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University Daily Kansan
Monday, May 8, 1961
Reserved Seating
There has been a great deal of controversy over the recently proposed reserved seating plan for university athletics which is to be voted upon at tomorrow's ASC meeting.
This is a controversy where lines are drawn immediately and views are based on either rumor or analysis. This is what occurred with members of the Daily Kansan editorial board.
For this reason, in an attempt to comment on the plan and its ramifications, the board decided to discuss both sides of the issue. The proposal is as follows:
Season tickets for football and basketball will be purchased each spring. They will be in the form of coupons for each home game and the price will be staggered for the next three years:
1963-64 and every year following: $7.50 per sport
1961-62: $2.50 per sport
1962-63; $5 per sport
ANOTHER QUESTION PRESENTS ITSELF: WHY DOESN'T the state legislature build the new building if it is so badly needed? The answer: A few years ago the legislature passed a bill which said in effect that no bonds may be issued for construction of a gymnasium. The University administration thus is strapped with the problem of needing a building with nowhere to go for financial support except the student body. At least, so the administration says. But the last four years were the Docking years and these years were lean ones for higher education and strict priorities had to be placed on funds. The hope in most circles which are concerned with higher education today is that this tight pinch on the purse-strings for the universities and colleges is past. Last year's legislature was an indication with KU's every request through the Board of Regents satisfied.
There is no question that Robinson needs a replacement. But how does this tie in with the reserved seating proposal? The answer is that students, in three years, will be charged $15 per year to see football and basketball games with reserved seats to help pay for the new building. So students who go to these games will be paying for the PE building, while those who don't go to the varsity games, but may like gymnastics or fencing, won't pay a nickel for the new building. Is the assumption that the group which attends KU football and basketball games is the proper group to tax for the new building correct? It would seem one select group is being taxed to benefit a different select group.
AGAINST
The reserved seating bill before the All Student Council takes care of two problems confronting the University today. The first is, of course, the problem of student seating at football and basketball games, and the second is, oddly enough, the problem of constructing a badly needed physical education building to replace the sadly outdated and now inadequate Robinson Gymnasium.
Another point of view shows that a vast majority of the students who will have to pay for the physical education building come from Kansas. This means that their parents are already supporting KU through their state taxes. This puts a double burden on a very few isolated families. There seems to be a shifting of responsibility from the legislature to the student in supporting the building burden. No matter how slight the amount, $10 or $15, the burden is twice as great on the student as on the legislature. For example, many students work their way through school, and the average wage on campus is about 75 cents an hour. All this student would have to do to see KU's football and basketball games is work an additional 20 hours.
Plans originally called for the tickets to be bought on a seniority basis but this part has been discarded in favor of a first come-first served basis.
THE JOINT PROPOSAL FOR RESERVED SEATING AND construction of the physical education building is not sound. Until the obvious errors in the system are ironed out the bill should be defeated. The bill was only completed Saturday morning in a talk between students and administration officials. Two days is not too long a period of time for the ASC member to get an accurate poll of student reaction when the student doesn't even know what the proposal is. And perhaps the proper course to follow in a situation where such a sum of student money is involved is to call a student referendum and get a true sampling. Certainly not an overnight presentation and vote.
- John Peterson
IF THE STUDENTS ARE TO PAY FOR A NEW PHYSICAL education building, why cover it up with the reserved seating proposal? It simply means that each student who goes to the athletic contests in the future is donating $15 a year to the new building, a total of $100,000 a year from the student body. It would seem much more logical to increase the tax base by having the entire student body pay for the new building through an increase in tuition. Increasing the tuition, however, would probably cause more reaction from more directions than increasing the athletic attendance price.
The coupon system as explained above would have students lining up Monday morning for the choice of seats. It also would allow the block selection of seats. This of course only shifts the chaos from Saturday morning lines, leaving the student with Monday morning classes at a distinct disadvantage. It also isn't too unlikely that c few organized groups would have shifts of men holding advantageous positions in line before the exchange windows open.
The administration officials have told the ASC members that Robinson Gymnasium will be torn down in the next few years and, as things stand now, there won't be any building to take its place. This is unthinkable and it doesn't seem logical that Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe would allow the students to be placed in the position of having no recreational facilities.
The money will go into a fund to build a new gymnasium and maintain intramural facilities.
- The Editors
The plan would allow the Athletic Department to know how many student seats will not be occupied for each game and to sell the empty seats to the general public at $4.50 a seat.
FOR
Last fall, student attendance at football games resulted in one of the most chaotic situations that the University has ever had. Three factors were responsible for the flasco that had stadium doors busted, students jammed in the aisles, on the rim, and in the end zones of the stadium, and many disgruntled students and visitors who had to push, shove, and literally fight to get a seat by game time.
The three factors were: the increased enrollment, the increased attendance because of the extraordinary team and its schedule, and an inadequate seating system that was impossible to regulate.
