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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Feb. 18, 1959
Confusion in Policy
The housing office seems to be confused on the University's policy for Negro housing.
J. J. Wilson, director of dormitories, said Monday that he knew of no separate lists for the housing of Negro and white students.
Mrs. Ruth Nash, University housing secretary, said yesterday that it is University policy to hand out separate housing lists. This version of
the story is backed by two Negroes. One, a woman, was given a list containing only two names while a man was told there were no names available. When each of them sent in a white friend, the friend was given a different and longer list.
To end discrimination people must have the facts. They do not know whether it is University policy to hand out separate housing lists.
Martha Crosier
Dispensable Dalles
Political parties are constantly creating mythical heroes from ordinary men with the aim of furthering party interests.
Now they have put Secretary of State John Foster Dulles up on a white charger as the indispensable knight who alone can save our world from utter destruction.
Mr. Dulles, it seems obvious, must retire because he needs treatment for cancer. This is indeed unfortunate. He has performed his duty as secretary of state satisfactorily, at times exceptionally well. But he is not indispensable.
The administration balks with fear at the idea of having to replace him, but it is obvious that it
must. Of course, it will be difficult for Mr. Dulles' successor to take over his duties at this crucial period in history. The whole country regrets that it will lose the services and valuable years of experience of Mr. Dulles.
Still the fact remains. He must retire. He can no longer serve the United States adequately if he is in poor health.
The sooner a new secretary of state is appointed the better the situation will be for the nation and the world situation.
So let's silence the melodramatic moans of Dulles' indispensability and step in the positive direction of naming a new man for this big job.
Pat Swanson
Students Ignore Prayer Day
Friday was World Day of Prayer. People gathered for services around the globe. Two services were held in Danforth Chapel so that students could take part in the observation, but only a few accepted the opportunity and attended.
A much larger percentage of students were probably only thanking God it was Friday.
We say that this is a Christian country and a large percentage of its citizens profess to be Christians. But what does this really mean to many of these people?
It means that we are claiming the same religion as our neighbor or roommate; therefore there are no social difficulties due to prejudices because of being "different."
Does it mean we go to church each Sunday because it's good for business if we are thought to be churchgoers? (Of course students don't have to worry about that so we can sleep late Sunday mornings.) Or does it mean we should not be bothered with any mid-week observances?
—M.C.
Editor:
Students enter the University in order to get a higher more specialized education. It is assumed by the time we graduate from high school, basic elementals such as grammar and spelling have been mastered. If a student does not know these fundamentals upon high school graduation, he is not prepared for college work.
If there is fault with the English proficiency examination, it is that it is not included in the college entrance requirements. When they enter college, students should be made aware that they lack basic knowledge of grammar and spelling. If these fundamentals are lacking, a student should be required his first semester to correct the problem. Then, as a final examination for the basic course, the student should be given the English proficiency examination again.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS BY BIBLER
YOU'LL HAVE TO ADMIT ONE THING — HE HAS CERTAINLY BUILT UP THE PHOTOGRAPHY DEPARTMENT."
Even under the present system at any time anyone who has failed the proficiency exam and who wants help with grammar or spelling or essay organization can get that help from the English department. There are people in the department willing and anxious to help teach students who want to learn.
A student who would fail the examination more than once is not college material, for he is unable to express himself to be understood by others.
It takes initiative and interest on behalf of the student himself to improve his deficiencies.
Nancy G. Pine Lawrence senior
He knows little who tells his wife all he knows.—Fuller
No rule is so general, which admits not some exception—Burton
Dailu Hansan UNIVERSITY
University of Kansas student newspaper
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changed name to University of Kansas
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National College Press. Repressed by 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, lectures, conferences, and other second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
NEW'S DEPARTMENT
Douglas Park
Managing Editor
BUSINESS PROJECTS
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Feitz Business Manager
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Pat Swanson and Martha Crosser, Co-
Editorial Editors; Robert Harwl,
Associate Editorial Editor.
By Calder M. Pickett
Assistant Professor of Journalism
SEEN ANY GOOD MOVIES LATELY?, by William K. Zinsser.
