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University Daily Kansan Friday, March 18, 1960
Let It Grow
The members of the All Student Council are kicking around a bill to sever KU's connections with the National Student Association (NSA).
To us, it appears the ASC has found an unknown plant in its seldom-tended garden of campus legislation for when the council members unwittingly found the NSA in their midst, they didn't know whether to cultivate it or plow it under.
After a short, vague discussion, they decided the plant must be a weed. It was easier to make a snap decision than to consult the ASC files, which — by the way — happen to carry a complete folder explaining just what the NSA is.
Once having decided the strange thing to be a weed, the ASC quite naturally decided to kill it. The first move for the execution came last week when a bill was introduced at an ASC meeting to disaffiliate from the student association.
This smacks of efficiency. However, there is one thing wrong. The NSA is not a weed. Close observation reveals it to be a strong plant capable of bearing fine fruit. Its roots are anchored by men who rank among the most accomplished in America today. Its branches reach toward the ideal of ideals — a richer, fuller life for all.
The poorly-informed ASC bases its classification of the plant on a series of pamphlets and brochures issued by the field secretary of a national sorority.
We have read the pamphlets which were the
basis for the ASC disaffiliation move. Never have we read such unpardonable tripe!
The "literature" reads like a page torn from the infamous McCarthy hearings. We find it hard to believe that college students of 1960 could believe the reckless and unfounded charges contained therein.
The following is one of six charges leveled at the NSA in the brochure:
"USNSA (sic) has adopted resolutions which declare it an absolute necessity for the students of college and universities to have a say in the policy-making of their institutions — concerning admissions, discriminatory practices, financial policies, determination of curriculum, etc. All this, of course, is democracy a la Communism, and is designed to introduce chaos on the campus, to vest a passing student body with authority without its incurring any responsibility."
The other charges in the brochure are equally innane.
This controversy concerns not only organizations, but shakes the very foundations of our democratic way of life. Will we allow a fine idea to die simply because a few misguided groups cry Red?
We pray not. We hope students will influence the ASC to change its mind. For the ASC, on this issue, is dead wrong!
— George DeBord
The New Era Begins
We have heard a heartening statement concerning the All Student Council. It goes like this:
"The ASC has now gained enough experience so it can provide the students with the kind of government they deserve. It takes a while to become familiar with such a complicated process as 'government.' The Council is now ready to be more than 'the navel of campus dormancy.'
"This probably will never happen again. Now that the election bill has been passed and there will be both spring and fall elections, the ASC will have experienced members on the Council at all times."
Oh happy day! We are going to have good student government at last.
We have a suggestion to start off the new era. A brochure on Sigma Tau Sigma has been floating around the newsroom for the past week. How about appointing a committee to investigate it—we know the ASC has a spare committee mired in its organization chart somewhere. Or at least they could pass it on to someone who shows some interest in this sort of thing.
Sigma Tau Sigma, or as it is sometimes known, the Student Tutor Society, is an organization that tutors the troubled student without charge.
Members in Sigma Tau Sigma have already proven their academic capabilities. They form a type of brain trust which is dedicated to helping
the student who is having difficulty with a course.
This student is usually a freshman. Often he is missing the academic mark because of faulty comprehension of class material, bad study habits or inability to relate one course segment with the subject as a whole.
Sigma Tau Sigma was created in 1954 at the University of Pennsylvania. Other schools across the nation have recently started chapters. During a recent academic year more than 200 students were helped by 78 members of the society.
The University of Pennsylvania chapter has an office which is open from 9 to 5 p.m., five days a week.
Any student who cannot afford the conventional method of tutoring can come to the office for help. Once the serious intent of the troubled student is established, he begins receiving tutoring at a time arranged with his Sigma Tau Sigma tutor.
A society of this type at KU would, besides helping students with scholastic difficulty, raise the academic performance of the whole University.
Anyone wishing more information about this organization should be able to obtain it from an ASC representative. The National Student Association distributes pamphlets on Sigma Tau Sigma to all member colleges and universities. Since KU is still a member, this information should be in the ASC's filing cabinet.
