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University Daily Kansan
Monday, May 2, 1960
Impending Crisis
Kansas high schools have an increasing responsibility to the citizens and their colleges in this time of higher standards and higher enrollments in all our schools.
Some of the secondary schools are strengthening their programs to better prepare students for college, and nearly all of them should be acting now to avert a crisis.
LIBERAL and Newton high schools recently announced plans to utilize the summer months for non-essential courses. These schools will teach driver education in the summer, rather than taking valuable time from the class schedule of the school term.
This is an excellent idea, and many other similar moves can be made to rescue the classroom from dominance by non-academic courses.
WE CANNOT afford to waste a single hour of the high school student's day in the classroom. He must be hard at work all the time to prepare for college. The more he receives from the high school, the more easily he can make the transition to college and the farther he can go in his studies with the aid of the college faculty and facilities.
We believe our high school was a good one, compared to others we know something about. But nevertheless there was a big jump for us from high school to college.
We didn't have to expend much energy to handle the high school classwork. And then as a KU freshman we found ourselves poring over the books late into the night and still not keeping up.
THE JUMP from secondary to higher institution is too great. The high school student should be worked harder by his teachers. This means cutting down on the frills and giving the student a heavier academic load.
Many non-academic classes and activities can be scheduled in the evening, before or after school or in the summer.
- Jack Harrison
"A Little Logic"
KU and other universities and colleges are tightening their standards. Enrollments will be climbing steeply in coming years. There will be no room in the schools for poorly prepared students.
The high schools must act now to keep pace with the colleges and universities.
Editor:
The latest statements of the ASC have been so remarkable that, albeit reluctantly, I feel compelled to set the record straight and impart a little logic to the discussion.
FIRSTLY, the ASC stated that "no formal resignation" had been received from me. This is a delightfully Machiavellian approach to the facts. I wrote the chairman of the ASC telling him that owing to my discovery that the elections committee had failed to supervise my election — as was mandatory for them — they had no legally elected foreign student representative; consequently, that while I wished to resign, not being a member of the ASC, I was not, in fact, competent to do so.
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
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I should be indignant at the knowledge that I have been a victim of the incompetence of the ASC elections committee, but refrained from publishing my letter of resignation, in order not to sound personal.
SECONDLY, there is no comparison possible between the position of the AWS "observers" and the foreign student (not International Club) "representative." The former are nowhere mentioned in the bills of ASC and I believe that the election of the second is legally enforceable — because it is stated unconditionally in bill number 2, that the elections committee must oversee the elections of the living districts, the academic schools, and "the foreign student
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service. 8 Election Services, NY 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 Saturday and Sundays. University series, periodically Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
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representative"; this they have not done.
THIRDLY, I must clear up this misconception in which the ASC seems involved, that the foreign student representative is an officer of the International Club; the International Club is nowhere mentioned in the ASC bills and is absolutely unentitled to a representative on the council (only half the foreign students belong to it — and the other half of its membership is American) — it is the foreign students who are entitled to representation — which is explicitly spelled out in bill number 2.
The only primary issue at stake is whether the ASC can ignore its own laws — whenever it feels them to be inconvenient — without any legal process being involved.
FINALLY, Miss Baumgartner stated that the present "set-up" calls for the elections committee to assist the International Club in electing its representative. This is inaccurate on both counts: the elections committee is not called upon to assist the International Club in electing its representative. It is obliged itself to supervise the election of the foreign student representative — in the same way that it supervises the election of the other representatives on the council — something which is totally different.
It is amusing to receive so much information on the ASC's election system from a council which is too busy changing bills to understand them; and which is unable to muster a oorum with which to do business! Formidable!
Denis Kennedy Lawrence graduate student (formerly of Ireland)
Closed Club
--living in unorganized houses; however there are other better ways to contact interested and qualified students in this district, which I do not enumerate here for the sake of brevity.
Editor:
Denis Kennedy
It was with great interest that I read the statements by Stanley Lehman. Abilene senior, in the April 28th edition of the U.D.K. In reply to Jim Austin's charge that the Kansas Relays Committee was a "closed club" and "narrow in its selection" Mr. Lehman weakly defended the committee by stating that each year letters were sent out to organized houses to ask for possible candidates. Wonderful! But is Mr. Lehman aware that almost 2,000 students on this campus, or about one-fourth of the entire University population, have no connection whatever with an organized house. Certainly many unorganized independent freshmen living in this group have the qualifications and interest to serve with distinction on this committee. Admittedly the cost of postage would not permit mailing applications to all freshmen
Tom Heitz
Sound and Fury
If Mr. Lehman is truly sincere in stating that the Relays Committee is not a "closed club," (and I assume by this that he means that committee appointments are available to any student who meets the qualifications regardless of living status) I would be glad to discuss with Mr. Lehman at his pleasure concerning the contacting and appointment of qualified unorganized independent students.
