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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, Oct. 4. 1960
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
The Educated Vote
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In a month the November elections will be upon us. As is the case in every election year, there will doubtlessly be numerous calls "to get out the vote." But what kind of a vote are we getting out?
THE PERSON WHO RESPONDS TO a last minute appeal to vote may not be an eligible voter. What is an eligible voter then? Is he the man on the street who cares little about foreign affairs, our participation in the UN, or our space program? Is he the every-day man just interested in the trivial side of life? If this is the case, as it so often is, what are the advantages of getting out the vote. Of what value is an ignorant, haphazard ballot?
This Friday the second of the once so-called "great debates" will be on television. Here is one more opportunity for the uninformed, but otherwise eligible voter to acquaint himself with the issues facing the United States. What could be more painless than sitting at home in the easy chair and watching the two presidential candidates debate and discuss the issues, and then drawing conclusions as to which of the two could
best lead the United States during the next four years. Voting is a privilege, and today this privilege is easy to take advantage of.
AS CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES we have a forced obligation to vote — intelligently. Here on the University campus, a center of higher learning, there should be hardly a person not qualified to vote and not eager to vote. As students starting out a year, the best way to approach the problem is to educate now and be prepared to cast the all important educated ballot in November.
Our greatest statesmen have said time and time again that the constant endeavor of the nation should be education of its people. Education means informed participation. Usually a lack of interest in voting is a lack of knowledge.
AS STUDENTS WE ARE SUPPOSEDLY here to educate ourselves. There is plenty of time to become acquainted with the issues both national and international. Let's hope that this is the way the election problems will be approached this year — with educated interest.
- John Peterson
Certainly it is true that Americans depend far more on the gasoline engine than on atomic power, which is still in its infancy. Everywhere we go we see evidences of its service to our society. We curse it for its faults, but still order our lives by the piston's stroke.
Double-Edged Sword
Some authorities take issue with the statement that this is the atomic age. They maintain that it is more realistic to say that this is the age of the internal combustion engine, that noisy, inefficient child of technology.
THIS FORM OF POWER HAS MADE US A nation on wheels, forever on the move, restless to see new places, do new things, broaden our horizons. The engine has brought us all within reach distance of each other.
We take it for granted in our everyday routine. It brings us to school, to the store, to all the prosaic and petty appointments which fill our lives.
At KU the pattern is no different. We move through the day on the roar of our engines. More than 6,500 of us have registered vehicles with the campus police, and a steady increase throughout
the year is expected. The congestion on the streets criss-crossing the campus is already noticeable and it will grow worse.
WE HAVE ALL GROWN ACCUSTOMED TO the maddening traffic jams, the heavy hand on the born, the snails-pace procession of ears on streets whose builders never dreamed would be so burdened.
But there is no such thing as being "accustomed to" injury and death. This pair walk in the shadow of every automobile driven today. Last year, about 40,000 Americans died on the roads and some 1,400,000 were injured.
THE MANY CARS THAT CROWD OUR campus are so many units of potential death or injury. To make things worse, many of us are so lax in our attitude toward safety, both as drivers and pedestrians, that we are truly "accidents looking for a place to happen."
There are only 16 campus policemen available to handle this awesome flow of traffic. This means each of us must be our own policeman, or we may fall victim to the machine made to serve us.
Bill Blundell
UDK - Policy Reviewed
I think that it is about time the University Daily Kansan stepped back and took a good look at itself, and then try to determine exactly what it is doing.
I am specifically referring to the stories on anti-discrimination that appeared in the Sept. 21 and 22 issues of the paper.
On the front page the Kansan
...Letters ...
printed a story that specified, among other things, that discrimination in employment is bad business.
Further in the story there was a statement saying that progress is being made toward cleaning up the hiring practices in Lawrence.
How does the Daily Kansan expect to help the people in the community and at the University who are striving for equal opportunities for all, when, on the back page, it ran an ad which definitely specified employment for white females only?
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
The ad read as follows:
"White females, age 18-35 with high school education. Student's wives accepted. Full or part time work. either day or night. Inquire Joy-O Corp., Charlton Insurance Bldg., across the street from Post Office. No phone calls."
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700
Extension 371, news room Extension 376, business 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.
