University Daily Kansan Wednesday, April 1, 1959
Statues or Scholars?
It is near the time for the Class of '59 to select its class gift.
The campus is already adorned with gifts from past years and we must not be outdone. Class gifts have included a sundial, fountain, a statue of a Jayhawk. All sorts of items essential to an institute of higher learning.
The main prerequisite for a class gift is that it must be something physical. Something that class members can point to and say "My class gave that."
These objects must be unusual and stand out from their surroundings such as the canopy in front of the Union. A class gift must be distinctive.
A class gift must be the only one of its kind on the campus. (Let us at least hope we will not have more than one Jayhawk statue.)
Whether the gift is functional seems to be of little concern to the gift committee. (Of course
the sundial may have been functional in its day; however, I was under the impression that most people have watches.)
Of course there are always a few deadbeats in every class who would prefer to give some unimpressive gift like establishing a scholarship fund for students or to create another distinguished professorship. These people obviously don't have any imagination. They are opposed to any gift that is materialistic. They want something that will serve a purpose. They are therefore unartistic.
What is more, these people are selfish. A scholarship would only benefit a few people. Rather than single people out to enjoy a class gift why not give a statue or a sundial which will benefit everyone equally?
After all, the best gift should be one which reflects the purpose of this institution. Which would benefit a place of higher learning more, a statue or a scholarship? —Martha Crosier
Grades . . .
Editor:
On the front page of your March 24 issue under the by-line of Tom Hough, you carried an article which suggests that the undergraduate scholarship report for the fall of 1958 indicates that sororities and fraternities are "conducive to better grade point averages."
In the interests of responsible journalism and the use of careful thought in inferring meaning from data, I would like to point out that a simple comparison of over-all grade point averages for various groups of students does not indicate the conclusion reached by the journalist.
Before one can draw such conclusions he would need to use some matching or other device for establishing comparable groups of Greek and non-Greek students.
If I am not mistaken an Ed.D. dissertation in the School of Education several years ago demonstrated that, for the most students with comparable entrance examination scores, there was no difference in grade point averages for Greeks vs. non-Greeks.
Grades . . .
Furthermore, it was found that in some fraternities students did less well scholastically than would be expected on the basis of their entrance examination scores.
Howard Baumgartel associate professor of human relations
Editor:
Your article about the better better grade average of fraternities and sororites is misleading. One of the main reasons for the higher grade average of sororites and fraternities is the fact that no freshmen are accepted in sororities, and in fraternities only freshmen with at least a 1.0 average.
This means that in the over-all women and men average all those who drop out of the university after their first semester are included while sororites and fraternities have a proportionally higher amount of upperclassmen.
Harald Meyer
Reinach, Basel, Switzerland
And More Grades
Your story of March 24 concerning the "sure" lead of Greeks over independents in the scholarship field seems a bit too smug and pat. I suggest that there are a few factors the story failed to consider.
Consider first the men's averages—you fail to mention anything of the relative ranking of the houses. For instance, the highest average among Greek men was a 1.8. Three men's scholarship halls were above that mark, and the other two men's scholarship halls were ahead of the second fraternity.
Of the top seven men's organized houses, scholarship halls
A women's scholarship hall was highest on the hill with a 21. The closest sorority had a 2.04. All four women's scholarship halls were at least 0.1 above the sorority average. Of the seven highest women's houses, four were scholarship halls.
hold the top three and the fifth and sixth positions. The all fraternity average was 1.31; the men's scholarship hall average was 1.8.
By this we can see that of the top 14 houses all nine scholarship halls are included.
Sororities should have higher averages than the all-women average. A girl cannot pledge until she is a sophomore and has survived the first year with a reasonable average. The all-women's average includes many girls who are forced to drop out.
Fraternities can be somewhat selective scholastically in picking their pledges, while independent students have no control over their membership. Also, Greek file systems and compulsory study halls are undeniably helpful.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS BY BIBLER
But the independent student is as intelligent, important, and able as is the Greek student. His only weakness is that he is what the name implies—independent. He cannot be organized and still be independent in the way he likes, so he is naturally weak in campus politics and activities, but the fact that many independents hold important posts even without organized backing is an indication of their ability.
