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University Daily Kansan Monday. Dec. 14, 1959
New Party Questioned
Most observers of campus politics will agree that single party domination injures government. That is why we welcome the Independent party as a second political party since the dissolution of AGI this fall.
Inter-party competition, whether it is on campus or in national affairs, forces individual party members to produce examples of their worth, or unworthiness, as the case may be. The best way to keep any party pointed toward fair and efficient government is to have another party snipping at its heels, watching for mistakes.
KU's political scene was dominated by one faction for many years. But, as is the way with most factions, it became too powerful for even its own members and split, causing two political parties to emerge in 1954. During the past five years this campus has had an effective two-party system, an era which we feel should be maintained.
KU's two-party system has been worthwhile primarily because it brought about the political unity of two relatively incompatible groups, the Greeks and the Independents. Each group was represented in both parties. Previously the Independents had only a minor voice in campus affairs. Thus, the significance of a party which is, in the words of one of its spokesmen, "strictly for Independents," can be questioned.
A political party's primary purpose is to elect its candidates. Issues and platforms are secondary, no matter what party leaders assert. We can assume, then, that the Independent party intends to fill all elective offices with Independents. So here is our question:
Can a party which excludes a large area of
student living from membership truly be representative of the interests of all KU students? That is one of the party's intentions, as stated by one of its leaders.
A "strictly" independent party could force the Greek houses to unite under Vox Populi. Such a party could draw the independent houses and individual members from Vox, introducing another phase of political warfare between Greeks and Independents. That was eliminated five years ago.
On the other hand, if the Independent party could effect a balance between both forms of student living, so that neither would dominate campus activities, it would be both significant and desirable. But that is hard to imagine since the party represents only the Independent branch.
The party could be an asset to the campus if it should admit Greek houses. It is showing a tendency to do that. But then it no longer would be a "strictly" independent party. The question now is, which kind of party should the new party be?
Since, in reality, the main issue on this campus has been Greek or Independent dominance, whichever you prefer, a "strictly" Independent party might be little more than an advanced form of pressure groups.
At any rate, we need two parties. But it would be much healthier for student government if both parties inclined to represent all students. We expect combat in campus politics. However, we prefer that combat to be based on correcting an opponent's mistakes. We disapprove of combat based on a dislike for the way another guy likes to live.
—John Husar
KU's 'Bowl' Team
The four members of the KU team which will compete on the College Bowl quiz show in New York City Jan. 3 have been selected.
This is quite an honor, for in effect, the committee, in choosing these people, has recognized them as outstanding "brains" in the undergraduate ranks of the University.
The four were chosen from a group of more than 100 who tried out for the show. The eliminations were made on the basis of answers given to questions of fact in fields ranging from music to geography.
The broad range of information that must be available to the contestants is shown by the questions they had to answer in the campus eliminations:
For example: "This familiar structure was reinforced with iron bars, pins, needles and penny-loaves. What was it?
"Answer: London Bridge, according to the Nursery Rhyme."
This one would have stopped us cold. However, we might have made up lost ground by identifying the Bessemer process on the next question.
Judging from past programs, the questions will be harder in New York.
But whatever the outcome, the selectees have shown that they are best qualified to represent KU.
We congratulate them and wish them success.
—George DeBord
Xmas Wish
Now please don't think I'm saving that any of these three gentlemen are like Scrooge. We all
Attn: Drs. David Dykstra, W. P.
Albrecht, Franklin Murphy;
I can't sing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" outside the offices of the above mentioned. However, this is the holiday season. I know because I see many things in store windows which I'd like to buy for my family. But of course since it has cost me $1,000 already this year to "raise" the standards of the English department at KU I'm a little short of cash. But after all, even Bob Cratchet wished Scrooge a Merry Christmas.
... Letters ...
know of their great, good works. Little David came out of the east like the Christmas star to slay the Goliath of Midwestern ignorance. With his trusty sling (called the English Proficiency Examination), he is laying Goliath low. I only wish that I were poet enough to write a psalm about David and his standards. David's standards really need extolling since, like the Holy Ghost, no one has ever seen them.
