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Page 2 University Daily Kansan Thursday. Jan. 7. 1960
Whose Victory?
The steel strike settlement is being heralded as a victory for Vice-president Nixon. Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell seems to think Nixon soley responsible for the settlement, that, in his words, "without the vice-president we would not have had a settlement."
The publicity given Nixon's role in the negotiations is welcomed by GOP officials as the most effective sort of political advertising available.
The steel companies apparently came to feel they were making enough profits to afford an increase in workers' pay without raising prices. This position is markedly different from their stand at the start of the strike that any wage increase would automatically bring a price increase.
Nixon's march on the White House will be helped immeasurably. Also, the publicity appears to give Mitchell a favorable position from which to try for the vice-presidential nomination.
It is encouraging that President Eisenhower took a role in the negotiations, even if he did it months too late. A point editorial writers and political drum beaters might remember is that Nixon was at work during the settlement talks on instructions from the President, and that the
solution offered by Nixon was the President's and not his own.
Secretary Mitchell says no settlement would have been possible without the mediation efforts of the vice-president. But Mitchell's statement appears to be an attempt to make a political victory from an event that would have happened even without Nixon's intercession.
Forces larger than any one man were at work during the dispute. Public opinion and the threat of another walkout on January 26, the date the Taft-Hartley injunction was to end, were the major forces behind the industry's decision to accede to the union's demands. There is no doubt that the settlement is a union victory. The 39-cent package increase is far above the industry's final offer.
The steel companies were put in the uncomfortable position early in the dispute of having to say that any wage increase would automatically bring an inflationary price increase despite the enormous profits reported for all steel companies at the end of the last fiscal year.
The public will believe a lot, but to ask the public to sympathize with the industry's stand was perhaps asking too much.
—Jack Morton
Fraternities Get Advice
The fraternity system, which too frequently is the subject of one-sided criticism, finally was offered some solid advice by a non-partisan authority. Dean of Men Donald K. Alderson, in an interview published in yesterday's Daily Kansan, advised fraternity men to work harder to sell rushes on KU, the fraternity system itself and, finally, individual houses.
Dean Alderson, a 1945 graduate of KU, lived in a scholarship hall as a student. He was a noted Independent leader, becoming president of his senior class.
The dean accused fraternity men of helping the number of pledges dwindle by not knowing enough about their product—fraternity membership—to sell it effectively. Last fall, KU fraternities pledged 78 students less than they did the year before. While agreeing that participation in social and extra-curricular activities is good for college men, the dean made an excellent point by warning fraternities against stressing these activities to the extent where the scholarship of members and pledges suffers.
his warnings came in the face of charges that fraternities are "frivolous," "plutocratic," "immature," and "irresponsible." The charges, made by propagators of our national trend toward broader intellectualism, in a general sense, are untrue. Fraternists must work to prove that.
Dean Alderson listed three other important
reasons for the decline in fraternity rush this year:
1. A growing trend on college campuses across the nation for a smaller percentage of students to enter social fraternities.
2. Fewer entering freshmen men this fall than were expected.
3. The initial occupancy of Joseph R. Pearson and Templin Halls.
The dean suggested that Greek living groups re-examine their strong and weak points, and work to improve the latter, especially if they include house scholarship standing, pledge training programs and extra-curricular demands upon members. He said:
"The Greek living groups have much to offer entering students in that their social and activity programs are well-coordinated. The groups have a long history of assisting their University on campus and across the state. The system has an excellent basis for offering freshmen positive orientation into the University's curricular and extra-curricular program for students."
While criticisms against the Greek system are easy to find, primarily among Independent students, fraternity men should consider seriously the dean's suggestions. If improvement alone will preserve the Greek system, that improvement must come immediately, and from within.
John Husar
With John Morrissey
Last weekend we had a party which was an outstanding success, we think!
The other day I was accused of being somewhat behind in this semester's scholastic endeavors. I look at the situation differently by holding the optimistic point of view that I'm really not behind this semester, just ahead for next semester.
