Kansan Comment
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
1941 Colonial Puritans
- THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 1941.
Today was election day. Men emerged temporarily from their book-filled dens to mark a ballat in the Men's Student Council election. But the election pulse was not high.
Inactivity on the Council front during the past year brought on relative inactivity by the voters. The campaign was quiet. Dandelion Day captured the interests and attention of even the biggest politicos.
One week before election, both parties announced their platform promises. Unusual for a University election, the platforms of the two parties did not cover the same subjects. The Progressive Student Government League, the party in power for the last two years, presented a five plank platform of generalities. The Society of Pachacamas pledged support of a possible student labor board, but the platform was too brief to tell how the sons of the rising sun planned to put such a board into action.
The inactivity of the 1940-41 Council was almost inevitable. Composed of 22 men, 11 Pachacamacs and 11 P.S.G.L.'s, the Council was still not representative of the student body. Its powers were limited to make laws for men only. Any measure concerning all students may be introduced and passed in the council, but it is not effective until the Women's Self-Governing Association has taken similar action. By the time this cumbersome procedure has been accomplished, the proposal may be outdated or weakened that it fails com
Both parties avoided the vital issue facing student government on the campus-what to do about the present cumbersome bi-cameral system of legislative procedure.
Students in the University are here to prepare for lives in a democratic government in which men and women vote, on an equal basis, at the same election, for the same candidates, and the same proposals. The law-making procedure is complicated enough under that system, yet the difficulties are not heightened by the segregation of men and women.
The M.S.C. and the W.S.G.A. council just out of office failed completely to solve the problem. The question of the unicameral student council died in a committee. If the new governing bodeis help the students of the University to the greatest possible degree, they will put party alliances in the background and combine their forces into a stronger and more progressive Student Governing Board.
Public Housing
Today we still take slums for granted as an incurable evil. We once considered infant mortality, lack of public education, and bad roads in the same light. But now free public education, supported by the state is taken for granted, though it costs the taxpayers nearly three billion dollars a year. Two billion dollars a year are spent on our good roads.
Common complaint against the United States Housing Authority is that while it is doing a fine job structurally, it is failing educationally. No government program can succeed unless it has public understanding and public acceptance. Least of all can a movement succeed without widespread understanding if it affects people's homes and their very lives as does public housing.
The American slums are as great an evil and as preventable—as any of these earlier
evils. They breed disease, crime, and misery destroy property values and human lives.
The slums are occupied by families in the lowest income group of the United States composed of one-third of the families in urban areas and having an income of $1,230 a year, and in rural areas less than $850.
Private industry builds no homes for this lowest income group. Until we build for the lowest income group, we can not wipe out slums. You cannot tear down slums until you provide other places which families from the slums can afford. Private industry is unable to build for these people because it cannot achieve rents that they can pay.
This situation is partly due to high interest rates, and bad building and tax laws which make slum ownership profitable and slum eradication difficult. In a larger measure, it is due to the families living in slums who do not have incomes sufficient to pay rents that even the most economical private enterprise must charge.
OFFICIAL BULLETIN
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Vol. 38 Thursday, April 24, 1941 No.132
Notices due at Chancellor's office at 3 p.m. on day before publication during the week, and at 11 a.m. on Saturday for Sunday issue.
A. S.M.E. and A.I.C.E.: Joint meeting, 7:30 tonight. Marvin auditorium. Colored films. Members requested to attend.-David Arnsberger.
ENGLISH PROFICIENCY EXAMINATION: The last proficiency examination of the school year will be given Saturday, May 3, at 8:30 a.m. Juniors who have not already passed a proficiency examination should take this one. Only students of junior or senior standing may take the examination. Register at the College office for registration. **29, 29, 30.** Unregistered students will not be admitted to the examination.—J. B. Virtue, for the committee.
JAY JANES: Wear uniforms all day Friday for tea 3 to 5, in men's lounge of Union—Genevieve Harman.
KAPPA PHI; Pledge meeting, new and old cabinet meeting, 1209 Tennessee, 7 o'clock, Friday, April 25. Kathryn Schaake.
MEDICAL APTITUDE TEST: The Medical Aptitude Test for those who are applying for entrance into medical school in the fall of 1942 will be held at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, May 1, in 206 Marvin hall. The test will not be given again this spring or next fall and should be completed on time. A fee of one dollar will be charged to each student who does not present a receipt for the fee. For any other information inquire of the undersigned—Parke Woodard.
MARRIAGE SEMINAR: Marriage Seminar led by Mrs. Gladys Hoagland Groves, April 27th, 28th, and 29th. Sunday there will be a tea in the Men's Lounge from 3:00-4:30, and that evening a discussion of "Premarital Adjustments" in the Ballroom. Four additional meetings on the following two days and personal conferences on the 4th day are $5.00 and are sold at the Home Economics Office, Psychology Office, Sociology Office, Hostess desk in the Union and at the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. offices—Margaret Learned.
NOTICE TO ALL STUDENTS: Dr. E. T. Gibson will be available for personal conferences at Watkins Memorial Hospital on Tuesday afternoons from 2 to 5. Appointments should be made at the Watkins Memorial hospital—Ralph I. Canuteson.
NEWMAN CLUB: Corporate Communion Sunday.
