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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Feb. 25.1960
Crucial Matters
How often does conversation around the dinner table drift away from basketball to more crucial matters - international affairs, for instance?
Most students occasionally speak of Castro and his land reform, De Gaulle and his bomb, Eisenhower and his journeys, Mao and his communes, Khrushchev and his missiles. But KU students spend little time in serious study of the world problems of the day.
We now have an opportunity for a closer inspection of such issues, and the methods used by world statesmen in seeking the solutions.
Tuesday is the deadline for registration of delegations to the Model UN, to be held April 1-2. The Medel UN will study and "take action on"
the issues of nuclear weapons testing, Algerian independence and proposed UN membership for Communist China.
Preparations for the event have been made by the steering committee, headed by Bob Nebrig. Helping out are faculty members and students of the political science department, foreign students, KU-Y officials and others who have a special interest in world affairs.
But all of us should be among those with a "special interest" in international relations.
None of us is unaffected by the diplomatic events in Jakarta, Peiping, Algiers, Havana or Santiago. We could all use more understanding of what those events mean.
Jack Harrison
Reply to Strassenburg Editor:
This is an attempt to answer Prof. Strassenburg's statement concerning the use of old physics lab reports. I would like to do this by telling a story.
It seems that long ago in the kingdom of Mur, there was a wise king who had two sons, Philip and Nicholas. Since both sons were to be married soon, the king gave them each a section of land as wedding presents. Between these sections was a large grove of coconut trees. The King then declared that in six months there would be a great contest between the two sons and their men to see which group of men could pick the most coconuts. The victor of the contest would inherit the grove and all the profits therein.
Both of the sons set forth diligently to train their men for the contest. Nicholas was a stern strict man who set up rigid training rules using sharp discipline. Each time one of the men didn't conform to the rules he would receive a sharp blow across his wrists. Since the regimentation was so strict a few of the men found they could collect more coconuts and receive less raps across the wrists by using a long pole to pull down the coconuts instead of climbing the trees. However, when this was discovered by Nicholas, the rules were made even more strict so that all of his men were forced to use the coconut-poles in order to meet the demands of Nicholas without receiving disciplinary action. As a result, at the end of six months all of Nicholas' men could obtain many coconut-poles but only by the use of coconut-poles.
Philip on the other hand, with ultimately the same goal in mind,
used a different technique. He participated with his men, encouraged hard work but did not force it upon them, and helped them to understand the more difficult points by patiently trying new methods of approach. Instead of using Nicholas' technique, when discovering the use of cocoutupoles, Philip pointed out that these poles weren't always to be found and couldn't be depended upon. Thus during the six months the men in Philip's camp learned to obtain coconuts by climbing the trees.
The night before the big contest, there was a terrific electrical storm and lightning struck one of the buildings in Nicholas' section destroying all of their coconut-poles.
On the next day as was to be expected, Philip was the victor by many thousands of coconut, since the men in Nicholas section were severely handicapped; first of all because they didn't learn the climbing technique, and secondly their wrists were so sore they couldn't be used in climbing. So the men of Nicholas had to be content with standing below and shaking the trees.
I think the principles of this story apply, quite well to the education of physics and I hope our physics students aren't satisfied with standing below and shaking the trees.
Charles Rutledge
Pharmacy Graduate Student
Editors' note: Arnold A. Strassenburg, assistant professor of physics, said he was opposed to using old lab reports and notes in physics (UDK, Feb. 17).
"It is my belief that a student who uses old lab reports in order to avoid putting any effort into a
course will be disappointed with it in the end." he said.
Prof. Strassenburg added that a student who avoids thinking problems out by using other material will not understand a problem well enough to make a good grade on a later test.
"As a result the student will become bored or hostile towards the course," he said.
Cuba's 'Communes'
Editor:
Mr. Bernaby Inlem says in the Daily Kansan of Feb. 19 that the Latin American students did not present proof of Dubois' errors. During the meeting many hands were raised but we had very little opportunity. I have the pleasure to offer it now:
1. Mr. Dubois calls the cooperative farms of the agrarian reform "communes," saying their possessors do not receive deeds. Since January 26 it was published in Cuban newspapers the giving of 300 deeds to new owners of land in the province of Pinar del Rio. The first person to receive a deed was Cristobal Avila, who at this time said: "Now I have hopes of resolving my economic problems. Before I had to pay rent for my little piece of land and I only earned between $400 and $500 a year. Now we have four schools in our area; I am very happy because my son will be able to go to school. Something I was unable to do; I cannot even sign my name."
