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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, March 3, 1959
We Offer to Help
In today's letter to the editor column an independent student has asked that The Daily Kansan initiate an informative campaign on student government. The reason for his request is that independents have little access to this information besides The Daily Kansan.
The Daily Kansan has always tried to serve the students of the University, to keep them informed concerning the day-to-day happenings and on matters of special interest to them.
Student government should certainly be every student's special interest since the decisions of the All Student Council are made in the name of all the students at the University.
It is true that a majority of the council members are Greeks because they have expressed, to
date, more interest in student government than the independents. But we will agree with Mr Archer that if the independents know what is going on they too will be interested.
The students who work in student government are not all council members. Some freshman women are doing secretarial work, a necessary part of any organization. There are others who have served on ASC committees, such as the housing and publications committees. Much of the actual work of student government is accomplished through these committees.
There are, however, many people who do not know of the opportunities to work in student government. Therefore, The Daily Kansas will attempt to answer any questions students may have about their government. —Martha Cresier
Freedom for Atheists, Too
Four state representatives in the Texas legislature have announced that they will soon introduce a bill to require an annual oath from teachers in state schools and colleges, affirming the teachers' belief in a supreme being.
The intentions were made public after the legislators had "been advised" that some instructors, especially at the University of Texas, are not only atheists, but that they are preaching their beliefs in class and are making derogatory remarks about religion.
One representative's reasoning was that if a person does not believe in a supreme being, he or she should not be allowed to teach. The representative backed up his arguments by saying that many atheists are Communists.
The fact that some teachers are atheists is nothing new or revolutionary in the teaching profession. Nor is the fact that many atheists are Communists any great revelation.
But it does remain that with the association of the two, however logical or illogical it may be, along with the present stigma attached to the word "Communist," the servants of the people are worried.
America is supposedly the land of the free, where freedom of religion is guaranteed in the
Such freedom does not seem to include the choice of political party—at least not the Communist party—because the federal government has denounced that party as one which undermines the original freedoms of our government.
first amendment to the Constitution. Freedom to choose no religion is included in that right.
The four Texas legislators are making stiff qualifications as to which freedoms we are allowed and which we are forbidden.
These legislators are sincerely looking out for the welfare of society, but that does not give them reason to take away another person's rights to believe or disbelieve what he chooses.
A man cannot be stopped from his beliefs. But he can be stopped from disseminating those beliefs in accordance with his job if his philosophy is not consistent with the policies of his employers.
But he must still be allowed to believe what he chooses, and not lose his job because of his beliefs.
Let's not degrade our freedoms by name-calling—accusing those who differ with our beliefs of being Communists. If an atheist wants to preach his atheism on a street corner, let him preach. It is his privilege. —Martha Pearse
... Letters ...
Editor:
Complacency is a word used quite consistently on this campus whenever your intention is to incite an element to action.
If I may follow in this fine old word-bandying tradition, I would like to accuse the independents on this hill of being complacent ...in
regard to campus politics and student government.
Admittedly no exception to this generalization, it has been my observation that independents are willing to sit back and let someone else run their show for them, then complain about it.
Now why are independents complacent? I seriously believe that
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
Greek houses usually have a source of information at hand in their respective representatives, and that is one factor which contributes to their control of student government.
"ARE TH' BOYS TAKING US TO SEE THIS PICTURE IN A
THEATRE OR A 'DRIVE-IN?'
-Harold Archer Olathe junior
independents have interest in student government, but due to a lack of knowledge, they have become nothing more than parasitical.
Therefore, I would suggest that The Daily Kansan use its editorial page to initiate an information campaign, and invite questions by students about student government objectives, functions, and effects.
It is about time independent students started securing what is rightfully theirs, a representative voice in their own affairs. Why not start now by writing in and asking the Kansan about what we want to know?
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
trifweekly 1908, dally Jan. 16, 1912
UNIVERSITY DAILY
Dailu Hansan
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.
News service: United Internationals School of Business semester or $450 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 the post office under act of March 3, 1872.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Douglas Parker
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Douglas Parker
Managing Editor
STATE DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Feitz Business Manager
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Pat Swanson and Martha Crosier, Co-
Editorial Editors; Robert Harwi, Asso-
ciate Editorial Editor.
the took world
Allen - Lentz
By Calder M. Pickett
Assistant Professor of Journalism
THE GOLDEN COAST, by Harnett T. Kane. Doubleday, $5.
