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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Sept. 24, 1959
Regents' Budget Split
Last spring the University had more than a tough time trying to secure a workable budget from the Kansas Legislature. In fact, KU never did get the figure it claimed to be necessary to operate the University on a competitive plane with other schools.
This year the educational general budget is already on its way to the Senate Budget Department and the governor for appraisal. The Board of Regents is asking for $13,168,000.
But there is another side to the 'educational finance situation which is currently giving the KU administration some heart-flutter. In what has recently become a controversial matter, the regents cannot agree on the method of financing the state's needed college building program. While one-half of the board sees the necessity in providing Kansas campuses with as much classroom and laboratory space as possible before the surge in enrollment expected by 1962, the other half feels it would be wiser to adopt a "more leisurely" building program. However, all regents agree on the need for the proposed buildings.
Slated for future construction at KU are a new engineering building ($1,900,000), a Watson Library addition ($1,800,000), and an addition to the power plant ($600,000). Seven institutions are seeking improvements which should total $11,- 891,000.
Those regents who favor the "more leisurely" method of handling the project insist that the annual $3 million appropriation from the Educational Building Fund (EBF) is sufficient. The others are equally sure that the EBF allotment alone will slow down the plan until it becomes too late to adequately cope with the building crisis. They feel that extra money should be brought in from somewhere to insure the program's early completion.
And to confuse matters, two Kansas newspapers have said that the board has split because of politics.
With a $15 million surplus in the state treasury, there seems little reason for the regents' dispute. —John Husar
In the Interests of All
Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy has reaffirmed the University's policy of making KU a vital center of scholastic, cultural, and intellectual activity.
This is a commendable goal. Everything possible should be done that will improve the quality of KU graduates.
However, there remains doubt in some quarters that this policy is in the best interests of all students. It has been charged that KU is going overboard in toughening up academic standards. An idea has developed that the University is interested only in the intellectual elite.
If this were true, the idea of the University as a vital center would have to be dismissed. This is a state university for all who desire higher education.
Its doors are open to all and the program offered must be designed in such a way as to be of benefit to the many and not the few. This is the democratic way.
KU as a center for a select gifted group would be ideal. That is, if you were one of those selected. If, however, you were Mr. Average and the doors of your University were closed to you because you were not exceptional, then the school on the hill would become a hated thing. It would suffocate within its own egoism.
KU should never become the Harvard of the Midwest, simply because that is not its function. Harvard is a private school, KU is a state institution. Harvard is endowed with millions of dollars, KU is tax-supported. Harvard may screen
out Mr. Average if it so desires, for it caters to whom it chooses. KU is less selective. It exists for and serves men and women who bring only the desire to learn as a reference.
It appears clear by his statements that the chancellor has no intention to push the requirements beyond the average student's reach. He said the University is as equally proud to serve the ambitious average boy or girl as it is of its gifted student program.
And too, there is little in the new requirements to indicate a move toward selective education. The changes are sensible and in keeping with the recently-discovered need for more knowledge and fewer "snap" courses.
Undergraduate requirements will require the student to take more mathematics. This is a reasonable revision. It is possible for a person to graduate at the present time without ever having seen the inside of an algebra class.
The requirement to fill distribution requirements from a list of "principal courses" will eliminate needless "pud" courses from many schedules.
The new foreign language requirement, which will make it virtually impossible for a student to take a language without learning it, seems only intelligent in this age of speed and world travel.
We hope the chancellor will see his dream of KU as a "center of intellectual activity for the Trans-Mississippi West" become a reality...a center in which the average man can grow into a great man. —George DeBord
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"NOW I KNOW WHAT THEY MEAN BY HIGHER EDUCATION."
"The most insane thing on the globe at the present time is for the world to spend 100 billion dollars a year preparing for a war nobody wants, nobody expects and nobody can survive." — Roswell Garst, Coon Rapids, Ia., farmer.
Worth Repeating
Raymond Nichols, executive secretary of the University said: "Once I held a watch for a Daily Kansan editor while he got doused in Potter Lake for writing an editorial which accused the upperclassmen of being more juvenile than the freshmen." Let history not repeat itself.
Paraphrasing an old University saying, Cancellor Franklin D. Murphy said, "Harvard is KU on the Charles."
