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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. Feb. 17. 1959
Whose Housing Bias?
Diversion is one of the best ways to get around an uncomfortable question. But the diverting by several KU staff and administrative officials in the most recent problem of racial discrimination at the University has resulted in some discrepancies.
A Negro student charges that the housing office follows a policy of discrimination against Negro students. In answer to this charge, officials offer only vague explanations and denials.
J. J. Wilson, director of dormitories, says no attempt is made to keep separate lists for any particular group of students.
If separate housing lists are kept for Negro students, it does seem that this is an unwarranted policy of discrimination. It is the responsibility of the University to help students obtain local suitable and convenient housing, not to protect them from embarrassment.
Discrimination is not new to the Negro students at the University. But it is one thing to be discriminated against by a prejudiced landlord and another to feel discrimination on the part of one's University.
The University does not officially sanction a policy of housing discrimination. University housing, such as dormitories, do not maintain separate housing for the different races. But does the University comply with local landlords who differentiate between the kinds of tenants they will accept?
If this is the case, some changes are in order.
The obvious step would be to give all listings to students, thus placing the burden of discrimination on the few landlords who practice bias.
The University, which is a representative institution of all the people of the state, should not have to bear the responsibility for the bigotry of landlords. —Pat Swanson
Movies Test Morals
Two movies that must be making past and present members of the Kansas Board of Review writhe in agony are playing in a downtown theater.
One of them is "The Moon Is Blue," which went through a two-year court battle before it was allowed to be shown in Kansas. The other is not quite so famous from the standpoint of censorship. But its subject matter is just as explosive to the ladies who sit on the board as the subject of sex, which is ostensibly the prime concern of "The Moon Is Blue."
The second show is about narcotics peddlers and users, card players and assorted members of a particularly undistinguished set of folk in a large city. The name of the show is "The Man With the Golden Arm," in which Frank Sinatra gives an unforgettable impersonation of a poor
guy who is a patsy for nearly everyone around him.
Both shows are old. Both are about subjects that Kansans, according to the statutes on the books, are not really allowed to be exposed to too much in their film fare. But actually both are pretty tame.
We have to wonder why there was such a fuss about "The Moon Is Blue" in the first place.
The film's dialogue is a little racy in spots, but our over-all impression is that this is a high school play tailored to appeal to sophisticated audiences.
It is not very complimentary to the state of Kansas that there was such a fight over this film. If our moral values are so shaky that they will be endangered by films of this sort, we are in bad shape indeed. —Robert Harwi
By Stuart Levine Instructor in English
It is, in a way a tribute to the taste of our concert audiences that the Italian chamber orchestra "I Musici," has become so popular. The members of the full house at Swarthout Recital Hall last evening heard a concert that was neither especially fashionable nor
particularly polished. It was,however,extraordinarily good.
Since the advent of the LP record, Vivaldi has become a favorite composer. One plays his music at cocktail parties. It reflects one's esoteric tastes. But 'I Musici' produced, in their performances of Vivaldi's Concerti in C Minor for Strings and Keyboard and in B flat
The group commits musical sins. It is occasionally imprecise and even out of tune. But it is never dishonest. Every phrase is fully realized; every lyrical possibility fully developed. "I Musici" enjoy their tusk, and the audience enjoys "I Musici."
TUNING UP—Felix Ayo and Vincenzo Altobelli tune their violin and cello backstage before their performance as soloists of "I Musici," the Italian chamber orchestra, in Swarthout Recital Hall last night.
Major for Violin, Cello, Strings and Keyboard, a sound that was not antique and exotic, and not even especially authentic (they used piano, not harpsichord). Rather, it was honest and extremely musical.
But Ennio Porrino's Sonar per Musici, apparently written for the group, was pretty stunning. It's a work in the so-called International style, written to show off each musician, and full of the kind of rhythmic interchange which is one of the strong virtues of the new music.
Two contemporary works suggested the group's versatility. The first, Remy Principale's Suite for Violin and Strings, was married by the soloist's rather soggy approach. Luciano Vicari is a good young violinist, but he lacks what musicians call "drive" and "cut." The ensemble produced the requisite crispeness; he did not.