Daihui Transan
Member Inland Daily Press Association Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. News service: Unite Press, advertising rates: $3 an semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Summary of publications: Lawrence Can., Sept. 17, 1919; at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
trweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Jack Harrison ... Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
George Deford and
John Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Kane ... Business Manager
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"OH, OH, I'M AFRAID MY NEW STUDENT TEACHER' JUST ISN'T QUITE READY TO HANDLE THAT 8TH GRADE CLASS BY HIMSELF."
From George DeBord
Dear Fred.
How's the Kid? I imagine you're enjoying yourself now that the holidays are over. I hear things get pretty busy up there in late December with all the angels rushing around doing good and drivers from late highway accidents trying to get through the old gates.
Boy! Did we lay one on New Year's Eve. Just like the old days. I had intended to study, but I got to thinking about togetherness and the recent follow-the-leader trend. My friends finally convinced me that there are enough isolationists in the Midwest already so I thought I'd better go along with them just to prove I didn't really have anything against the Organization Men.
Well, I'll not bore you with the details, but thought you might like to know that one guy showed up at the party with a real dog, which is nothing unusual for
which is nothing unusual for him except that this one had four legs and long ears.
But enough of that. School has resumed and we're preparing for finals. And with the end of the term has come the annual deluge of magazine articles on cheating.
I've always appreciated this service to students offered by America's concerned editors. Their articles are so written that the careful student can glean at least a dozen newly-discovered methods of getting through an examination from each exposé.
Of course the magazines
really are trying to help. The writers and editors are afraid that cheating will lead to unscrupulous business practices when the gang graduates. They feel that if we're moral now, we'll be sound citizens tomorrow.
But when you stop to think about it, maybe the student is better off if he learns to cheat before being turned loose. At least this way he will be better prepared to take part in television quiz shows and politics.
A recent article in the Saturday Evening Post assures us that cheating in college is not restricted to the Midwest. You probably won't believe this, but they do it back East too. This is sort of like confiding to the Harvard man that there really are colleges west of the Appalachians. The whole thing is pretty encouraging.
The article goes on to say that cheating is considered part of the game by students who practice it. To my way of thinking, this news is revolutionary. It's like saying a football is part of the game to the players who play it.
Well, Boy, I could go on, but for my money the article just doesn't hold up. It takes a few isolated examples of cheating and from this deduces that the values of all college students are in jeopardy.
As long as I've been in school, there have always been a few corner-cutters in each class. But this never led me to believe that all of us were sliding downhill.
But it's like I've always said:
Give me a good sociologist and I'll show you a man with a problem.
Keep your tail up.
George
From the News-stand
Liberal Arts in Thrall
"Dr. Earl J. McGrath, former United States Commissioner of Education and at present director of the Institute for Higher Education, charges that the liberal arts colleges 'have lost their vitality and their sense of dedication.'
"The graduate school is the villain of Dr. McGrath's small but angry book, The Graduate School and the Decline of Liberal Education,' published today by the Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia ($1.50). It is accused of seducing the liberal arts college into educationally illiberal by-paths—narrow specialization, pre-professional training and research—while masquerading under its old title...
"It would be well for the liberal arts colleges to return to their primary function of making men—not workers, not scholars," writes Dr. McGrath. They cannot do this, he adds, 'until they free themselves from the dominance of another institution, the graduate school—an institution whose ends are in large measure at cross-purposes with their own'...
"Dr. McGrath's prescriptions against what he considers 'the present patternless mosaic' of a 'disordered educational scene' include:
(1) Special training for college teachers, somewhat different from the program of other graduate students who expect to make research their primary work.
(2) Broadening prospective college teachers through a period of internship in a college classroom 'under the supervision of an accomplished teacher.'
(3) Abandoning the graduate school-imposed maxim of 'publish or perish,' rewarding instead accomplishment in college teaching on an equal level with research."
(Excerpted from The New York Times, Dec. 13, 1959.)