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
2. Another argument of Dubois is based on an editorial of the "Diario de la Marina." He must know, as well as we do, that this newspaper was opposed to our librators of the War of Independence and later on continued its tradition on the side of all the governments which robbed and corrupted our nation. If Dubois had said this, his argument would have had no significance whatsoever for anyone.
Mirylis Moreland Lawrence
"WHY CAN'T WE TALK ABOUT HOBBY TONITE?"
In the Dark
One night last week I called a sorority house six different times trying to locate one of its female type occupants. Once she was at song practice, another time she was eating, and the rest of the times she was attending some sort of meeting. I really believe that if the Greek girls didn't have a meeting to go to or a meal to eat, they'd be severely frustrated.
With John Morrissey
The other night on the Jack Paar show we saw a well rested fellow who had taken an overdose of sleeping pills one afternoon in 1939. The effect was that he slept through dinner, breakfast, lunch, and the Second World War.
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. . .
Over the vacation we went to see Ben Hur in Kansas City. We think some credit should be given to the companies that made this great film possible; for instance, there was jewelry by Cracker Jacks, togas by Brooksbrother of New Haven, lipstick by Crayola, and undergarments by Jockey Inc.
International Jayhawker
By Denis Kennedy
Dublin, Ireland, Graduate Student
Since this international column, sponsored by the International Club, is a new development, some explanation of its purpose and contents seems desirable, lest this columnist should come to be regarded not just as a columnist, but worse as a fifth columnist!
It is partly to overcome this difficulty that we are calling it the International Jayhawker, because the authors of it will be writing, not primarily as foreign students putting forward ideas which are somehow mysteriously common to the whole foreign student community (such unanimity never exists), but as individual Jayhawkers of the University of Kansas, albeit with backgrounds and experiences different from that of the normal Jayhawker. Not all the writers will be foreign students. Any student who has been outside his own country, or who has interesting ideas on international affairs, may be called upon to contribute to it.
The opinions and ideas expressed will be purely personal, and will reflect no club policies other than a commitment to free speech and a wish to select the writer of the column in an impartial manner, without the deliberate exclusion of any group.
What does this weekly column hope to achieve? Well, we believe that although human nature may be universal, the human condition, and with it the culture of the individual, varies materially from country to country. It is very easy in writing about another country to use a frame of reference derived from one's own, and, while knowing all the facts, still to present a very misleading picture. It can be argued that the really significant things about a nation are the things which are simply taken for granted, and therefore may escape mention. It is the object of this column to mention them.
An additional advantage which this column hopes to enjoy is the personal narration of events, which should give a feeling of immediacy. It is very difficult, for example, for someone living in a peaceful society, to really understand what it is like to experience war or revolution. We hope to be able to help you.
We believe that it is not enough to create understanding for the feelings and opinions of others — we also wish to create sympathy for their viewpoints — even when they seem incompatible with one's own. Above all we want to cure the idea that there is something peculiar or beat about the foreign; a notion perhaps typified by one living house on the campus, which has offered hospitality to one foreign student guest — but only on condition that no foreign students were to be brought into the house!
The contents will be as varied as possible; we plan to have contributions which are social, cultural and political; as a point of departure we are taking Puerto Rico — What is a Puerto Rican? The editor of this column has no fixed ideas about this, but he is very interested in the answer, particularly as he believes that the next President of the United States will be an Irish-American, and he does not want to see one of his compatriots assassinated!
We do not expect to please everyone all the time, and doubt if it is desirable to try, but we do aim to please all of the people some of the time. This will be one of the principle planks in our editorial policy.
What motto will the editor keep constantly in mind? Well, everything is subjective, and life is full of temptation, so he will remember frequently the remark of an apocryphal Irish bishop, who is reputed to have said "the essential is to follow the straight and narrow path between right and wrong!" If I should find myself departing materially from this line, I shall resign, and turn over the management of this column to someone more astute than myself!
I have lived a long while and I still don't understand women.
That is my fault, not theirs.—John P. Marquand
Worth Repeating
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Today business has become to a large degree a way of life, so that politics, government, education, the entertainment industry, and even religion find themselves permeated with and to a large degree controlled by commercial criteria of productiveness, increased size, and popularity.—Samuel H. Miller.
UNIT PRITS
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
Telephone VIking 3-2700
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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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