— Doug Yocom
Dailu Hansan
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, 18 East 50th St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $$ a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the university year except Satdays 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.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Jack Morton ... Managing Editor
Ray Miller, Carol Heller, George DeBord and Carolyn Frailey, Assistant Managing Editors; Jane Boyd, City Editor; Ralph (Gabby) Wilson and Warren Haskins, Sports Editors; Carrie Edwards and Priscilla Burton, Society Editors.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Douglas Yocom and Jack Harrison ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bruce Lewellyn ... Business Manager
John Massa, Advertising Manager; Mark Dull, Promotion Manager;
Dorothy Boller, National Advertising Manager; Tom Schmitz, Circulation Manager; Martha Ormsby, Classified Advertising Manager.
Letters Dept. Governor
Editor:
Dear Governor
Our congratulations—
To George Docking for your constant campaign against better education in the state of Kansas. Also, thanks to you, governor for assuring us that the mental institutions will continue to function on the meager appropriations that you so kindly remembered to include in this year's budget.
And, now, for your greatest achievement of all, our heartiest congratulations.
Rod McDonald
Denver, Colo.
H. C. Palmer
Denver Colo
Atchison
First-year medical students
Postgraduate & Public Murder
Postscript to Franklin Murphy:
Let us be the first to wish you happiness in your new position,
Honorable Dr. Murphy. We know you will be successful. May you find Gov. Brown a bit more cooperative. We can assure you a more congenial relationship—Gov.
Brown does not condone capital punishment.
By Calder M. Pickett
Associate Professor of Journalism
A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES, by William Dean Howells. Bantam Classics, 75 cents.
The thesis of this review is that William Dean Howells has been given short shrift by the literary critics. Howells usually gets a passing nod as the fine editor of the Atlantic, or the father of literary realism, or the critic who had the courage to espouse Dreiser, or the man who gave strong encouragement to his friends, Mark Twain and Henry James.
Howells was more than that. He was a good novelist as well. "The Rise of Silas Lapham" is known to many readers, but more still should know "Indian Summers" (which compares favorably with James' international novels) and "A Modern Instance" (which deals probingly with ethics of the Gilded Age). More still should know "A Hazard of New Fortunes." This is the book that scouts the notion that Howells wrote only of "the more smiling aspects of life."
But in the final analysis Basil March, though he might feel these people, hungry and illiterate and agitating for their rights, are victims of determinism, finds himself on their side. The values of what he calls the "counting-office" lose out to the values of the ethical Basil March. And this is where William Dean Howells soon would be finding himself, as well, for he, like March, came to realize that man was not doomed to live in the slums and starve and work for low wages, and that the "survival of the fittest" was a phony rationale of the robber barons.
He was responsible, of course, for that "smiling aspects" line. It's what he advocated in "Criticism and Fiction." But the person who says that those words characterize Howells just hasn't read much Howells. He was no Flaubert or Zola when it came to dispassionate portrayals of passionate matters, but he was no more prudish than his better-recognized contemporaries, Twain and James.
"A Hazard of New Fortunes" contains exciting incidents, and excellent portraits. March himself is a journalist hero that one might compare with an idealist like Steffens, or Godkin. The business manager of the journal, Fulkerson, is a witty and likable "realist" who is the devil's advocate in the many conversations over journalistic ethics.
"A Hazard of New Fortunes" also dissipates the notion that Howells was an arch-conservative of the Republican faith. He was one of the few notable Americans to speak out for the anarchists convicted in the Haymarket bombing, and in this frequently exciting novel of 1890 Howells writes compassionately of those persons then examining socialistic and anarchistic doctrines.
Superficially, the novel deals with an editor, much like Howells himself, who moves with his wife from the literary-dead Boston to the vibrant city of New York. There he undertakes the editorship of a new journal, to be called Every Other Week. There he comes into conflict with the immigrant-heavy city that soon would be portrayed in the paintings of the Ash Can School and the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz. There he engages in earnest dialogues concerning ethics and morality of that confused age.
Basil March, the hero of the novel, is not like the Howells of a few years later who would emulate Bellamy in his scorn for capitalist values. He is still just a basically decent fellow who feels that the people of the slums are victims of environmental determinism, and possibly biological determinism as well, for Howells doubtless was paying some attention to the master race boys who were preaching Social Darwinism.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
I UNDERSTAND THE FOOTBALL TEAM VOTED HER THE BEST 'PASS RECEIVER' OF THE SEASON.