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University Daily Kansan Monday, Nov. 14. 1960
It's Your Choice
It's election day at KU tomorrow.
After more than a year of one-party campus politics, the University Party makes its heralded debut against Vox Popull Party. This is the "good old American system" of two-party politics, the kind that breeds healthy competition and greater advantages for the voter compared to the oneparty domination. But what does this competition mean at KU?
Yes, there are certain issues like NSA (National Student Association); but both parties have taken the same stand favoring KU remain in the organization. In actuality, what tomorrow's election means is that KU voters will have the two-party choice of candidates, but hardly a two-party choice of issues.
A newspaper traditionally gives voters an indication of which candidates are the best qualified in its eyes by endorsing them. This often means nothing so far as qualifications are concerned other than the candidates belong to a certain political party. This isn't always true, but sometimes.
At KU, the Daily Kansan has the prerogative of supporting individual candidates or political parties and the entire slate of candidates in campus elections. But how can the Kansan make any great choice between parties and candidates when the issues are dead and no choices are left to the voters. Tomorrow must simply boil down so something of a popularity contest.
True. the University Party does have a couple
of "new ideas" in its proposal for a student discount plan and greater cooperation between the All Student Council and the city government and other city officials. Vox, has the same stand on cooperation between city government and the ASC, but it isn't quite as well developed.
The student discount plan? This plan might eventually save some KU students some money if installed here, but the plank in the UP platform is simply for investigation and advocates nothing. Vox supports the free ID exchange for football games. But Vox has been in power for a year and what has happened?
The lack of issues has been conspicuous on campus. The Daily Kansan has tried time and again to stir interest in the campus elections this fall, but most students don't know who is running for what and certainly have no idea of why that student should be voted for.
Yes, tomorrow is election day at KU and all living district seats in the ASC are up for reelection or change. The two-party system has become a reality once more at KU. Both parties seem to have strong organizations and the vote should be nearly split.
We at the Kansan hope all of the students will vote. This is campus politics and nobody really expects anything else. But the point is—be sure to exercise your right to vote or we will have an issue for the campus politicos, the one that's always there or so it seems—student apathy.
— John Peterson
By Stuart Levine Instructor of English
The concert Friday night in Swarthout Recital Hall by The New Danish Quartet was part of the group's first North American tour. Let us hope it is not their last; this is a quartet worth hearing again.
Like everything else on the program, the G major Quartet Opus 77 Number 1 of Josef Haydn seemed to have been prepared with great care. The Danes played as though they had thought out every note, searching for some devious plot. Haydn can be pretty devious, but none of the tricks he had up his sleeve passed undetected, even in the lickety-split last movement.
I don't think I've ever heard anything by Neils Bentzon, a contemporary Danish composer, before, although in a sense we've all heard his Quartet Opus 124 Number 6—it's so much like the work
of so many "International Style" composers. And because the standard procedures of this school have been borrowed for radio, television and movie scores, the music poses no problems for even the unsophisticated listener.
If there is anything individual about Bentzon's work, it was not evident on first hearing. Bartok might have written parts of this, Piston or any of a dozen men other sections, and one passage in the last movement seemed to have been lifted from, of all things, Honegger's Pacific 231. But it wasn't a bad piece of music, and the quartet played it very well indeed.
Brahms' A minor Quartet, Opus 51 Number 2, followed the intermission. Now Brahms performers fall into two schools, those who emphasize rich textures and those who stress the individual lines: the
Big Sweepers and the Fine Liners. The first tend to make Brahms round muddy but impassioned; the others, profound but stagey. The New Danish Quartet is hard to characterize. It thinks of the music in terms of the Big Sweep—large masses of tone rather than carefully etched lines —but its first violinist, Arne Svendsen, has an approach so extremely clean that one can never forget the work's linear content.
I would venture a guess that there is a viola in his background—either that he studied under a violist or that he is a violist himself—because he plays like a good violist. He has the violist's concern with extreme clarity of articulation, his tendency to emphasize the difference between slurred and articulated notes, his preoccupation with making the pattern of accents very clear, even his inclination to play a trifle sharp. Violists do these things to make sure that their line is heard. At any rate, the results Friday night were very nice, especially since, besides all these admirable qualities, Mr. Svendsen has a very sweet sound.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
"WELL, THIS COLLEGE IS KNOWN FOR ITS VERY FRIENDLY,
HELPFUL FACULTY."
