Page 2
University Daily Kansan
Friday, Feb. 19, 1960
Public Relations
James Gunn, administrative assistant for public relations, raised some interesting questions in his address to the Faculty Forum Wednesday.
Mr. Gunn said that students and the Daily Kansan are hindering him in helping to establish the University as a quality school.
Exactly what is the function of KU students in regard to helping to establish a "quality" institution?
Mr. Gunn seemed critical of students who, when asked "How's KU?", reply "It's rough."
We would like to call attention to Chancellor Murphy's comments which appeared in the Daily Kansan Sept. 17. In reaffirming the University's policy of developing KU into a "vital . . . scholastic center." Chancellor Murphy said:
"We are not interested in wasting the time of a gifted faculty . . . with those students who do not wish to develop to the outer limits of their native ability."
When people ask us "How's KU?" we tell them it's rough, and are proud to do so. KU is no place for those looking for a snap degree.
We take pride in the intellectual accomplishments of KU. We don't have to sell KU constantly—KU is selling itself.
We also would like to suggest contemplation of Chancellor Murphy's words delivered during a press conference on May 14. The Chancellor said:
"To spend your time figuring out how to get a University loved by everybody is a waste of time. When you reach that point you don't have a university--you have a trade school."
Now to Mr. Gunn's comments about the Daily Kansan. "The Daily Kansan makes comments for which we suffer sometimes," he said.
Unfortunately, Mr. Gunn gave no examples to buttress his comments about the Kansan.
Off-hand we do know of one prime example of this. Undoubtedly the University was embarrassed when an administrator last March claimed there were no separate housing lists for Negroes at KU.
The Kansan obtained evidence that there were such lists and the University decided to change its policy.
At that time the Kansan came under fire for raising an "issue." The Kansan published an editorial establishing its policy in such cases. The editorial, written by Pat Swanson, 1959 graduate, said:
"The student newspaper was merely trying to fulfill its responsibility—acting as a check between the student body and the administration.
"Freedom of the press is the vital right of mankind—the unquestionable right to discuss whatever is not explicitly forbidden by law.
"It is an unalienable right for the student to check on the administration as it is the citizen to check upon his government. No democratic citizen would deny another that right."
"We do 'publicly claim responsibility' for this act, which is part of the Daily Kansan's service to its University—to uphold the rights of its students and to see that the administration does likewise."
At this point we would like to hasten to add that we are not infallible in our coverage and policies. As Jenkin Lloyd Jones, editor of the Tulsa Tribune said:
"The science of truth telling remains inexact.
"All day long the editor flies by the seat of his pants in a thick cloud layer, with the compass swinging and the artificial horizon turning circles. But somehow the paper gets out. Somehow the right guesses seem to balance off the boners.
"And then a truly great truth dawns on him. How sterile are the routine professions. How dull the easy businesses! The thing that makes journalism one of the most challenging callings on earth is its very perplexity—its wide areas of error—the utter impossibility of doing it as well as it ought to be done."
If the University suffers while we go about our learning processes we must apologize and ask for patience. The impossible may take a while to learn how to accomplish. — Ray Miller
Editor:
More Light
... Letters ...
Although I am not a student, I read the Daily Kansan often. I find it more interesting than the town paper. Certainly the editorial page has more to it than the bland product we get nowadays from papers in this area.
Two things bothered me in my paper recently. First, I noticed the reluctance of several members of your faculty to comment on whether students know about McCarthyism. Does this mean that these men retain the fear that McCarthy planted in this country ten
years ago this month in his speech in West Virginia? Does this mean McCarthyism is alive in spirit? If our faculty people fear to speak out, then we are in trouble.
Second, I am alarmed at the manner in which the Latin American students tried to answer the charges of Jules Dubois. They gave their cause — and mine, I should point out — a black eye. Instead of presenting Dubois with documented proof of his errors, they chose to attack him personally. Those who did not make this mistake made the equally bad one of talking in generalities.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
—AT LEAST WE HAVE A LOT MORE OF THE FRESH-
MEN COMING IN TO USE THE LIBRARY.''
The young men who insisted that Dubois is some kind of fascist, Trujillo-lover, or rebellion-instigator are wasting their time. Dubois is none of these.
One of his major charges is that the land reform is communist oriented, and that it is much like the Chinese communes. Did anyone attempt to pin him down on this? Instead, we had some young man shouting "liar" and some hothead talking about "the big business press." These are as meaningless as Dubois' commune charge is untrue.
I can understand the feelings of anyone whose homeland is under attack by a foreigner. But if someone were to say that my government is riddled with card-carrying communists I would attempt to disprove the assertions with facts, not with epithets and wild statements about the critic's personal life.
