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University Daily Kansas Wednesday. Jan. 6, 1980
Colorado Fumble
The University of Colorado made a pitiful mistake in refusing to grant campus status to a new organization, the Student Committee for Freedom of Religious Dissent. In doing so, Colorado's administration said that it was afraid "that the University might be considered anti-religious in approving such groups."
Colorado's decision is remarkable in that it defies the role of education, part of which is to promote the search for truth. If the University felt that the student committee's purposes were undesirable, it should have considered that the only way to eliminate undesirable ideas, whether in religion, politics or science, is to permit them free play in the open, without interference by any coercive authority.
Thomas Jefferson's words in regard to governmental authority can apply to the Colorado issue. Jefferson said:
Unfortunately, the University of Colorado has become a coercive authority. It is presuming that it has the right to restrict its students from certain areas of opinion.
"... The rights of conscience we never submitted (to the government), we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg . . . Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error...
"Are we to have a censor whose imprimenture
shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is cut to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe?
"It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If (a book or idea) be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides."
Jefferson's words seem to imply that anyone who bans the individual's right to a dissenting opinion or belief, and still claims to follow American principles, is a hypocrite.
If a man were to walk into the office and proudly declare that he is a communist, we probably would feel sorry for him. We would not maim him or even order him from the building. If he wanted to talk, we would let him talk. And we would expect him to listen to our side of the story. But if we were prone to follow Colorado's example, that man would be in physical danger.
No one has the right to condemn another for his opinion. If a person feels justified in opposing atheism, communism, or any other controversial ideology he may pity those who believe differently and work to straighten them out. But neither he, nor even a university, has the power to arbitrarily deny them their Constitutional right to believe what they wish.
—John Husar
Anti-Western
North Carolina Complaint
Although the editor does not pose as an expert on television programming, we will now proceed to offer a bit of twenty-nine cent advice on television programming.
For our part, we have had our fill of average-grade Westerns. As far as we are concerned, we get a little weary when we see two cowboy figures put the ray on each other, back off, and draw. As far as we are concerned, the best outcome in many cases would be for them both to succumb.
As is the case with so many ideas which "take," the Westerns were a big smash on television because the other fare was so obviously lousy that we have gone a little nuts on the subject of Westerns. Although the shine is somewhat dimming this season, even according to the ratings, the
number of Westerns which one must devour is causing serious digestive problems.
The United States, it is true, is a young country, and we do not have as much history as the European countries, or even many countries in the Far East. Nevertheless, it would seem that some true adventure, concerning the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, the War of 1861-65, World War I, World War II, and even the Korean War could provide enough plot and background for an endless number of adventure stories.
These stories would offer the excitement and entertainment of the cowboy yarns, because they too would be life-and-death stories, but they would also be educational, historically accurate, and serve an uplifting and patriotic purpose.
Cleveland County (N.C.) Times
With John Morrissey
The other day we read the unbelievable story of a World War II aviator who fell from the bombbay door of his plane without a parachute at 30,000 feet and lived—until he hit the ground.
* *
Next semester will be a lonely one. Most of our friends who provided the campus with the fantastic football season parties have resigned from the University (upon request of the management, I believe) to seek, and I hate to say it, employment.
Micky Rooney was not tight on the Jack Parr Show—he was stoned.
. . .
During a sick spell over the vacation the Doe's advice was to drink plenty of liquids. Now there was a swell doctor.
The vacation seemed so long to us that last Monday we had to check with the registrar to see just where our classes were and what time they met.
I think New Year's Day would be much more enjoyable if there was something interesting to watch on the tube; even a football game or two might help.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"MOST OF TH' TERM HAS BEEN ON 'HOW TO BILL TH' PATIENT" LAST THIS WEEKS WILL BE SPEND ON TH' TREATMENT OF DISEASE!
the took world
By W. D. Paden Professor of English
NEW LIGHT ON DR. JOHNSON: Essays on the Occasion of his 250th Birthday. F. W. Hilles, Editor; Yale University Press, 1959, $6.
These twenty essays have been gathered and published by The Johnsonians, an informal but exclusive group of enthusiasts centered in New York. Some were once delivered as speeches at the annual sessions of the group; others are revised versions of important articles that have appeared in professional literary journals; others are here published for the first time. The calibre is high, the value varies rather widely. Some of the best have been contributed by guests of the group.
THE AVERAGE COLLEGE student may wonder whether any new light can be thrown on the life of a man who died in 1784, and if so, whether the activity can be useful. He might remain unimpressed by Maurice Quinlan's proof that Dr. Johnson and Benjamin Franklin were once present in the same room. It was at a session of "Dr. Bray's Associates for Founding Clerical Libraries and Supporting Negro Schools," on May 1, 1760. Neither man mentioned the meeting, much less the presence of the other, to anyone so far as we know.
The proof of their joint presence has been dug out of the Minute Book of the Society, which is preserved in the London Archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Dr. Johnson's adherence to Dr. Bray's associates illustrates his consistent, continuous, unemphatic charity; but one must admit that only a few people would walk across the street to hear of it.
BUT IF ONE TURNS to Bertrand Bronson's discussion of Johnson's consistent use of abstract statements in his poetry, one finds that the area he is dealing with expands relentlessly to include at last the intellectual milieu of Johnson; "a view of the world so comprehensive and assured as to enable (him) to state common experience in general terms" — and to convey to his contemporaries, by such abstractions, experience of a significance and force that we can in our day obtain only by an accumulation of vivid images and detailed specific statements.
Scholars interested in the biography of Alexander Pope will be grateful for F. W. Hilles' account of how Johnson wrote his "Life" of his predecessor, for it untangles a number of hitherto puzzling knots in the lines of tradition. But again, one must admit that the number of scholars interested in the biography of Pope could probably be counted up in a minute.
Refreshed by this wider view, one may read Herman Liebert's paper on Johnson's revision of a wooden ballad by Hannah More, and comprehend the reasons for the changes he made; and then suddenly, excitement rises from the fact that one has been reading an 18th century poem in the terms in which it was written. And both Johnson's religion and his critical standards are illuminated by Bronson's analysis of his modes of thought.
It is an excellent example of how scholarship gradually, by immense labor, discovers the meaning of the past.
From the Bookshelf
"...so far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality. If poetry were anything—like dropping an atombomb—which anyone did, anyone could become a poet merely by doing the necessary anything; whatever that anything might or might not entail. But (as it happens) poetry is being, not doing. If you wish to follow, even at a distance, the poet's calling (and here, as always, I speak from my own totally biased and entirely personal point of view) you've got to come out of the measureable doing universe into the immeasureable house of being..."
(From "i, Six Nonlectures," by e. e. cummings; published by the Harvard University Press.)
Dailu Hansan
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 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
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.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
George DeBord and John Husar ... Co-Editorial Editors
Saundra Hayn, Associate Editorial Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bull Kane Business Manager
Ted Tidwell, Advertising Manager; Martha Crosier, Promotion Manager;
Ruth Rieder, National Advertising Manager; Tom Schmitz,
Circulation Manager; John Massa, Classified Advertising Manager.