Page 2
University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Jan. 13, 1960
The Future Is Bleak
KU students just don't care!
They do not concern themselves with the controversies and problems that are the life's blood of students on other campuses in America.
Rather, KU students live in an isolated world. They are behind their times. They should have lived 30 or 40 years ago. They should have been around when President Wilson was touring the country attempting to mold public opinion in favor of the League of Nations. This would have given them a chance to properly express their philosophy:
"Don't bother us with national and world problems. We have enough to do at home!"
What is it that they have to do? What is so pressing that they can't concern themselves with a controversy like the one surrounding the National Defense Education Act's so-called "loyalty oath" clause?
How can almost half of 379 students sampled on the campus not even know what the clause is? What keeps them so busy that they have not heard the arguments against the loyalty oath requirement of the act—arguments that have caused several universities to refuse government loans to students under the act?
KU students have several things to do—several things which are so pressing they cannot
spend even a few minutes of their time keeping informed on the issues of their times.
For one, they have to graduate. Graduation is the key to the future for the great men we are turning out here.
For another, they have to make good grades. A high grade-point average is essential if one is to get a good job.
For a third, they have to study. Studying is the means to the above ends. And what one studies is important: One studies only what is applicable—that which will insure graduation and high grades. All else is superfluous and is dismissed as such.
KU students haven't time to mess around with loyalty oaths, discipline problems, world affairs, humor magazines, student government or any other issues which have come before their attention this year.
They've got too much to do.
A great Kansas editor once asked, "What's the matter with Kansas?"
There is nothing the matter with this state except that the young men and women who will be called upon to lead her in the future do not concern themselves with anything that does not offer immediate and material gain.
Kansas is OK now, but her future is bleak.
The Star Points Out
Kansas Education Quandary
When the 1960 budget session of the Kansas Legislature convenes tomorrow (yesterday) it will be confronted with both an enormous surplus and an enormous problem.
State officials estimate the balances in the general revenue and sales tax funds at 26 million dollars next June 30. On paper, this is magnificent. When other states are facing deficits, a solvent Kansas is free from a general bonded indebtedness and it has millions in the treasury. If the citizens didn't take a second look, they could shout "Hurrah!"
There is, too, a haunting problem. The problem is how to educate Kansas children without breaking the back of the home-owner with property taxes. Education is a state responsibility. The constitution says so.
At the outset of the 30-day session there will be unadulterated confusion. Gov. George Docking will recommend a drastic reduction in the $21\frac{1}{2}$ per cent sales tax, possibly a whole 1 per cent, to cut back collections 28 million dollars a year. Also he will lower the boom on trucks. There is expected to be little recognition of the imminence of pupils flooding the schools, increasing in numbers at a rate of 10,060 every year.
The Legislature is preponderantly Republican and legislators of neither party have the slightest idea that Docking's program will be adopted. Democrats in an election year will go along for the appearance of unity. Once it is obvious that the sales tax will not be reduced, then what?
Kansas has 126 state agencies, for most of which the Legislature will make routine appropriations. But what is the basic purpose of state
government? Its purpose, legislators will agree, is to perform certain services for the people which are in the natural field of government. Chief of these are education, health and social welfare, and highways. The bulk of state-collected tax money goes for these services.
Kansas highways are in no difficulty. Funds are believed sufficient for the present. The mental hospitals require more money, but not enough to make a serious dent in the budget.
So the problem of the 1960 session boils down to schools. The question is how well the Legislature can take care of them?
Conscientious legislators may ask whether Kansas really has a surplus, or balances, when the schools are in dire need. Is the state performing the service it should?
Many citizens groups will be urging a state payment of $25 a pupil in the grades 1 to 12. Many will urge increased salaries for faculty professors and urgent appropriations for buildings at the state colleges. The two demands could total 16 million dollars more. Legal difficulties may be involved in the formulas for the lower grades.
The budget session marks the beginning of the long pull to modernize the Kansas school system. Any action will be temporary, pending further legislation based on information from the statewide educational survey to come later. The session will be judged by how completely Democrats and Republicans forget politics in an election year to work co-operatively for the children.
