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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. Jan. 5. 1960
We Resolve...
Now that we're back on our feet after staying up too late to greet 1960, we feel compelled to make some resolutions for the newly-arrived decade.
First of all, we make ourselves an iron-bound promise not to read any article entitled "The Soaring Sixties" no matter what magazine or newspaper it appears in. Perhaps we might glance at one or two stories simply headlined "1960" or we could be cajoled into looking back at the "Fumbling Forties" but we had about all the soaring we could stand New Year's Eve.
Also, we intend to have a bunch of loyalty oaths printed up for our personal use. This way we can sign one every morning with our oatmeal to reassure ourselves that we are good citizens. We don't understand just how this works but one of our friends said the other night it was the thing to do.
Then, we resolve to really settle down to this school business. We've made this same pact with ourselves every semester since we were freshmen and have never kept it past the first weekend after classes resumed. But this time we mean it—at least until we get our finances back in shape after too much light-hearted Christmas shopping.
Next, we promise to take a more kindly attitude toward our governor. We may not see eye to eye with him on the needs of education, but he's the only governor we have at present and who needs professors anyway?
We resolve not to join the Christmas Savings Club for 1960 regardless of how many more post cards our bank sends us.
We promise ourselves not to wait until the last minute to cram for finals which will be coming up in a few weeks. We won't study for them at all.
We long ago resolved not to think too badly of that group of professors the Chancellor is sending down south. After all, if those guys want to get a good tan, that's their business.
Next, we resolve not to write anything more about the budget. With all the facts and figures that everyone on the Hill is quoting, we fear that further publication will only lead to confusion among the taxpayers in the western part of the state. And they are already overburdened with the problem of trying to help the governor figure out just what to do with the present surplus in the state treasury.
Finally, we promise not to worry about the English Proficiency or Western Civilization examinations any longer, since we passed them both last year.
Also, we will try to avoid national politics. Although it's an election year, discussion of issues only leads to arguments and we don't want to lose any friends. If Rocky can stay out of it, so can we.
We resolve to see one art film and hear two visiting lecturers before the year is out.
Right now we're going to file these resolutions away along with last fall's football schedule and settle down to the late, late movie.
We resolved to quit watching the midnight cinema last January, but contacted a slight case of insomnia between semesters and haven't broken the habit yet. George DeBord
Washington's Worried
Deciding Upon Scholars
A few days ago the University's 38 new members of Phi Beta Kappa, national scholastic honorary, were named by the local chapter. Unquestionably, this is an honor which most of them will wear with pride for the rest of their lives—and well they may. Phi Beta Kappa is an organization which represents the highest goal in collegiate scholarship. The symbolic key is a token of intellect and ability to which even the most indifferent bend the knee of respect.
from this school. By comparison, there were only a handful at the University of Oregon last year.
At present, the University's Phi Beta Kappa students are chosen on the basis of grade point. Anyone with a 3.7 GPA at the end of his junior year or a 3.5 during his senior year is eligible. In a University of almost 17,000 there are plenty of eligibles—as is verified by the number of students who each year join the ranks of Phi Beta Kappa
It is, however, an honor which is in danger at least on this campus. The reason for its precarious position should be evident in the mere announcement of the Phi Beta Kappa winners. Thirty-eight this quarter—and many, many more before the year is out.
Obviously, the current method of choosing Phi Beta Kappa is neither fair to students at other schools nor is it fair to the society itself. Students at this university have a far greater chance of becoming members simply because the requirement is set so comparatively low. And by allowing so many newcomers to be initiated, the exclusiveness of the organization is severely damaged. Who can be sure that simply because a person has a 3.5 or better he or she is qualified as a Phi Beta Kappa?
Any time we judge people on grade point we are entering into a tenuous realm. Our system of determining intellect by numbers is at best an uncertain thing, somewhat allied to the 36-23-36 school of judging beauty. The most that we can say for the current grade point method is that it may be the least worst.
Mary Richardson University of Washington Daily
UNIVERSITY Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
tristweek 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Vikling 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, NY. Associated 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 events. 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 Fralley, Society Editor.
Saundra Hayn, Associate Editorial
Editor.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
George DeBord and
John Husar ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Kane ... Business Manager
Ted Tidwell, Advertising Manager;
Martha Crosier, Promotion Manager;
Ruth Bieder, Marketing Manager;
Schultz, Circulation Manager; Johan Masse, Classified Advertising Manager.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"SO I FINALLY HAD TO DRAW TH'LINE."