Dubois has become anti-Castro after being the only major newsman who was with him, outside of the New York Times' Matthews. Although he is now obviously overemphasizing some things, it is silly to brand him unfriendly to revolutionary movements in Latin America. His record proves that assertion of the Cuban students false.
Let's have more light and less heat. If the Latin students cannot produce facts, then I must conclude they have none, and that, reluctant as I am to admit this, Dubois is right.
Barnaby N. Inlem
Lawrence
Editor:
***
Regarding Thomas Hardy's "The Dynasts": for Pitt's sake, IMMAN-ENT will not IMMINENT.
Martha Ann Mueller
Lawrence Graduate Student
Martha Ann Mueller
---
(Editor's note: The Kansan does not have unlimited space to print letters to the editor. Letters 250 words or less will be printed in their entirety. Longer letters will be excerpted.)
By Carroll D. Clark
Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
SOCIAL CONTROL AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIETY: Pioneer contributions of Edward Alsworth Ross to the Study of Society. Edited by Edgar F. Borgatta and Henry J. Meyer, Beacon Press, 1959.
If a thinker rises to fame in his youth and then lives to a ripe old age, he is likely to suffer the uncomfortable experience of seeing his work devaluated in his later years. But if his shade revisits the halls of learning a decade or so after his demise, there is a chance he may find his contributions receiving a more favorable re-appraisal. The Zeitgeist changes, and there are changing fashions in social thought.
Edward A. Ross is a case in point. He belonged to the first generation of sociologists who gained an academic foothold. Receiving his Ph.D. (in economics, for sociology was not yet accepted) from Johns Hopkins in 1890, Ross taught first at Cornell, then at Leland Stanford University. There he published a series of articles on social control that quickly established him as a leading sociologist. There, too, he launched bold attacks against political graft, corporation tycoons, and exploitation of oriental immigrants. The "vested interests" he assaulted included those of the patron saint of Stanford University. Ross found himself under counterattack from press, pulpit, and academic pundits, and was forced to resign. The "Stanford case" became the first academic freedom issue involving a sociologist to arouse national attention.
The University of Nebraska offered Ross sanctuary, and after teaching there five years, he became professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin. Book after book—some twenty-eight in all—flowed from his pen, with over two hundred articles also published along the way. But sociology matured as a discipline, adopting more objective and rigorous methods of investigation, and much of Ross's work came to be regarded as superficial, or "journalistic." Before he assumed emeritus status at Wisconsin in 1937, he had heard himself described as a man on a soap box, and a muckraker—an epitome of things a scientific sociologist should not be.
Today many of us are recognizing that such a judgment is too harsh. It is no longer entirely unfashionable for a sociologist to be vitally concerned with values. As reporters and analysts of the contemporary scene, the inquisitive legmen of empirical sociology and the best of journalists are not poles apart. Ross wore two hats. He was a great reporter whose crusading zeal left its mark on reform movements of his time. But he was also a thinker who dealt with substantive sociological, as distinct from social, problems. His pioneer conceptual formulations have left their mark on our discipline.
The present volume attests to this fact. It is a skillfully edited re-issue of the one work on which Ross's lasting reputation most probably will rest, "Social Control" (1901)—together with five chapters drawn from "Foundations of Sociology" (1905). His scheme of conceptualization and analysis used in treating control phenomena is so fully absorbed into present-day Sociology that only the occasionally archaic terminology reminds us that this study was written over half a century ago. With a sharp eye and a half sardonic tone, Ross probes into law, public opinion, ethical codes, myths, mobs, fashions, education, custom, and other forms of social restraint. One feels, as one does in reading Veblen, that here is a man writing for posterity.
Ross visited the KU campus a number of times, for he was a good friend of the late Frank W. Blackmar, who founded the sociology department—first west of the Mississippi River—here at KU. Both men were Johns Hopkins graduates, both had studied in Europe, and both had published books widely read. Each was jealous of his prestige. This reviewer recalls a meeting of the KU Sociology Club in the early 1920's at which Ross, standing six-feet, four and wearing a high celluloid collar with bat-wing tie, squared off against Blackmar, who was not much shorter and similarly collared. The issue, if memory serves, centered in Blackmar's last book, "Justifiable Individualism," which gave aid and comfort to conservatives—or as Ross put it "standpattism." Each was a master at verbal infighting and sharp repartee. Each broke a lance in this joust. The students loved it, as did obviously both contestants.
Ross died in 1951 at the age of eighty-five. Students today, whether or not they have had a course in sociology, might find his autobiography, "Seventy Years of It," spicy reading. Those who have studied sociology could profitably read the book under review.
Dailu hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700
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, 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.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor
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 Yocem and Jack Harrison Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bruce Lewellyn Business Manager