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University Daily Kansan
Monday, April 27, 1959
Worthwhile or Worthless?
Every June another senior class "bites the dust," so to speak. And every year a part of that class that calls itself the senior gift committee invites its classmates to coffee to decide what the class should leave the old alma mater.
This year Robert Billings, Russell senior and backbone of the Jayhawkers' basketball quintet, is chairman of the senior class gift committee. This year that committee is recommending that class members vote to purchase a championship trophy case for Allen Field House.
Is it not wonderful, too, that the University has won so many athletic trophies that they can't possibly be squeezed into one whole Trophy Room in the Kansas Union?
Or, maybe the class of '59 could decide just not to leave the University anything. Maybe they could best be remembered that way—or at least remembered in the best kind of way.
Of course there is no sure indication that the class will donate a trophy case. There will be two other gift suggestions on the ballot Thursday: furnishings for the new addition to the Kansas Union and a painting of a Kansas scene to be placed in a display panel in Dyche Museum.
Four years of university life is supposed to do something for a student—make him somewhat more broadminded, a more mature person. It somehow usually manages to indoctrinate him with the idea that education is a wonderful thing and that it must be something passed on to every member of posterity.
Yet there has been no indication that students have acquired these things when one examines the gifts presented the University in recent years.
No recent class has valued its education so highly that it has provided a scholarship or fellowship that would enable someone else to acquire an education. No class in recent years has made any contribution to further education.
Of course not! These would not be tangible gifts. They would bear no bronze-plated, engraved plaques to boast their contributors.
Instead, walking across the campus we find a variety of fountains, stone benches, and an unsightly canopy that directs water in a steady flow so that you get a whole bucketful of water on your head instead of a few gentle drops.
There is a bronze Jayhawk that is supposed to make the campus a more beautiful place to study someday.
The plaques that ornament these mementos remind students where they came from. But I doubt that they remind students of the academic achievements of those who gave them. I doubt that they bring more than an occasional poke at posterity's folly.
Perhaps six trophy cases costing $1,750 would be different from the gifts in the past. Maybe they are needed.
But I have a better idea. Why does not the class of 59 just donate funds to remove the canopy from the Kansas Union? —Carol Allen
Editor:
KU emphasizes the amount of individual attention a student may receive from professors and other individuals concerned with the "optimum development of each student." However, the suspension of certain students for apartment damage as reported in the April 23 Daily Kansan casts doubts in this area.
The students in this case are Melvin Hawk and David Blackburn, students attempting to appeal their suspension from the University. We have known Mel five years and Dave more than three. Unless the administration can come up with further evidence to "incriminate" them or more fully explain the reasons given for suspension, it seems that their case should be reconsidered.
... Letters ...
The administrators need to clarify the following points:
Dean Woodruff purportedly told the men that they were suspended because they had not stopped what
1) According to Hawk, he and Blackburn went to the apartment in question for only a few minutes. They left when the fellows there began making "a lot of racket."
was going on. What could two guests do to stop their host and his four guests from making noise? Could attempts to stop the noise not have led quickly to a fight? Was not leaving a better solution than fighting?
Or Hawk and Blackburn could have called the police. But people rarely call the police to quiet a noisy host and his friends. How many people, students and professional people allike, have attended parties where they wondered if the neighbors would be disturbed by the noise? You either endure the noise or leave, just as these two men did.
2) Dean Woodruff compared seeing a murder being committed on the street and trying to stop it to the action he believed the two men should have taken. In any case the use of murder in an analogy seems rather strong. This analogy seems equally logical: When you see a car driven at high speed, you do not stop the driver on the assumption that he is reckless and will probably have a wreck.
3) Two other young men who had lived in the apartment with Hawk and Blackburn during the first
semester were not even present during the evening. But they were told they had been placed on probation because they had formerly lived in the apartment and knew Hawk and Blackburn.
We are proud to say that we know them too and if this is a reason for being placed on probation we are eagerly awaiting the distinction! Were there other reasons for this probation about which we are not aware?
4) Considering that the two men took no part in the unfortunate action in question and that they readily told all they knew of the situation to the deans, could not the punishment have been less severe? Take Hawk's case for example: Hawk (with credit for a full course load this semester) would have been able to complete work for a master's degree in January, 1960. The authorities will allow him (if he desires to) to reenroll next fall.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
It seems that loss of a semester's credit absolves his "crime." If not, then why let him re-enroll at all? 5) There are three possible levels on which the fate of these two students may be decided;
*PROF SNARF IS UP TO HIGI D TRICKS - MAKING AN ASSIGNMENT
  AN PUTTING ONLY ONE REFERENCE BOOK ON RESERVE*
A) The deans may make the final decision. If all of the above factors have not been considered, perhaps Dean Woodruff and Dean Alderson would take time to re-examine the facts in the case. We sincerely hope that they will not ignore anything so important as the education of two students in order to "stand their ground."
