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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. March 24,1959
Grading Inconsistency
The second English Proficiency test of the school year was given Saturday. The question is how many people will fail it this time.
Blame for the English Proficiency test failures has been placed on the students and the high schools.
The English department, however, is not completely blameless.
The high schools, it has been said, do not offer enough practice writing themes. This the University does, but many freshman and sophomore English students still do not have a clear idea of their writing ability.
The reason for this is a tremendous inconsistency within the department in grading.
One semester a student may be able to make "A's" with little or no effort. The instructor likes his writing and can find very little to criticize. The next semester he is told his sentence construction is all wrong, his themes are too flowery, he dwells too much on detail, he is little better than a "C" student.
This is, to say the least, frustrating.
The English department puts out a little booklet which is meant to make the English 1,2,3,and 4 classes more uniform. However,more is needed.The instructors should discuss and agree what they plan to use as a basis for determining grades.
-Martha Crosier
Aim of Safe Driving
It was a still, moonless night as a car sped along the highway at 85 miles per hour. Another car approached. The headlights were blinding. The driver of the first car did not see the truck that was creeping along down the highway in front of him, not in time, at least. The car swerved, hit an embankment and three young people, aged 19. were dead.
Spring vacation begins tomorrow and nearly 9.000 students from the University will be on the road for home.
This same scene may be re-enacted again, this time with one of us as the principal player.
Several University students have lost their lives already this year in traffic accidents. But these tragedies always happen to somebody else. This is true only until it happens to you.
There is a line in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. When you cross it,you lose a day. There is a line in the middle of the highway. When you cross it,you can lose more.
On the way home this vacation, remember you are not driving your car when you push it past the speed limit—you are aiming it.
Pat Swanson
Pinched Patriotism
Editor:
And to you, Patrick Allen, go my heartfelt thanks for your attempt at setting me straight. However, old man, I wouldn't particularly enjoy receiving a 25 cent stereotyped greeting card on the seventeenth of March, or any other time. Most of the local chaps wearing green received their in-doctrine from the pinches of their grade-school playmates. I can't read much patriotism into that.
That there are exceptions, I'd be among the first to admit. However, I find myself wondering why there was but one reply to my remarks. It seems that your legions have deserted.
Thomas Jackson Topeka junior
P. S. I seldom eat cherry pie on Washington's birthday. Does this make me a traitor?
No Curtain Calls?
Editor:
"The Great God Brown" was an immensely enjoyable performance, but why is the audience denied the pleasure of curtain calls?
Attnough I am not a student at the University, I frequently attend the theater at KU which is one of the few places in the Midwest where one can see good experimental theater.
Donna McKinney
Kansas City, Mo.
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You Are Welcome
The weekend of March 14-15 the Missouri-Kansas Region of the U.S. National Student Assn, held two conferences at the University of Kansas. I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation both to the student government and to the editors of
Editor:
the Daily Kansan for the excellent hospitality which was shown to us.
We send our best wishes both to the student government and to the Daily Kansan for success in continuing their excellent work during the remainder of the year.
Mary Ethel Booker
Missouri-Kansas Region USNAS
Short Ones
A recent survey says that people who enjoy TV westerns are in the lower class bracket and members of the high class bracket prefer to attend the opera and ballet. This leads us to believe that the middle class is made up of the resourceful people who straddle the fence and go to the ballet to see Billy the Kid.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS BY BIBLER
***
The collegiate dictionary is certainly up-to-date, even in usage of college slang. It defines a date as a fruit.
"—AT LEAST HE'S TRYIN' TO HOLD OUR INTEREST."
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
triweekly 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.
service to the national press association. Subscription rates: $3
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, Kan., on Sept. 7, 1910, at
Lawrence, Kan. post office under act of
March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Douglas Parker   - Managing Editor
Joseph Holt   - Treasurer
Jim Cable   - Assisting Management Editors;
Jack Morton and Carol Allen,
Co-City Editors; George DeBord and
Victor Vocom   - Executive Editors;
Sandra Nelson   - Society Editor; Donna
Nelson, Assistant Society Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Feitz Business Manager Linda Lida Advertiser Howard Young. Classified Advertising Manager; William F. Kane, Promotion Manager; Paul Nielsen, Circulator Manager.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Pat Swanson and Martha Crosier. Co-
sident of the Robber Harwl,
Associate Editorial Editor.
