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Summer Session Kansan Tuesday, June 25, 1957
Conformity - Strength In Numbers
"Conformity—and complacency with it—are the greatest dangers facing American society today."
We have heard it from scores of commencement orators across the nation this month.
A. Whitney Griswold, president of Yale University, probably summarizes the common attack on the present generation better than any of them:
Said Tillich: "It is my wish and hope that many in this outgoing class are determined to preserve the power to say 'no' when the patterns prescribed by society will try to conquer them. We hope for nonconformists amongst you, for your sake, for the sake of the nation and for the sake of humanity."
"The creative power of the individual is more sorely needed today than ever before," Griswold told the Yale graduates. "This alone can save us from collective sterility...nor shall we recover our self-respect by chasing after it in crowds... It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it; knowing the truth, we have spoken it."
"All this is serious and challenging talk," wrote Life magazine editorial editors, "and we hope it strikes some serious and thoughtful answers from the Silent Generation."
Another critic of the present generation, Paul Tillich of the New York New School for Social Research, fears "patternization."
We are not struck by any "serious and thoughtful answers," but we do have what we feel are some serious and thoughtful questions.
We have noticed with more than a little anger
that all educators seem to agree that the present generation is a conforming lot, too concerned with security, too complacent with society as it is. We have also noticed with some irritation that there are some among the "old liberals" who catcall "Conformist!" and then rush out in ivy-league pants or white socks for a coke date.
We have thought—until the past few years that all those wars were fought because we wanted and needed security; that we were trying to eliminate human want and suffering.
Perhaps that is not what we were doing at all. Perhaps security is not what we need and want. Perhaps what we need is another war (on the grand scale of World War II) so that we can talk sensibly of intense pain and suffering. Or maybe another depression is what we need so that we can talk with our graying academic counterparts about empty sugar bowls and long bread lines and social revolution.
This is the background music that somehow staggers us again and again, more often because the brass bit about the good old days of the liberal sometimes gets a little too loud.
We do not doubt for a minute that the present generation differs remarkably from the generation before it. We do doubt, however, the validity of incessant hammering at this generation to keep clear of conformity.
We have learned that there is strength in numbers, and now, at a time when our elders are just as much intellectually lost as we are, we need this basic strength. It is all we inherited—except perhaps the everlasting human drive to find the answers—collectively.
Dale Morsch
From Other Campuses
Members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon at the University of Washington have given themselves over to hog-calling and verbal mudpies according to the Washington Daily, the campus newspaper.
Most of the fun is being poked at a breed of porkers they term "Sororitus Hamus" — the sorority girl. The SAE's, spokesmen report, felt the girls at UW were "getting pretty bad and needed shaping up."
The SAE's have decorated the walls of their brick house with caricatures of campus women, and hidden loudspeakers blare forth with insults and "honest evaluations."
And through all the hogwash and hullabaloo, Betty Coed, a 250-pound sow, lounges nonchalantly in her slat house on the SAE lawn. The SAE's say she is shaping up and will soon "conform like all the rest of the sorority girls on the campus."
The University of Texas Summer Texan, a campus newspaper, is concerned about the price of progress.
Until 1955, the women's dorms were known as the Tri-Dorms. With the addition of the fourth
dorm, the community became known as the Quad-Dorms. Now the completion of a fifth dorm across the street will make the prospect of the Quint-Dorms a reality.
With the inevitable sixth dorm looming in the future, continuance of the Latin tradition would be somewhat embarrassing and even a switch to the Greek wouldn't help.
"After all," say the Texans, "What young lady would want to give her address as either the 'Sex-Dorms' or the 'Hex-Dorms'?"
The Daily Iowan, a student and community newspaper at the State University of Iowa, recently made a faux pas which every newspaper constantly lives in horror of doing.
The mistake was explained like this:
"Announcement of the forthcoming marriage of Constance Hamilton to George Athanas appearing in Friday's Daily Iowan was incorrect.
"The couple has been married for a year.
"The picture and write-up were misplaced last year, and were found in the society desk files Thursday. The society editor assumed the announcement had been turned in recently and printed it."
TV Notes
The lineup for NBC's new one-hour filmed western series, "Wagon Train," due to tee off Sept 11, includes Ernest Borgnine as star of the first drama, "The Willy Moran Story," and Michael Rennie and Carolyn Jones in the second, "The John Cameron Story." Ward Bond and Robert Horton will be fixtures in the series as wagon master and scout, respectively.
The first nine games in the 21-game series of National Hockey League games that the CBS network will telecast next season will be on the air at 2 p.m. The first game involves the New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins Nov. 2.
Groucho Marx, as usual, will be available on NBC throughout the summer via repeats of some of his programs of the season just concluded. The repeats started June 27, and there will be 13 of them.
The Warren Beaty you saw in a leading role on "Kraft Television Theater" June 26 was picked out of Stella Adler's acting classes. The 19-year-old actor worked as a sandhog on the recently completed third tube of the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River to keep himself going while waiting for "the big break."
First Concert: Well Done!
A concert was held Sunday evening in Hoch Auditorium by a group that, had been together for only one short week.
An average University concert band or orchestra rehearses for about six weeks before presentation. Judging from these standards, we can only say that the Midwestern Music and Art Camp Band and Chorus performed exceptionally well.
Therefore, can one, with justice, comment that the trombones opened the Theme Song a mite discordantly, or the clarinets and flutes didn't sound just right in "On the Trail" from Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite," or that there was usually a section somewhere that persisted in drowning out another section?
There was the conducting of Messrs. Russell L, Wiley and Clayton Krehbiel. A person finds it easy to discover and appreciate the ability in these men. How many men can assemble a group of nearly two hundred musicians and dare to give a concert with them in four days? ..a good concert?
There were some works done rather well, taking nothing into consideration. Like the majestic "Tannhauser Overture" by Wagner, and the colorful "Tap Roots" by Skinner, suggesting quiet western
It would not do well to forsake mentioning Bob Grace's clarinet solos. His clearness and versatility forced us to speculate with pleasure on the possibility of his performing one of George Gershwin's classical clarinet pieces.
scenes. The french horns combined with the saxophones for a brilliant period in "Grand Canyon Suite."
Reflecting on the evening, we look forward with anticipation to the remaining concerts on the Summer program. It will be interesting to watch the progress of the campers under the guiding batons of the famous guest conductors, although we are beginning to be skeptical as to who could, with measure, surpass our own trio of Messrs: Wiley, Krehbel, and Carney in the educational concert field.
—John Husar
SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
(Published Tuesdays and Fridays)
Ed. Phone 251 Bus. Phone 376
Editors ... Dale Morsch
John Eaton
Business Mgrs... Colby Rehmer
Bill Irvine
Reporters ... Martha Crosier
John Husar
Janet Juneau
Manager ... James E. Dykes
. . . Short Ones . . .
Someone commented the other day that KU is breeding a new race of men—men who walk on their hands and knees trying to avoid the low hanging branches of our campus flora.
And if you like puns, the United Press tells us of the judge who fined four college students for stealing a cemetery gravestone. He said they made a grave mistake.
We've been looking under the T's. "Twaddly" means twaddling or suggesting twaddle. "Twaddle" as a noun means silly talk; gabble; nonsense; also bombastic talk, fustian.
Then there was the Minn. U. co-ed who answered a Home Ec test thusly: "To make a small room appear larger use thinner wallpaper."
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