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University Daily Kansan Thursday. Feb. 5, 1950
Wage Earner's Woes
University maintenance employees have complained about the wage cut resulting from a legal opinion by Attorney General John Anderson January 1.
In order to understand their complaint one must look into their positions.
Just where does the worker's weekly salary go? And how far toward meeting his needs can it travel?
Let us picture the housewife who takes the paycheck. With the bargain-hunting wisdom that comes from scraping to make the budget meet the needs, she proceeds to buy groceries, pay rent, utilities, other outstanding bills.
The budget for this housewife is for a family of four—$60 per month for food, $20 utilities, $75 rent or house payments. That is $155 and it doesn't include automobile maintenance, incidental medical bills, clothing, insurance or taxes.
Yet the state of Kansas expects the employees at its university and colleges to work at wages set for civil service in 1947.
There is an inconsistency in this line of thinking. Neither our nation or state can operate on the budget used in 1947. Our automobile cannot operate on the narrow highways of the '40's.
Yet the same legislators who pass larger state budgets to build super-highways expect men with families to live at a wage level established 12 years ago.
The lowest paid maintenance employee at the University on the civil service scale is the janitor who earns 96 cents an hour. The highest paid is the electrician at $1.79. Provided they work the full 176 hours per month they earn $168.96 and $315.04, respectively. At union wage scale these same two men would carn $369.00 and $633.60 —more than twice as much.
This issue which arose over University wages merely serves to point out the need for renovation of the process and thinking of our state government.
In addition they receive no insurance against injuries incurred while on the job. A truck driver pays his own liability insurance. And most of the men must work for five years before they can expect a raise.
Kansas cannot grow and prosper under the stale and static provisions of our laws. Let us call for a housecleaning to dust the cobwebs from the statehouse. —Pat Swanson
Food for Peace
President Eisenhower announced a different kind of peace plan Jan. 29 in his farm message to Congress. It was only briefly mentioned in the speech but it deserves attention. This plan involves "food for peace."
"Food can be a powerful instrument for all the free world in building a durable peace," he said. "We and other surplus-producing nations must do our very best to make the fullest constructive use of our abundance of agricultural products to this end.
At present U.S. surpluses are being sent overseas in three different ways as provided by Public Law 480. They may be sold for foreign currency. When this method is used the money received for the goods is usually used to pay American expenses in that country. The surpluses may also be given to a country where disasters or emergencies have arisen or may be given to a nonprofit voluntary relief agency or intergovernmental organization to assist needy people abroad.
President Eisenhower has been studying the present law and has had a working group visit countries where our surpluses have been sent under its provisions. The President is apparently now ready to present a new program.
Similar programs have been proposed before but central authority and direction have been lacking. We hope that this time a successful plan can be established.
This sort of a plan would not only be a method of disposing of our national surpluses of food, but more important, it would be filling the urgent need for food which is being felt in many parts of the world. Here is an opportunity to bring the nations of the world closer together.
—Martha Crosier
Sense of Safety Skill
The University has appealed to the students to gain skill in handling their automobiles.
In order to obtain a driver's license, every person must pass the test, or its equivalent, of the Kansas State Highway Patrol.
Last Sunday afternoon a parked, driverless automobile slipped on the ice and slid down a hill into the rear of another parked car.
the Highway Patrol, contains a simple diagram explaining the correct procedure of parking an automobile parallel to the curb on a hill.
The driver training handbook, sponsored by
The turning of the front wheels into the curb might have prevented the accident Sunday.
What if someone had been in the path of the uncontrolled vehicle?
And while we're moralizing—just how do YOU park on a hill? —Tom Hough
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"ARE WE AROUND TO GRADING FINALS AGAIN PROFESSOR SNAKK:"
The farmer's son wanted to go to college so he could study obstetrics, but pa warned against it. "Why sure as shootin'." said the farmer, "you'll spend all that time learning about obstetrics and then somebody'll come along and find a cure for it."
Short Ones
The more arguments you win, the fewer friends you have.
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas biweekly, 1904,
tridayweekly, 1908, dailyweekly
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, New.
