Page 2
University Daily Kansan Thursday. Oct. 13. 1960
Expanding Horizons
"A state university will not have fulfilled its obligations to its state in this, the 20th Century, if it fails to provide for its students the kind of educational experience which will fit them for life in the 21st Century."
THIS THE FINAL PARAGRAPH OF A SPECIAL report recently published by the University entitled, "The University and World Affairs." This pamphlet is the findings of a special committee appointed in November, 1959, by former Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy to study the responsibilities placed upon higher education and the University by the increasing urgency in world affairs. This committee's report says that a century ago institutions of higher learning had one chief aim — to work in behalf of the economic development of the country. Today these institutions still have one main aim and one problem to solve. This problem is the capacity to understand and to participate intelligently in world affairs. The pamphlet claims this problem now is as urgent today as was the problem of technological development a century ago.
The committee made one major recommendation or proposal. It says: "We propose that one half of the junior class each year be abroad studying at a foreign university and their places on the campus be taken by an equivalent number of foreign students. These visitors should be living with the University's own undergraduates who would receive their exposure to a world perspective by the association rather than from an experience abroad."
THE PAMPHLET CONTINUES TO OUT-line some specifies necessary for the establishment of this policy. It says that the University has a start but that it can not be accomplished in the right perspective unless it is more coordinated and organized. It says that piecemeal efforts have deficiencies and that "this will not be sufficient for the future. What is needed is a comprehensive program, well integrated and coordinated, based on a clearly articulated set of principles which
will serve as a framework and a yardstick for future efforts."
THE ONE PROPOSAL BY THE COMMITTEe is admirable, but it hardly alone will be enough to meet the vast problem set forth in the pamphlet. Integration of foreign students on campus will give insights to their problems, feelings and ways of life and the same will be true of our students sent abroad. But an exchange of students does not seem to be the only answer. The problem is defined as "our capacity to understand world affairs and to participate in them intelligently..." If this is the most urgent problem today, then why shouldn't the University change its curriculum to an extent and require each student to take courses in international relations and psychology or sociology to help each student better understand human thinking processes.
There are vast fields that could work toward the solution of this problem if established in such a light. One aid to better understanding between peoples on certain problems would be in communications. Many people today feel that efforts to reduce communication barriers are far behind other advancements made technologically. There are others.
THIS STUDY DOES A SUPERB JOB IN setting forth the problems of today and just what the major problem will be facing institutions of higher education tomorrow. It says that the problem must be faced with organization and thought, and cannot be approached on a piecemeal basis. But by the very nature of the problem studied, it is inadequate to propose a single fixed plan where needs are many and diverse. Certainly there are vast opportunities and benefits from mass student exchange with foreign institutions, but just as many benefits could be reaped today by revamping part of the University's setup and what it has to offer. The problem must be confronted on all sides to be successfully dealt with.
— John Peterson
GRANADA: "Man on a String"
Why is it the lousiest shows always have the most appealing ads?
"Man on a String; Tough! Tense! TRUE! The show that was filmed with bullets!"
That's what the ad said. Then it had a picture of Counter-Counterspy Ernie Borgnine, a look of terror in his eyes, undoubtedly contemplating the horror of it all.
Well that ain't the way it was at all. (The picture for the ad was
At the Movies
probably taken after he saw a preview of the movie.)
Lovable ole Boris Mitrov (Borgnine), Russian born but American made, is duped by those treacherous Commie guys (sneaky, shifty, eyes always' darting) and gals (earthy fems in blue pin-striped suits) and made to aid their spy network.
Boris, a minor movie mogul in Hollywood, has a father and four brothers behind the Iron Curtain
who are going to get it if he don' come across. He does.
Unbeknownst to all, that super-secret U.S. Central Bureau of Intelligence (the CIA doesn't even know about them) has heard every word of their devilment for years via thousands of ingenious electronic gadgets planted all over the place (so many are shown that one wonders if the picture's bill wasn't footed by G.E.)
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Anyhow, after Mitrov Sr. makes it to America the super-suave CBI closes in and spills the beans to Boris.
Tense sense: "Mr. Mitrov, we're from the CBI," says the collegiate agent as he whips out his billfold and fumbles for his ID. "Dammit where is that thing — you got it Joe?"
Then the story goes like this: Boris goes on both payrolls, heads for Berlin and finally — Moscow. After a brief Fitzpatrick-type tour of the Russian capital, he meets the Bigs in the Kremlin. (Don't worry, Boris is on our side.)
