Page 2
University Daily Kansan Friday, Feb. 13, 1959
Whys Behind Curricula
A re-examination of the reasons for having certain of prerequisite and "pud" courses is badly needed in the University.
Many times when a student asks why a certain course is a prerequisite his adviser evades the question or says that is the way the department set up the sequence.
The faculty adviser, in some cases, knows that some prerequisites in department curricula are designed either to serve its monopolistic aims or to protect its mediocre teachers.
Part of the blame for the popularity of the "pud" courses can be blamed on the faculty. In many cases faculty members are too interested in their pet research projects or in climbing the academic ladder to be bothered with trying to revise the curriculum.
During the Middle Ages, students held all the
administrative posts in the Italian universities. They established fees, professors' salaries, length of lectures and fines against teachers who arrived late or who taught poorly.
This would not work today. But this does not mean that students should not show initiative in such University matters as revising the curriculum of a particular department or school or in correcting injustices that exist in the hours and credit system.
If the students of Kansas University, through boycott of "pud" courses or by some other peaceful group action, would call for the faculty to reevaluate some parts of the curriculum, the students would be surprised to learn how many of the faculty would respond to even a slight show of initiative by the students to improve the quality of their educations. —Harry Ritter
Limits to Collegiate Spirit
Winning a game is wonderful, especially when you have just conquered your arch foe. A 10-point victory is certainly one to be proud of. A celebration is even in order after a show of skill like that.
Plenty of victorious yells, even bonfires, have their place under such circumstances.
But limits must be observed. There is an old adage which goes something like "too much of a good thing is bad."
K-State defeated KU in basketball 82-72 Wednesday night. A celebration, such as described above took place. But the celebration got out of hand. Not only did the students cheer and build bonfires, they destroyed private property
In the course of the evening's festivities a tailgate and rear window of a pickup truck were broken and the vehicle's hood torn off. Saw horses, owned by the city, wooden signs, two utility poles, and picket fences added to the flames of the bonfire.
But as we point an accusing finger at our rivals from up the river let us remember that while we are pointing at them there are three fingers pointing at us. Sure, we know it couldn't happen here. But our students have done it before.
They were only showing school spirit? But what kind of spirit does this destruction give to the people who had their property damaged. I doubt if they will be feeling quite so friendly toward the school.
But we are college students. We're young. We like to have fun. But the problem is we are college students. This shouldn't be an excuse to hide behind; it is a responsibility. We are supposedly at college to learn, among other things, how to be more mature and how to be a better citizen.
Whether it be KU or K-State, football or basketball, do not forget—the are limits.
Martha Crosier
Art for the Hungry
By Jack Schrader
Many might be surprised to learn that hundreds of students, who never set foot inside an art gallery, have daily contact with original works by modern masters. And strangely enough, many of these students do not even realize it.
Far too many on the campus are unaware that the walls of the Kansas Union Cafeteria are hung with a permanent exhibit of modern graphic art. One also can find prints in the cafeteria by such famous artists as Braque, Picasso, Villon and Rouault.
This collection of modern art, owned by the University's Museum of Art, is displayed in the Kansas Union not only because the museum does not have room to show it, but because the prints are
suited to the modern atmosphere of the Union building and can be enjoyed by the students there.
French art seems to dominate the graphic collection. From 19th Century France we find lithographs by Camille Pissaro and Rudolphe Presdin.
The Impressionist work by Pissaro, "La Chur rue," greatly contrasts the infinitely detailed "Comedie de la Mort" by Bresdin, an artist who shows little similarity in style to his contemporaries, but who was greatly influenced by earlier artists such as Brueghel and Durer.
Examples of 20th-Century French art in the collection include an exceptionally fine impression of "Clowness and Child" by the late Georges Roualt, whose early training in stained glass is so evident
in his art; "La Mandoline" by the cubist Georges Braque; an abstraction by Jaques Villon which is typical of that artist's orderly use of color and line; and Maurice de Vlamnick's "Le Pont de Chatou."
We are reminded of the part played by foreign artists in France's artistic past with "Mademoiselle F" by Mary Ca satt (the "American in Paris"), who shows in this drypoint her love for the light and shade of Italy's 16th-century Antonio Correggio, "Moses and the Burning Bush" by the French artist, Marc Chagall, reveals the artist's Russian-Jewish background. This scene appears on the seal of the university.
