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University Daily Kansan
Fridav. Sept. 25, 1959
A Lousy Impression
The University has became quite cosmopolitan with over 200 foreign students enrolled here.
Naturally, in connection with our country's policy of emphasis on diplomacy, we want to show these visitors the best possible side of American life.
But if incidents continue such as the recent theft of nine Kansas Union cushions, worth $225, how can we impress these visitors in a favorable manner? If students continue to steal and shoot others in the back, will foreign students honestly be able to respect our moral ideals?
At KU we are theoretically pursuing higher education. We are assumed to be learning about our nation and the immense responsibilities we must shoulder as its citizens. Who, of the 9,000 students enrolled here, really needs a black leather cushion enough to steal it from the Kansas Union?
Couldn't we at KU help our guests to understand us in some more constructive way?
What will we say to the foreign student who asks why "rich" Americans steal from the institutions which they themselves finance?
—Saundra Hayn
The American Juvenile
Former president Harry S. Truman has suggested a return of the "Spare the rod and spoil the child" theory as a means of combating juvenile delinquency. To some extent we have to agree with him.
Judging from the recent trouble in New York and daily articles in local newspapers reporting juvenile crimes, it seems that discipline has become almost archaic. At the present rate, the word could conceivably disappear from the dictionary about the time the New Delinquents are old enough to reflect back on the good old days when switch-blades were still legal.
It is understandable that a certain percentage of the young men and women from underprivileged areas would turn bad. Economic, and family difficulties serve to motivate an almost innate desire in young people to rise above the mess they were born to, whatever the consequences.
However, there is no such excuse for the boy or girl from a substantial home who wantonly destroys or steals for thrills or because it is the thing to do to become accepted by the "Group".
When this particular breed of youngsters first appeared in large numbers, no one seems to know. Only that it was sometime during the
transition from the Model T to the Vanguard or from the hand-wound phonograph to the drive-in movie. At some point in our recent revolution from horses to highways, discipline fell behind.
Discipline does not necessarily have to be of the "rod" type, but the word "no" could stand some reviving. Fathers could do their bit by not asking Junior for the car anymore. Mothers could get into the act by giving up a few jobs and creating others for the kids at home.
Juveniles are little different from puppies or grade-school children. They can adapt to something new, like discipline, just as soon as they understand what it is. If it takes a few whacks with a willow switch to teach them that "no" is "no," then so be it. A boy with a burned bottom is far less dangerous to society than he is with a group in a car burning past a drive-in while attempting to raise the insurance rates.
Part of the trouble today seems to be that mother no longer cuts the willow switch from the tree. Instead, she will drive to the corner drugstore, buy a book on child psychology, and leave it on the table for father to read while she motors down to a garden club meeting.
Morals and Movies
It's not often that a radio disc jockey gives his listeners a subject to think about which is any deeper than the latest Fabian hit. But recently a Kansas City dee-jay paused for a moment to bring a topic of national importance to his listeners.
Pearson pondered the question: "Why did the State Department choose to conduct Premier
KCMO's Johnny Pearson was speaking about Russian Premier Khrushchev's recent denunciation of the movie "Can-Can," now being filmed in Hollywood. Khrushchev called the movie an example of American moral degradation after he saw some chorus scenes being filmed.
Khrushchev on a tour of that particular motion picture?"
He asked why the No. 1 Russian could not be shown the filming of an American epic, something like "The Robe." Pearson then instructed his radio audience to turn to the movie page in the morning newspaper. He proceeded to note that there were no less than four movie ads featuring pictures of women in various stages of undress.
"If this is true on just an average day," he said,
"wouldn't it be easy enough for others to conclude the American morals are truly in a state of degradation?" —Rael Amos
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
Daily Hansan
Founded 1889, became bweekly 1904,
trieweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
University of Kansas student newspaper
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Reprressed by National Advertising Service. 420 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. Mail subscription: National. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the university year except Saturday and Sundays, University holidays, and first-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 Yocam, Assistant Managers Editors; Rael Amos, City Editor; Jim Trotter, Sports Editor;
Carolyn Fralley, Society Editor.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
George DeBord and
John Husar
Adriana Hayn, Associate Editorial Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Kane Business Manager
Ted Tidwell, Advertising Manager;
Joanne Novak, Promotion Manager;
Ruth Rieder, National Advertising Manager; Tom Schmidt, Circulation Manager; John Massa, Classified Advertising Manager.
