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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Nov. 16. 1960
A Constitutional Relic
3.
When president-elect John F. Kennedy raises his right hand to take the oath of office as President of the United States next January, he may do so without the support of the majority of his fellow citizens.
At present, it does look as if he is indeed the man the people chose; but the tabulations of the popular vote still give Vice President Nixon an outside chance of becoming one of the members of an elite club — the National Association of Presidential Candidates Who Won the People and Lost the Presidency.
This is not an idle speculation; it may well happen in this election. In Mississippi, a slate of totally uncommitted electors has been elected. In Alabama and Georgia, the Kennedy electors have the right to withhold their votes from the president-elect. If a couple of the big states had turned to Nixon instead of Kennedy, this clique could have — against the will of those citizens they supposedly represent — named the president.
AT THE ROOT of the trouble lies the electoral college, that stuffed dinosaur inherited from the aristocratic founders of the republic who feared the "great beast," the public. The college tampers with the free choice of an enlightened electorate, and does so in the protective shadow of the constitution.
The college elects presidents; the people only elect the college, and even then cannot be sure that the men to whom they have entrusted their vote will not turn on them and twist their birthright to serve some political or personal purpose.
SHACKLED BY THE STATES, the electors simply go through the motions, casting their votes for the man the voters chose. This procedure is better than the perversion of the desires of the electorate that can be seen in some places; but there is still much wrong with it.
But we can have even more respect for the electoral college when it operates in this highhanded, uncaring way then we can for it in its present condition throughout most of the nation.
First, it is about as useless as the appendix. Here the college does not even serve as a check on the people. It is merely an obstruction between the people and the presidency, which has come to be our most important office in terms of its sensitivity to public pressures. The presidency now belongs to the people, and is entirely responsible to them.
Secondly, it makes possible that gross miscarriage of justice, the election of a president without the support of the people. When a state which goes strongly for one candidate and a state which is very evenly divided are compared, we find that the ballot cast by the man in the hotly contested state means more than the one cast by the man in the other state. If Kansas gave Nixon a plurality of 100,000 and California gave Kennedy a plurality of 10, Kennedy would have won 32 electoral votes to Nixon's 8, although the latter received a majority of the popular vote. This is both ridiculous and tragic.
THE FRAMERS OF the constitution thought to protect Americans from making the wrong choice when they set up the college. But they were living in a different age. The people were relatively uninformed; travel was severely limited; there were no mass media. Today we may boast of the most enlightened electorate anywhere, an electorate jealous of the right to choose their own chief executive without the intervention of an institution born in a bygone era and nourished on fear of the public.
We have tried more than 100 times to modify or abolish the electoral college, but those who consider it "an ace in the hole" and see in it the means to wield power in an emergency have defeated it. There is always talk of the Founding Fathers and State's Rights shot through their arguments to lend them credence. To our misfortune, these agruments have carried.
But there is always time to try again. And we must try, for present concept of the presidency and the idea of an enlightened electorate investing that office with all its power are inconsistent with the existence of the electoral college. Our democracy will be most just and more expressive to the public will when this institution joins the powdered wig and the snuff box on the shelf of history.
— Bill Blundell
Most Happy Fella
Editor
For the information of the University Daily Kansan, a wonderful musical was presented by the University Theatre Nov. 6-12. Its name is "The Most Happy Fella." It starred Norman Atkins, we all-known Broadway star, and a great cast of KU students. It is surprising to me that the "award winning" UDK would not cover this show and give it some kind of a writeup. But nothing has been done and I assume that the music critic of the UDK spends his time on bigger "seops."
THE PRODUCTION was great.
Mr. Atkins, Miss Tebbencamp,
Miss Malicky, Mr. Harris, Mr.
Sneegas, Mr. Hopkins, and the
entire company deserve a special vote of thanks and recognition by the University for giving us such a treat. The ease with which they presented this production proved to the audiences the great amount of time and work that went into this show.
As for the UDK, I would like to see a little more effort in reviewing University functions instead of their "special editions" and "hot" lines regarding the elections, etc.
To the cast of "The Most Happy Fella," thanks for the enjoyable treat and I hope that the UDK will give some recognition to you.
James C. Coleberd Liberty, Mo., senior
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Extension 376, business office
University of Kansai student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Viking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press.
Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22,
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
Ray Miller Managing Editor
Carol Heller, Jane Boyd, Priscilla Burton and Carrie Edwards, Assistant
Managing Editors; Pat Sheley and Suzanne Shaw, City Editors; John
Macdonald, Sports Editor; Peggy Kallos and Donna Engle, Society
Editors.
Rav Miller
Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
John Peterson and Bill Blundell ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Mark Dull
Business Manager
The members of the cast like to receive the criticism of a supposedly alert and unbiased reviewer. And after months of tedious preparation — so that the show will entertain thousands — a review of this type is deserved and appreciated.
Happy Fella Ignored Editor:
It is the responsibility of the Kansan to inform the students of any available, newsworthy occurrence. "Most Happy Fella" was just that.
NEGLIGENCE OF THIS SORT has been observed before. In fact, there was only a late-appearing, half associated review of the last Experimental Theatre production "Somebody."
"Most Happy Fella" began Nov. 6. Since then, thousands have seen and, I think, enjoyed the delightfully performed show. During that week, there were few — if any — campus events that were as well prepared and as beautifully presented. It seems to me that a Daily Kansan review was in order.
A CONSTRUCTIVE REVIEW should have appeared Nov. 8—for there were many students who were waiting for such a review. As you know, they were disappointed.
I believe your policy to be worthy — of improvement.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Ed McMullan
Long Beach, N. Y., senior
Student Body Vice President
(Editor's Note: The Kansan has no choice but to dig into a large portion of humble pie and assure reader McMullan that from now on the campus theater productions will receive the attention they deserve.)
"PROBATION OR NOT — ILL NOT BEG TO GET A GRADE RAISED."
The American Negro
Part III By Bill Blundell
The closing of the schools in Arkansas and Virginia left the issue squarely in the hands of the federal government. And the government was not slow to act. The power of the executive fell behind the order of the court on September 24, 1957, as President Eisenhower ordered federal troops to Little Rock to enforce integration at Central High School. The words of the law became translated into the cold steel of bayonets.
From that time till now, the struggle has taken on a different objective. Segregationists, fully aware at last that the government means business, have taken the war underground, following a series of defeats in the courts and the collapse of "massive resistance" in Virginia. Here Gov. Almond surrendered to the pressures for integration and was forced to open the schools.
The new war is waged in secrecy, in the recesses of those parts of the country which still believe sincerely that the Negro and the white races were never destined to intermingle. Negroes still cannot get many jobs they were guaranteed by the courts, nor can they live where they please; the reasons given for this failure is always evasive, always one the courts can never touch, always one which is rooted in basic prejudice but never admits to this.
In the past few years, the Negro has found new weapons; too. The most effective of these has been the "sit-in," in its many variations. Here the Negro attacks what he considers inequality by passive resistance, a technique reminiscent of Gandhi. The peaceful nature of these demonstrations has disarmed the segregationists, at least for the time being; but the issue has not yet clearly turned in the Negro's favor.
So we find the races jockeying for position in many areas of the nation. They glower with suspicion, test each other's defenses, execute cautious probing attacks. Neither side would ever admit that the words of the Supreme Court decision of 1954 changed their society instantly, and for all time.
But this is true, no matter how vehemently it may be denied. In the history of this country, a backward step of any significance has never been taken in the process of racial toleration. One need only follow the history of the Supreme Court to see that the movement has been toward integration of the races ever since the first days of the republic.
At this time, the Negro was a chattel whose very soul belonged to his master. He was property in the legal sense of the word, a being with no rights who existed at the sufferance of his owner. When the Abolitionists began to agitate for the end of slavery, the Negro was unable to join them, for his total illiteracy and the tradition of obedience to authority prevented him from making any efforts in his own behalf. The court's attitude toward the Negro was shown in its opinions on the Dred Scott case. In this opinion, the rights of the Negro as a citizen were emphatically denied.
The first great advance in the attitude of the court came in 1891 with the decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Here the court maintained the equality of the Negro in accordance with the 13th and 14th amendments, but also stated that separate but equal facilities for both races were consistent with the constitution.
For more than 50 years the "separate but equal" doctrine was the rule of life in this nation. As the years progressed and the Negro became more socially oriented in his outlook, greater concessions were won. Also the spirit of the white community became more liberal toward the Negro, who was beginning to show marked advances. In time, this attitude was crystallized by the great Supreme Court decision of 1954, which was militant in its proclamation of the equal rights of the Negro, and the necessity of integration in their procurement.