In the past several years Americans have grown increasingly conscious of the history of this country. of its folklore, its geography, its customs—its culture, perhaps. We have seen the surge of popularity of books about the Civil War, have watched the list of volumes grow in the Rivers of America and American Folkways series.
Add to this increasingly long "shelf" a new book by Harnett T. Kane, fervent admirer of New Orleans, the lower Mississippi, the bayous and the keys. His "Golden Coast" is the Gulf Coast, from Brownsville on the west to Key West on the east.
* *
It is a picture story, splendidly illustrated by the photography of James Riean. These photographs, coupled with the spirited text of Kane, tell the amazing and entertaining story of a land that Kane believes has "a tapestry of history and incident more highly colored than that of any other part of North America..."
Here is the saga of Pensacola, grown from the days of that Scotch-Indian chief named Alexander McGillivray to the days of naval boom town, a city of cleaners and camellias that "retains its half-yawning air of the past, while the other part roars into the future." Jets streak over the grave of McGillivray in 1959.
Here is Tampa, the city of cigars and the Tampa Bay Hotel, a Moorish palace that was the inspiration of Henry Plant, a business titan of Tampa in the past century.
Here is St. Petersburg, which owes its name to a Russian Imperial Guard officer named Piotr Alexeitch Dementieff-Iversonkoy and its present state of prosperity to its frank catering to folks of 75. It's the city of shuffleboard courts and green benches lining the shady streets, of oldsters who play baseball and shout "What's the matter with 75? We're the boys who keep alive!"
On Kane's "Golden Coast" there also is Sarasota, where your next door neighbor might hang out spangled tights on the clothesline, for here is where the Big Top spends its winters. It's the coast of the Keys, which learned how to fight hurricanes and now enjoys great prosperity.
***
Here is the country that retains remnants of the Old South, but a South of considerably more tolerance than the inland South. Here are the old Greek Revival mansions, the French city of Mobile, where a famous Civil War sea battle was fought. "Furl that banner, softly, slowly," sing Mobilians of their lamented Confederacy, "for its people's hopes are dead."
"The Golden Coast" can lay claim to being big country as well as fascinating country. It has New Orleans, city of the Mardi Gras and the Mississippi. It has gulf fishermen, and oil derricks out in the water, working to make the offshore area yield its horde of black gold.
It has Houston, now the metropolis of the South, city of Jesse Jones and Glenn McCarthy. It has old Spanish forts and missions, and not far inland one of the country's greatest ranches, the storied King Ranch.
The names of big men still loom large here—Sam Houston, Jean Laffitte, Admiral Farragut and Commodore Porter. Shrimp boats, fresh fish, sea walls, skyscrapers, buried treasure, oil, egrets, alligators, cotton, cactus and cattle. That's the Gulf Coast.
It Looks This Way . . .
By Geneva Mendenhall
The University Daily Kansan has published a number of interesting articles dealing with scholastic achievement at KU: "Grammar, Content Mistakes Cause Proficiency Failures," "College Raises Grade Average." "Proficiency Scores Lower for Transfers," and "Ten Per Cent Now on Scholastic Probation."
These articles expose significant symptoms. They are syndromes of a situation. KU has its strengths, but apparently it also has its weaknesses. These articles point to a situation, but is any treatment prescribed to improve that situation?
Yes, suggestions have been made for getting at the causes. One girl wrote a letter, suggesting that the proficiency examination be administered earlier in the college career, or that some of the requirements be included in the entrance examination.
Another item in the Kansan reported that English II is a course that has had a remodeling job this semester, with more writing and less reading, and with particular emphasis on discussion and class criticism.
These appear to be constructive approaches to a real problem, but is there some course or someone who can show a student how to budget his time, how to organize his daily schedule?
Is there some provision for teaching the gentle art of breaking down a mass of printed material and extracting the essence of it? There are scores of students who have never been taught to crack the nut of long assignments, to pick out the kernel, and to throw the shell away. They have learned neither study habits nor study techniques.
Are these students to be discarded as human waste because of a failure that may not be their own?