The Kansas City Star (Jan. 11, 1960)
UNIVERSITY OF BRITAIN
Dailin FRANCE
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, 420 Madison Avenue, 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.
Jack Harrison ... Managing Editor
Carol Allen, Dick Crocker, Jack Morton and Doug Yocom, Assistant
Managing Editors; Rael Amos, City Editor; Jim Trotter, Sports Editor;
Carolyn Frailey, Society Editor.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
George DeBord and John Husar ... Co-Editorial Editors
Saundra Hayn, Associate Editorial Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Business Manager
Ted Tidwell, Advertising Manager; Martha Crosler, Promotion Manager; Ruth Rieder, National Advertising Manager; Tom Schmitz,
Circulation Manager; John Massa, Classified Advertising Manager.
In the Dark
We have heard, from various sources, that the social life here at dear old KU is on the downswing. We've heard that all the good parties are no more and that good times have passed. Ahhh, if only the truth were known.
With John Morrissey
Why does smoke proceed from unoccupied houses during vacations? Why are private parties held in these unoccupied houses? Would such a party cause the ceiling to fall? Yes, and where will I go to school next semester.
. . .
---
We were very disappointed on Christmas day to find that Santa had not left us the gift we had desired for so long. Perhaps next Christmas we'll get our still.
The guys at our beloved pad have been looking pretty serugy lately due to the fact that the beer in the tub has taken longer than usual to age.
By John Husar
The setting was the Experimental Theatre, the time 10 a.m. Monday. Some 15 tortured spectators were on hand to witness the debauch of the contemporary tragedy, "Proof of a Man." The play was written by a man named Love. He sure could use some.
The theater people had their chance at a field day Monday and, fortunately, for this person at least, muffed it. The occasion was the unheralded return to the KU stage of the pobre alma who was their drama critic.
It concerns a teen-age boy whose parents won't let him play football. The mother fakes a heart ailment to keep him off the gridiron. So the boy takes off in rage and drives the family car into some pedestrians and a couple innocent autos. His action in the juvenile court determines the proof of his manhood.
Anyhow, a charitable fellow named Cliff Hamill decided to present the first scene from the play as part of a class assignment in directing. He scoured the campus looking for a cast, and came up with three fairly talented people. Only one role remained unfilled, that of a philosophic cop. Cliff searched and searched and got no results.
FINALLY HE STRODE into a local pub to drown his sorrows. And lo! Hunched on a stool, sobbing over some old "letters to the editor," Cliff saw me. It took him only a moment to rebuild my ego and contract我 for his play. Four quick rehearsals, and Monday it came off. Yes, it came off, and so did Cliff's directorial neck.
Nothing is more demoralizing for an actor than to look at his audience and see mirthful glares in return and to hear squeals of glee. Especially when he is doing tragedy. It indicates a lack of confidence in his creative genius.
BUT THOSE 15 CAPTIVES in the audience deserved their moment of hilarity. For, upon the stage, they saw the man, who for two years has filled this column with his opinion of their dramatic endeavors, bumble through an aborted performance. He chewed his lines, and strolled aimlessly from the blocking pattern. Only Cliff's groans from the back of the theater kept him in the play at all. Finally, at the end, he had to laugh too.
As I said before, the theater people had their chance at a field day. It's really too bad that they weren't all there. They could have had a party.
Oh Well...
Readers of our "Worth Repeating" column no doubt were confused Monday when they saw the first part of a very poor joke. The punch line was absent. The joke went like this:
"A convict at the Colorado penitentiary called to testify in a confidence game trial of a county sheriff, was asked: 'Were you born in the United States, Pete?' "
The part we left out should have read: "No sir," he replied, "I was born in El Paso, Texas."
Then, again, maybe we were justified in the first place.
The average doctor of philosophy is a model of compulsive cautiousness.—B. F. Skinger.
The voting public will soon believe that college-going is as im- portant as motherhood or owning a car. -Wilbur J. Bender
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"TRANSLATION: LINCOLN STUDIED LATE AT NIGHT AN'
HIS EYES BECAME BLOODSHOT"