Then of course everybody, recognizes the great strides made by Dr. Albrecht in "rebuilding" the English department. Why, in less than two years many of the old "inefficient" staff members have been replaced by "brilliant" younger teachers intending to sweep the
cobwebs from the halls of ivy. All Dr. Albrecht needs is just a little more money and a few more required courses and KU will turn out nothing but brilliant English students. Yes, in a few years everybody will major in English so they will be able to meet the "raised" standards of Dr. Albrecht's English department.
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
How can anyone have failed to notice the great strides taken by Chancellor Murphy? We now have more money for a greater University and, of course, more opposition to that mean old Governor Docking. I wonder what ever happened to the old fashioned chancellor who didn't manage to make it to Russia but who did oversee the development of the University from the student's point of view. Oh well, times change and, in retrospect, Nicholas Murray Butler did very little to advance Columbia University. No. I don't wish to imply that Drs. Dykestra, Albrecht and Murphy are a trio of modern Scrooges. If you remember, in "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge mends his ways in the end. You see, no ghost could possibly get through the walls of academic ignorance that these men have erected.
Extension 376, business office
Telephone VIking 3-2700
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912 Telephone VIking 3-2700
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
Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
George DeBord and John Husar ... Co-Editorial Editors
Saundra Hayn. Associate Editorial Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Kane Business Manager
I realize that my complaints are beneath these august gentlemen's dignity. Still in all, to the modern counterpart of Marley and Scrooge I wish them a comfortable Christmas in front of the fire. I wonder if there is a Christmas for other people, too.
Bill Kane
C. E. Cornell Uravan, Colo. Class of 1959
How Do You Feel?
I oppose the use of the oath and affidavit, and feel the University should refuse the loan fund.
I support the use of the loyalty oath and disclaimer affidavit.
I am opposed to the oath and affidavit, but I believe we should continue to use the loan fund while working for the removal of the oath and affidavit.
Name ...
Hometown and class
Send to the University Daily Kansan, Flint Hall.
By Calder M. Pickett Associate Professor of Journalism
DEAR DEAD DAYS. by Charles Addams. Putnam, $3.95.
But what is humor? We can laugh at the sick joke about Mrs. Lincoln or the child dying of leukemia, but is it funny in real life? How many of us can stand to look at deformity? Let's say one of Addams' three-legged creations came walking down Massachusetts Street, or into the Student Union. Would we laugh—or even look for very long?
Be advised, lest you think otherwise, that this is not a book of cartoons. Far from it. The dust jacket calls it "a family album." It is a collection of the kind of sick humor that has inspired this sharp American humorist.
Addams' Cartoons
That's the difference, it seems to me. And I have long loved Addams' cartoons—the truck driver motioning a driver around a mountain curve into the path of an oncoming car. The car and trailer poised beside a precipice, the husband saying, "Would you please step out a minute, dear?" The ghoulish family right out of Frankenstein and Dracula. The monster pouring boiling oil on the merry Christmas carolers.
This is no disqusition on humor. My students tell me this stuff is funny. They say it will go big in the fraternity houses, just right for the Christmas trade. Here are some of Addams' collections of photographs of the "dear dead days," pictures that have inspired his great cartoons:
A baby playing with a gun, a double-headed baby, an infant with a supernumerary head, a baby lying on a pool table, a three-legged boy, a girl with a mustache.
A pig-nosed woman, a monkey-woman, an albino family, Siamese twins, "the only complete shrunken body extant," a body preserved in ice.
Strangely enough, there are no funny sketches from Dachau or Buchenwald prison, no Chinese prisoners raped by the Japanese. Ruth Snyder frying at Sing Sing is not here.
Charles Addams' cartoon heros are funny. Those who inspired Addams are not. Hitler and the atomic bomb may have hardened us to death and to gruesomeness, but they also have removed the humor. This book truly is, as the publisher says, a chamber of horrors.
Moon animals from Locke's "Moon Hoax," a woman staring
• morosely at a skull, boots of misshapen feet.
CA
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"NAW, THAT ISN'T HIS LETTER SWEATER —THAT'S
HIS GRAPE AVERAGE."