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University Daily Kansan
Monday. Jan. 4. 1960
Christmas in Town
While Mount Oread looked like a ghost town during the past two weeks, some students were present to share the desolation. Some of them, especially those who were far from home at Christmastime, felt sorry for themselves.
While there were listless attempts at parties, nothing seemed to compensate for the warmth of a family circle during the season when thoughts of home are most prominent. And while these students were going through the motions of living and studying, waiting for nothing to happen, a great spirit arose in the minds of many men and women. This spirit, called "good will toward men," "charity," and sometimes "love," let its subjects see beyond their normal obligations and into the lives of some who seemed a bit less fortunate at the moment.
As a result of that spirit, many students found themselves welcome in many homes, and shared in the sacred joys abounding in families blessed with love. Many beautiful Christmas stories happened in Lawrence this year. We feel that one student's story can speak for the others.
This student was preparing to spend his first Christmas away from home and he didn't like it. Without his realizing it, self-pity had soured his attitude. He walked among the throngs of
shoppers on Massachusetts St. studying faces and remarking to himself on the utter simplicity of people who enjoy materialistic Christmases. He saw tortured parents and big-eyed kids, and everywhere heard the words "I want . . . ." And he went back to his room feeling bitter and lonely.
Then he received a phone call. Then another. And he met some friends. Soon he had received five invitations to dine with various families. Some gave him small presents. All gave him their time, their efforts and their friendship. One family took time out from severe personal difficulties to send him some food and a present. And on Christmas Eve his mother phoned to tell him that her employer insisted that the student join his family for the holiday, and insured that by arranging for a round-trip ticket which the student was to pick up in Kansas City. He flew home in time to eat his Christmas dinner with the folks.
Christmas? There was plenty of Christmas in Lawrence this year. It didn't involve tinkling bells or green trees or even Santa Claus for some people. For them it was greater than any physical moment because it took place in the souls of good people who know what receiving can mean. And so they gave. And their gift was of themselves, which is really the greatest gift.
Syracuse Writes
The Press and the People
We're having difficulty recovering from the shock of Thursday night's criticism of the Daily Orange at the "Pinebrook in Retrospect" conference.
We've been criticized before—often with good reason. Our reporters have been guilty of inaccuracies; our editors have left out news items that should have been in; we've let copy slip into print that should have been left out. We've been blasted for it, and all we can do is apologize and try to do better. We're learning too, you know.
However, we are proud of the fact that in spite of our mistakes, we've managed to be rated one of the top college newspapers in the country by an independent agency. So our mistakes can't be as bad as those happening elsewhere.
But "Pinebrook in Retrospect" presents a new, and somewhat unique criticism. We could brush it off as plain stupidity if it weren't so
alarming that college students, indeed a law student included, could level such criticisms.
They didn't criticize us for inaccuracies, but rather for reporting and commenting on the truth.
We were criticized for showing the bad points of government.
Such a criticism indicates an appalling ignorance of the traditions of American government and the press. Does anybody remember John Peter Zenger?
It is the duty of a newspaper to criticize government. It was for just this purpose that the freedom of the press was included in the Bill of Rights. For crying out loud, what does government think we are — their public relations sheet?
When we are wrong, criticize us. But when we tell the truth about your mistakes, don't cry about it — correct them!
-Syracuse Daily Orange
Solon Agrees
Editor:
I am happy to see a united effort on the part of University students in behalf of adequate appropriations for the state colleges. I pledge my complete support to this end. I was on the campus the other week and was shocked at the overcrowding and inadequate facilities.
Your statement (item 8, column 5, page 2, Dec. 16 Kansan) "the legislature voted to cut the civil service pay scale" is not correct, in my opinion. I tried to raise it and failed, but I don't think we cut it. The one who stands in the way of more adequate pay is Gov. Docking.
Rep. John D. Bower (R)
Fourth District
McLouth, Kan.
Daily 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 236, 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.
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
Saudra Hayn, Associate Editorial Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Loyalty Oath
Bill Kune Business Manager Ted Tidwell, Advertising Manager; Martha Crosier, Promotion Manager; Buth Rieder, National Advertising Manager; Tom Schmitz, Circulation Manager; John Massa, Classified Advertising Manager.
