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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, April 28.1959
Partisanship Is Your Fault
Each year a cry goes up-"Partisan representation on the All Student Council committees."
Students complain because their dormitory or fraternity does not have anyone on certain committees. The unorganized independents think there is prejudice because there are so few from their living district represented.
Now is your chance to do something about it. The ASC is taking applications for committee positions. Its main problem is that so few people have applied.
Here again apathy lulls the student body into a "who cares?" state of being. But these same students within a matter of months will begin to wonder why there are two men from Joe Blow's fraternity on key committees and his house has none. The scream will once more go up—"unfair!"
These committees can play an important role in the student's life—for example, the Housing Committee's investigation of Sunnyside and the
Health Committee's getting the new student health program. For these committees to continue their work, competent persons must apply —persons who are genuinely interested in what they can do to aid their fellow students.
Students discussed the various persons running for the All Student Council—they wanted to make sure they were qualified. This same interest should be shown toward the committee appointments. What the committee members do or do not do will affect the whole student body just as the Council's action does.
Talk to your friends who you feel would be able to carry on the work of the various committees. Urge them to apply. This is your responsibility.
Unless you have applied or have talked to your friends about applying, you will have no right to complain or criticize next fall.
The committees are an important part of student government and it is up to you what sort of government we have. —Martha Crosier
What Are Our Values?
Editor:
J. A.M. Murloo published in 1956 his book, "The Rape of the Mind." It represents his studies dating back to 1933 on the various aspects of mental torture, submission because of fear, brain-washing, in effect, "rape of the mind," with very broad implications.
When I finished reading Wednesday's Daily Kansan, I was quite angry. And as I've done at other occasions when I was angry at the Daily Kansan, I controlled my impulse to "do something about it," discarded the paper, and went about my work. However, lest I fall under the condemnation of Mr. Murloo who has studied the whole matter of "passivity" for more than 20 years and may be right in part, I am now writing to you briefly.
The most concrete statement in Murloo's book which, I confess, I do not know inside out, is this: "Every man has his own psychological Maginot line—a mental fortress that he believes inviolable." My comments fall within the framework of its implications.
I object to a national advertising program which interrupts all radio and TV presentation with cigarette and beer advertisements. Does this actually reflect the standard of this—the United States—society?
I object to the use of four-year-
old children to sell soap, a certain hair-do, and finally, "a happy home," created by other group factors over which the child in no way has any control.
And finally, I object to the Daily Kansan, as the paper representing university level scholarship in this area, succeeding to the lead of society at large. In proportionate emphasis on advertising, we are almost caught up with the Saturday Evening Post; in ladies' fashions, with Seventeen. For fluidity of style, we probably excel Budweiser.
Is it impossible to get an editorial on what goes on inside leaders (they may not be campus leaders) as they stand on that solitary hill, by day, some four miles south of Lawrence, or as they pause on campus, on a quiet, starlit night. Which are the things, the everlasting values, that we want to share with our fellow-man, and transmit to our children?
Let's take 10 minutes to see whether the things we emphasize in this our society and on the KU campus are such as will "sell" in terms of foreign policy, or whether as perhaps Muruo indicates, we are being sold.
This letter constitutes my token of confidence. Please continue my subscription to the Daily Kansan.
Hepburn, Saskatchewan,
Canada graduate student
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"SAY,THEY'VE SURE SPEEDED-UP THIS 'CHOW LINE' SINCE I WAS HERE LAST."
Champions of Female Editor:
Poor, traitorous Messrs. Kennedy and McMullan that they must champion the American female. It would seem that the problem facing us should not be their protection. To use some of their remarks one could easily see a reversal of their case.
The amount of morality on campus is indeed an open question. But to be bewail a lack of maturity and in the same breath suggest further restrictions is a psychologically incompetent remedy.
Furthermore, if that which is done "after 5:30 p.m." is, in their words, possible "before 5:30 p.m.," there is strong reason to believe that the only change will be in the area of study during the day. I propose abolition of closing hours so that what would have to be done "before 5:30" could be returned to its time-honored place, and studies could be normal.
If one rewords a statement they made it would seem that "...any scheme for the tightening of closing hours has a pinkish tinge and is objectively a Red-inspired plot to demoralize American manhood."
To close I would merely congratulate them on their last issue. They have by their letter successfully convinced us that at least some of those in college are not mature.
Peter M. Gardner
Osawatomie senior
* * *
Proposed Gift Explained Editor
The senior class gift selection seems to be very much in the lime-light now. This is as it should be, I suppose, since the voting is to be at the senior coffee Thursday.
