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University, Daily Konson Date: Nov. 11, 1960
It's the Same Place
Welcome back. We're glad to see you, all of you.
It's been a year since we have had the chance to get together again. In that time, many of us have joined you; and, sadly, many whom you all knew are gone, while others are scattered like chaff to all corners of the world.
You have among you doctors, lawyers, clergymen, architects, teachers, businessmen, scientists and people in almost every other trade, craft or profession practiced anywhere. You have little in common with each other professionally and socially. Most of you couldn't recognize fifty of your old schoolmates if you tried.
BUT YOU HAVE ONE THING in common that brings you here today — a deep affection and pride for your university. Today none of you is a stranger to any other, and that is as it should be.
When you reach the campus, you'll probably notice that there have been quite a few changes. There are buildings where tall grass used to grow. The buildings shout their newness, blocks of stone and glass mingling with the older, gentler structures you take comfort in seeing for the thousandth time.
There are more students, too. More than 10,000 stream across the campus now, bound for classes that perhaps were never dreamed of when you were here. If they look younger than you remember yourself as being, of if they seem to act a bit more boisterous than you think they should, remember that there is a distance between them and you that has been increasing with the years. You needn't feel wistful or nostalgic about it, either. Most of them envy you your position in life and are only too eager to try their own talents in the outside world.
THE PEOPLE WHO ARE runnings things are not those you knew when you were on the hill. A new chancellor sits in his office in Strong, trying to match the problems of the University against solutions he is unfamiliar with. The questions he deals with every day are not the ones his predecessors faced, and they are perhaps more difficult to solve. He is doing well, as we expected he would.
But in many ways, things are the same as they were when you were students. The old buildings still stand and are used, even if they have to share their once spacious grounds with other, newer structures. The students are, after all, still students, with all the inquisitiveness, energy and eagerness that has marked the breed since the first bored seeker after knowledge fell asleep during one of Plato's lectures. Also, though many of the problems they face are more complex and utterly different than those of the men before them, today's administrators still fret about funds, supplies and what to do about those high-spirited boys who took on a little more than they could carry last Saturday night and raised a fuss downtown.
AFTER YOUVE LOOKED the place over, seeing the old and the new, you'll go out to the stadium and watch one of the best football teams in the history of the University, a team we've all come to be very proud of. When you're watching them, you'll probably be thinking back to the great teams and their players that were at KU with you.
And that night, after the pregame hoopla, after the game itself and the parties and receptions that follow it, after you've switched off the lights — after all this, we hope you feel that you've been home again. We hope you see that for all the changes, for all the growth, the ideals of the University are still the same bright ones you created and passed down to today's students. We hope you know that this is still your university, and always will be.
Bill Blundell
INDIRECT PRAISE
Editor:
You have really blundered! Professor Ketzel and a Cuban accomplice of the International Club cited clearly how editorials such as the one you had published Oct. 26 (Castro's Cross), are packed full of lies and misinterpretations. Similar slanderous editorials have appeared in practically every leading newspaper and magazine in the country for the past ten months. Just because some puppet dictator in Cuba has been
filching American assets, persecuiting dignitaries, prelates, American land owners and citizens, and incarcerating anyone who voices an adverse criticism of his government, is no reason for you to be intolerant of these misdemeanors and suspect the scholarly Dr. Castro. The Doctor is a competent representative of his people, and although a little confused right now, I'm sure he will eventually do a sensational job of the agrarian reform movement. Dr. Castro is "an excellent speaker," as Professor Ketzel has observed for our edification, and one cannot help but marvel at the semblance between the Cuban scholar and the rhetorical Adolph Hitler.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Your biggest blunder, however,
was when you stated we are a proud nation. That utterance must have rattled H. L. Mencken's bones. I once had a grade-school history teacher tell me a little anecdote about how a handful of proud men, representing thirteen small colonies, fought and beat an empire. Most of that pride died with Theodore Roosevelt and General Pershing, and the rest of it died in the Second World War. As present day sages suggest, pride and intolerance such as that today would certainly be risking war for peace.
"HOW CAN YOU GIVE ME AN 'ON THIS PAPER WHEN YOU ADMIT YOU COULDN'T EVEN READ IT."
Yes, poor man, you have really blundered! You have broken away from the tolerant flock of sleeping sheep. You have ascended from the realm of inveterate stupidity and blindness. You are a proud American and an American to be proud of.
Don Mason Prairie Village Senior
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Viking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association.
Associated Collegiate Press.
Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 Ease 50 St., Chicago, IL.
Supported by 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 days. A roommate must attend Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Ray Miller Managing Editor
RADIATOR EDITORS
John Peterson and
Blundell Billud... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Mark Dull Business Manager
EATON KU EMLLY KANSAS
The American Negro
Part I By Bill Blundell
The reaction from all corners of the nation was instantaneous. The South, only three generations removed from slavery, fell upon the court decision with a thunder of protest. The Southern leaders, steeped in the tradition of states' rights since the time of Calhoun, declared the action a breach of the constitution itself because it robbed the sovereign states of the power of self-determination. Ardent segregationists circulated petitions for nullification. A spirit of determined resistance swept the South.
In 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States, in one of the most monumental decisions in American history, declared that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
NORTH OF THE MASON-DIXON, liberals applauded the decision and upheld the jurisdiction of the court, whose action was in accord with their ideal of equality for all men. But in the great urban centers where segregation was deplored in public and practiced in private, the attitude was less favorable. It was foreseen that the decision would soon affect not only school segregation but the entire delicate balance that had been struck between the races. The North had grown accustomed to the theory of equal opportunity for all men, regardless of color; but it needed time to consider the greater implications of the decision, implications which might well break the silent agreement between black and white. The North was apprehensive.
In New York, a Negro grade schooler boards the subway she takes to school every day. She is traveling about five miles, even though there is a modern grade school around the corner from her house. The school she attends now is about 80 per cent Negro; the school around the corner is 90 per cent white. (When she tried to enroll at the neighborhood school, the official said it was overcrowded already, but he could suggest a very good school in another district...)
And the Negro? On the day the court reached its great decision,
the following things may well have been happening. . . .
In Raleigh, N. C., Negroes step into the streets as whites approach. Their faces are down, they look at the pavement; but there are no sullen glares, no fear. They step off the curb without thinking, as you or I return a passing greeting. It is a reflex action.
IN THE SAME CITY, a graduate student at Columbia University is holding forth at a bull session in one of the University's cooperative dormitories. His arguments are disputed hotly by the other participants, an Indian student from Lahore, an Egyptian, a Chinese and three Americans, one of the latter a citizen of Louisiana. The graduate student is a Negro, but neither he nor the others think of that very often. Soon they will go out to dinner and a show. There are plenty of things to do in New York at night.
In Georgia, a guard on a road gang shoots a Negro prisoner attempting to escape. He uses a 12-gauge shotgun slug at close range. At Tallahassee, Florida, Negro students flock into a college laboratory and begin their experiments in agricultural chemistry. There are no whites in the room. In Detroit, Michigan, a savage race riot on the fringes of the Black Belt brings a swarm of police cars to the scene. The leaders are rounded up, but not before three boys have been stabbed. . . .
Throughout the nation, the collective life of the race continues much as it has for years; justice and injustices, good and evil, tolerance and bigotry stand side by side with the Negro and intermingle in his daily life. But the complex pattern to which he has accustomed himself has been drastically changed by nine men in Washington. These men have given the society they interpret a problem to solve, a moral ruling to live up to—and, in doing so, have changed the juxtaposition of an entire race in a free society.