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"Hal Boyle lost 40 pounds in 90 days and wrote a column about it. Bet it'd be interesting to read how some KU chicks achieved the reverse." -Disenchanted student.
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Now that Khrushchev has visited Coon Rapids, Ia., headline writers are calling him "farm boy." That sounds very homey to Kansans, maybe, but the term "farm boy" has a different connotation to people from Chicago, New York and Pittsburgh.
It Looks This Way ...
By Tom Hough
The KU pseudo-intellectuals and self-branded beatniks are having a hey-day with the wide-eyed, emotionally tense freshmen and new students.
This happens every fall.
Unable to quickly comprehend the difference between statements such as Chancellor Murphy's recent reaffirmation that the policy of KU is to make "a vital center of scholastic, cultural, and intellectual activity for the Trans-Mississippi West," and the first sentence an average, seasoned KU student generally says about his school, "Boy, did we have parties!" the campus newcomers are ripe for any bit of garbage thrown their way.
This is what the pseudo-intellectuals and self-branded beatniks are banking on. They know that changing schools—especially from high school to college—is confusing. They use every device in their power to acquire what notoriety they can.
Notice a pile of books stashed for a moment while the owner tends to business elsewhere. The book on top is invariably representative of the most difficult course that individual is taking. More patient observation will reveal many students restack their books when they set them down for a minute—a little labor for recognition.
The tidbits of conversation are perhaps the most disgusting.
"Take it easy now, and try not to be a cynical misanthropo," one KU male remarked to a pretty freshman woman as he took leave of her in front of the Kansas Union during enrollment.
He was probably a sophomore. "The Misanthrope" is required reading in a freshman English course.
Knowledge and education are the basis for most students attending school, and every freshman has to progress from wide-eyed wonder, through the stage of cynic, and finally to the quiet confidence of the youthful senior—until he gets out in the world and finds most of his pet theories are of little use in actual practice.
By Calder M. Pickett
Associate Professor of Journalism
Miss Rand exalts the individual over society. Oh, how she does! Her individual can be as egoistic as her architect of "The Fountain-head." He builds the building, so he can tear it down. Christian ethics are nonsense to Miss Rand. And her villain is Robin Hood. Rob from the rich indeed! Give to the poor? The poor are not worth bothering with, she says.
Not worth bothering with unless they fawn over the man of power and individuality, that is. For in our society there are individuals of power and greatness, who can never yield to a superstate that sucks away all their individuality and makes them part of the mass.
What do Miss Rand's individuals do about our "statist" society? Well, they find a mountain retreat somewhere in the Rockies. There they set up their cooperative society (Well, that's what it sounds like to me, Miss Rand). Here in their Shangri-La they can yield to the instinct of workmanship. They can exalt the dollar, because there is nothing shameful about making money, and making a profit.
The heroine of this colossal tale is one Dagny Taggart, whose ancestors built the great rail line, Taggart Transconmental. The heroes are three—Francisco d'Anconia of d'Anconia Copper, Hank Rearden of Rearden Metal, and John Galt, who once constructed a motor that draws its power from the universe. Dagny, whose view of love is comparable to that of a Kathleen Winsor heroine, goes to bed with all three.
The book probably cannot be written off, nor should it be. It is gargantuan. It is as full of stylistic quagmires as a combination of Dreiser and James Jones. And this paperback edition is set in type that makes reading baseball box scores almost a pleasure.
And all three think that's mighty fine. They're the great of the world, you see. Understanding. Intellectual. Not bound by our 20th century middle class morality. They live in that retreat in the Rockies, which they call Galt's Gulch. There they wait for the bureaucrats to destroy America. Then they return to the world, to rebuild it.
"Atlas Shrugged" borrows liberally from "Lost Horizon," Robert Owen, Fourier, Herbert Hoover, "Gone with the Wind," Russell Kirk, Veblen, and "Executive Suite." But most of all it's like "Little Orphan Annie." And its approach to sociology and economics is about that ingenuous.
Come to think of it, there's another literary resemblance. James Fenimore Cooper. The escapes and coincidences are as much fun as anything in "The Last of the Mohicans." Crazy book. Trouble is, it makes sense every once in awhile. But then, so does "Little Orphan Annie."
ATLAS SHRUGGED, by Ayn Rand. Signet, 95 cents.
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
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