However, as the gift committee member who was assigned to look into a possible gift to Dyche Museum of Natural History, I should like to clarify its nature. It would not be a painting as has been stated in the "Kansan." The suggestion of Dr. Hall, director of the museum, was a diorama featuring the state bird and flower.
The space set aside for such an exhibit is on the second floor of Dyche and would be similar in structure to the three dimensional scenes already there.
Such a gift would not only be a memorial to the class of 1959, but would enlist paid student aid in preparation. Thus the student would be receiving the equivalent of a scholarship while learning techniques of exhibit preparation.
An estimated fifty-thousand or more people visit the museum yearly. These include school children from the surrounding area for whom the diorama would be a visual lesson worth many words of a text book. On the college level it would be a lasting teaching aid in mammalogy, biology, ornithology, botany, entomology, and ecology of the area.
No. John Husar, a diorama is not a "vague and useless item."
Barbara Richards
Hays senior
Allen-Lentz
By Jerry Knudson Instructor of Journalism
THE HUNGER AND OTHER STORIES by Charles Beaumont, Bantam, 35 cents.
Billed as "a collection of violent entertainments ... for the ghoul in you," this collection of startling short stories reaches a macabre intensity that adds new dimensions to the grotesque.
Readers will find a collection of characters ranging from "Miss Gentibelle," an insane woman who insists her son is a girl, to a spinster in "The Hunger" who seeks out a rapist-murderer for his love.
In "The Dark Music" a Victorian biology teacher is seduced by a Satyr; in "Tears of the Madonna" a Mexican boy discovers his prostitute friend plays the role of the Virgin in a theatrical tableaux.
The unexpected dominates Beaumont's stories. They range from a whimsical humor in "The Vanishing American," in which a nondescript office clerk regains his individuality by fulfilling a lifelong dream of riding the stone lion in front of the library, to stark morality plays such as "Last Night the Rain," wherein a stone-built Tower of Sin topples over and crushes a small girl.
Humor pervades "Free Dirt," story of the catastrophe which befalls the man who gets free dirt from a cemetery to build up his garden. Perhaps the finest story is "Black Country," which captures the pain and release which produced jazz.
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FANCIES AND GOODNIGHTS by John Collier. Bantam, 50 cents.
More of the weird and fantastic by a writer picked by some as heir to the mantle of H. H. Munro, better known as "Saki." On the basis of this collection, the praise seems premature, however.
Collier suffers from lack of style. His plots are often engagingly bizarre but he needs polish to give them form, "Evening Primrose" is the strangest, embracing a group of characters too weak to face the world. They go underground in large department stores, emerging only at night to prowl the deserted buildings.
Inevitably, a genie tale shows up in a book such as this, and "Bottle Party" adds a new twist to devilish trickery. "Spring Fever" offers a new variation on the living ventriloquist's dummy theme. Fifty stories, but the chaff outweighs the grain of originality.
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THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, edited by Louis B. Wright. Pocket Library. 35 cents.
Another paperback edition of "Macbeth" appears, this one distinguished by a thorough-going introduction by editor Wright, who is director of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Carefully explicit notes appear opposite each page.
The introduction discusses the tragedy, which came between "King Lear" and "Antony and Cleopatra," from the standpoints of "A Study in Evil," text and history of the play, the author, the publication of his plays, and the Shakespearean theater. References for further reading are appended.
This edition in the Pocket Library series calls to mind Richard Armour's recent book, "Twisted Tales from Shakespeare" (McGraw-Hill, $2.95) in which he describes "Macbeth" as "full of beautiful passages, such as the hallway in Macbeth's castle, where Lady Macbeth loved to fingerpaint on the wall with other people's blood."
Worth Repeating
To a brave man, good and bad luck are like his right and left hand. He uses both. —St. Catherine of Siena from Rudolf Flesch's "The Book of Unusual Quotations" quoted in the Reader's Digest
***
On the whole, I think we shall survive. The outlook is as bad as it has ever been, but thinking people realize that—and therein lies the hope of its getting better.
— Jawaharl Nehru in "Forbes" quoted in the Reader's Digest
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If I were a godfather wishing a gift on a child, it would be that he should always be more interested in other people than in himself. That's a real gift.
Sir Compton Mackenzie in the London Sunday Times quoted in the Reader's Digest
***
An American will tinker with anything he can put his hands on. But how rarely can he be persuaded to tinker with an abstract idea. —Leland Stowe in "They Shall Not Sleep"
Dailu hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone Viking 3-2700
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Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press.
Represented by National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. News service: United Press 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, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan. post office under act of March 3, 1879.
News Department ... Douglas Parker, Managing Editor
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Editorial Department ... Pat Swanson and Martha Crosier,
                    Co-Editorial Editors