Doubleday. $2.75
William K. Zinsser, who for several years spent his mornings in New York movie houses, watching June Allyson wave goodbye to Jimmy Stewart staring into the blue, Victor Mature tossing about gladiators in the Coliseum, and Tab Hunter fighting the war in West Coast motel rooms, is now writing editorials for the New York Herald Tribune.
As that paper's movie critic he was one of the best in the city that has the best movie critics in America. In "Seen Any Good Movies Lately?" he tells about his odyssey as movie critic.
It is not deep, searching criticism that we have here, nor is it samples of Zinsser's criticism. Such' can be found, he says, in the Herald Tribune itself. He takes the reader into the popepen palaces of America, and on a guided tour of Hollywood studios, Shirley Temple's old dressing room is not the 20th Century-Fox dentist's office, the barn DeMille used for filming "The Squaw Man" is now the Paramount gymnasium where Burt Lancaster continues the tradition of the flamboyant movie producer.
"Seen Any Good Movies Lately?" is light and entertaining. It makes some pointed digs at the movie business and the various movie stereotypes. Zinsser, in fact, fancies himself as a sort of anthropologist, reporting on the habits and customs of movie-going and movie-making America, and he occasionally is a perceptive anthropologist at that.
To him the motion picture (except for the several films that he cites as being among the best in recent years) has become as stylized as its most representative form—the western—in which one can readily spot the hero, the villain, the prim heroine from the East, the dance hall girl with a heart of gold, the town doctor who drinks too much, the cowardly sheriff who comes through in the last reel. Zinsser also points to the stylized historical drama, and the war film.
There is "The Virgin Queen," which taught Zimnser the real story of Elizabeth and Raleigh. Raleigh, you see, had both the queen and a lady-in-waiting on the string. He also wanted to go avoyaging, in ships provided by the queen. One day the queen went down to Raleigh's ship and found his cabin fitted with a double bed, and Raleigh and the lady-in-waiting wound up in the Tower of London.
There is the brave cop in "The Killer Is Loose," who is being hunted down by a crazed gunman. The wife can't take it any longer: "I'm tired of being scared every time there's a knock on the door or the phone rings. Be sensible, Joe—give up your job so that we can start living like other people. Do you think you can bring Nails Brody in single-handed? It's suicide."
There is the unannounced pregnancy scene. Wife, busily vacuuming the rug, suddenly falls against a chair. "Harriet! Is anything wrong?" "No, it's nothing, really... I'm fine—just fine."
There is the war film. There has to be, in each platoon, a farm boy, a married man dreaming of his family, a hillbilly who quotes his old man, a bespectacled scholar always reading a book, a troublemaker, a wolf always looking for broads, a big jerk from Texas.
Zinnier says his favorite "blending of the martial and the feminine" was an atrocity, filmed in 1950 and released in 1957, called "Jet Pilot." Aging hurt only the jet planes, he says. John Wayne's face never changes, and Janet Leigh looked even better seven years earlier—playing a Russian spy who marries an American colonel.
in an introduction to the book, the excellent Broadway-Hollywood director Elia Kazan laments the "promotion" of Zinsser, to the editorial page. Movies need perceptive critics like Zinsser, he says.
One can heartily concur, in a day when every Ed Sullivan, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Walter Winechell in the land can hail many lush epic out of Hollywood as "an Academy Award natural," when the popularity of a picture—a "Ten Commandments" or a "Geisha Boy," for example—equates the picture with greatness.
Critics, who get roasted almost as readily as football coaches, do a great service, by and large. The few movies and plays that they succeed in killing commercially are usually of the caliber that richly deserve a grim and early death.
It Looks This Way...
By Larry Miles
Northern liberals were surprised to learn the Virginia governor —J. Lindsay Almond Jr.—pronounces his name Allmon and not like the nut.
A tax professor says that taxes and death are inevitable. Tax service experts agree, adding that they want to make one just as easy as the other. Paying taxes will be as painless as death this April.
Coeds have been warned against wolves. A blue-eyed friend of mine is helping to identify the animal species. His zoology book, he claims, states all wolves have brown eyes and hair on their chests.
The Army contends Beetle Bailey hurts its prestige and wants the comic strip banned. The Army should not be permitted to alter history.
A campus idealist says that the dollar has served so well everywhere else that KU may replace grades with dollars.