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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, May 13, 1959
Sports for Spectators
A. Whitney Griswold, president of Yale University, in a recent speech at Johns Hopkins University criticizing universities which place too much emphasis on the promotion of spectacular sports, said;
"The national traffic in athletic scholarships constitutes one of the greatest educational swindles ever perpetrated on American youth."
Dr. Griswold explained that universities try to rationalize their super-athletic programs by saying they are interested most in the educational welfare of the scholarship recipient.
"But for the most part, such scholarships undermine American education because the aim is not the education of youth but the entertainment of elders," said Dr. Griswold.
Lets bring this home and try the shoe on to see how it fits KU.
Is the football department's traveling salesman, who drives thousands of miles each fall making book on Kansas high school football players,
really interested in seeing that the recruit gets an education? Or is he thinking in terms of filling Memorial Stadium or Saturday afternoons two years hence? Lets be honest. Athletic ability comes first in granting scholarships. The athletic department has a tutoring fund to pay tutors to look after the athletes' grades.
Why is football and basketball a six-figure business here? Is it because the athletic department is so anxious to please the students? If it were the students would be sitting in the choice seats on the west side of the stadium at football games and in the chair seats on the east side of Allen Field House for basketball games. The plain fact is that football and basketball here at KU are primarily for the entertainment of the alumni and spectators.
The shoe Dr. Griswold has thrown at American universities fits KU. And as long as the alumni and spectators exert the influence they now do, the University will wear the shoe.
Harry Ritter
It's May and just about time for graduation. For the seniors, the end of college life will come at a time when the world is in turmoil.
Everybody's World
The big powers are meeting through foreign ministers, and reports are that the breach between East and West is only growing wider. Before the ministers met, there was little optimism that they would be able to agree on even relatively minor points.
This gloomy outlook was born out in the preliminaries, when Russia and the United States argued over what kind of table to sit at. The first meeting was a battle to decide if East Germany would sit in on the meeting. East Germany did not get a seat, but Moscow picked up some valuable propaganda material.
Doubtless, little will be accomplished at the foreign ministers meeting. The only ray of hope, and it is a faint one, is that some agreement can be arrived at on the German question at the summit.
However, unless some unforeseen change occurs in relations between the East and West, news analysts see little chance of solving the Berlin problem at Geneva.
The outlook for the future, is one of dim hope and continued friction between hold-the-line American diplomacy and the Russian chess players.
This is the kind of world the seniors are graduating into. It is a world of tension, but it is not a world without hope. And if progress is to be made in this age of the hydrogen missile—progress toward understanding and a permanent peace—then it is up to the men and women who will be the leaders of tomorrow to begin working now for these ends.
They must begin by doing all they can to understand the tensions that separate nations.
But most of all, these leaders of tomorrow must act. They cannot stand aloof, and say that nothing can be done. There is no room for apathy. Each man is a potential diplomat—whether he works in Lawrence, Little Rock, or Washington.
If a man can help just one other person to understand our confusing world, then that man has done his part. It is a complex world, but it is a world of individuals. Each can learn and each can understand. —George DeBord
McCarthyism
...Letters...
Editor:
The editorial of Pat Swanson concerning the May Day student pranks expresses a fear of public opinion typical during the days of McCarthy. Miss Swanson says:
"Many people fear the ideology of Communism so much that they never hesitate to label anyone who
disages with them a Communist. If word of the May Day celebration at the University were spread around the result could be very harmful to the reputation of KU."
If the actions of the University and its students are to be controlled by the thoughts of the naive people who would brand KU Communist because of a May Day
joke, the University should also lower professors' salaries (to balance the state budget), support segregation, and eliminate from its curriculum all courses with no obvious "practical" value. The emotional person who labels every nonconformist as Communist probably has no understanding of the principles of Communism or democracy.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"WELL. IF YOUR EYES ARE THAT BAD - WHY DONCHA GET GLASSES?"
And even if there were a few Communists on the campus—so what? Often the best way for one to realize the value of one's own beliefs is to get an understanding of the "other side."
To try to eliminate the few members of the other side would probably strengthen their organization as well as weaken our own beliefs.
To attempt to eliminate all Communists would be to resort to the same tactics we condemn in certain other countries. To use such tactics, even if they appear to gain our own immediate ends, would be to refute the principles and faiths upon which this society is supposedly based.
Kansas City, Kan., sophomore
John L. Hodge
Dailu Hansan
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It Looks This Way...