Parenthetically, I might mention that this is a very young quartet. Knud Frederiksen, the violist, is the only member of the group who looks like he might be over thirty; the rest look like kids, especially Palle Heichelmann, the second violinist, who doesn't look a day over 18. And Mr. Svendsen is still young enough to spook himself—he'll worry about a tough passage, tense up in the spot just before it, play the hard passage very well, then relax too completely and make a boo-boo in whatever comes next.
But there were no boo-boos in the slow movement of the Brahms; everyone was completely lost in its warmth. And the quartet did to the final allegro movement what Kansas did to Colorado; perhaps it was too merciless, but it was certainly exciting. The audience applauded warmly but couldn't induce an encore; perhaps these most happy fellows were eager to catch the musical across the hall.
The Kansas Legislature is convinced that teachers aren't the only underpaid public servants.
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Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through. —Jonathan Swift.
The American Negro
Part II By Bill Blundell
The Supreme Court decision of 1954 baffled the Negro. After centuries of indoctrination in the spirit of inferiority, he was slow to assert himself. He could not fully realize that the decision of the court represented the apex of a century-old movement toward racial tolerance as a guaranteed right. The Negro looked about him fearfully and hesitated long—but at last he began to act.
THERE WERE THOSE of his race who had studied integration in detail, preparing themselves for this day. They were his leaders. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People led the assault on the bastions of prejudice. They did not seek so much to change attitudes as to force them to conform with the decision of the court. They felt, and still feel, that if equal opportunity and the removal of conditions which lead to feelings of inferiority became reality, then hostile attitudes could be overcome. But they said this last could not be done unless equality and integration in the broad sense were established, even though protests were vehement.
The NAACP was aggressive. Its lawyers brought scores of cases before the bar in many states, and began to extend the court's decision to any and all matters involving separation of the races. Often they were wrong, or their accusations were unfair; but they also exposed many an injustice.
The South, its heritage and entire way of life threatened in the eyes of its citizens, fought back. The Ku Klux Klan, long dead as an influence in the South, enjoyed a brief revival, but soon lapsed back into virtual inactivity. The people of the South had advanced beyond use of the Klan as an acceptable arm of action. Instead, the communities of the South organized White Citizen's Committees, dedicated to the idea that the mixing of the races was unnatural and evil and contending that the Supreme Court overstepped its bounds in forcing on the people of one area a decision that they alone had the right to make. Some of these committees operated with perfect sincerity and conviction; others became sounding boards for men like John Kasper, who hid sick hatred for the Negro behind a veil of states-rightisms and implications of racial inferiority ordained by the almighty. All of them led their communities in maintaining segregation in the face of mounting pressure. The battle was joined.
IT WAS NOT LONG before the massed power of the federal judiciary and executive branches began to weigh on the South. In 1955, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its decision of the previous year, and warned that the law at all levels must be made to conform to the idea set down by the original decision. This reaffirmation led to a procession of cases brought before the courts, cases involving segregation in eating places, on public transit systems, and, of course, in schools. The South (and parts of the North) were watching their powers of self-determination chipped away by the court. Tension increased.
In 1957, schools in Little Rock, Ark., were shut down in a desperate attempt to forestall integration. In Virginia, Gov. J. Lindsay Almond, declaring he would never permit integration, slammed the doors of schools in that state in the faces of the pupils. There had been a brief lull in the advance of integration, but now the choice was clear—integration forced upon the South by the government, or failure of the government to enforce it, leaving the field to the individual states matters involving separation of the races.
Worth Repeating
College faculties should be shaken up a little. Intramural warfare notwithstanding, life is too easy for many. There are the inflexible corruptions of teaching: the too-quick dominion over students' minds, the sleazy omniscience, the sacerdotal aura of the lectern. It would be wise to have more faculty seminars, and teams of teachers handling the same class in active opposition to each other. All too often it is considered bad taste for professors to discuss ideas — they are inherently monologists — and some faculty dining-rooms have the starchy chattiness of a British officers' mess.
The welfare state can be just as enervating in academic circles as elsewhere. And current tenure arrangements can mean strenuous effort early in one's career and the worst kind of solth in the middle and final stages when one should be most productive.David Boroff
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Ray Miller ... Managing Editor
Ray Miller
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
John Peterson and Bill Blundell ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Mark Dull ... Business Manager