Photo by Mike Gunther
A GOOD NIGHT FOR A "MUD IN"
Residents of KU living groups fought mud battles all over the hill last night. These students were participants in a free-for-all in the mud on Daisy Field near Ellsworth hall. A combination of a power blackout and two and a half inches of rain set the stage for the melees.
Storm knocks out power KU students fling mud
Lights over much of Lawrence went out during last night's thunderstorm and lunacy took command of the University of Kansas campus.
As torrents of rain estimated at up to two and one-half inches pounded lawns into seas of mud, KU men and women surged into the streets to fight mud battles.
In residence hall cafeterias, students were consuming their food when they suddenly couldn't tell the stewed tomatoes from the meatballs. Screams were heard up and down Hashinger's halls as coeds dashed for candles, matches or flashlights.
Two McCollum women were trapped inside an elevator stopped by a power failure and fellow residents fumbled in the darkness outside.
On Engel Road between Templin and Lewis Halls, two armies of men and women fought a muddy battle. As the crowd swelled to about 600 persons passing motorists were pelted with mud.
Police were called to the scene and moved the crowd from the street. One angry officer, asked for comment on the incident, said, "Iain't got nothing to say." The crowd, which yelled "police brutality" and "let the police handle it," hurled mud at police, photographers, and cars.
A spokesman for the Kansas Power and Light Co. said the power failure, which stopped residence hall clocks at 6:18 p.m., resulted
from lightning and wind damage to power lines. The U.S. Weather Bureau reported winds of more than 50 m.p.h. in the area.
The spokesman said no major equipment failures were involved and that the outages were minor and in isolated pockets across the city. Power was restored to the affected areas on the Hill at about 7 p.m.
But before electric power was restored and while the rain still fell, another "mud-in" or "mud happening" as participants called it, took place behind Ellsworth Hall at the other end of Engel.
About 20 men went outside and then dragged onlooking coeds into the mire. One girl said, "I don't know whether to take my clothes off before or after I shower."
One of the girls trapped in the elevator, Sharon Stewart, Moline, Ill., sophomore, said. "It was pitch dark-I couldn't even see my hand. We screamed for help. The guys on the seventh floor and the girls on eight heard us." Prying a crack in the door male residents tossed the coeds matches. "Finally, the maintenance man told us what to do and the guys helped us down."
Meanwhile the lobbies of the residence halls turned to ringing confusion as hordes of callers tried in vain to reach residents. Don Huggins, St. Louis junior explained that while telephone lines were operating electric communications to rooms were not.
(Continued on page 12)
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
79th Year, No.26
The University of Kansas—Lawrence, Kansas
Tuesday, October 22, 1968
UDK News Roundup By United Press International
Da Nang sailors dispute
DA NANG, Vietnam—The U.S. Navy recently imposed restrictions on American servicemen in the Da Nang area because of racial incidents, a military spokesman said Sunday.
The spokesman said the restrictions were imposed Oct. 12-13 following two confrontations that weekend between whites and Negroes and after a Negro enlisted man opened fire with a pistol and a shot from the gun killed a Negro guard.
Prison-mates recaptured
The shooting was not necessarily the result of a racial dispute, the spokesman said.
Hungarian troops leave
Other reports said Polish troop units were also crossing the frontier enroute home.
SANTA ROSA, N.M.—Two Kansas State penitentiary escapees, who were recaptured in a dramatic show-down at a ranch home where they held four hostages, were jailed on stolen car charges pending filing of additional charges Monday.
PRAGUE—Prague Radio Monday announced Hungarian troops had withdrawn from Czechoslovak soil. This was the first public and official indication since the occupation treaty was approved Friday that the rollback on Warsaw pact troops has begun.
The two escapees-James Roach and James Ford-escaped from prison Oct. 8. Both were convicted of the slayings of two inmates at the Kansas prison while serving terms for other crimes. They had been kept in the maximum security ward.
2.
Ends 11-day flight
Apollo hits down
SPACE CENTER, Houston (UPI)
—Apollo 7's three astronauts rode a "pink cloud" of fire back to earth today, triumphantly ending the 11-day space flight that shattered the barriers between man and the moon.
Walter Schirra, Donn Eisele and Walt Cunningham, apparently unshaken by an upside-down splashdown in the Atlantic and a frantic 15-minute search to find them, strode onto the deck of the carrier Essex at 7:08 a.m., CDT.
"We're riding a pink cloud," Schirra joylessly cried as the space-ship's hurtling re-entry into the atmosphere built a ball of flame around its blunt heat shield.
Their 11-day voyage 163 times around earth was America's most successful space flight. It virtually assured clearance for Apollo 8's Dec. 21 launch on a journey around the moon.
It was the third, and probably final, space voyage for the 45-year old Schirra, commander of Apollo
Hanoi says U.S. has no right to call for reciprocal cutback
SAIGON (UPI)-Hanoi today broke its relative silence on worldwide reports of a U.S. bombing halt proposal and said Washington has no right to demand a reciprocal Communist descalation of the war
The broadcast over Radio Hanoi said it stated the viewpoint of a Viet Cong "commentator."
It restated the familiar North Vietnamese and Viet Cong positions that the United States has no right to ask for mutual response from Hanoi in return for a bombing halt. But it raised particular interest because it did not specifically reject the possibility of such a gesture and it alluded to the reports of a new bombing halt offer.
The broadcast said President Johnson had been forced by public opinion "to talk about a bombing halt over the whole territory of the north.
"But with their stubborn and warlike character, the U.S. imperialists have continued to request reciprocal acts, saying that we will
to pay a price for a deescalation of their war invasion.
"If the Americans want to avoid heavier defeats in South Vietnam, if they want to have an honorable peace as they are used to saying, they have no other choice than to give up their war of invasion," the broadcast quoted the Viet Cong spokesman.
Weather
Clear to partly cloudy today, tonight and Wednesday. Cooler today and tonight. Warmer Wednesday. Northwestery winds 10 to 20 miles per hour today. High today 65 to 70. Low tonight 35 to 40. Precipitation probabilities. Less than 5 per cent today. 10 per cent tonight and Wednesday.
7 who plans retirement from flight. It was the first trip for Eisele, 38, the navigator, and Cunningham, 36, the systems engineer.
Wobly under their first taste of earth gravity since they blasted off from Cape Kennedy Oct. 11, the astronauts saluted proudly as they stepped off the helicopter that plucked them from the Atlantic.
Three helicopters searched frantically through mist and drizzling rain for the spacecraft, its radio beacon blocked by its upside-down landing. The astronauts apparently peeled off their space suits in the bobbing spacecraft. When swimmers put the flotation pad around it, they emerged in their white coveralls to be hoisted up to the 'copter.
Schirra and his crew brought back to earth proof that the new Apollo series, America's first three-man spaceships, are capable of making the voyage to the moon, three or four days from the safety of earth, and coming back.
The 4.5-million-mile earth-orbit trip gave Apollo 7 a string of space records, including the most man-hours in space on a single flight—780 hours and 30 minutes—and the second longest flight in space-260 hours and 10 minutes. The only previous three-man flight was Voskhod 1, launched by Russia in 1964.
Schirra, Eisele and Cunningham also set a first with their head colds in space—an annoyance at first that led to grave fears for their safety during the return. It was feared the swiftly rising pressure and sudden gravity thrust—giving them at its peak three times their earth weight—might burst their eardrums. Intense pain was considered likely.
But the astronauts appeared unharmed when they stepped off the helicopter.