Kansas City, Mo., sophomore and ASC representative
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More Bodies
Perhaps the greater university family can help the university solve this grave procurement problem of the anatomy department.
FACULTY: Dedicate your remains to the search for truth and the progress of humanity. In so doing, you will be of service to knowledge in both LIFE and DEATH. (Administration: for purposes of effectuality, this clause might be written into the contracts along with the security pledge.)
SENIORS: Who knows what destiny fate will bestow upon you in the modern world. Go out into life with the assurance, at least, that upon decease you will be of value to your Alma Mater. (The administration might also note that this could become part of the graduation requirements.)
I propose that the names of those dedicating their remains be immortalized on a bronze plaque to be affixed to the base of the bronze Jayhawk now wasting away in the lobby of the Kansas Union. The Jayhawk and plaque could then be erected near the facade of Haworth Hall to remind the living of the institution's dedicated dead (dissected) sons and daughters.
ALUMS: Money will never suffice.
Alexis Smyernashevsky Class of '57
Short Ones
TORQUAY, England — (UPI) — A truck driver has to be fast to stay legal here where a street sign says: "No waiting while unloading."
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Caryl Chessman one day before:
"I'll start dying at 10 a.m. I don't intend to start killing myself in pieces."
Bland-itis
On the front page of the April 26 number of the Kansan, you had the good fortune and taste to print a picture of a young lady who, at least as judged from this photo, is one of the campus' most beautiful women. I don't know her, I have never laid eyes on her outside of this photo, and I wish only that I did know her.
But to get to the point of this essay — why, in electing the so-called queens of this or that function, can't the sponsoring groups either admit that the queens are not chosen primarily for their beauty or why don't they elect girls who really look like queens?
JUDGING FROM the present crop of royalty, the girls must be elected on the criteria that they be pretty enough to compete favorably with the candidates from other houses, but that they be drab enough that the runners-up not feel offended. Heavens, it would be politically unwise to offend any of the fellow house members. But the net result of this process is mediocrity. A girl who has something more than the rather drab and vacant and stereotyped appearance wouldn't get past the first clawing, er, election.
Kansas need not think that it is unique in suffering from this "bland-itis." More than one campus has been given cause to remark about this same defect (which might be called the Organization Man/Woman Syndrome.)
HOWEVER, in this democracy, the mediocrity has seeped down to even the proletariat; it is not a purely royal trait. How many of the men have remarked negatively about the trollopish tastes in appearance displayed by the typical-coeeds. From eye shadow misused to the most slatternly looking hair-dos, most of these women are enough to give any high school sophomore the frights.
Now I am not, repeat not, advocating a return to the Little Miss Innocence type of dress. Ye gods, what could be quite as dull. All I ask is that, if the maidens are determined to attract attention to themselves, they do so at least a little artfully. How is a man supposed to delude himself, after the fashion of his ancestors before him, into thinking that the maid is tender, fragile and needing of his manly might when she looks like the visual equivalent of a blaring jukebox? Let the women disavow this conformity to tartish, brassy, and stereotyped "fashion." Women now talk of charm as if it were something given as an inalienable right, that male approbation be theirs not to win but to command as one commands a faithful dog.
I AM NOT advocating a mere conformity to a set of male ideals, either: for a woman can be the most maddening when she is doing her damndest to be contrary to every male ideal of order, etc. But just as she is always crying about being appreciated, let her damn well do somewhat the same for her male companion. Let her try to be an objet d'art for him, a thing of beauty. If all the typicalcoeds on this campus could show the same charming freshness that is apparent from the previously mentioned photo, could show a real art to the crafts, then I am sure that I would be driven much to distraction — compared to a present state of boredom bordering on disgust.
—the Philosopher
"When (Sen. Hubert) Humphrey speaks of the American agricultural surplus, it is consistently in a favorable light. He frequently points out that if the Russians had this great capacity they would not curse it, but count it as a blessing, and put it to dynamic use in their overseas political and economic operations. . . His 'Food for Peace' plan proposed last year was the latest in Humphrey's frequently successful attempts since 1954 to strengthen legislation which authorizes a program of overseas disposal of surplus food and fiber. He plans to continue fighting for greater, not less, food production, and for using our abundance with imagination and with humanity."
(Excerpted from the article "Hubert Horatio Humphrey," by Michael Amrine, in the April, 1960, Progressive.)
Worth Repeating
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There are only three persons to whom I have never been able to say "no": my wife, Henry Stimson, and George Marshall.—Robert A. Lovett
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
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