-] REFUSE YOUR QUESTION ON THE GROUPS MY
  ANSWER MAY TEND TO INCRIMATE ME. "
Elkhart sophomore L. Deane Rollmann, Pratt sophomore
Let us not brand the independents as a different race or lower caste—and let us have some recognition of the scholarship halls, the real campus intellectual leaders and the contributors of their share of activity leaders.
Jack Salmon.
Dailu Hansan
UNI PRITT
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
trifweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association.
Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service,
420 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y.
Associated national. 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 lawrence. Sep. 17, 1908 at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Douglas Parker ... Managing Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Feitz Business Manager Robert Lida, Advertising Manager; Howard Young, Classified Advertising Manager; William F. Kane, Promotion Manager; Paul Nielsen, Circulation Manager.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Pat Swanson and Martha Crosier, Co-
spiratee of Harwell Harrel,
Associate Editorial Editor.
Student Government-
AGI Is Older Party
(Editor's note: This is the second in a series of articles on campus politics and student government. This one deals with the Allied Greek-Independent political party.)
Campus politics is dominated by two political parties. Allied Greek-Independent and Vox Populi. Both parties include Greeks and independents in their membership, the difference being mostly organizational.
One of the main differences between the two parties is the method used to select candidates for the All Student Council. AGI uses the closed primary system while Vox uses the convention method. Both require a party card to vote in the primary.
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Here is how the AGI system operates:
Any member of the party who wishes may run in the ASC primary elections on the AGI ticket. However, the party encourages the members not to run too many candidates for the same office. This can be seen in this year's slate of candidates in which only the School of Business has more than one candidate in the primary.
During the general election campaign the party organizes a speaking committee which visits organized houses and explains the party platform and answers questions concerning the elections.
Once the candidates are elected to the ASC the party does not try to tell them how to vote. However, they are encouraged to attend the meetings of the party's forum.
The governing body of the party itself is called the forum and is composed of one representative of each organized house in the party and one representative for each 50 unorganized independents in the party. This latter representation is determined by having the person who wishes to be seated as an unorganized independent representative present a petition signed by 50 students in that living district.
Last fall the forum included four unorganized independent representatives. However, only two of them are still active.
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The forum meets once a week prior to elections and twice a month during the rest of the school year.
The party's executive council is usually elected from the members of the forum. The purpose of the executive council is to keep an eye on what is going on in the party and to set up the agenda of the forum's meetings. It also does most of the work of drawing up the party platform although this must be approved by the forum.
The executive council includes the party's president, four vice presidents, secretary and treasurer. The four vice presidents include one man and woman representing the Greeks and one man and woman representing the independents.
Any organized house which wishes to become a member of the party may do so unless there is some objection made in the forum. Unorganized independents may receive party cards by contacting a member of the executive council or the forum.
Party elections are held following the ASC general elections.
均  必  得
This year AGI supported the establishment of a racial desegregation investigation committee by the ASC. The ASC voted this down on the grounds that the Group for the Improvement of Human Relations was already doing an efficient job.
AGI is the older of the two present parties, having been formed after the 1953 spring elections. It was the result of the split in Pachacamac, the political party which had been the first and most dominant party since KU campus politics originated in 1912.
The party surveyed University departments which hire students to determine how much the departments pay and how many they employ. The findings of this survey are to be turned over to the ASC labor committee.
The party encouraged the letter writing campaign in support of the University's proposed budget.
AGI also is supporting the proposed amendment to the ASC constitution which will be on the general election ballot. The amendment will lower the required number of votes which must be cast in a school district in order for that school to have a vote in the ASC.
Worth Repeating
"When we were boys, we had to do a little work in school. Boys were not coaxed, they were not hammered. Spelling, writing and arithmetic were not electives, and you had to learn. In these more fortunate times, elementary education has become in places a sort of vaudeville show. The child must be kept amused and learns what he pleases. Many teachers scorn the old fashioned rudiments and it seems to be regarded as between misfortunate and crime to learn to read..."
"The above item was taken from a New York Sun editorial dated 1902.
"As Will Rogers said, 'Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was.' " Sleepy Eye (Minn.) Herald-Dispatch
The true wealth of a country lies in its men and women. If they're mean, unhappy and ill, the country is poor.—Richard Aldington
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Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea.—Longfellow
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A lamentable tune is the sweetest music to a woeful mind.—Sir Philip Sidney
疏 杂 浓
Think not thy own shadow longer than that of others, nor delight to take the altitude of thyself.—Sir Thomas Browne