THE SITUATION WILL BE AS BAD OR WORSE NEXT season and for the years to come if something isn't done immediately. The major purpose of the proposed reserved seating plan is to clear up the mess that will be inevitable at every home game. Through it, KU students will be raised from the second class position they new occupy and become first class spectators who will be assured of a seat by merely walking into the stadium shortly before the game starts.
A subsidiary purpose of the plan is to resolve another problem now facing the students. Robinson Gymnasium is not only about to collapse from old age, but it also does not provide the facilities that are necessary and essential for a university—recreation and intramurals. The swimming pool is the joke of the conference. The old basketball courts are beyond repair in many cases, beside being so few as to limit activity.
The reserved seating plan will eventually call for season tickets for reserved seats to be bought for $7.50 per major sport. The tickets are optional and those students who don't wish to go will not have to buy tickets. Those who do will be assured a seat at every game without having to line up at 10 a.m. or fight the mob gathered in front two hours before game time. Provisions have been made for married students and those who wish to go to only one or two games a season. There are also provisions for exchanges.
Despite the decrepit condition, the limited facilities, and the valuable building space it occupies. Robinson will not be replaced in the future by legislative appropriations. Because of the pressing need for classrooms, office space and other priorities, the university cannot ask for funds and the legislature will not appropriate funds for a gymnasium, according to university officials.
The students don't have to do anything. But it is better to be a little farsighted than to have the problem grow until it becomes impossible. It is known that Robinson is going to be razed to make room for a classroom building in the future, thereby leaving the University without facilities at all. It really boils down to this: if the school is going to have a gym, the only way the funds will be obtained will be through the students. Funds from the reserved seating plan is one way. A raise in tuition is the other. These are the only two ways we know of.
WHY DO THE STUDENTS HAVE TO PAY FOR A GYMNASIUM?
THERE ALSO HAS TO BE SOME MONETARY CONSIDERATION to the system or there would be no reason to have the plan. If there is no charge, seating space will be set aside for every enrolled student, as it is now. None of the chaos will be resolved.
In summary, the plan amounts to the student paying approximately $1 for a reserved seat at football games and 60 cents at basketball games. And from this, the student body will have new intramural and recreational facilities. We are for this, despite the small strain on the already overtaxed wallet, because we have had to stand in too many lines, sit on too many concrete steps, and wait too long to be able to use the courts at Robinson.
Frank Morgan
Worth Repeating
In the first place, a profession is not a vocation, a calling, an occupation, or an employment; it is, rather, a "way of life of service." It is a way of life developed from a multitude of experiences, but the basic experience is a well-rounded program of "formal education of high standard." It is a way of life based further upon a highly developed, well-understood, and rigidly adhered-to "code of ethics." Without adherence to an ethical code and without a liberal as well as a specific educational experience, there is no profession—W. Clarke Wescoe
Letters
in Honorable Exchange
I am grateful to the author of a recent letter (May 4) in the UDK who enthusiastically supports—in rhyme, no less—my reading of some "New Poets" during the Poetry Hour. I would like to thank him for his kind words, and also to correct (as invited) one particular quotation in the Kansan report to which the writer has objected. (Apparently he was not present at the reading.)
All that I recall saying then was that W. D. Snodgrass, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, has had an uneasy relationship with Academia—a fact fairly well known, and which is the subject-matter of his very engaging poem, "April Inventory," which I read. Whether this uneasiness is generally true of the relationship of the poet to the teaching profession is, I should think, very much a matter of the individual, and of a particular faculty. Would that I could be more dramatic, but alas no.
One point more; I must say that the "poet-know it" writer of the letter to the UDK did come a bit sadly a cropper in rhyming my name. He can at least take heart though from the verse problems, rather similar in their way, recounted of Emmeline Grangerford in Huckleberry Finn—to whose spendid example of versification under grave pressure, I would like to refer you all.
John A. Meixner
Assistant Professor of English
***
The Powers of Ann
Who can say that Ann Landers wasn't right about the really big problem of the world being the man-wife relationship?
WHO KNOWS IF Lamumba's murder was not at the bottom the result of Madame Tshomeb making some inscrutable feminine comment on Moise's manner of tying his shoelaces, thus sending him into a state of depression which could only be dispelled by having his arch-enemy rubbed out?
Who knows if Barry Goldwater's championing of rugged individualism isn't just a reaction to wifely pressures to conform?
Of course men don't talk about these things to their constituents—some other rationale is found—but, if they could be persuaded to accept wise counseling, 'a la Landers, just think what might happen to the course of history!
WHO KNOWS whether better communication between J.F.K. and Jackie wouldn't have made him content to stay at home rather then seeking new frontiers?
All right, I'll bite. What?
Tom Moore
Exec. Sec'y., KU-Y
Short Ones
You cannot fly like an eagle with the wings of a wren. —William Henry Hudson
. . .
Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths. —Jean Baptiste Molliere
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became bweekly 1904,
trilweekly 1908, dalfy Jan. 16, 1912.
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Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except spring and summer holidays and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
John Peterson ___ Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Frankle Morgan and Dan Feeley
Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
John Massa Business Manager