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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, Feb. 24. 1959
Trained Seals? Not Us!
Gov. George Docking said yesterday that he has learned "not to talk to unfriendly amateurs at press conferences." He was referring to the interview with Daily Kansan staff members Thursday.
What the governor should have learned was not to talk at all.
It was not the question of these "amateur" reporters that roused public opinion throughout the state, but the indiscreet answers of a man, unmindful of his office, who replied with the vengeance of an angry child.
The governor accuses us of being amateurs. We confess. We are amateurs if by this the governor means we are motivated by these simple beliefs:
1. Kansans are entitled to know how their elected officials stand on important public issues. The budget allocated to the University and other state schools is vitally important to the future of our state and its citizens. In 1915 40 per cent of the state budget was spent for education. Today about 6 per cent goes to education.
2. A public official is responsible for his statements to the press. Gov. Docking was fully aware that this interview would be reported by University students in the University newspaper before he granted the press conference. If he did
not have confidence in the ability of these students, it was his prerogative to refuse this conference. But he did not; therefore he has no just cause for complaint.
3. A newspaper is obligated to report the news, not to strain it through the sieve of personal feeling.
Gov. Decking's attitude toward the University and education in Kansas has been talked about for some time.
A year ago in January, a more reserved governor, clad only in first term clothing, said the University needed to clean out its course clutter and get rid of some faculty members who have been "squeaking around."
The Daily Kansan just happened to be present when the governor spoke at length again about the University. He was quoted fully and without editorial comment. This the governor himself admits.
But after seeing his unreasonable remarks in print, Gov. Docking attempts to evade responsibility by talking about "unfriendly amateurs."
We doubt that by this he means reporters attached to the statehouse are "friendly professionals." We know of no trained seals among the capitol press, no blind camp followers.
Pat Swanson
Life and Mission of the Church
By Dr. Alan J. Pickering Pastor to Presbyterian Students
Guest editorials on religious subjects are always worm's eye views, for in "about 600 words" no one can survey the life and the mission of the Church, least of all develop a deeply theological analysis of the place it ought to hold in campus life. But since editorials are a sort of "cry of public alarm," here I go, screaming:
The Life and Mission emphasis of the Church is the brain-child of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). (The American section of this world federation is the USCZ-United Student Christian Council—which is made up of 12 more nationally organized intercollegiate student Christian movements, all with the appropriate alphabet-soup designations.)
The WSCF recognized, about 4 years ago, that the Church was going to pot. Historically, it had always led the way in race relations, social justice, and ecumenicity (look it up), but that this was hardly the case today.
Comfortably ensconced on the suburban "frontier" in opulent buildings with thickly carpeted ping-pong rooms, it was sharing
the gravy of the current religious revival. It was staffed and budgeted to the hilt—in some places having more professional religious workers than there are to serve a whole country overseas—providing housing, counseling, and sparetime diversion for a public newly intoxicated by the cult of public-relations religiosity.
To state it quite bluntly, the Church had moved—says the WSCF—from prophet to household god, from the tiger at the gates to the domesticated cat.
And so, comes the revolution; the Life and Mission emphasis.
Basically, it is a sort of New Ionicoclasm (get your dictionary out again). The first ionicoclasm came a long time ago, of course, and is a valuable bit of history, interesting and invigorating.
The New Iconoclasm is more however, than a cyclical smashing of recent icons and unanalyzed impressions we have on divinity—God as a bearded Zeus, Jesus as his gentle junior, and the Holy Spirit as a gimlet-eyed dove endlessly zeroing in.
The shock treatment that the WSCF prescribes also has to do with patterns and structures by
which the Church has traditionally channeled its life and mission.
For example, take the matter of evangelism. When we think about it—rare, please—it is in terms of the tent and the sawdust trail of a century ago, a sort of Madison Avenue campaign that matches the former raids by the Indians who invaded enemy territory to snatch scals, and then hastily retreated back to the teepee.