It Looks This Way...
By George DeBord
I called in my friend, Mike (Vote Here) O'Neill about the Kansas Board of Regents deadlock. Mike has been arbitrating political disputes on the waterfront in Brooklyn for a number of years and is something of an authority on whipping boys and vice-presidential hopefuls.
I explained to my one-time service buddy that the Board was split sharply over methods of financing the building program.
"What should the board do?" I asked.
"There is no room for disagreement?" the soft-spoken Irishman replied. "If the boards in your University buildings are splitting, it seems apparent that new stone or steel structures should be built to replace those wooden edifices whose very foundations are of rotten timber.
"And furthermore, I would like to bring to your attention the fact that splinters have been the cause of a number of lawsuits since the days of Roosevelt, and not one candidate for office would dare stand on a platform of decaying planks—no matter what his calling. This even can be applied to the candidate, who in the interest of vote-getting, bases his campaign on his appeal to those sacred voters in the rural areas, at the expense of a lesser number of votes in more cultured urban communities.
"Mike! Mike, boy." I pleaded, attempting to steer him back to the immediate problem. "You're not addressing the boys at the hall now. You have lost the subject. I want your opinion on the action of a non-political body that has political overtones."
The big man puffed on his 50-cent cigar and looked me in the eye. There was a bit of the old Irish devilment in his grin. "Me boy," he said, "a political overtone is like a hole in your sock. You know it's there, but you just don't talk about it."
"Sometimes it is difficult to keep politics out of certain situations," he sadly said. "I recall the time me friend John O'Toole was runnin' for county clerk. He had no qualifications, but it was a rural area and the folks there hated the one city school in the county.
"But, Mike," I pleaded, "everybody around here is saying that we have a potentially unhealthy situation. Many are of the opinion that politics should not be a factor in determining the future growth of the University."
"So, Johnny used to go down there every day before election and throw rocks at the kiddies as they arrived for classes. It got in the newspapers. Needless to say, he lost the city vote, but the country people elected him by a landslide."
"I see." I said, putting my pencil awav.
“It's like finding cream in your coffee.” he said. “You might not be able to swallow it, but someone else likes it that way.”
By Carolyn Frailey
ADramatic Observation
Scores of college students, dramatists or would-be dramatists, shuffled off stages, twisted nervously in their seats, or grabbed frantically for a last glance at scripts as auditions for University Theatre productions continued this week.
As the crowds surged around the bulletin board in the Music and Dramatic Arts Building, it seemed as if every theater-inspired student on the campus had turned out to put in his bid for a part in one of the plays.
A typical example of the quietly conducted tryouts was found in the Experimental Theatre where the casting director was skipping through dozens of actors hoping for a part in "Desire Under the Elms," by Eugene O'Neill.
In this case, the casting director was a woman. She sat in the back of the room staring intently, but expressionless, at the stage as the hopefuls read through their parts two by two. The actors were never encouraged with a smile or discouraged with a frown—they were merely dismissed with a tired, "OK, that's enough. Thank you."
The faces of the students were also expressionless as they awaited their turn to climb on the stage and make a "now or never" attempt to impress their theatrical ability upon the mind of the casting director.
Their emotions were seen only through their actions. Some stared into space, apparently oblivious to all tension, but the rapid tip-tap of their shoes against the floor or their fingers against the arm of the chair showed that they were not as far away as they seemed to be.
Some sat with their noses in the scripts, mouthing the words of the parts to themselves.
Only a few watched the students on the stage, watching for mistakes which could be avoided when their turn came.
Students who are good friends or have many classes together barely spoke as they vied for roles in the play. There was no obvious hostility—just an apparent desire not to give the next guy an extra edge.
There is an irony to the story. As the tired, emotionally exhausted, but keyed-up students trooped out of the theater, the casting director's voice carried through the room.
"Tryouts are always a farce!"
Worth Repeating
The reason why so many Society murders are unsolved is that so many people consider them a good thing—Cleveland Amory.
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Students are the ones who decide how much any one student can be allowed to produce without being thought a "square" or a rate-buster.—David Riesman.