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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, September 18
Wescoe and Voice
President Lyndon B. Johnson used a surprise attack last April when, after a long televised speech on Vietnam, he ended with an announcement that he had decided not to run again.
The speech worked. In the utter shock that followed, many looked with a less-jaundiced eye at Johnson's handling of the office of the Presidency. Since he isn't campaigning this fall, Johnson hasn't had the extensive personal criticism that was piled upon him last winter. The charge of his every action being politically-oriented has lost force.
Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe his resignation Monday was also a surprise and although probably not intended to do so, will likely soften the reaction of student protestors.
About 50 students connected with the protest group, Peoples Voice, walked out during Wescoe's address. As they left, they distributed half-sheet fliers explaining their reasons for the walkout.
Voice should have stayed. Wescoe's speech turned out to be neither rhetorical nor meaningless, especially not to Voice.
"Therefore we walk out during the Chancellor's meaningless rhetorical exercise," the flier read.
Perhaps some of the various members of Voice are pleased with the Chancellor's announcement. But the dissident students of KU could do much worse. And most of the leaders of Voice would surely admit this.
Wesco base his opening address on change and stressed his own and KU's role in change.
"Although I would hesitate to admit it, I think if I were to be classified when a student and later as a faculty member and now administrator (whatever that may mean) that classification would read, in lower case letters, 'rebel.' My pride in the accomplishment of change rests in the change being wrought through intellectual persuasion, through the presentation of inconvertible facts," he said.
Despite Voice's allegations that Wesco and the administration of KU treats its students with "paternalism," the Voice members would have to admit that Wesco has not veered away from dialogue. Last year's protests and petitions about student voice in university committees now composed completely of faculty members demonstrated the Chancellor's willingness to talk it over.
Instead of reacting with the strong-handed tactics of Grayson Kirk, president of Columbia University who resigned in late August, Wescoe announced the establishment of a student-faculty committee to discuss the need for student representation in University affairs.
"I feel now that the processes of student government can swing into action," he said.
The KU student body will no doubt remember Wescoe's open lines of communication during the coming school yearand realize that his willingness for change and discussion are becoming priceless in a nation that is taking an increasingly hard line toward student rights.
Alison Steimel Editorial Editor
Kansan record review
Rock/jazz: good
bv Bob Butler
If you haven't heard Eric Andersen's album, "More Hits from Tin Can Alley," you owe it to yourself to find a copy and give it 45 minutes of your time. I've heard lots of fine albums lately, but this is one of the best.
ERIE Andersen started his career with Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs in Greenwich Village in the early 60's. Back then he was a straight folk singer. Actually, he still is, but he has seen fit to augment his superb guitar playing with drums, bass, banjos, honky-tonk piano and trombones. The result is the story of a day in Tin Can Alley, a bitter yet strangely hopeful picture of slum life.
Andersen has adopted a musical style that combines folk rock and dixieland jazz. It is sometimes quiet, sometimes raucous—always satisfying. But when coupled with his biting lyrics it becomes brilliant.
The album's closing lines:
"Smokestacks coughin' a couple blocks away,
Air's so dirty the sheets are turnin' gray,
It looks like midnight, it's the middle of the day,
Down in Tin Can Alley—where the little kids play."
Andersen can be a devasting satirist, as in his put down of the Hugh Hefner syndrome in "Rolling Home":
"I don't want a lot of money
I don't want a Playboy bunny
Jest a love to call me honey
Late at night."
There are few albums I would guarantee for every listener. This is one of them. Eric Andersen is an angry young man, but at least he cares. If only some of flag-waving "law and order" politicians could understand what a slum is like, then perhaps they would understand also why it's really not so terrible to see one burn down.
Paperbacks
"Torn from the headlines," as the movie ads used to say—that's a new paperback by Robert Lewis called MICHEL, MICHEL (Crest, $1.25). Not the biggest headlines, but those that pack the emotion and cause bridge-table discussion, because "Michel, Michel" is about a struggle for possession of a child, a struggle between a Jewish refugee family and the Catholic Church.
The child's parents were Jews, victims of the Nazis, and the child is raised as a Catholic. Then the aunt, in Israel, claims the boy and the battle begins. It's a big book, and a literate one, whose author has a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from Johns Hopkins.
It's sort of a step down to Lew Louderback's THE BAD ONES (Gold Medal, 75 cents), a paperback original also torn from the headlines—headlines of the 1930s. Capitalizing on interest in "Bonnie and Clyde," and even presenting the lovely Bonnie (Marjorie Main, not Faye Dunaway) on the cover, cigar and all, the book deals with the hoodlums of those good old days—Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd,
Now back in time, quite a distance, to the days of decadent Rome. ROGUE ROMAN (Gold Medal, 75 cent), by Lance Horner. This is a humdinger. Wow. There's this handsome slave named Cleon, from the Near East, who is trained to be a lover and gladiator. Cleon gets all mixed up with the royal family and the fall of Rome. A natural for Embassy pictures. And the book isn't really written in English, which makes it easy for the script writers.