B) Chancellor Murphy could play an important part in the decision. In many instances a member of the administration feels that he should not contradict the decisions of other administrative members.
If Chancellor Murphy assumes this attitude, the right to appeal is worthless. Is it possible that he and the two deans could reach a compromise agreement?
C) This case seems to be the type which could be handled by the disciplinary committee, composed of both students and faculty. However, all such cases must first be referred to this committee by Dean Woodruff.
Does KU really give any consideration to the individual student or does it just herd the masses? The decision reached in this particular case may eventually put its finger on any one of us as students. Are there any methods of defense for us when we are accused of wrongdoing? Or are we "guilty until proven innocent?"
Mr. and Mrs. Lauren Wilson
Lawrence graduate students
SELF PORTRAIT—Judith T. Hood's contribution to the Big Eight art show was first prize winner.
Big Eight Art Show A Little Disappointing
By Brett Waller
The annual Big Eight show offers young midwestern artists a chance to exhibit their work and an opportunity to win substantial cash prizes.
One show cannot create renaissance, but it is a step in the right direction. Although the Big Eight show may never foster a single piece of great art, it will play an important part in creating an atmosphere in which great art may someday be created and appreciated.
This year's exhibition, however, is a little disappointing. Several of the pieces are not even good student work. Barbara Cheatham's "Seated Figure with Yellow," Mary Stipp's "Quiet Harbor," and Bill Stevenson's "Study in Form" are all inferior works.
The show also has its quota of mediocre pieces. Nancy Lumpee's "Midday on the Lake," an eviscerated Van Gogh with calendar art sentiments, is a good example. "Saduh, a skillfully executed metal sculpture by Martha Renfro, has about the same aesthetic appeal as an Elffel Tower made of toothpicks. Our interest is more in how long it took the artist to make it than with anything it says.
Robert Edmiston exhibits a handsomely crafted piece of "Forged and Welded Steel" sculpture. However, there seems to have been insufficient concern with formal values so that the expression is a bit melodramatic. The ragged lower edge seems to have been considered mainly as a literary symbol for poverty and despair rather than as a form existing in space which needs to be related to every other form in the work.
What of the prize winners? They are indeed the three best works in the show, Judith T. Hood's first prize winner, "Self Portrait," was highly praised in an earlier review of the Print Workshop show, and that judgment remains unaltered by a second exposure.
The third prize winner, a wood sculpture by Hiroko Miyake, is not an ambitious work, nor is it particularly original. But one is pleasantly surprised to find that it succeeds. It seems to say, if a visual statement can be paraphrased, "See the beauty of this walnut, and of the gentle interplay of simple forms." It is an honest, successful affirmation of a simple thing.
Jerry Buchanan's "Out of Colors and Out of Glued Scraps," which took second place and the purchase prize, is undoubtedly the best painting in the show. It is a large work in typical landscape format. The color and paint surface are subdued, almost ascetic, except for the three or four rich, thick accents which bring it off. The painting's uniqueness is due to the fact that its upper portion, the sky area, is cut out and pasted on as a piece of collage material. This visual double meaning is both interesting and amusing.
All the other paintings in the show have fallen into one or another of the current cliches. We've seen them all before. Buchanan's work avoids these snares, but still seems to fall a little short of real significance.
In considering the works, this reviewer was struck by the appearance of sloppiness and haste. Upon close examination, this apparent sloppiness is seen to have been carefully considered, and in some cases, even contrived.
There have been painters—great painters—whose burning desire to make a statement led them to disregard certain aspects of the craft. Rembrandt, Goya, Van Gogh, Beckmann—this is true to a certain extent of all these artists. What they had to say was too urgent to permit a subtle approach.
A young artist who admires these men is apt to assume that the vigor he senses in their work is due to their lack of concern with "polish." Actually, just the opposite is true. The lack of polish is an effect, not a cause, of the urgency of their statements. That vigor cannot be induced by carelessness is something that the artists in the Big Eight Show have seemingly failed to recognize.
Dailu hansan
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