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University Daily Kansan Wednesday. May 11. 1960
Disappointments
If trends in the last few years run true to form, there will be quite a few senior students, now eagerly counting the days until graduation, who soon will be mightily disappointed.
The blow to their anticipated departure from this institution will be struck with the release of the English Proficiency Examination results.
The percentage of failures on the examination has tended to run between 35 and 40 per cent. A good number of these will be seniors. A passing grade on the examination is a prerequisite for graduation from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Fine Arts, School of Education, School of Journalism, School of Business, department of nursing and departments of architecture and architectural engineering.
WE FEEL that the students are being cheated by the method the University uses in determining the mastery of the English language—the English Proficiency Examination.
All of the students in the schools requiring the examination must take and pass four semesters of English. When they successfully have completed these courses, they are considered competent English students. However, if they take the examination and fail it, they just keep taking it over until they pass. No more English courses are required.
IT SEEMS only fair to the student that he would not be given a satisfactory grade in an English class unless he truly has met the course requirements. Under a good educational system, all students completing the basic English requirements should be considered masters of the subject.
If the English Proficiency Examination is to remain a graduation requirement, we propose that the examination be given at the end of the last required English course for the students in the schools requiring it. Under this system, passing grades for this course would not be given until or unless the examination is passed.
IF THIS method were used, students would know both their exact standing with the English department and their degree requirements at the end of their sophomore year instead of their senior year. They would not be led falsely to believe that they had met the English standards of the University. They would know exactly where they needed more work and how long they had to do it.
A college education does not come easily. The road is long and steep and the price is high. It is hardly fair for a student to reach the summit of the climb, only to find an unanticipated barrier blocking his way — especially when the barrier can be met and conquered earlier.
Carolyn Frailey
Personalities
Editor:
A Hays graduate student declares that he is having none of this emphasis on "personalities" which has marked recent evaluation of presidential candidates in the Kansan. He prefers to discuss "what individual candidates stand for."
Apparently he is most disturbed by the unfavorable evaluations of Mr. Nixon. These evaluations, however, were based upon facts — details of underhanded methods which are clearly a part of Mr. Nixon's record. Where does the "personalities" charge enter into such treatment? What does this critic mean by "personality"?
IN ONE sense of the word. Mr. Nixon has a very pleasing "personality." At least he is usually able to convince most of the people that he is a good guy and on their side, even though he may be pulling strings behind his back depriving these same people of equal treatment in comparison with entrenched plutocracy; such a performance qualifies for a high rating in terms of the vague, characterless use to which the word "personality" is usually put.
If by "personality" is meant "person," and our critic expects us to elect a man President without considering him as a human being, he is thinking in an extremely impractical and unrealistic manner. And if he expects liberal writers to argue solely according to the formula "what individual candidates stand for," he should at least have done them the service of spelling out what Mr. Nixon does stand for. So far Mr. Nixon has done a good job of confusing everybody on that score.
OUR CRITIC does attempt — with something less than full respect for the ability of his fellow students to discriminate between truth and fantasy — to tell us what liberals in general stand for: Their
program "robs the willing, the gifted and the enterprising" . . .
They emulate Franklin D. Roosevelt, "that glorified founding father of American socialism."
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
Two comments are appropriate in response to these stiltified smears. One is in the form of a recent magazine article by J. Paul Getty, claiming that anybody with a keen mind, courage, and ambition to work can still become wealthy in today's economy. Mr. Getty, of course, is the richest man in the world — a distinction he has achieved since the beginning of the New Deal. Probably the biggest difference between him and the average frustrated grasper after everything-for-nothing (the type which most often complains of the "something-for-nothing" subsistence-level welfare checks) is that he prefers hard work to idle gripping about high taxes.
THE OTHER comment is contained in Paul Samuelson's Economics: "The term 'socialist' is frequently used as a disparaging stereotype to discredit anyone who believes in social security, progressive taxation, bank deposit insurance, some other social improvement, or free love." Offhand, I can think of no Democratic candidate who has ever been in favor of free love. As to the other issues, it should be clear that Richard Nixon is as much a "socialist" as anyone else.
Among things which our critic claims that Republicans in general stand for is "non-interference in private affairs." This would not be so bad if it were not for their alarming tendency, at least since Teddy Roosevelt, to be also loath to take a constructive interest in public affairs. Aside from mere apathy, which is widespread enough in the current administration, this attitude often develops to the point where it become a destructive interest — as in the case of the reckless, unscientific destruction of national forests which has recently been carried on by certain pro-Nixon citizens under the government-approved pretext of looking for mineral wealth.
In conclusion, I am glad to say that there is one statement by our critic which I can strongly support: "Kennedy and Stevenson? Two of a kind." Either man, I am sure, would do a much better job than Richard Nixon as President of the United States.
John Chappell Jr.
Topeka graduate student
Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum. . .
From the Magazine Rack-
Bowles for President
"Of course, the choice of candidates, especially by the party out of power, often has its somnambulistic and therefore disastrous and incomprehensible aspects. In retrospect, no Republican, it may be assumed, can understand why, with their intense dislike of the New Deal and their iron determination to end it, Republicans picked of all people in this great country the hapless Alf Landon to oppose, of all people, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Only political panic, political defeatism and some sort of political blackout accounts for the choice.
"It appears that the Democrats are at present in a similar frame of mind, partly because they are out of office, partly because their attitude to Richard Nixon is actually very similar to the attitude that Republicans had toward FDR: When the subject of Nixon is brought up, Democrats foam at the mouth, stammer, roll their eyes and have nothing really relevant to say. There have only been three men in America's recent past who for a variety of widely divergent reasons have had this toxic and emasculating effect on their opponents: FDR, Joseph McCarthy and Nixon. And the power which these men exercised, mainly because their mere existence reduced their opponents to raging political infants, was enormous and of an entirely different order than that of the ordinary politician.
"This brings us, finally, to the dark horse Chester Bowles. While Kennedy has virtually everything in the synthetic sense, and Symington has virtually everything in the machine sense. Bowles has virtually everything in the real sense. He is a strong, secure, well-do man who is very intelligent without being conspicuously an egghead, a man who has served successfully at home and abroad. He is, on the face of it, a patient, reasonable and kind man, something 'new' without being untried...
"However, the panic into which the image of Nixon throws his adversaries is bound to lead them to the choice of the wrong candidate and down the way to defeat, unless they finally free themselves of it. Panic leadst to the illusion that the opponent is a giant with supernatural powers who can only be unseated by a superman...
"A final word on the often heard, exasperated exclamation that the Democrats do not 'have anybody.' The exact opposite is the case—the Republicans do not 'have anybody.' If the Democrats decided to run Bowles for President, Kennedy for Vice President (to avail themslves of his popularity and ability), and slated Stevenson for Secretary of State, they would have more than a party out of office has had for a long time."
"This is directly relevant to the coming election. The opponents of Roosevelt, McCarthy and Nixon did not just harbor opposing political ideas. They fervently believed, and in Nixon's case still believe, that the country, freedom, democracy, life itself were at stake. This is, of course, complete nonsense. Roosevelt saved the capitalists; McCarthy never had a chance; Nixon is an intelligent, capable and human young man no more interested in the destruction of the American Way of Life than you or I. He may be an opportunist, but there is nothing wrong with that."
(Excerpted from "Democratic Party Parade" by Konrad Kellen in the New Leader, March 7, 1960.)
Dailu Transan
University of Kansas student newspaper Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 13 East 50th St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the university year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
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