Boris replies: "Gosh gang, I knew it was wrong but I didn't think it was that bad."
They're not really sure he's frat material but it's been a bad year and they let him in on all the stuff anyhow. Blessed with an above average IQ. Boris memorizes the names, locations, personal characteristics and ROTC number of the 14,000 Commies in America.
He's got the goods and now has to find a way to make a fast exit without seeming too impolite — gosh they've been nice.
The ending? It wasn't good but it at least woke up the guy next to me. I don't think I'd be revealing too much to say everything came out happily.
All in all, it was worthwhile for everybody — Boris gets his Dad, Uncle Sam wins a set from the Muscovites, the CBI no longer has to toil in inglorious anonymity — worthwhile for everybody but the people watching the picture. —FM
By Calder M. Pickett
Acting Dean, School of Journalism
JOURNEY TO SHILOH, by Will Henry, Random House, $2.95
JOURNEY TO SHILOH, by Will Henry. Random House. $3.95.
The title and cover will mislead many into thinking they have a story of some value as Civil War literature. "Journey to Shilloh" is far from that. It is an amateurishly written novel, contrived and full of fake heroics, its dialogue recalling Zane Grey or Harold Bell Wright.
Mr. Henry seems to be telling a Darwinian tale, if the symbol-seekers care to find something beneath the pulp. Buck Burnet is the hero, a tall, lovable, enormously capable Texas boy who with six comrades from the Comanche country called Concho County heads for Virginia in 1862 to join Hood's brigade.
They are interested in Mississippi, and soon find themselves in the bloody battle of Shiloh. Buck becomes the courier of Gen. Braxton Bragg, sees Beauregard bungle away the battle (as Henry interprets it), learns gradually of the deaths of his friends, and at the end of the book is fleeing, heading back for his beloved Texas.
He is toughest, he alone of his breed survives. "Journey to Shiloh," which has a reputable publisher, presents the frightening possibility of being deluged with similar Civil War novels in much the way that we were deluged on television with adult westerns written for 12-year-old minds. The prospect could well keep many people away from book stores.
From the Magazine Rack
Death at Sea
"I think the horrors that normally confront an infantryman in action must be very terrible and take perhaps a long time to live down. A ship heavily hit in action is not pretty, certainly; neither are her people, particularly if you see them in the sea, where shock and the cold quickly reduce them to infantile helplessness. But, for the most part, naval fighting is relatively clean; killing — if one must — at a distance. But the bodies of drowned men, whether killed outright and with intent by an enemy, or by some futile error of judgment like breaking one's neck with a life jacket, or at length after a very long struggle with cold and the darkness, or caught in a squall in a mishandled sailing boat, whether crusted with burnt oil scum in the bitter Atlantic water or lolling idle as seaweed under a Mediterranean sun; the bodies of the drowned men eventually lie face down in the sea, humped up in a posture of uniform and poignant ungainliness, suggesting no image of life. Of 'Hood's' ninety officers and more than twelve hundred men, there were three men only who survived; over a hundred of 'Bismarck's' people lived, but her complement was near two thousand, and many men had to be left in the water when the U-boat warnings came.
"The engineer officer of 'Tartar' got his brass hat soon after the Bismarck' action, and his ship was torpedoed on the Murmansk run soon after: he would have lasted only a few minutes in that water. The first lieutenant of 'Tartar' in 1944 was given command of 'Icarus,' one of the destroyers that hunted for 'Hood's' survivors. I am told that on one of those restless, still summer nights off the Normandy coast, flank guarding and patrolling to the northward of the assault anchorage, 'Icarus' was lost without a trace. It was at night, so nobody saw the breaking of the ship or the breaking of the bodies; and no man turned from his plow furrow to remark with placid wonder so meteoric and mundane a disaster."
(From "The Sinking of the Bismarck," by George Whalley in The Atlantic Monthly, July, 1960.)
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1004, trieweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
Extrusion 376, busines office
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.
Editc
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
John Peterson and Bill Blundell Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Mark Dull Business Manager
Rudy Hoffman, Advertising Manager; Marlin Zimmerman, Promotion Manager;Fredrick Milo Harris III, National Advertising Manager; Mike McCarthy, Circulation Manager; Dorothy Boller, Classified Advertising Manager.