The Life and Mission of the Church attempts to re-orient our thinking about all aspects of the Gospel's vehicles, including evangelism. It insists that the world is not a hunting ground for uncommitted scalps, God loves the world. He created it, orders it, and has entered it in the form and person of Jesus Christ. And our task is to participate in the ministry which God, through His Son, has already begun.
Revolutionary? Definitely, for it demands an awakening from the present social euphoria—the Church's Babylonian captivity to organization man.
Ergo: The Church's task is like that of the two skeletons hanging in a closet. One turns to the other and says: "You know, if we had any guts, we'd get out of here!"
Dr. Alan J. Pickering
The Life and Mission emphasis—the New Iconoclasm—is an attempt of the Church—from within itself—to "get out of here." And it takes guts.
Pish posh? Very well, you who lip religion every week, then why don't you immediately bring a halt to both the open and covert cheating on examinations—the crib notes painstakingly abbreviated and concealed beneath the garter? (Remember the 8th commandment: Thou shalt not steal.)
Why don't you immediately practice brotherhood with all colors and creeds, national and international, and abandon your polite toleration without trust which so frequently marks campus "democracy?"
Why don't you stop seeking a promiscuous, sexual finish to every Saturday night date? (The 7th commandment; Thou shalt not commit adultery—plus Matt. 5:27-28.)
Friends, if religion is ever to be anything more than a Sunday morning somniloquy, it will take a campus epidemic of sclerosis of the alimentary canal—i.e., guts.
So, comes the revolution; The Life and Mission emphasis. It is a call to arms—a call to get so deeply involved in the Church that we can stand it no longer—then to get back out of the Church and into the world, there to be obedient to God's revolutionary Spirit.
"Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not the things I command you?"
Editor:
And how should I begin?
I shall wear the bottoms of my ivy leagues buckle. I shall wear my hair in a flat-top. There shall be three buttons on all my shirt collars and up the front of my suit.
In the rotunda The Daily Kansans come and go, speaking of things that I should know.
There are people on our loyal, Christian campus who wear sneakers, sweatshirts, beards and colored glasses. As Mr. Crocker tells us, they are dope addicts, un-American, and, most heinously, not in favor of Motherhood or even Suburbia (most clearly an inseparable combination).
It strikes me, a regular kind of a guy—American through and through (certainly all for Motherhood), that, if Mr. Crocker speaks the truth in his lengthy front page article in Wednesday's Kansan, we should all do something before it is too late.
Jazz, leotards, and stoie indifference to the highly sinere smiles one sees of a morning on his way to class have always seemed to be symbolic of the depths of degradation such as dope addiction, an enjoyment of Kerouac and (I shudder to mention it) a dislike for middle-class culture.
You have, I am sure, read a considerable amount of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Rexroth, and Ferlinghetti. You don't like them. I don't blame you in many ways, but please, Mr. Crocker, let me wear a sweatshirt to my 8 a.m. Saturday physiology lab without feeling un-American.
What am I speaking of, Mr. Crocker? I'm speaking of one thing that is worse than any pseudo-bohemian; worse than any faded jeans-clad, dark-glassed, long-haired, sneaker-shod individual. I am speaking of the one thing that strikes me, one of your own kind—a nine-to-five, grey flannel suited. Organization Man—as probably the most distasteful of outlooks. Specifically: narrow-minded blindness that hides behind the ever-protective guise of pseudo-normality and shuts its mind to that which runs not on the treadmill of mediocrity.
This plague is oozing out of basements and garrets and is covering our American nation with muckish and mirish threats to the foundation of democracy (to wit: Suburbia, Motherhood, and the Organization Man!).
—Robert Alan Kimball Derby sophomore
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. News service: United Press International. 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 second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan. post office under act of March 3, 1879.
News Department ... Douglas Parker, Managing Editor
Business Department ... Bill Feitz, Business Manager
Editorial Department ... Pat Swanson and Martha Crosier.
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