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University Daily Kansan Friday, Oct. 21, 1960
Sitting it Out
Though only four years apart, presidential elections seem to occur less often because of the unusual importance we attach to electing a head of state.
Every election is a crisis in itself. Also, a quick glimpse at different campaigns in American history would make one new to the scene think that each election year coincided with an apparently unsolvable national crisis — yet somehow the nation always survived.
This is not to imply that these "potentially catastrophic circumstances were not real. Not so. Each pause for the change of chiefs was made to meet a real need.
TODAY WE ARE AGAIN CONFRONTED by danger, but this time of greater proportions than ever before. The possibilities of communist world domination and annihilation are problems we have never been confronted with.
They are the young senator from Massachusetts and the equally youthful vice president of the outgoing administration. Their qualifications are open to both praise and criticism.
Who are the men who step forward, offering to guide the nation through the questionable future?
But many appear dissatisfied with the alternatives. A statement frequently heard this year is: "I don't think either one is qualified to be President of the United States of America, and my vote will be for the best of a poor lot."
Well, this may be. This opinion is at least indicative of some thought about the candidates. Perhaps Nixon is "tricky," a hypocrite, an opportunist, an image instead of a man or perhaps he does have "too much Eisenhower in him."
Perhaps Kennedy is young, inexperienced, insincere, too wealthy, and an unprincipled power seeker.
Those who hold these views heartily voice them to one and all. Like individuals form groups. Groups form organizations. All have the same goal: either to positively or negatively influence the election of a candidate.
IT IS LOGICALLY ASSUMED THAT THESE organizations, groups and individuals plan to translate their convictions into action at the voting booths.
This is good. This is the fuel for engines of democracy. No matter for what reason the ballot is cast — to get a man in, to keep a man out —
the vote is the only measure of the majority's will and the foundation of the democratic principle.
But, unfortunately, there are individuals, groups and organizations who will deliberately cast away their ballots unmarked, showing disdain for both candidates in a kind of passive political protest.
How could any citizen of the U.S., regardless of intelligence, education or economic level, imagine that he can contribute to the strength of the government — a government by and for the people — by not voting?
There are such people. There are such groups. There are such organizations. They are dedicated to the idea that abstinence from voting this year is a constructive act.
"Americans Sitting This One Out Together" is an organization formed in Brooklyn, N. Y. after the summer conventions. Its purpose is to "achieve domestic and international goals by withdrawing support of the 'bipartisans'" and to "abstain until we can vote for candidates who (will work for these goals)."
THEY HOPE THAT THROUGH THEIR ABstention they will "put the hollow winners on notice that they enjoy no mandate from a great majority of citizens."
It is ironic that one of the group's platform planks is based on criticism of administrative apathy regarding civil rights. They declare that "every American must have the right to vote now!"
This is incongruous and tragic.
On this day of crisis and chaos in the world; on this day when the only hope for man's freedom lies in the global stature and influence of the United States, to weaken the unity of the nation by robbing it of the support it needs is beyond explanation. Without the knowledge that it has the confidence of the people, no administration can be truly effective.
Our governmental structure is erected on compromises of the past. When compromise has been impossible, conflict has occurred — but out of this conflict comes dear agreement. We wish the political passivists of 1960 would find it possible to compromise enough to enter one of the opposing camps. If they could not do so — why not a third party?
Frank Morgan
From the Bookshelf -
Operators All
"Gibber demonstrates that robber barons are not just a few businessmen trying to move ahead, but nearly all of us. We make up the 'genial society' that not only permits corruption but practises it. Although one can say that society is responsible, it is the individual who does the immoral or illegal act. Gibber describes the stinking smell of corruption but he does not really suggest how we might get rid of the obnoxious odors. If we leave
the blame at society's doorstep, we somehow absolve ourselves of responsibility and even of the need for any action. Everyone can blame society for his individual corruption. Thus, if we don't submit honest income tax returns, it is not because we do not want to, but it is because everyone else is doing it. Even our most bitter critics of whatever they mean by conformity in American life, are no doubt conformists about evading income taxes.