The program closed with Mozart's Divertimento for Strings in D Major, K. 136. The performance nicely demonstrated what I have said about the group's honesty. There was no cheating on repetitive passages (and, as the early Koechel number suggests, there is plenty of repetition present) and a sense of lyrical phrasing wholly in keeping with the Italianate origins of Mozart's melodic lines.
A word about the two soloists in the second Vivaldi Concerto: neither Felix Avо nor Vincento Altobelli (wonderful name for a musician!) is a major artist. Neither has the fat tone of the popular big-name soloist nor the exceedingly crisp style of the fashionable baroque specialit, but each has a splendid feeling for the extended line which is the heart of the music, and it seems to me that this is more important.
By John Husar
"Naked," an attempt at drama by Luigi Pirandello, opened last night in the Experimental Theatre.
Directed by Barbara Conroy, the play reveals a girl (Sara Maxwell) who, distraught because her fiance (Paul Brooks) jilted her, was caught in flagrante delicto with her employer, an Italian consul (Steve Callahan). This was at the time the consul's baby, whom she was supposed to be guarding, fell to its death from a roof-deck.
Banished from the consul's house, she grew despondent and was saved from her own poison by quick medical treatment. While in the hospital, she told her tale to a newspaperman (Dick Pratt) who published a factual and sympathetic account in his paper. As the play begins, a novelist (Daryl Warner), who discovered the story of the homeless girl, takes her in.
The essence of Pirandello's story is the girl's lies, lies which cover other lies until no more lies are possible. She lies not to create a facade, but to convince herself of her own worth, to provide an excuse for sorrow, suffering and self-pity. Her tragedy is not her death, but the revelation of truth as she appears without even a flimsy cover to shield her nothingness, her moral and spiritual nakedness. As one of her lines reads:
"The worse we are—the uglier we are; the more anxious we are to appear beautiful." At least to ourselves, she means.
Pirandello wrote a good play, but not a great one, for the ideals are too muddled. His main preoccupation is with the difference between illusion and reality. Since the players rarely descend from the thick, heavy plane of over-acting—they seem to believe that sensitive drama and hard-hitting melodrama are the same—attention is drawn from the actual conflict to the acting shortcomings.
As the characters develop, it becomes apparent that each has lied, mainly to himself. This is unfortunate, as such universal insincerity leads to little hope for humanity.
Likewise, there is little hope for "Naked." Some of the situations are incredibly ridiculous. For instance, who can expect a roomful of people from myriad walks of life to suddenly abstractly philosophize upon the girl's motivations for lying? Then, the players' many long, wordy passages carry them completely out of conversational reality. Finally, we suffered a constant feeling of uneasiness, either because the play is emotionally searching, or because its presentation falls short of competency. Doubtless, it was the latter.
Miss Maxwell dug too deep into her role, and emerged with a heavy, uncomfortable characterization. She treated the girl as an idiot, rather than one with a serious emotional conflict.
Warner and Callahan were acceptable as the author and the consul, if only because of their fine deliveries and techniques. Barbara Gerlash, as a maid, was also interesting. But Brooks is hilariously miscast with the contrived majesty of his lines; and Pratt's illusory conception of the journalist is "from nowhere," where it belongs.
Ruth Hicklin saved the day, as far as acting is concerned. Her portrayal of the author's lovable, yet shrewish, landlady was an absorbing and highly credible analysis.
But as a whole the acting was fruitless. We have never noticed an audience chuckle and laugh more at a dramatic attempt. So departed Pirandello's effect.
Profile of a Prof By Geneva Mendenhall
He is a great teacher in the truest sense of the word.
He is a rare species.
He does not confine.
His student need not conform.
He never dogmatizes—he asks.
He does not overload.
He gives the mind time to explore, to investigate, to seek, to think.
He hands you a book that you might read. What does he think? You never know. He only smiles, nods, asks another question. "What do you think?" he asks.
Quiet, thoughtful, he drops a remark that sets your mind aboiling and off you go in search of a clue. Apparently passive, how can he be so stimulating? That is his genius-he is a truly great teacher.
Dailu Hansan
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