Allianz - LanTz
By Ruth Nettleton
TREASURY AGENT by Andrew Tully, Simon and Schuster, $4.95.
This book represents a hand-picked collection of cases from the files of the U.S. Treasury Department. Schemes the next door neighbor might concoct to gyp the government are related next to the activities of headline figures Mickey Cohen, Frank Costello, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Dave Beck.
The author, Andrew Tully, has been a newspaper reporter for 28 years, and his journalistic training is evident in the concise, vivid way the material is presented.
The various divisions within the Treasury Department—the Secret Service, the Division of Investigations of the Bureau of Customs, the Bureau of Narcotics, the Coast Guard and the Internal Revenue Service—are shown in action.
Customs officials are engaged in breaking up international rings for smuggling narcotics, arms and diamonds, while Internal Revenue agents may be working on a large counterfeiting operation or checking endless details in an income tax evasion case.
Tax evaders keep few records and transact much of their business in cash, making it extremely difficult to trace every expenditure over a period of years.
Attention to such details has enabled Internal Revenue agents to put behind bars a number of picturesque underworld characters against whom the law was unable to bring any other charge.
Other Treasury Department activities include Secret Service protection of the president, and pursuit of bootleggers, who do an estimated $80,000,000 business in the course of a year.
The book unquestionably fulfills the expectation of the Secretary of the Treasury, who expressed his hope in the foreword that it would contribute to the esprit-de-corps of the Treasury law-enforcement agencies.
While Treasury agents are described losing their lives defending the president, halting moonshine activities or battling dope fiends, little is said about the less dramatic aspects of their work. It is very possible that agents who go underground to gather evidence "seldom find any glamour in their cloak-and-dagger activities," but little elaboration is given.
Embarrassing situations in which the Treasury Department fails to "get its man," suffers from inner corruption or is completely outguessed have been omitted from this compilation. One wonders, too, at the claims that Alcohol Tax agents have never lost a murder case in which one of their own officers was killed.
Abundant humor and interesting bits of information can be found in "Treasury Agent." At one time, 90 per cent of the citizens in one Virginia county were directly or indirectly interested in the bootlegging industry.
Federal Narcotics Bureau officials possess convincing evidence that the narcotics racket is a fund-raising function of the Red Chinese government.
More entertaining are the operations of Secret Service men assigned to protect the president. Whenever the president travels, Secret Service men are briefed on persons who might annoy or attempt to murder him. All employees or servants are checked before the president dines or stays overnight at any hotel or private home.
Wherever the president goes, his detail goes with him; on the golf course, one Secret Service man carries a golf bag containing a submachine gun and a two-way radio.
For the person seeking information on how to smuggle contraband into the country, cheat on income tax forms or operate a successful still, this book will not be particularly helpful. It can be recommended, though, as a relaxing—even entertaining—volume for light reading.
Worth Repeating
Debt is a stabilizing and stimulating influence...It is a good thing for most young men, particularly married men, to have at least a moderate volume of debts that they are paying off.—Sumner H. Slicter.
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Some girls regard going to college as a Safari, the main purpose of which is a Man-Hunt.—Stanley Marcus.
***
People are examined too much and too frequently.—Richard T. Gill.
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Art history as it is now being taught is an evil thing, because it places the emphasis on a non-existent science and not upon the reality of human experience.—Bernard Berenson.
中 审
Governor Faubus has painted himself in.—Harry S. Ashmore.
Too few students realize that God is not grading their bluebooks. Wallace McDonald.
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I am worried about our tendency to over-invest in things and under-invest in people.—John Kenneth Galbraith.
Few speeches which have produced an electric effect on an audience can bear the colourless photography of a printed record.—Archibald Philip Primrose, Earl of Rosebery
☆ ☆ ★
Do your Christmas shopping early and give your friends a chance to get even.—Anonymous
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Early to bed, early to rise leaves no bags under your eyes.—Mad Magazine