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University Daily Kansan
Monday, Sept. 26, 1960
The Trend Is Up
Members of the Class of '61 may spend the most valuable $10 of their lives this week. A new system whereby graduating seniors pay class dues during University fee payment this week instead of in the late spring as last year has been installed by this year's class officers. The advantages to this system seem to be unlimited.
The first, and most obvious advantage, is that a senior will save $7.50 by paying his senior fee and attending all of the planned class functions. This is the hope of the class officers. Senior president Frank Naylor said the more seniors to attend the functions the more successful they will be. The desired end of the entire year of senior class get-togethers is to instill a spirit of class fellowship which will carry-over after the student graduates. This will give the University its desired group of loyal and dedicated alumni.
IN YEAR'S PAST EACH senior class has had to operate on deficit spending. The functions — such as picnics, breakfasts and coffees — were held while the officers prayed to break even monetarily. More often than not they ended up on the short end of the ledger each spring and such activities as candy sales had to be held to pull the class out the red.
This $10 fee at the start of the school year will allow the class officers to see what money will be available and plan the parties accordingly. A breakdown of the $17.50 of benefits for $10 is pennant, $1; button, $1; calendar, $1; senior day, $1; picnic, $2; breakfast, $2; three senior functions, $3; two coffees, $1.50, and gift, dues and operating expenses, $5.
THE FEE SYSTEM is not compulsory in that a senior may choose to forego paying the $10 this week and simply pay his $5 next spring for
the class gift and class dues. A senior must pay the $5 before he is allowed to receive his diploma and cap and gown. But even waiting until spring to pay the class dues is a losing proposition. In the past nearly the entire senior class has attended the senior day, senior breakfast and senior picnic. If these are the only parties a senior attends — forgetting about another coffee, three other planned functions and the calendar, button and pennant — he still breaks even.
The plan seems to be one of those schemes dreamed up every so often which, oddly enough, benefits all parties concerned. The University gains as more students will gain a sense of belonging and identification to the University family by attending the class functions, and in all probability, remain more strongly interested in KU in future years. The class officers planning the fee system this fall win by knowing what money will be in the operating budget and can plan accordingly. This will cut out the usual uncertainty involving finances. And finally, the individual senior benefits from his associations gained, and monetarily if he partakes in any activities whatsoever.
THE ONLY WEAK link in the $10 fee is that $5 is slated to go for class dues, class gift and operating expenses during the school year. This represents a 30 per cent increase over last year's $3.50 which seniors paid. If there ever was evidence everything is getting bigger, including inflation in the nation, this is it. A bigger gift is being planned and a bigger year of festivities for seniors is scheduled with, of course, twice the budget ever before imagined. $11,000. Regardless of the point of view the seniortakes — the trend is up.
John Peterson
The Role of the Press
Editor:
I have been quite disturbed with the influence of the American press and its role in directing the attitudes and public opinion of the American people, concerning the Cuban situation.
It is my opinion that the headline of the article, EISENHOWER CALLS FIBEL, NIKITA 'TROUBLEMAKERS' which occurred in the UDK of September 19, obviously is an error. The article which followed stated: Mr. Eisenhower did not name any "troublemakers." But he seemed to be referring, in a joking way, to Khrushchev and other leaders of the communist
sphere attending the United Nations meeting in New York.
If Mr. Eisenhower only referred too Khrushchev and other leaders of the communist sphere, as, "troublemakers", then I believe the headline is misleading.
The error is minor; however, it is important. I believe, to strive to be more accurate, omitting any such errors, and in doing so, improving our international relations.
Jim Morelan Humboldt senior
Comments on Nasser
Editor
It was nice to find out that we might hear Dictator Gamal Abdel
Nasser on our first Convocation this year—a real worthwhile educational start. I hope he will be more coherent than his associates are with their hate propaganda on Radio Cairo. Since I don't think that I will be allowed to ask questions after his address to the student body—let me use this forum for one small request: That Dictator Nasser will give us the inside dope on the murder by a bomb of the Prime Minister and several of the Ministers of Jordan, what was awarded to the guys who did it and fled to the United Arab Republic (Northern Section), and who is next in line.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Name Withheld
* * *
"OK, INTH' BACK ROW - LETS HAVE THAT 'GIRLIE' MAGAZINE UP HERE IN THIS BASKET!"
Seat Saving Again
Editor:
At the TCU game the old Jayhawk custom of seat saving at football games was in full blast. With all the brethren and old pals taking over many of the seats an individual didn't have a fair shake. What's going to happen when Syracuse comes to Mount Oread? Are the brethren and old buddies once again going to take over?