Breakfast and discussion after 9:30 Mass. Make reservations before Saturday with officers of Club—Joseph A. Zishka.
SENIORS: Seniors expecting to receive degrees this June or at the end of the summer session who have not filed application for degree cards in the Registrar's Office should do so immediately—George O. Foster.
STUDENT DIRECTORY APPLICATIONS: Applications for editorship of the student directory for 1941-'42 should apply by letter not later than Monday at the N.Y.A. Office—Velma Wilson.
W. N.A.A.: Election of officers, 7:30 this evening, Pine room.—Lillian Fisher.
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Student Paper of THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Lawrence, Kansas
Subscription rates, in advance, $3.00 per year, $1.75 per semester. Published at Lawrence, Kansas, daily during the school year except Monday through Friday. Entered as second fee on November 7, 1910. Submitted to the office at Lawrence, Lawrence, under the act of March 8, 1979.
Whistle Awakens Student
Ten times a day the K.U. power plant goes on the air!
Ten Times Daily
At eight each morning and at 20 minutes past the hour until 4:20 p.m., six days a week, that familiar sound of the campus whistle floats across Mt. Oread, and, drifting with the wind, dies far above the golden valley. $ \textcircled{4} $
Not so musical as the "Alma Mater" nor so renowned as the Rock Chalk yell, the campus whistle is, nevertheless, the Hill's voice of authority. It may be only a 12-second broadcast of noise, but it gives orders to faculty members and students alike, and no one ever questions its right to do so.
Because everyone is interested in what the whistle means, few people ever think of the mechanical side of it. The University has no more delicate, complicated, and relatively expensive piece of equipment than the whistle.
Besides keeping the class schedule functioning smoothly, the whistle serves also as the voice of exhortation. Impersonally each student is notified of the passage of another scholastic hour. The whistle warns the doodler, rouses the library napper, rebukes the time-waster, brings the day-dreamer back to reality, nips the heels of the slow worker and exhorts the rapid one to higher attainments.
In the electrical shop of the building occupied by the department of buildings and grounds are two glass cases enclosing the mechanism for operating the whistle. This operating mechanism consists chiefly of two program clocks, one for regular school days and one for convocation days. Each clock has four electric circuits which connect it by an underground cable with additional mechanism in the power plant.
The apparatus for setting and timing the whistle is its most complicated feature. A 12-inch cylinder, called a calendar drum, contains perforations which represent the days of the week. Each day has performances covering every minute in a 12-hour period. In these holes, about the size of a pinhole, tiny steel pegs are placed—a peg on the exact minute of each day
when the whistle is to blow. This drum makes only one revolution per week.
A second cylinder, the timing drum, turns once every hour. This drum has a very small gadget, perhaps a sixteenth of an inch in length, which passes over each perforation on the calendar drum. When this tiny lever strikes a perforation containing a steel peg, it causes an electric circuit to close. The circuit pulls a chain which opens a steam valve; the valve releases steam into a long pipe which carries it to the roof of the north end of the power plant; and, at a pressure of 175 pounds per square inch, this steam is forced through a 24-inch brass cylinder.
Thus the whistle blows, a sixteenth-inch lever striking an eighteenthpeg in a pinhole perforation regulates a blast which can be heard for many miles.
According to Mr. P. H. Leibbrau, the University's chief engineer, the cost of blowing the whistle amounts to 18 cents per day, $3.60 per month, or $39.60 for the eleven-month school year.
Lynn Tells Changes In Little Nells In Two Centuries
The change from the lavender and old lace heroine of the early romanticists of English literature to the lustier Little Nells of the nineteenth century, was the subject of a talk by Miss Margaret Lynn, professor of English in the Memorial Union building today.
Professor Lynn's discussion was not based on any English course taught in the English department, but on the chronological development of her heroine of the English novel as she passed from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
ROCK CHALK TALK
By HEIDI VIETS
Today being election day, Dean Paul B. Lawson's class in household insects started the day by passing out cigars. Someone brought, for demonstration, three cigars badly chewed by the cigarette beetle larvae, but no one had the courage to smoke one'.
Probably the first carnival concession ever to lose money consistently was the turtle race sponsored by men's Pan-Hell at the Dandelion Day celebration.
It didn't take spectators long to pick the winners. The turtles started in a pile in the center of a circle, and the one on top of the pile almost always crossed the ,nish line first. Betting became a cinch, and for Jack Severin, Bob Voelker, and Buckshot Thomas, operating the concession became an expensive duty.
Students walking by Fowler shops this morning noticed rocks in the dandelion pile, suggested the spot for a geology field trip.
Bob Price's Pi K.A. brothers say he is Scotch. They know his pin is out to Ruth Rodgers, Delta Gam who was Relays queen, but they are still waiting for cigars.
Car-starting is not among the arts at which Sue Corson and Helen Winkins, Gamma Phil's, are experts. Yesterday they were downtown in borrowed buggy. They parked it, and when they tried to start it again, nothing happened.
The damsel in distress called passers-by to help, and finally had to phone the owner for information.
The relays are gone and forgotten, but statistics remain. In case you're interested, more than 60 yards of sign cloth were used for numbers on the backs of contestants. More than 5,000 safety pins were needed to fasten these signs in place. And an average Kansas relays consumes 300 yards of finish tape.