By Tom Hough
The magic words are "Bolshevik" and "Communist."
The American people have been conditioned to respond to these two words like an irate mother to the child who said an obscene word during church service.
As the result of the May Day jokes—when the Chi Omega fountain was dyed red, a student was seen waving a Russian flag, and a shabby bulletin listed a meeting in a non-existent place—an editorial in the Topeka Daily Capital leaped to the rescue of the "reputation of the University of Kansas."
The Capital summed up its remarks with, "(The University) ...never has been (full of Communists), and we doubt it is now"
This editorial is rather frightening. It seems to support the view that the most terrible things in the world are pegged Communist and Bolshevik. It points out the sensitivity of the American people to the mention of these words.
The surprising thing about these magic names is the lack of attention they receive when an authority schedules a lecture on the subject, or a publication devotes reams of material to them.
Another point that causes concern is the use of "certain people" and "many people" in the editorial. These terms are hedging around the implication that every American is sensitive to the "magic words."
But, being "magic words," they fall in the same classification as other words in the near past: "witch" in America and "Jew" in Germany.
The Capital said these people "... see a Communist in every non-conformist and a demon in every eye that twinkles."
To repeat: the editorial is frightening because it indicates the hate-spark propagandists will fan into a blaze when they feel a blaze is needed.
The absurdity of this American hate-spark can be read into a remark made by the socialist Yugoslavia ambassador, Marko Nikezic, in an interview April 10.
"America is formally against socialism, but many things you regarded as socialistic a few years ago are in effect now." he said.
"Communist' and "Bolshevik" are the magic words. Want attention? Use a magic word. Want a war? Propagandize a magic word.
By Gordon W. Bennett
THE INTELLECTUAL MILIEU OF JOHN DRYDEN, by Louis I. Bredvold, Ann Arbor Books, $1.25.
"Presumption is our natural and original infirmitie." (Montaigne)
Mr. Bredvold tries to disentangle a tradition of skepticism lurking behind the "conservative" habit of mind in the political and religious writings of the 17th Century poet, John Dryden. This complicated century of religious polemic and controversy, of political extremes in theory and fact, and of enthusiastic speculations in science lived a pyrotechnic mental life.
But what breed of men were the Drydens, the conservative Tories who "retreated" to political absolutism and Catholicism? Bredvold suggests how Dryden, like the earlier Montaigne, cultivated a skeptical habit of mind despite a "robust individuality." He turned away from Hobbism, materialism, and deism to a philosophical tradition of skepticism and to a conservative tradition in politics and religion.
To convince us that Dryden's Toryism and Catholicism is something more than a timorous shrinking from the exploding controversies of his era, the author provides a concise history of the skeptical or Pyrrhonistic habit of mind. A suspended judgment in skeptical thought indicates a basic distrust of the senses and a belief that a science of ethics is impossible. Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus were the Greek counterparts to Dryden who defended the established order in politics and society and who clung to the established religion and prudent, practical conduct.
The Medieval Nominalists extend the tradition, in part, until it finds clear literary expression in Montaigne's essays. After Montaigne, Sir Thomas Browne's "Religio Medici" and Pascal's "Pensees" are key documents in this literature of paradox where faith and the humiliated Reason embody a clear-cut skepticism. His chapter "The Traditions of Skepticism" should interest students of philosophy, history and religion as well as students of literature.
The argument is too complex for presentation here. The author illustrates how the new science of the Royal Society and Hobbes' materialism threatened the materialist's peace of mind. He develops a fascinating line of inquiry in which one method of Catholic apologetics, bordering upon the heretical, attempted to restore Faith by undermining certainty in religious Knowledge and spiritual Authority. The beginning of higher Bible criticism are part of this skeptical tradition, taking the form of "fideism."
Bredvold also suggests that the Tory is skeptical and conservative in politics because the Tory has a disillusioned and cynical view of human nature. In short, the author rigorously explores the intellectual implications of the conservative temperament which submits to faith and humiliates the Reason. This habit of mind is always a mystery to enthusiasts.
Although the author succeeds in showing that there is a kind of skepticism which does not lead to libertine acts and "free-thinking," he does not quite convince this reader that Dryden "is on the intellectual side a significant and an imposing figure. As it was" or some Catholic apologists, skepticism tends to be merely a "useful controversial weapon," not a rigorous inquiry into the human condition.