in a democracy when it is obvious that if a college newspaper didn't go about the business of publishing and interpreting campus news it wouldn't even be a campus newspaper" My answer would be: "In the same way that you learn how to live effectively in a democracy by participating in intramural programs, in debating, in glee clubs, in social organizations, etc."
Some of you will immediately ask a very pertinent question: "How can you propose that the principal function of a college newspaper is
Learning Successful Living
Under such enveloping purpose, success will naturally be achieved in proportion as democratic methods of operation and known good methods of learning are employed to do the job at hand. In other words, the means is not only, as important as the end—the means is synonymous with the end. This does not imply that the job of putting out the newspaper should be less well done—indeed, it would anticipate getting a better job done or as good a job done with less strain on a few individuals. It does shift the emphasis from the product or result to the means of getting the result and to the individuals who get the result. The latter is particularly important when we remember that only a comparatively few of our newspaper staff members ever practice journalism—as only a few of our debaters later practice law, or glee club members sing professionally, etc.
The college newspaper can function in a democratic way and in support of a democratic way of life. The college newspaper is a student activity, with infinite possibilities for providing the medium of learning successful living for a great many college students.
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