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University Daily Kansan Monday, March 16, 1959
Would You Be Here?
Enrollment is growing so rapidly at the University that in a few years there will not be enough facilities to accommodate the students' needs. It soon will be necessary to expand the available facilities or decrease the number of students.
Several ways have been proposed to decrease the number of student admissions, since that would be more practical than further expansion.
One is to determine a student's fitness by high school scholastic standing. But that would be unfair because of the differences in size of graduating classes of high schools, and other circumstances.
As the law now stands, Kansas colleges are required to accept any graduate from a fully accredited Kansas high school. That, however, is not the problem, for such a requirement could be removed if the situation demanded it.
The problem is how to select the students on as fair a basis as possible. Since picking and choosing according to high school standing is unfair, why not work out the entrance examination idea? Certainly, many other schools have used it successfully, and the University might be able to do the same.
In the first place, it is not entirely logical that entrance examinations he given by each department with emphasis on a chosen major. It is
doubtful that a student has had enough training in high school that he would be able to pass such an examination. After all, the student comes to college to be trained in a major, not to show how much he knows about it before he gets here.
Second, the high school graduate has been trained in a general liberal arts background, and would be reasonably prepared to take an examination over liberal arts material.
Third, if the University did not like the sound of a liberal arts test, it could use acceptable I.Q. tests, which would determine a student's potential ability for reasoning and learning in a relatively, though not completely, accurate way.
Fourth, entrance examinations would not only help the University narrow the number of enrolling students, but would help those applying. Many high school graduates come to the big University with eyes bigger than their brains.
Students who flunk out of school because they are unable to do the work or because they cannot meet the competition rarely benefit by their mistakes. Such students would be better off in a different type of educational institution in the first place.
With entrance examinations, an indelible black mark on a University record could be avoided for the student who has higher aspirations than abilities. —Martha Pearse
Independents, Vote
Editor:
After reading Thursday's issue of The Daily Kansan, I would like to publicly thank Larry Blickhan for his letter to the editor. It is a great consolation to see that an un-organized independent has taken time and effort to break from the typical passive attitude conferring campus politics.
Perhaps through letters to the editor, both sides of the story will appear in the college press. Let us hope that this will not be another year of partisanship...by the Kansan during the campaigning and elections.
It really doesn't matter which of the two parties Mr. Blickhan criticized. At least, he took time to attend a political meeting and to stop and question the existing situation, which is more than most of the independents have done.
Mr. Blickhan mentioned the "iron law of oligarchy." It is this passive attitude of the majority of the students that paves the road to oligarchy.
If only more of the independents
would take the time to question the politicians who represent them, perhaps the muck and corruption of the vain-glorious "sharp boys" could be eradicated.
This year I am appealing to the unorganized independents to take part in their campus politics. Start before voting time. Examine the practices and policies and meet your representatives to see how they will represent you.
These parties have their respective constitutions, but they are not worth the paper they are written on, unless you elect responsible people who will live up to the ideals of these constitutions!
The independents are in the majority on this campus; let your voices be heard on election day.
Gary Sourgin
Stanberry, Mo., sophomore
You're Welcome! Editor:
The Student Religious Council
I feel compelled to congratulate the Daily Kansan staff for the excellent reporting on the activities of Religious Emphesis Week.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS BY BIBLIER
"PROBATION OR NOT - ILL NOT BEG TO GET A GRADE RAISED."
expressed unanimous appreciation for the effort that the Daily Kansan dedicated to informing the student body of these activities. The Student Religious Council feels that this year's Religious Emphasis Week was one of the most successful in recent years. But however successful, the credit for success was due in large part to the University Daily Kansan.
So, to the staff, an earnest "well done."
Gerald Simmons Parsons senior and chairman of Religious Emphasis Week
By Geneva Mendenhall
Poetry Corner
Why space?
Why not
Better health,
Less disease?
Better food,
Less hunger?
Better schools,
Less stupidity?
Better preparation,
Less delinquency?
Better care,
Less mental illness?
Better government,
Less inefficiency?
Better planning,
Less chaos?
Why not a better world here?
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became bweekly 1904,
triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Dailu Hansan UNIVERSIT
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.
N.Y. News service 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 Attorney on Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., book under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Douglas Parker ... Managing Editor
Al Jones, John Husar, Jack Harrison,
Emily McCall, Sarah Mitchell,
Editors; Jack Morton and Carol Allen,
Co-City Editors; George Debord and
Doug Yocom, Co-Sport Editors;
Emma Nelson, Soil Science Editor
Nelson, Assistant Society 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.
H. B. Hungerford
Professor's Search Began 45 Years Ago
Sometimes a job takes longer than one expects, while at other times one goes off on a tangent, never returning to the original work. It is this secondary job that has kept H. B. Hungerford, professor emeritus of entomology, at work the past 45 years.
Prof. Hungerford started his work in the field of the biology and ecology of water bugs about 1915. He began this project as part of his work for his Ph.D. degree at Cornell University. He has received his bachelor of arts from the University of Kansas in 1911 and his master's degree from the University in 1913.
He had no sooner started on his work for the doctor's degree than he discovered that there were no keys published for the identification of water bugs.
This is where the original project ended and the tangent began, first project of the ecology of water bugs.
Prof. Hungerford began to search for a method to use in identifying water bugs. In 1928 he went to Europe and took a pair of
every type water bug he could find—both identified and unidentified. This launched him on his new project which was called the taxonomy of water bugs.
Prof. Hungerford said the work he has done during the past 45 years has simply been getting ready so that others can begin where he planned to start in 1915.
His work in this field has not gone unrewarded. Recently he was awarded the Joseph Leidy Memorial medal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. This was the first presentation of this medal west of the Mississippi River.
And while all this work has been going on, Prof. Hungerford has not been idle at the University.
on Prof. Hungerford has not been die at the University. He taught for 30 years in the entomology department and was head of the department for 25 years. He retired in 1956. Aside from teaching, he is the author of about 200 papers.
Still his work goes on. Each day he goes to his office in Snow Hall and tackles the problems of the aquatic and semi-aquatic water bugs.
Worth Repeating
"A magnificent story of the human body and the human spirit was written a while back.
"It is one of the great news stories of the year.
"In Canada there was a shattered mine. Six days later, 12 men emerged alive.Add three days; another seven were rescued.
'The world looks on and wonders: 'What hath God wrought?'
"In one way, Charles Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest remains a theory.
"For among the dead—and those yet to be recovered—were men denied, beneath the sudden weight of rocks and earth, a chance to prove their fitness to survive. Death gave no quarter.
"But in another way, Darwin was vindicated. To 19 the chance was given. And 19 honored God and man.
"To keep their spirits alive, they turned to spiritual rocks: Their stripped-bare souls, their loyalty to like souls with them in the depths of Sheol, their faith that less-tested men would save them if possible, their ultimate reliance on Him who saves if death works faster than men.
They emerged triumphant.
"So let scoffers say what they will.
"It was the miracle of 1558. For it proved anew that the human spirit, in all adversity, can be indestructible."
***
—St. Joseph (Mo.) Gazette
The time to fight inflation is when it comes—Seymour Harris.
Reasoned response. The Brixton educational process in a single
If I were to describe the Russian educational process in a word, I would call it regurgitative.-Herold C. Hunt.