By Jon Muller
TRIUMPH IN THE WEST, by Arthur Bryant, Doubleday & Co.
$6.95
This book, which is the second of a two volume set, is one of the flood of recent books that attempt to give the story of World War II as seen by those who were charged with winning it. Although the name on the book is that of Arthur Bryant, the reader will discover immediately that Mr. Bryant is in no sense the author; he has done nothing more than to present us with an edited version of Field-Marshal Lord Alanbrooke's diaries.
The first volume of this work "The Turn of the Tide" makes far less use of these actual quotations, and many people would probably prefer it to the present volume. Yet, at the same time, it is the presence of the quotations which make "Triumph in the West" more valuable as a source to gain an insight into the personalities of the war.
Alanbrooke's own personality shows up quite boldly in this book. His main purpose in releasing his diaries seems to be his desire to be looked upon as a modern Napoleon. Alanbrooke knows that he was nearly always right, and he wants everyone else to know it too.
However, we cannot criticize him too strongly for holding this view because we find a similar attitude in the writings of Eisenhower, Churchill, Montgomery, or any of the other wartime leaders. There is little modesty, false or otherwise, in the works of these men.
One criticism that could be made of Alanbrooke is that he fails to realize that he saw only part of the total picture and that this could let him put too much weight on his own theater of operations. This would mean that his strategy might well have been wrong when all factors were considered.
The controversial parts of this book are those that give Alanbrooke's opinion of his fellow commanders. Alanbrooke looks upon Dwight Eisenhower as a good social mixer, but believes that Ike was totally lacking of any skills as a strategist. Alanbrooke does tell us, however, that Eisenhower could have done a good job had he been in charge of logistics.
His view of MacArthur will be a surprise to some; he says that MacArthur was one of the best generals of the war. In Alanbrooke's own words, "He certainly outshone Marshall, Eisenhower, and all other American and British generals including Montgomery." Alanbrooke almost certainly has a feeling that Eisenhower and Marshall caused the war to last a month or more longer than necessary.
Reading the book is not a pleasure — Bryant will never make a living as a novelist, but he is an acceptable prose writer. For any person who has an interest in World War II and has already a fairly good knowledge of the events, this is an invaluable book; but I would not recommend it for the person who wishes a book to use to "bone up" on the history of the war. For such a purpose it has too much detail and too little of the general view.
Scholarship or Pap?
"Whatever else may be said about American scholarship, one must grant it the quality of copiousness. Dozens of university presses, scores of private institutes and foundations, hundreds of journals and newsletters, thousands of surveys and reports exhibit the results of an unceasing, nation-wide, solemn-eyed activity which every American citizen has learnt to regard as sacred and indispensable: Research. . . .
From the News-stand
"It depends on how honorific one wants to be. America has a way of turning out from time to time a piece of definitive research which is also a literary achievement and a contribution to thought and feeling—in short, a book. One thinks of Samuel Eliot Morison's 'Columbus' or Lionel Trilling's 'Matthew Arnold' or Henry Nash Smith's 'Virgin Land: the American West as Symbol and Myth.' Yet the conventions by which scholarship is encouraged in American academic life, though they do not precisely prohibit the emulating of such triumphs, do not favour it either. The conventions have not been consciously designed; rather, they have grown out of the programmes for the higher degrees, which were established seventy years ago in hybrid imitation of Germany and France. The central idea of these programmes is that a scholar is made by taking the courses and writing the dissertation which will earn him the Ph.D. degree. Since this preparation is to launch him into the profession of research, the young scholar's promotion in the academic hierarchy depends on his continuing to "contribute" to the literature of his field. No Ph.D., no scholar; no production of articles, no promotion.
"But how much of this ferreting and publishing can be called scholarship in the honorific sense?
"At the present time one can see in the United States a violent exaggeration—indeed, a caricature—of these commandments, and hence of their results. One can therefore understand why American scholarship is what it is only after looking a little farther into the conditions that produce it. Two considerations out-top all others: the young scholar wants to move rapidly to a tenure position; the college or university wants scholarly prestige. The young scholar, if he is wise, will neglect the teaching duties for which he is paid and will devote his time to research in a field which his superiors deem important at this time..."
(Excerpted from "Publish Or Perish," The Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 6, 1959.)