Spanish art is also well represented in the collection of modern prints. Besides an early 19th Century etching by Francisco Goya, the collection boasts four Picassos. Of them are posters for the Hispano-American and Vaulauris expositiones of 1951 and 1956 respectively. The other, "Artists and Models," was probably done in the late '20s.
The collection of prints in the Kansas Union Cafeteria is an excellent panorama of the world of art since the early 19th Century and contains splendid examples of some of the major movements in art since that time. It also offers a variety of mediums: lithography, etching, drypoint, intaglio.
CULTURE AND COFFEE—Bob Smith, Salina sophomore, admires one of the many prints which hang in the Kansas Union while he takes a coffee break.
But most important it adds to the general attractiveness of our Kansas Union. We should not fail to appreciate its aesthetic worth. It is modern art in a modern building for modern men and women.
Short Ones
A Canadian missed one of his county council meetings to go moose hunting. However, the councillors agreed to overlook his absence on condition he supply 100 pounds of moose meat to each of them. At the present price of meat they got a pretty good deal.
By Gilbert M. Cuthbertson
THIS WAS A POET: EMILY DICKINSON, George Frisbie Whicher. Ann Arbor Paperbacks, University of Michigan Press, $1.75.
Some of Wordsworth's lines recaptured the intense romantic quality of the poetry of Emily Dickinson, presented in her recent biography by George Frisbie Whicher, "This Was a Poet":
"She lived unknown and few could know..."
Emily Dickinson's life was fenced like one of those granite-crested fields which surrounded her Amherst, Mass., birthplace. She lived secluded from society, yet in her early years was far from a complete recluse. Her watchword was "Trust in the Unexpected."
Around Amherst were many "a violet by a mossy stone half hidden from the eye." These were the typical, simple, natural subjects of Emily Dickinson's poetry. She scribbed her lyric verses on scraps of paper, Valentines, and notes to friends. Only a very few poems slipped into print during her lifetime.
The love affairs of Emily are reflected in her poignant yet ethereal love verses; poignant, for the intensity of the emotion expressed, ethereal, for the exact identity of her lovers is only conjectured. Like Emerson's "Brahma" Emily was both "the doubter and the doubt," embodying both a world of dreams and a world of practical experience. Yet Emily Dickinson couples this classical and traditional element with the modernity of a Robert Frost.
She wove with consummate skill the threads of Puritanism, nature, self-reliance, even humor into a sensitive poetic "landscape of the soul."
Emily, however, does not exactly fit the description of Wordsworth's Lucy: "A maid whom there were none to praise and very few to love." Emily's poetry, for instance, was read by such authors as Josiah Gilbert Holland and Helen Hunt Jackson, who both praised and "improved" it with corrections.
Emily Dickinson's poetry is an image-permeated reflection of the life of New England. As Whicher writes: "What she actually represents is the last surprising bloom—the November witch-hazel blossom—of New England's flowering time."
Whicher's study of the poetess contains not only historical background material, but also an analysis of her stylistic technique, subject matter, and literary influences on her poetry: "Her individual struggle was a replica in miniature of the greater conflict that was breaking around her; the acute accidents of her experience paralleled and intensified for her the spiritual predicament of her age."
It Looks This Way. . .
Willie King, Jacksonville, Fla., was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for listing his dog, Willie King Jr., as a dependent on his income tax return. Those wishing to adopt the new orphan should send dog biscuits to Junior, Jacksonville.
By Larry Miles
Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy claims the Republican administration's ICBM propulsion program is as good or better than Russia's. So is the Republican wind propulsion program, Democrats add.
The Air Force reports the Titan missile flight was a success. But where was the President's voice?
An irate boxer who lost a three-round decision Friday punched the referee, kicked a bucket into a row of spectators and bit a police lieutenant on the finger. The young man may not have been much of a fighter, but in the fight lingo he must have been a heck of a crowd pleaser.
Democratic political strategy included the ladies when Gov. Docking addressed the annual pancake race at Liberal. The ladies flipped for the governor.
A course to prepare students for new Soviet challenges will be offered at KU. Students will be taught to make cursing sound like conversation.
A KU individualist starts spring semester when the basketball season is over and ends it at the start of track. Probation starts at regular times.
Newspapers have reported the sinking of the French trawler Mary-Brigitte in waters off Ireland. But she didn't sink nearly so low as O'Mally's heart when he thought she was Bardot.
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,
Co-Editorial Editors