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University Daily Kansan Fridav. Feb. 26.1960
Whither the Week?
Religious Emphasis Week is apparently on the way out as an institution at this University.
Despite a new name this year (Religion in Life Week) the annual event attracted even less attention than it has in past years. The fate of the week will be debated and perhaps decided upon at a meeting of its sponsoring group, the Student Religious Council, March 7.
Religion remains near the top of the list of subjects for heated classroom discussions and dormitory bull sessions. But students don't care to attend planned discussions and lectures on the subject.
Nearly every college student is concerned with religion. For many this is a time of indecision and insecurity as they begin to find out what other people and the world are really like. Many change their beliefs or make important decisions while in college.
But why is religion emphasis week unsuccessful? We believe it is the failing of the form given to the event, and not an indication of a lack of interest in the subject.
The all-student convocation is one aspect of the religious week which should be eliminated, whether or not we continue to set aside a specific week for emphasis on matters religious.
The average KU student has anti-convocation tendencies. Unless the speaker is Hubert Humphrey or Clement Attlee, students would rather listen to the Hawk's Nest jukebox or their sorority sister's latest bits of gossip.
Why take an hour of valuable class time for a convocation?
A favorable aspect of the religious week is the bringing of authorities to the campus to discuss religious questions. The empty seats at their speeches result from their connection with the organized week and are not there because the men or their topics are insignificant.
Each could give one main speech and also meet with student religious organizations and classes which would be interested in discussions of his field of emphasis. Each would stay on the campus several days.
But let's get rid of religious emphasis week. It has a negative influence on student religion. It's a hindrance to the give-and-take informal discussion of religious problems by KU students.
The SRC would do better to drop Religious Emphasis Week and instead sponsor the visits of several religious leaders to the campus at different times during the school year.
Capital Punishment
—Jack Harrison
The Feb. 29 issue of Time magazine adds an interesting sidelight to the Caryl Chessman case.
Time says California Gov. Edmund Brown set a precedent of sorts in granting Chessman a reprieve because of pressure from the State Department. But essentially the same type of pressure was exerted upon Alabama Gov. James E. Folsom by John Foster Dulles in September, 1958.
Jimmie Wilson, 55, had been sentenced to die in the electric chair for a nighttime robbery of $1.95.
Nighttime robbery is a capital crime in Alabama.
pealed to Folsom to commute the sentence because U.S. embassies around the world had received numerous letters protesting the fate of the condemned Negro. Folsom granted Wilson a two-week clemency because of the international interest in the case and later commuted the electric chair sentence to life imprisonment.
Dulles, while writing that he had no intention of interfering in the state's judicial system, ap-
We're all for Chessman getting his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. And Alabama's out-dated law seems ridiculous. But, regardless of our desire to see capital punishment abolished, governmental interference into judiciary procedure cannot be condoned. Our judicial system cannot function objectively with outside intervention, either from the State Department or from pressure from a foreign nation. — Doug Yocom
Editor:
This is what I told your inquiring reporter: Monetary savings exist in three forms; (1) time deposits in commercial banks; (2) the saved portion of demand deposits; and (3) currency hoards.
Clarification
In the Thursday, February 18, 1960 issue of the University Daily Kansan (p. 12) an article appears under the caption "Prof. Calls for Use of State Surpluses." The article is so consistently in error I will not bother to repudiate any specific part of it.
... Letters ...
Monetary savings, if utilized may be used in a variety of ways: (1) to finance real investment (plant and equipment inventories, housing); (2) to cover government deficits; (3) for financial investment (financing the turnover of existing securities, real estate, commodities); (4) to finance transfer payments and duplicative
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
I FIGURED I'D BETTER GET ALL MY HOMEWORK DONE
NOW SINCE I HAVE A STUDY DATE WITH WORTHAL TONITE."
transaction; and (5) to finance consumption. Only uses (1) (2) and (5) contribute to the Gross National Product, and (2) only to the extent that the decift is on goods and services account.
As long as savings are held in monetary form they are lost to investments, and indeed to any other type of payment which would contribute to the GNP.
