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University Daily Kansan Friday. Oct. 22.1960
The Abiding Spirit
Yesterday's NCAA decision struck KU like a hammer blow, shattering all hopes of participation in post-season bowl events or basketball tourneys. The campus was shocked and outraged to realize that its two major teams had been so harshly penalized.
The indignation, the outrage, the sense of injustice that many felt may well be justified — or it may not.
Many questions remain to be answered. A basic one is; Have the parties involved told the whole truth? If this is the case, no blame can attach to the University officials, alumni or players involved. If all have told the truth without regard to future consequences, the only explanations possible are:
1. That those who should have known better were grossly ignorant of the NCAA rules governing recruiting, and in their ignorance have blasted the hopes of two major teams.
2. That an honest error was made which was a clear violation of NCAA rulings, and which that body, justly or unjustly, felt was sufficient cause for the penalty it exacted.
3. That the decision of the NCAA was partially or completely erroneous.
THIS LAST DESERVES further discussion. The investigative procedure followed by the NCAA does indeed resemble a Star Chamber, proceeding. The accused is given no chance to testify in his own behalf, nor is he permitted to answer any accusations. The evidence quoted by the NCAA invariably comes from "reliable sources" who are never named. The accused is entirely at the mercy of the "court." We may then ask: Is this justice? Is an accurate appraisal
of alleged violations by any school possible in such a proceeding? It is not.
Whether the ruling against KU was just is not as important as the arbitrary methods used in gathering and evaluating the information. The NCAA should reconsider its policy and procedure.
But now let us return to the other, more unsavory possibility in our own case. Suppose one of the parties involved was lying or withholding information? If this is true, we certainly have much to be ashamed of.
WE ARE, HOWEVER, convinced that if any violation was made of NCAA regulations, it was unintentional. Furthermore, we are doubtful that a real violation did actually occur.
KU now has to live with the penalty that the NCAA has imposed on the University. Where all proceedings are confidential and only the parties directly involved know exactly what the facts are, it is possible to debate the decision of the NCAA indefinitely without gaining any appreciable satisfaction.
THE UNIVERSITY now should take the stand that this will never happen again. It is certainly a black mark on any school's reputation to be involved in such a happening. KU now should make every possible effort to keep its alumni informed of procedures and possible reprisals for any aid or assistance they might give the University in recruiting. It is imperative that KU's reputation remain at the same high level as of past years. There must be no more such incidents to cause question of the University's integrity.
Bill Blundell and John Peterson
Michigan Senate Race Close
Williams Record May Help GOP
By Dan Felger
Michigan manufactures more cars and corn flakes than any other state. It also has produced this year one of the hottest senate races in the state's history.
Michigan is one of the most strongly unionized states in the country, and the United Auto Workers are firmly behind both presidential candidate John F. Kennedy and senatorial incumbent Patrick V. McNamara. Curiously enough, however, the prominent position that labor occupies in the state may have boosted the chances of Republican hopeful Alvin Bentley for McNamara's job — in an indirect way.
Williams Era Ends
This year the leading figure in Michigan politics for the past decade, Gov. G. Mennen (Soapy) Williams, steps down from his post. During his time in office, Gov. Williams shoved through aid for the aged and blind and a public works program that has made Michigan one of the most progressive states in the Union. At the same time he brought himself under fire from the Republicans for his stand on labor.
Bentley's chances may be tied in with how Michigan voters look in retrospect at Mr. Williams' administration.
While it is true that Michigan has realized many improvements in the last 10 years, most of the expense has been borne by business. State taxes on manufacturing have skyrocketed, many of them endorsed by the UAW. This has caused a number of manufacturers to pull up stakes and move. As a result, unemployment in Michigan has increased.
With Williams departing from the statehouse in Lansing, many experts feel that the Republicans stand one of their best chances to gain control of the state in a long time.
Yet Bentley stands no chance of capturing huge Wayne County (Detroit). This, of course, is the strengthhold of the UAW and the base of operations for many smaller unions. It was with one of these unions, the Detroit Pipefitters Union, that Patrick V. Mc-
This could be an important factor in Bentley's bid for victory. During the Williams era, Democrats sewed up the state, taking at one time 20 of 23 state posts and both seats in the U.S. Senate. A revamping of the state Republican Party also has fanned Bentley's hopes. Party members are reported to be watching the senatorial race with new optimism.
Detroit Conceded to Demos
Namara served as president. Throughout his career in the U.S. Senate, Sen. McNamar has been known as a friend of labor, the force that has been so dominant in Michigan politics.
The 68-year-old senator is considered a liberal. He is the originator of the McNemara-Hart Bill which was passed in the last session of Congress and deals with federal assistance to education.
