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University Daily Kansan
Friday. May 5, 1961
College Professionals
All our life we have been told that athletic participation builds good character. Everywhere we turn we see the athlete held up as an example to be emulated for he is the leader of men.
YET WE NEVER HAVE TO LOOK VERY far to find refutations of these glowing words. Ten years ago, there was the University's "fabulous five" and the startling revelation that members of the nation's best basketball team had been guilty of accepting bribes to shave points so that New York gamblers could fatten themselves on bets made on games that should have been won by greater margins.
This year several college basketball players, including the captain of the Southeastern Conference champions, have been involved in the same thing—point shaving.
Perhaps the heart of the problem lies in the fact that athletics are overemphasized in America's colleges and universities. College athletics have moved far from their original aims—physical fitness and recreation—and have been replaced with a form of professionalism differing from that of the professional sports only in degree. There is certainly no difference in motivation.
COLLEGE ATHLETICS HAVE BEEN tainted with the ideals—or lack of ideals—of professionalism. The cardinal sin of college athletics is losing, and high-powered recruiting programs and big-spending athletic associations have sprung up to avert the stigma of defeat.
It has become the practice in college athletics to do anything to build winning teams while avoiding the only stigma comparable to losing—getting caught.
point shaving instances spring up. An athlete in the employ of a university athletic association has little more compunction to turn down a better offer from a gambler than a plumber has to turn down a higher-priced job.
It is from this attitude of professionalism, perhaps, that such scandals as the basketball
It is this attitude that must be stamped out if college athletics are ever to be returned to the proper perspective and such events so detrimental to the ideals of higher education prevented. Many in the sports world realize the problem, but we doubt if all those closely affiliated with athletic conferences and their members do.
AFTER STATING THAT THERE IS MORE honesty in athletics than he could remember in 20 years, newly selected Big 10 Commissioner William R. Reed said last week. "Intercollegiate sports exist within the framework of educational institutions and therefore justify themselves in my eyes only so long as they support the integrity, dignity, and purposes of higher education.
Reed stated the very reason why the University of Chicago, while striving for educational recognition and high professional dignity, chose to resist the tide of professional college athletics and do away with its intercollegiate sports program.
He also pointed out very clearly why college athletics may be forced out of existence. There are many who would prefer to see athletic professionalism removed from the campus and relegated to the citys' athletic arenas where it belongs.
If sports are not cleaned up, that is just where they will end up.
— Kentucky Kernel
University of Kentucky
Editor:
Mr. Blundell's editorial on the Eichmann case repeated accurately several pressing questions which had been raised previously by the nation's metropolitan press. It is with the original material in the editorial that I must take issue.
FIRST, THERE is no Jewish race, nor has there ever been one. Judaima is a religion, as is my Unitarianism, General Eisenhower's Presbyterianism, and Mr. Kennedy's Catholicism. Ten minutes' reading in any standard anthropology text will attest to the validity of this statement.
Second, the World Court (i.e. the International Court of Justice) could not try Colonel Eichmann, as Mr. Blundell suggests it do, because its jurisdiction extends not to individuals but only to nations.
SINCE THE RACIAL myth and the World Court suggestion were the only original contributions to Mr. Blundell's editorial, and since they are both incorrect, may I suggest that the UDK investigate more carefully in the future before placing itself and the University of Kansas in a position inviting question both of their motives and of their scholarship.
Ernest Z. Adelman
... Letters ...
Ernest L. Adelman
Kansas City, Mo., senior
(Editor's Note: First, it is well known
to this editor that the World Court has no jurisdiction in cases of an individual v. a state; but if Mr. Adelman took his nose out of that anthropology text long enough, he might realize that the Eichmann case has no exact precedent. Referential evidence was reportedorial, in that many have argued that the Court, through a special extension of its powers, could try the case. This is admittedly faretched, but a more discerning reader than Mr. Adelman may have noted that the argument is not premised that of many elements of the public—and was clearly labeled as such.
Second, Mr. Adelman has obviously been exposed to anthropology IA; but his lack of insight into both the thinker and the actress, because of the Eichmann trial betrays elemental historical background. As ten minutes reading in "Mein Kampf" will tell anyone who takes the trouble, the emperor being not the certifiable termination by Eichmann was undertaken to destroy not the Jewish religion, but all bearers of the germ plasm who practiced religion. The impotent being is not the certain and truly irrelevant person who cannot not a racial character but a religious belief, but rather the fact that Hitler considered the Jews a race, and persecuted them as such. He was concerned with the destruction of the specific creed of Judaism. In this sense—and we fail to see how it can be put another way—Hitler's henchman, Eichmann, is being crimes were perpetrated against a lignion and not a people is ridiculous.
May I suggest that Mr. Adelman look a more deeply into matters that concern him, to give his position inviting questions not of his own but of the ones he undoubtedly the best, but of hisSELF.