News service: www.newyorkpress.com. Annual 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. Published on Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Douglas Parker Managing Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bill Feitz Business Manager
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Pat Swanson and Martha Crosier
Editors
Censorship Series
Wrangles Over Bans
By Robert Harwi
(This is the third in a series of articles on motion picture censorship in Kansas. The series is based on a master's thesis on the subject by Robert Lee Skinner. The Daily Kansan wants to thank the department of political science for making this thesis available.)
Numerous controversies have erupted over actions of the Kansas State Board of Review since its inception in 1913. One of the most bitter occurred in 1937.
The board, in what some contend was direct violation of the law, cut a political speech from a "March of Time" newsreel. The speech, by Sen. Burton K. Wheeler (D-Mont), was part of a film survey on President Franklin D. Rocevelt's proposal to increase the number of Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chairman Mae Clausen said the board acted because the scene was "partisan and biased."
Louis de Rochemont, producer of the "March of Time," commented that this was the first time a statement on a national political issue by an accredited authority had been censored by a state board.
Gov. Walter Huxman instructed the board to re-examine the picture. Four days later the board rescinded its decision, and the deletions were restored.
A running controversy over the D. W. Griffith film classic, "Birth of a Nation," started in 1916. The film portrays Reconstruction days in the South and the beginnings of the Ku Klux Klan.
The film was banned in January 1917. Four months later it was resubmitted by its owners for the board's approval. It was agreed that the picture would be passed if certain eliminations were made.
But upon Gov. Arthur Capper's objection, the film was recalled for rejection again. In January, 1923, when the film owners tried to get a permit, Gov. Jonathan M. Davis told the board to refuse to review it.
In April, 1931, the board approved a new sound version of the film. When a Topeka theater showed it, Gov. Harry Woodring began receiving telegrams of protest. The film was recalled for re-examination and banned.
A more recent film which tested the Board of Review was "The Moon Is Blue," the spicy comedy starring William Holden and David Niven. In June, 1953, the board examined but refused to approve the film on the grounds that it had "sex theme throughout, too frank bedroom dialogue, many sexy words."
On July 14, 1954, the court issued a memorandum opinion enjoining the board from preventing or interfering with the exhibition of the film.
The film company argued that the board's actions were unjustified and that the Kansas statutes were in violation of the State and Federal Constitution.
On Aug. 17, 1953, the owners of the film sought "an injunction to protect them from the enforcement of the motion picture censorship law."
The court held that "a state statute providing for censorship of motion pictures...is invalid, as repugnant to the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the U.S."
Also, it held that the board's use of "obscene, indecent, immoral, and such as tend to debase or corrupt morals" gives to each of those words a meaning so broad and vague as to render it unconstitutional.
The board's attorneys appealed the case to the Kansas Supreme Court, which, on April 9, 1955, reversed the decree of the trial court and reinstated the order of the board.
The industry attorneys then appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. On Oct. 24, 1955, the Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Kansas Supreme Court The film was permitted to be shown throughout the state.
Worth Repeating
A university's primary concern is to quicken and strengthen intellectual experience in individuals. This kind of activity in any person must always owe much to the example and influence of others.
Hence the need for scholar and teachers-or better yet or scholar-teachers; and hence the reason why a university must be everlastingly busy seeking to draw into its faculties new recruits of distinction who combine preeminent scholarship with inspiring teaching.
It is inevitable, however, that such recruits will not always fit into the existing framework. Indeed it is to be hoped rather that frequently their presence will be due to intellectual adventure in new places. Where it is, it will also, almost certainly, call for additions to budgets and often, too for new physical facilities...
In a constant changing world a university's attention can never properly be limited to the ordinary and familiar, nor its allegiance confined to traditional values not freshly won. A university's major task is to respond to the deepest needs of its time, and now as in the past a university will be measured by its capacity and willingness to do this.
Our time calls for knowledge, technical and humane, for understanding and fresh creative intelligence, and beyond this, for new idealism, hope, courage, resolution and concern for others—above all for increased ability to live constructively with others without sacrifice of value or loss of individuality. . .
President Nathan Pusey Harvard University