Seth. McNamara underwent an operation for cancer in July, but he has been campaigning intensively in the Upper Peninsula. (He captured the least populous of all counties, the Keweenaw County in the Upper Peninsula, in 1954. This gave him a majority of the votes in both the least-populated and heaviest-populated Michigan counties in his victory over Republican Homer Ferguson.)
Meanwhile, Sen. McNamara's opponent has been campaigning vigorously also. A recent article in Time magazine said that Congressman Bentley has not been above questioning McNamara's health. Neither, the article continued, has he been averse to saying that Kennedy is deliberately fanning the religious issue.
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Realizing that the Detroit area is gift-wrapped for McNamara, Bentley has been concentrating his efforts in medium-sized and smaller Michigan cities. In this he is attempting to neutralize the overwhelming voting power of the industrial areas.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
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... Letters
Editor:
The first item of the Vox platform which appeared in the Oct. 26 issue of the Kansan was a revelation to me. Would someone please tell me why Vox (or any campus political party) does support candidates for the ASC? Until now, I was under the obvious delusion that the ASC served no more purpose than an empty toothpaste tube and therefore membership on the council was sought wholly for some sort of prestige.
Bill Charles
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Oak Park, Ill., senior
"I UNDERSTAND TH' DEAN HAD HIM SUSPENDED FOR THE REST OF TH' TERM."
By Jon R. Rutherford
SEGAKI, by David Stacton. Pantheon Books, Inc., New York, 1959. (Available at the Undergraduate Library.)
It is the fourteenth century in Japan, and the countryside is ravaged by revolutionary war. The fighting and slaughter have become so general that even in the relatively peaceful Noto district, the remote mountain monastery of which Muchaku Hojo is abbot, is threatened. When a strange soldier, the sole survivor of the protector of the monastery, shows up for lessens in warfare which Muchaku refuses him, the latter must accept the truth to the soldier's words: "You have nothing to teach. . . You are too learned!" This confirmation of an unrest in Muchaku's conscience makes him set out on the road to his brother, the painter Yasumaro, whom he has not seen for twenty years. He hopes that somehow his brother can clarify a powerful but indefinable doubt about his existence which has taken hold of him. Muchaku is accompanied, somewhat against his will, by the soldier's abandoned dog, and the journey of the two to Yasumaro and their days with him make up the rest of the story. Through a series of mysterious and tragic events, Muchaku gains the answer to the question that he could not even have posed, and returns to the monastery a much different man from when he left it.
Segaki, the author informs us in a note, is a "popular festival, July 13th or 14th, the feeding of the hungry ghosts. In Zen usage it is less an attempt at plocation than a form of communion." The ghosts, in various forms, or perhaps one should say in various degrees, play a most important part in Muchaku's enlightenment.
In his writing, Mr. Stacton is successful in the creation of a half-concrete-half-elusive atmosphere in the "ghost" scenes, properly leaving the reader in doubt as to just what has happened. In the rest of the book his descriptions of nature and even of psychological states are very good indeed, sometimes almost uncannily precise and evocative. Aside from a surprising misuse of a few words, his style is clear and it is much to his credit that while using an impressive vocabulary he yet manages to sound simple. There are two or three similes which struck me as excessively violent and in bad taste; otherwise, his prose is consistently the kind to relish and savour, a beautiful proof of what English can achieve.
Mr. Stacton shows a tendency to turn his novel into a kind of popular Zen-textbook, however, and the resultant weakening of the story line is pronounced. One sympathizes with this kind of enthusiasm, but cannot help feeling that the writer might more cleverly have worked his "asides" into the story itself, perhaps even by making the book somewhat longer (it runs only about 60,000 words), a move which anyone who has read even the first few delightful pages would welcome. The most regrettable instances of this lack of restraint come in passages where the language is that of well written travel posters saying, in effect, "Come to lovely Japan." While intrinsically far from unpleasant, these excursions hinder rather than promote the author's main work, at least in a book the length of this one.
No one should be put aside by the above remarks; it is easy to point out faults in "Segaki" simply because there are so few of them. On the whole, the book is gripping and — one hesitates to say enjoyable, but it is just that. Zen Buddhism has these days, perhaps through its appeal to our love for the exotic, but quite possibly through a deeper feeling of identification and of need, caught the attention of United States readers as few other movements have, and it is good to read a book which often at least hints at some of the nature of Zen in the course of telling a story which is longer, more fully developed, and told in a more Western way than the familiar Zen anecdotes. "Segaki" is a book that merits not only reading but re-reading, and that is rare enough nowadays.