Bill Blundell)
Editor:
Don't Knock It
It's getting so I can't stand to read the UDK, as you so lovingly call your daily paper. Wednesday's paper is a case in point.
Why did you print that picture of a new Fraser? Don't you know that by publishing the fact that Fraser will have to be torn down you excite alumni into pestering the administration, which has enough trouble on its hands. Wait until the walls are on the way down.
AS FOR THAT SOB story about the sorority girls . . . Again you insist on knocking one of the great American traditions. So some girls can't get in. Not everybody can get straight A's either. Cut out the tear jerkers and get back to basic coverage, like what is going on in the Union these days. I understand there are a lot of conferences and meetings there.
AND THAT EDITORIAL about Ann Landers. Here a charming young woman who was our visitor. She serves a purpose. We can't all the time be worrying about Laos, Cuba, the Peace Corps (Kennedy's Kiddie Corps, I should say). If you can't boost, don't knock.
James W. Wrightson Emporia freshman
English Rural Theatre
Perennial Pantomime
By L. C. Agnew
Associate Professor of Medical History
What glorious months February and March are for the British provincial theatregoer! For these are the months that the pantomimes, those sturdiest of British theatrical flowers, wither, and the regular plays blossom again. Now don't misunderstand me—chances are our theatregoer really likes to see a good pantomime but with perhaps only a couple of theatres in his town and both of 'em showing pantomimes, the poor fellow's had it, theatrically speaking, for three months each year. And those months—December, January and February—are such good theatregoing ones too. In London, things aren't so chronic; most of the regular shows are still running and only a few pantomimes are around. But in the provinces . . . Still, and such is the magic of pantomime, our provincial type would be the last to do more than mutter sweet nothings in his beard. For everyone, but everyone, goes to the local pantomime, and this takes time, and there is not a thing our boy can do about it, or would do about it.
WHAT IS THIS PANTOMIME? AND WHAT IS THE SECRET of its hold over our British cousins? One can answer the first question, but the second one is a stinker and perhaps all one can say here is that it's traditional, and leave it at that. Pantomime, like so many things in England, has a past—more than two hundred years of it in England alone, to say nothing of its fifteenth-century Italian origin in the "Commedia dell'Arte" in which such familiar characters as Harlequin, Clown and Pantaloon first appeared. Harlequin and Co. hit England in the early part of the eighteenth century, and from their simple cavortings the modern pantomime evolved. In those early pantomimes there was the Harlequinade—a Mack Sennetty sort of an affair with Clown stealing strings of sausages, and aided and abetted in senile fashion by that lovable old fool Pantalon, while Harlequin and Columbine danced gracefully around. Oh, and there was a chase—a magnificent affair, with policemen, Clown, and Pantaloon all over the place. But the Harlequinade, alas, is no more.
MODERN PANTOMIME IS A SORT OF MUSICAL, LIGHTLY based on a fairy story—Puss in Boots, Cinderella, Aladdin, Mother Goose, Jack and the Beanstalk—or maybe on a tale based on fact, like Robinson Crusoe or Dick Whittington and His Cat. Forget about the name, pantomime—and don't think about Marcel Marceau—modern pantomime is not only visible, it's quite definitely audible as well. Anything goes—space ships in the middle of Cinderella, or submarines in Red Riding Hood. The hero—the Principal Boy—is traditionall played by a girl, and although the heroine—the Principal Girl—is also played by a girl, elderly hatchet-faced ladies such as the ugly sisters in Cinderella are usually played by male comics (the shades of Clown!). The songs and dances are usually quite modern, but the connecting dialogue is usually spoken in rhymed couplets. A famous couplet in a production of Dick Whittington went:
As for you, you idle apprentice,
You really make me feel non compos mentis!
Pantomime is a full time business in Britain, and when one show finishes, next year's is already in the works. Pantomime stars are highly paid; indeed they are often top vaudeville performers when not up to their eyes in a pantomime stint. But some are content to do a three month stand, and expend not a single calorie more professionally for the rest of the year. This might possibly explain why some of the top people have been on the go in pantomime for almost indecently long periods. Miss Dorothy Ward, for example, who, as the "London Times" recorded recently, "has played Principal Boy every Christmas for almost as long as anyone can remember." She must be at least—oh, of course she is and everyone knows it, but again, as "The Times" puts it, "as long as Dorothy Ward plays Principal Boy, pantomime will retain a little of its absurd glory, and Christmas will be all the merrier."
THERE'S USUALLY A FAIRY QUEEN SOMEWHERE around, and if there is there's usually a bad type not far away so that we can have the old good versus evil tug of war. Fairy queens always enter from the right of the stage, and the bad types from the left. Fairy queens have a field day in Cinderella—their big moment being the so-called transformation scene when the pumpkin plus mice is turned, thanks to the sweat of an ulcer-ridden stage crew, into a golden carriage plus horses and footmen.
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, trieweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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