Managing Editor Carol Heller, Jane Boyd and Priscilla Burton, Assistant Managing Editors; Pat Sheley and Suzanne Shaw, City Editors; John Macdonald, Sports Editor; Peggy Kallos and Donna Engle, Society Editors.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Ray Miller
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
John Peterson and Bill Blundell ... Co-Editorial Editors
Mark Dull
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Mark Dulh Business Manager
Rudy Hoffman, Advertising Manager; Marlin Zimmerman, Promotion Manager; Milo Harris, National Advertising Manager; Mike McCarthy, Circulation Manager; Dorothy Bolter, Classified Advertising Manager.
Does the U.D.K. feel that the financial returns from such ads justify that it go against the Kansas Act Against Discrimination, against the policy of anti-discrimination throughout the University and against the very principles of democracy?
I would like to know in an editorial just where the Daily Kansan stands. Is it for or against discrimination practices in employment?
If the Daily Kansan says that it is against discrimination, and continues to run ads such as the one above, then the University Daily Kansan is making a mockery and a farce of itself.
If the policy of the Daily Kansan is not changed so that ads of this type are removed permanently, would it be improper for this matter to be brought to the attention of the ASC in order to evaluate whether the Daily Kansan is serving the best interests of the student body? I sincerely hope that this action will not be necessary.
Peter Frey
Vineland, N.J., senior
"WE BETTER RUN BACK AND CHECK THAT SCHEDULE."
From the Magazine Rack-
The Research Mania
"This confusion of ideas and purposes would be merely laughable if the endless praise of research had not deeply corrupted certain of our indispensable institutions. Perhaps the most important of these is the educational system. We have all become familiar with the frivolous make-believe indulged in by our lower schools under the pretense that children of ten can 'do research,' in such forms as collecting travel folders and pasting them attractively in 'research reports' about foreign lands.
"But one may fail to see how harmful the mania for research has become in the centers of higher learning, where it now produces symptoms of some gravity. I refer to the invidious system of academic promotion, the perversion of the undergraduate curriculum, and (most recent) the professional teacher's contempt of teaching. There three are related to one another and to a rather vicious habit, which used to be absent from scholarship when the phrase 'a gentleman and a scholar' still had meaning. The habit I have in mind is self-praise. Today, it is no longer forbidden to parade oneself as 'a research scholar' and to look down on those fallen creatures who 'do not publish'; it is no longer improper for university departments to boast of their greatness, due to So-and-so and So-and-so, mighty 'producers' in the sight of men. A golden glow is diffused over an entire academic community from the individual halos earned by research. When one of these halos is extinguished by retirement or death or — worst of all blows — by removal to another institution, there is no peace of mind until a replacement is found...
"The requirement that every young college teacher shall 'produce' is arousing discontent in young teachers and in their students, while tempting some in each group to a premature cynicism. 'Neglect your teaching and you will rise; attend to it and you will be fired.' Teaching continues to be honored on all pious occasions, such as commencement. In reality it is considered a fool's way of mismanaging a career."
"It is not as if the system required one to be a great scholar, or a good scholar, or even a scholar at all; it only requires that one produce research, which being translated means publish papers. Their contents should be in a certain form and they should be documented and if possible accurate — that is all. Thought, relevance to the interests of any other human being, engaging exposition or lucidity of prose are not mentioned among the specifications. The papers are merely asked for as evidence of professional discipline justifying one's existence — and promotion. And at the same time, 'research' can be given as an excuse for neglecting the interests of students or of the university. The modern teacher flees to the library and cries 'research' as the medieval thief fled to the church and cried 'sanctuary!' Thereafter both are untouchable by law or society.
'To equate scholarship with publication might be reasonable if the impulse to publish were spontaneous. If one is moved by curiosity and skilled in the act of discovery, then it is both generous and modest to tell one's peers what one has learned, for their edification and their criticism. But when filling a block of print is done at regular intervals under tacit compulsion, and a judicious silence greets each successive teasing of the obvious or the trivial, the idea of scholarship itself is compromised. Indeed, the cynicism and discontent of the young are justified, and the observer of the academic scene is at last brought to think that there may be something wrong with a system in which Lord Acton could never have become an assistant professor.'
(Excerpted from an article "The Cults of 'Research' and 'Creativity'" by Jaques Barzun in the October, 1960 Harper's Magazine.)