Page 2 University Daily Kansan Wednesday, May 6, 1959 Troops With Trash We constantly hear students praising the beauty of the KU campus—and for good reason. Our "Stanford on the Kaw" is known across the nation for being an exceptionally attractive university. Our administration spends upward from $10,- 000 a year keeping the landscape in top order, striving to make KU a more pleasant place. Enter student, with paper cup and candy bar wrapper in hand. Same student remarks how lovely the campus looks in the spring, and proceeds to throw his litter upon our beautiful landscape. There is a basic inconsistency in this student's thinking. And, we might add, it is contagious. How on God's green earth do students expect to keep the earth green if it is covered with multicolored cups, wrappers, letters, useless class papers, former lovers' photographs, and everything except their dirty underwear? Call them litterbugs, screwballs, defacers of public property, or kids-will-be-kids. They still spread their garbage from Marvin Grove to Allen Field House. If buildings and grounds workers were not following untidy scholars as they leave a trail of discarded papers, our home away from home would resemble the Chicago slums. By 1963, if there was no one to pick up after us, each student would have to own a snow plow to get to class. Think of the parking problems that would create. If we are to be responsible adults, we need to do a little conscience cleaning as well as campus cleaning. It is time that each student started picking up his own debris. In fact, it would not hurt anyone to pick up any extra trash that might be lying around—it would help take off that boarding house flab. Bend-two-three, up-two-three. There are several advantages to keeping our campus clean. However, the biggest advantage simply is keeping it attractive, and you are the ones who are responsible. —Martha Pearse Maturity from Experience Editor Editor: I find Bob Krahl's letter (Friday's Kansan) rather curious. At least Krahl finds his view one of ignorance, and his mind deranged by believing whole-heartedly in chastity for unmarried couples. What does he want unmarried couples to do: put on black robes, go crawl into monastery coffins, pray and do penance for the sins of the world? Or would he rather that we live as each individual thinks best for himself? Krahl tells us that it is God's will that all men should have this ideal of extra-marital chastity, and anyone who denies this will curse themselves and wail at their loss of virginity. I seriously doubt that everyone feels this way. They are probably too busy enjoying this life and its beauty to stop, think and then blaspheme life because Paul said it was naughty. Aldous Huxley once wisely said, "Chastity means passion, Chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices." Come, come Mr. Krahl. Stop worrying about good and evil. They falsify the real pleasures of life. Krahl says children must be taught phobias and unreasoning fears because they do not know the meaning of Krahl's hypothetical "values". What kind of a man is Krahl to want to mold a child's character, to make him into a well-adjusted social unit instead of an individual? What kind of a man is Krahl to scare innocent children and warp their natural characters? To me, your argument on giving chastity as a marriage gift is rather faculty, at best. A big part of maturity comes from experience Most people would probably prefer a mature person as a mate than a frustrated, immature one. Love is not selfish, ego-ceniered desire Mr. Krahl. There is no value in remaining chaste. To do so would be to negate much of your life. Besides, what would I do if I wished to remain a bachelor, read Henry Miller all my life? Stewart Nowlin Holton sophomore Uncritically Condemning Editor Editor: How dare you call the ingrates who placarded the campus on May Day "pranksters!" It is hardly a prank when someone attacks the foundations of the "American Way." They even had the audacity to point out that there was unemployment in our great capitalist system. We do agree wholeheartedly with your statement that the spreading of these handbills could have serious repercussions for the university. We ought really to concern ourselves with what people feel, and not with what is true or what might make people ask questions and think. Let us never (God forbid!) question either the will or the ability of the state to cope with current socio-economic problems. Let us ever and always remain true, red, white, and blue, pure blooded Americans, never questioning, always enthusiastic, ready to do or die... Don't think about Detroit; don't think about Kentucky and West Virginia; just leave it to Daddy Warbucks Eisenhower. Never impugn the name of free enterprise. Let us, all of us, not only protect zealously the golden unsullied reputation of KU, but also positively build it up. The impertinent fact—that the moral prestige of the University has been subverted, nay, openly assailed—must be rectified. Perhaps the ever-vigilant administration should conduct a full-scale investigation with all flags (except the Red) flying and all students' rights suspended. LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS BY BIBLER Or better yet perhaps the students should be lined up and every tenth "scholar" expelled. Such bold action has shored up many a tottering regime. "YES, OFCOURSE I M HOT. BUT—" Richard Kraus Lawrence senior Lawrence senio Darwin Sharp Lawrence graduate student Edward Coomes Kansas City, Mo. graduate student Edward Coomes (Committee for Uncritically Condemning Communism) University of Kansas student newspaper Dailu Hansan Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912. Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Repressed by National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave., New York, NY. Republished by International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays, academic holidays, second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910; at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879. NEWS DEPARTMENT NEWS DELETED Douglas Parker Managing Editor BUSINESS DEPARTMFNT BUSINESS DEPARTMENT Bill Feitz Business Manager EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT Pat Swanson and Martha Crosier, Co- sultant of Harvil, Associate Editorial Editor. READERS in "The Long Shadow" are Steve Callahan, Jeanne Rustemeyer, Erik Wright, Tom Sawyer, and Lillian Howard. By John Husar Every now and then a playwright sees an unjust situation and immediately assumes the role of reformer, a crusader out to right mankind's wrongs. Such a situation was aired last night when "The Long Shadow" opened in the Experimental Theatre. A play by Miriam Roffman, it involves the tough times which befall a convict when he returns to his family and society after 12 years in the tank. Staged as a dramatic reading by Allen Crafton, the play dramatizes the life of said convict, a kindly, innocent chap. A number of thing are wrong with this play, one of them being that it runs too long—one hour and 45 minutes of melodramatic nonsense. Luckily, the play was not acted visibly, for then the sheer emotional impact of the tense and heart-rending plot would surely have brought tears bursting from the audience's dammed-up eyes, forcing it to swim toward the exits. Last night the audience only had to walk out, albeit quickly, but which may have saved many lives. Seriously, though, the play goes nowhere. It starts in the prison with the convict idealistically expecting things to be hunky-dory when he gets paroled. They aren't. This is normal. Not only does he have job trouble, but living conditions are difficult for him, too. The son who is expected to hate him, really likes him and takes him in. The daughter who is supposed to love him, is too small and stupid to keep her promises. The son's wife, who is supposed to be a society girl, is really a nothing with an affected voice. The daughter's husband, who is a church leader and revered citizen, is the most bigoted man under the sun. This is the play. It seems to be a study of contrasts rather than a sociological analysis. If the playwright meant to point out the mental tortures suffered by an ex-con at the hands of merciless society, she only got far enough to show a number of confused characters blundering through a piped-up situation. The family setup is not real, but contrived. The convict himself is portrayed as a wise man, but is not given enough brains or insight to realize the family mess he caused. The plot is unreal. Its ends are not based on fact, but on the whim of a certain type of people. In short, the play doesn't arrive at an imaginative conclusion. It leaves the audience up in the air with the impression that nothing different happened. There were also many inaccuracies in the story, far too numerous to begin to mention. While the playwright gets an E for effort, it must be remembered that E stands between D and F on the KU grade scale. Although the play may have been bad, its production was something else. Prof. Crafton's formal staging had the performers standing before lecterns, from which they read scripts. Utilizing a minimum of gestures, the players drew the maximum emphasis from their voices. In fact, the spell-binding influence of their vocal effects alone held the play together. Dan Palmquist injected a mellowness into a subdued voice which fully developed the convict's character. Herk Harvey, doubling as a hardened criminal and a doctor, showed a knowledge of techniques which earned him a most effective contrast. Mike Jackson and Lex Buchanan used well-styled nuances to develop different convict characters. Tom Sawyer took advantage of a deep and imaginative character analysis to bring the most out of an unusually undefined role. Charles Kephart's incisive voice masterfully portrayed the bitter son-in-law. Jeanne Rustemeyer aptly played the tortured society girl. Steve Callahan brusquely created a character for "the screw," Lillian Howard was an effective spineless daughter, Glenn Hunt a strong warden, and Erik Wright a good typical boy. The cast gets A for ability. Comparing that with the E for effort, the final average becomes a C—a rather mediocre grade upon which to close the season.