Baby Face Nelson and Ma Barker.
HOLLYWOOD — (UPI)—Filming has begun in Moscow on "Tschaikovsky." the first American-Soviet co-production with Dimitri Tiomkin producing for Warner Bros.
SOVIET-AMERICAN PIC
Letters to the editor
FESTIVAL ENTRY
HOLLYWOOD - (UPI) — MGM's "The Legend of Lylah Clare" is the American Entry in Spain's 1968 San Sebastian Film Festival.
Union thanks KU students for patience
To: The Editor of the University Daily Kansan
Those of us at the Kansas Union want to express our thanks and appreciation to the students, staff, and faculty for their patience and perseverance relative to pedestrian traffic during enrollment at the Union.
Our temporary walks, fences, bridges, and steps were designed and installed for your safety.
The general contractor (B. A. Green Construction Co.) has been plagued with an unusually rainy summer. Working long and late, often doing work a second time after rains had washed it out, Mr. Green has made a sincere and determined effort to have streets and walks ready for all your activities related to the first home football game on September 28.
Frank R. Burge Director
Wallace target
Voters' fears
The unpredictable action of a frightened voter in the secrecy of a voting booth could determine the outcome of this year's presidential election.
The frightened voter is not a political activist; nor is he a rank-and-file party member. More than likely he was an Eisenhower Republican, wavered between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960, and cast his fate with Johnson in 1964. He is now perplexed by the Vietnam protests, campus disorders, and the black man's discontent. He does not regard himself a racist, but is covertly and sometimes overtly critical of the revolt that threatens his middle or lower-middle class security. The frightened voter may well be the eye of the hurricane backlash.
The frightened voter is dubious of the racist stigma attached to the third party candidacy of George Wallace, but at the same time, he is unimpressed with the familiar faces he sees in the Republican and Democratic parties. His skepticism is a prime target of Wallace's American Independent Party.
The frightened voter does not figure in the nearly 20 per cent of the electorate currently siding with Wallace. His vote may very well be governed by one of those imponderables that campaign managers understand only after they lose.
The ponderables are dealt with by strategists before a campaign is off the ground. A candidate's stand on basic issues is calculated in anticipation of the electorate's predictable responses. But occasionally a sleeper issue will arise and be subsequently reinforced by unexpected events. The sleeper this year is the law and order issue and the burgeoning campaign of Wallace has unfortunately been able to capitalize on this issue.
Such an imponderable was the bloodletting that scarred the Democratic national convention in Chicago. The apparent result was to hang another albatross around the neck of Hubert Humphrey and present Wallace—and to a lesser extent, Nixon—a feast that whet his political appetite.
It is significant to the Wallace candidacy that what troubles America was dramatized on the stage of Chicago. For it is in the big northern cities where the frightened voter abounds—and it is in the big northern cities where unexpected Wallace support could throw the election into the House of Representatives.
Polls indicate that Wallace is ahead in the five deep-south states with the distinct possibility that he could carry most, if not all, of the 13 southern states. With the former Alabama governor's support growing in the border and midwestern states, the big-city North and East could provide the key to Wallace's presidential aspirations.
One more imponderable event could have the frightening effect of bringing out unexpected support for Wallace. A major civil disorder the week preceding the election could persuade many frightened voters to go the Wallace-route November fifth.
Richard Lund-Quist Editorial Assistant
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester, $10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 66044. Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
Executive Staff
Executive Sam
Managing Editor Monte Mace
Business Manager Jack Haney
Assistant Managing Editors Pat Crawford, Charla Jenkins, Tim Jones,
Steve Morgan, Allen Winchester
City Editor Bob Butler
Assistant City Editor Kathy Hall
Editorial Editor Alison Steimel
Editorial Assistant Richard Lund-Quist
Sports Editor Ron Yates
Feature and Society Editor Rea Wilson
Copy Chiefs Judy Dague, Linda McCrenley, Don Westerhaus, Sandy
Zahradnik Marilyn Zook
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National Advertising Manager Karlyn Sanders
Promotion Pam Flatton
Circulation Manager Jack Hurley
Classified Manager Barry Arthur
Quotes
About the Candidates
George Wallace: "The people in all walks of life in these United States are tired of the way the pseudointellectuals are writing them guidelines telling them what to do."
A Wallace position paper: "Can a former truck driver who is married to a former dimentore clerk and who is the son of a dirt farmer be elected President of the United States?"
The Alabama Journal, writing of the George Wallace campaign: "This is not the kind of campaign that wins national elections. But unhappily, it is the kind of campaign which sets class against class, race against race, people against government, workingman against intellectual, the deprived against the middle class and blurs our vision of the common goals which all men of good will seek."