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700
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$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
John Petersor. and Bill Blundell ... Co-Editorial Editors
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Mark Dull Business Manager
Rudy Hoffman, Advertising Manager; Marlin Zimmerman, Promotion Manager; Mike Harris, National Advertising Manager; Mike McCarthy, Circulation Manager; Dorothy Bolter, Classified Advertising Manager.
"If Gibney's book shocks us into a desire to make the ubiquitous operator less present in all aspects of American life, then a two-pronged attack is at least necessary. One prong would be the Government, where the appropriate agencies should be given more effective laws — but more important, money — to insure that those who are breaking or evading the law are likely to be caught and stopped. But the other area of attack is with the individual. We are embarrassed to discuss ethics with our young people. Religions (particularly their schools) usually do not teach ethics; they teach ritual. School teachers rarely have their pupils try to evaluate the difference between right and wrong; they are too busy themselves trying to decide whether Admiral Hyman Rickover or John Dewey is right or wrong — without reading either. And parents are so busy taking their kids to zoos, museums, theaters, picnics, or saying that their child is getting rid of his aggressions and hostilities and is therefore quite healthy when he punches another boy who is not looking, that one cannot hope that they would have the time to deal with ethics. And yet it is on these institutions — government, religion, education and family — that our society's ethical basis rests."
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
(Excerpted from a review of the book "The Operators" by Frank Gibney and published by Harper. The review, by Albert A. Blum appeared in the Oct. 3, 1960, New Leader.)
"EVEN THE STUDENTS ARE DEMANDING HIGHER SALARIES FOR OUR TEACHERS—PROFESSORS COME & GO SO FAST THE FRATERNITIES DON'T HAVE TIME TO BUILD A TEST FILE" ON THEM"
Children and TV
From the Podium-
"Uneasy feelings that probably the media are doing no good to our children have started innumerable investigations and research studies to try to find out exactly what the influences of the mass media are. I can tell you, as a research scholar, that not one of these studies has been able to show much effect. The latest and largest of these, the British study of television and children, has just been completed; and the conclusion is that television, so far as the results show, is, of itself, neither very good nor very bad in changing the development of children.
"In Great Britain, television has postponed the average bedtime of children about twenty minutes, but there is no sign of worsened eyesight or health. There is no sign of any harmful aggression being created, no evidence that it makes for more juvenile delinquency. It makes the duller children a bit better informed, and may perhaps take the brighter children away from some reading that might better inform them. Those children who seemed to make behavior problems in their first year of television were, found, for the most part, to have had corresponding problems before they got television. . . .
"Therefore, I suggest that you do not think in terms of what television does to children, but rather, what do children do with television?"—(Wilbur Schramm, in a talk on "Children and Television: Some Advice to Parents.")
"Television is only one voice, and one influence, on children. There is also the influence of the family, the peer group, and school. Television, therefore, acts through a whole constellation of other influences, and these are tremendously potent. Compared to the effect of the family or the peer group, the effect of television can hardly be dominant. And in any case, it is very hard to isolate because it is interwoven with these other influences.
"As we now see the situation, a child goes to television to satisfy certain needs which have grown out of his personality and his social relations. What he takes from television depends on those needs. What he does with it depends on those needs and on the other influences which bear on him.
From the Magazine Rack-
Retrograde Teaching
"But in the midst of the Great Debate, retrograde teaching plods on. Talk to students and you can compile a bleak anthology of boredom, inertia, and ineptness among teachers. The unconscionable method of stuffing the "prolix gut" of the student — the phrase is Woodrow Wilson's — is still going on. 'They just give you the text,' a student said bitterly. Another remarked: 'My professor throws something at us, and we return it on an exam. In between we never even look at it.' Perhaps the most startling symbol of complacency and disengagement is provided by a very near-sighted professor I heard about, who removes his glasses so that he cannot see his students, sits back, and pontificates. Students are indignant at first about this dreary assembly line of learning. Freshman year, a time of the greatest expectations, is often a cruel disappointment to many who had looked forward to something exhilaratingly different from high school."
(Excerpted from "American Colleges," by David Boroff in the April, 1960, Harper's Magazine.)