State surpluses held in commercial banks, including Kansas State surpluses, constitute a form of monetary savings. As long as they are so held they are lost to investment, are a drag on the economy, and make no contribution to the GNP.
Obviously to maximize the benefits to the economy there should be priorities, but I did not say how the funds should be spent. I do not have sufficient knowledge to stipulate what priorities should obtain in the expenditure of the State's balances.
If such funds were spent on an engineering building, or any type of activity that created a demand for current output of goods and services, the welfare of the economy would be promoted to a greater or less extent.
With John Morrissey
Leland J. Pritchard Professor of Economics
Well, this'll be my last semester at KU. I may not graduate, but one way 'or another, it'll be the last.
the took world
Washington, Marcus Cunliffe feels, was often the reluctant leader, who had to be persuaded to play a role in history (though Washington, like McClellan or MacArthur, often was conscious that he was playing a role). Washington stood as symbol, more than man, in times when a symbol was needed.
Last weekend our phone rang at three in the morning. It was North College saying that one of their girls was missing and did we know anything about it? Its just like Dad said it would be—make one mistake and they'll blame you for everything!
And was Washington a great soldier? Not necessarily, says Cunliffe. He was fortunate in being better than his English contemporaries—Gage, Burgoyne, the Howes and Cornwallis. He was better than Charles Lee or Horatio Gates, but perhaps Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island could have been as good.
Such a time was the 1870s, when the late colonies were floundering as a federation. Such a time was 1775 and 1776, when a leader of ralliving power was needed.
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And such a time was 1789-97, when Washington served, first in New York and then in Philadelphia, as our first president. He attempted to utilize the best, and placed those adversaries, Jefferson and Hamilton, in his cabinet. He worked to forestall another war, which could have crippled the young nation at that time.
Why was Washington great? It is specious to say that he was greatest because he was first. We'd have stumbled badly in the 1790s had John Adams been president. We might have evolved completely differently had Hamilton been in the office. Even Jefferson couldn't have managed the task.
By Calder M. Pickett Associate Professor of Journalism
GEORGE WASHINGTON: MAN AND MONUMENT, by Marcus Cunliffe. Mentor, 50 cents.
Marcus Cunliffe of Manchester University deals with this problem of Washington as Hero in an interesting volume that is half history, half essay in American Studies. With the insight of an Englishman (and perhaps a bit of the bias, too) he dissects the myth, but he himself reluctantly comes to the conclusion that the myth—like Davy Crockett and Billy the Kid—can't be resolved.
Drive past the Cordley school around Feb. 22 any year and you're likely to see little red hatchets pasted in the window. Ask who Betsy Ross was and you're likely to hear that she's the lady who designed the flag for the great man. What is the Rappahanock? A river that George Washington threw a silver dollar across.
Where does the legend end and the man begin? Why can't George Washington come alive for us? What makes him more "monument" than man, eternally, as in Richard Henry Lee's words, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen"?
He did some head-bumping, undoubtedly, when Jefferson and Hamilton became fractious. He weathered out rebellion from the West, and the much-hated Jay treaty, and the visit of Citizen Genef.
He coped with the diatribes of Jefferson's man, Philip Freneau, who attacked him in the pages of the National Gazette (though Washington lost his temper and referred to "that rascal Freneau"). He coped with another Republican editor, Benjamin Franklin Bache, who wrote: "If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American Nation has been debauched by Washington."
There are many memorials to Washington today: the towering monument in the nation's capital, as cold as the man for whom it is named; statues, like the Horatio Greenough version of Washington in a Roman toga, looking a little like the Statue of Liberty sitting down; dozens of postage stamps; many cities named Washington, as well as streets and colleges.
We laughed last spring when the exhibition of Grant Wood paintings at the Museum of Art included "Parson Weem's Fable," that incredible sketch of Weems drawing aside the curtain on a father, a chopped-down cherry tree, and a little boy, with a Gilbert Stuart head. But don't we think of Washington that way? Doesn't he remain an old man, with powdered wig and teeth that don't quite fit? Won't he always be the man throwing the dollar, chopping down the cherry tree, or praying at Valley Forge? Isn't he, in effect, by now more myth, more monument, than man, general, or president?
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave., New York, 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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