A good case can be made both for and against the loyalty oath required of loanees. I can understand the reasons some schools have turned down the loan program; and it would be asking too much of the government to omit its little commie-catcher.
Editor:
While a university is necessarily a paternalistic institution, I think in this case it could forego the delights of fatherhood. Many students probably would be happy to sign the loyalty oath, get the loan, and go on with their education. Others would stand by a principle and refuse the loan, and perhaps find another source of revenue.
Notice that you ran a box poll on whether the federal student loans should be accepted. But among your three alternatives, you don't spell out what I think should be the best system.
But if the University decided not to take part in the program, the students who would take the loans are denied the chance to do so. Therefore, why not (for the University) accept the program, and leave the decision up to the individual, who has to worry about the rest of it — repaying the loan and all that.
It may be out of line with the latest thinking to suggest that students are capable of making such a decision for themselves, but I'm not too popular anyway.
—Alan Jones Emporia, Kan Class of 1859
By Bernard W. Eissenstat
Assistant Instructor of Western Civilization
COLLECTIVE FARMING IN RUSSIA: A POLITICAL STUDY OF THE SOVIET KOLKHOZY, by Roy D. Laird, assistant professor of political science. Social Science Studies, University of Kansas Publications, Lawrence.
"Collective Farming in Russia" is a significant and timely monograph which deals with the problem of power and its relationship to the peasant in the Soviet Union. It is a work which is a welcome addition to a field of Soviet agricultural studies to which, unfortunately, a rather thin number of Western observers have applied themselves.
The book is designed to give an analysis of Soviet institutions and administrative organizations as they apply to the Russian peasant and to simultaneously give some insights into the significant and underlying Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist theory which motivates and guides the Communist leaders. The essence of the work, in the broadest terms, lies in the conflict between the balance of power which is held by a poorly organized peasantry and the political power which is exerted on the peasantry as applied by a well organized group led by the Communist Party.
DR. LAIRD asserts that the revolutionary movement which culminated in October of 1917 with the ascension of the Bolsheviks to power was a dual movement. The Bolshevik revolutionary forces, without the overt consent in terms of aid of the Russian agrarian revolutionary forces, could never have brought the October revolution to a successful culmination. Even after the revolution, Lenin was acutely aware of the latent power of the peasantry, and the NEP was primarily a concession to them rather than to the urban entrepreneur.
With Stalin's decision, in 1927, to create the agricultural "Revolution from Above," the struggle between the Party and the peasant became intensified. All the power apparatus which was available in a totalitarian state was utilized to force, compel and coerce the peasant into the agricultural image of the Communist state — first the Kolkhozy (collective farms) and then Sovkhozy (state farms).
The immediate goal for the Party in the socialization of agriculture was to build a powerful industrial complex on the backs of the peasants. Concurrent with this aim were the desires to establish a system of centralized control and direction over the peasantry and, perhaps more importantly, to remold peasant consciousness in terms of Marxism.
THE AUTHOR ANALYZES in great depth, the system of controls, both internally as exemplified in the Kolkhozy, and externally as implemented by the Party through the Republic, the oblast (region), the rayon (district) and through the Kolkhozy. He also goes into some detail when he describes other means of external control — the MTS (Machine Tractor Stations), the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs), the MGB (Ministry of State Security) and the Party cadres at the local level. This leads to what is perhaps the most valuable part of the book — the tightening of controls over the Kolkhozy in the post World War II period. Here Dr. Laird points out the fallacies implicit in the Soviet totalitarian system and make his value judgments as to where Soviet agriculture and, hence, the Soviet system is heading.
UNFORTUNATELY there are several more or less serious detractions in this book. The beginning chapters dealing with the history of the Soviet Union in terms of the peasantry are thin; the attitudes expressed towards the peasant by such people as Trotsky, Bukharin and Rykov are not dealt with, and a lack of proofreading lessens the readability of the work. In sum, however, the book is well worth reading.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
L7
"IT'S HIS OWN IDEA, HE HAS NO CONFIDENCE IN HUMSELF WHEN HE GOES OUT WITH LOUIS."