Brooklyn, N. Y., senior
R. Finnick
Frairie Village junior
Monte Seewald
Dailu Hansan
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Ray Miller Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
John Behnem and Co-Editorial Editors
Bil Blindt
Bill Blundell Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Mark Dull Business Manager
By W. D. Paden
Professor of English
THE BRITISH IMAGINATION (A Special Issue of the London Times Literary Supplement; 9 September 1960). Seventy-five cents; copies may be ordered at the Union Book Store.
According to the English, the controlling aspect of their imagination is snobbery. They say so, bluntly. "Snobbery in England is more than a joke or a frame of mind, more even than a relic of dying orders. It is a phenomenon of such complexity and force that nearly all our lives are affected by it, and the essence of the state is spiced with its pungency. For England is still an aristocracy — not just a place where breeding counts, but a society still run by a series of consciously formed elites. Certain regiments of the Army, certain schools, certain professions have long enjoyed a preferential status, a superiority of privilege that is tacitly accepted by the common weal, and has become part of that queer web of custom and inanity that the English, with a mystical smile, call tradition." And this mode of thinking can be defended. "English snobbery is more aspiration than contempt. It is a constructive energy, for good as well as evil. The intelligent and persistent snob, aping and enying the manners of his social superiors, can readily improve his condition — if not in his own generation, at least in his son's. A snob is usually a man on the move, and the original meaning of the word (about 1820) was not a person who scorned his inferiors, but a lout with yearnings." It sounds something like the social competition that we know in the Middle West; indeed the English agree that it is the same, on one social level: "the snobbery of our newly prosperous bourgeoisie conforms to the American pattern" — but neither below nor, of course, above that level. Here we have it: the social pattern that the great majority of us regard as inevitable the English lightly dismiss as recent, deplorable, comic, and characteristic of persons rather far below the middle of the pile. Shall I throw up a window for some fresh air?
THE PRUDENT AMERICAN will stay away from the whirling gears. There is a mischievous picture of how "the president of the American women's club, crossing her knees fastidiously upon her Hepplewhite sofa, mistily recalls the splendours of her pedigree — Sir Hawkins, you know, and his wife the seventh Countess, who had such a lovely, lovely old place not a stone's throw from Blenheim'..." For clarity the points should be set out: (1) When Hepplewhite sofas were new, the women who sat upon them did not cross their knees in public; (2) Sir John Hawkins is addressed by his equals as Hawkins and by almost anyone as Sir John, but never correctly as Sir Hawkins; his name shows that he is either a knight or a baronet, and his wife is referred to as Lady Hawkins; (3) A countess, on the other hand, is the wife of an earl, a man who is addressed in writing as The Right Hon. The Earl of Chelsea and in speech as my Lord, and is referred to, usually, as Lord Chelsea; (4) While a man may be called the seventh Earl of a particular creation, the countesses in his family are not thought of in a strict series, for a title does not (with negligible exceptions) descend through a female line; so that a woman referred to as the seventh countess would normally be understood as the seventh wife of a particular earl; and finally (5) Blenheim, the gift of a grateful nation to the first Earl of Marlborough, was built in the middle of an extensive domain, so that the only houses near it are the homes of tenant-farmers. The first Earl's wife, Sarah, a woman of fabulous strength of character, saw to that.
They are now inspecting their new situation, with special reference to America, which they see as the image — or spectre — of the future. One of the essayists in the special issue observes with surprise that American novelists are both able and willing to write about men who do physical labor or hold menial jobs, and asks why English novelists seldom do? "The truth is that most English novelists are educated in a way that precludes any wide range of practical experience." When one compares brief poems on the same subject by an English and an American poet, the Englishman's words seems bookish and etiolated, the American's suggest "immediacy and fidelity to momentary experience." An undergraduate magazine at Cambridge is quoted at length on British verse: "Poems continue to be written, but too much from force of habit. There may be sensitivity, there may be wit, there may even be high spirits, but there is no tension, no insistent personal rhythm forcing upon us a living imagination. Despite some recent appeals to learn from America, it's not simply a Little England rut; our life is horribly verbalized and poetry undoubtedly suffers when the strength of the language is sapped by its doing duty for other media of expression."
A COMMUNITY WHICH has devised so intricate a system of social forms and infinences has obviously long possessed both wealth and power. After the changes caused by universal suffrage, two world wars, the partial collapse of the British Empire, and the imposition of income and inheritance taxes four times as heavy as ours, the England of today feels no simple and secure identification with its glorious past. But only a fool would imagine that the Englishmen of today are not tackling their current problems in the manner of their forefathers — that is, with intelligence, vigor, and decision.
IF I MAY SAY IT without offense, as an instructor of Freshman English, our life here home on the range is in small danger of becoming over-verbalized, and we may have some difficulty in comprehending the current situation of Englishmen. But we may wish them well.