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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, March 28. 1961
Don't Get Out the Vote
Tradition, everyone realizes, is an all-powerful force. The command of tradition, along with the demand of necessity, sets up campus elections each spring at KU. Tradition decrees that the leaders of one particular dormitory or one Greek house will attempt to persuade the members of that living group to vote a certain slate, pointing out the advantages to be gained from the election of that slate. Finally, tradition binds leaders of both parties and the press to make the time-worn statement, "Let's get out the vote" as election draws near. But wait one minute...
LET'S NOT GET OUT THE VOTE.
That's right. Let's not get out the vote—if the election issues and respective party platforms are not understood in the first place. This year, as has usually been the case, two students are running for the office of student body president. Two students are running for the office of student body vice president. A host of students are running for seats on the All Student Council. Still more students are running for twelve class offices. They all, however, share one thing in common.
They do not desire to gain office, or fail to
gain office, thanks to a ballot cast by uninformed students.
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ELECTION AT KU. The last year has brought many problems to the Mount Oread locale, some of them undreamed of ten, five, or even two years ago. How should the civil rights problem be resolved? How should the University move toward greater national and, perhaps, international student representation? This year's office seekers are ready and able to cope with problems they will have to face. The student who steps into the voting booth in Strong Hall today and tomorrow and sees only names that he was convinced he should see is doing the candidates no favor. Much time and effort and thought has gone into their campaigns. To mark an "X" with a pencil directed by someone else is to do the candidate an injustice. By the same token, to mark an "X" indiscriminately through ignorance is just as bad.
SO THERE IT IS, PLAIN AND SIMPLE. Let's not get out the vote, if the choice is someone else' or one of ignorance. And, let's not dish out the criticism if we don't get out the vote.
Dan Felger
That Jackie-Look
A new look in women's hairstyling that has been sweeping the country finally has made its appearance on Mount Oread. It is, of course, the Jackie-look, and its presence in these parts is about as welcome as Quantrill's was a century ago.
NOW THIS IS NOT TO SAY THAT THE First Lady's hairstyle is not attractive — on her. Mrs. Kennedy is easily the most beautiful lady ever to grace the White House, and Uncle Sam — er, uh, Jack — is a fortunate as well as fine President. But while the Jackie-look is devastating on her, it doesn't do much for other women, especially those at KU. In hairstyling, the Jackie-look resembles one of those early, early morning styles. A KU coed might achieve the same effect by walking around in these Kansas spring winds all day without a scarf. Yet she wears a scarf. And now she's beginning to go in for the wind-tossed, or early morning, or both,
Jackie-look. The whole thing just doesn't make sense.
What's more, the fact that the Jackie-look is becoming popular with KU women is a crying shame. They have always been the prettiest in the nation. Now we'll have to find some other thing to brag about. And what's going to happen if the Jackie-look spreads into other parts of Kansas?
CHANCES ARE, THE MEN OF KANSAS will feel the same way KU men do . . . and that's where Kansas Democrats are going to run into trouble. They will have to find some way to restrict the Jackie-look to the other 49 states without offending both the President and his lady. If this cannot be done, probably Kansas is not going to break custom in the next election either by voting for the Democratic ticket.
... Books in Review ...
Dan Felger
By Calder M. Pickett
Associate Professor of Journalism
McTEAGUE, by Frank Norris. Premier (Fawcett), 50 cents.
This grim and ugly story is without question a landmark in American naturalism. It has enough force and magnetism to pull the reader through its dark pages to the savage climax in the middle of Death Valley.
"McTeague" has attained significance as the inspiration for Erich von Stroheim's silent picture classic, "Greed." "Greed," in fact, would be a good title, though the novel involves more than that.
IT IS THE STORY of a crude and brutal dentist in San Francisco, whose only passions, until he meets Trina, are his canary, his concertina, a gluttonous meal on Sunday, and the steam beer he loves to drink. Trina injects an element of beauty into his life, but she herself has hardly risen above the low level of her own background and her own mentality. It is her grasping ways and her possession of $5,000—even while she and McTeague are on the verge of starvation — that drives him to beat her brutally and eventually murder her.
Norris envisions his people as beasts of the jungle. They are as pulled by Darwinian forces as the team dogs of Jack London's novels. There is nothing lovely about these lives. Only Miss Baker and Old Grannis, the lovelorn oldsters who sit in their lonely rooms and conduct their affair by remote control, are not dominated by the basest of passions.
MONEY AND GOLD are the obsessions of most of the people in McTeague. Kerkow is driven by a passion for gold, and he becomes infatuated with the wild story of the Mexican girl Maria, who babbles on and on about the gold plates and gobllets of her past. These two die because of money.
Marcus, who hates McTeague because McTeague married Trina and her $5,000, dies on the desert because of money. And McTeague, his saddlebag full of gold, stands stupidly in the burning sun, looking at Marcus's body, knowing that all the water in the canteen is spilled in the sand and that death must be near.
Dear Editor.
. . . Letters . . .
I merely wish to state that I did not spend six hours one evening designing and painting a poster in support of the University Party to have its reproduction torn from the bulletin board in Joseph R. Pearson Hall by persons unidentified. To me, this is little more than common vandalism.
Robert B. L.
Bayonne, N. J., freshman
Robert B. Sklar
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
trilweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
UNIVERSITY DAILY 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 Bureau. N. Y. News service: United Press International. Mall subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and holidays and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
John Peterson ... Managing Editor
Bill Blundell, Carrie Edwards, Lynn
Cheatum and Ralph Wilson, Assistant
Managing Editors; Tom Turner, City
Editor; Bill Sheldon, Sports Editor;
Sue Thieman, Society Editor.
EDITORIAL BOOK
Frank Morgan and
Dan Felger ... Co-Editorial Editors
Frank Morgan and Co-Editorial Editors
Dan Kline
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
John Massa...Business Manager
F, Mike Harn, Advertising Manager;
Tom L. Brown, Circulation Manager;
Richard Horn, Classified Advertising Manager;
Marlin Zimmerman,
Motion Manager; Marlin Zimmerman,
National Advertising Manager.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
"FORGET ABOUT WHAT I WANT YOU TO TEACH—CAN YOU DRIVE A BUS? TEACH SUNDAY SCHOOL? MAKE MINOR REPAIRS-?"
Sound and Fury
John Birch Society
By Bruce Beard Overland Park junior
The John Birch Society has been a confused topic in the last week. Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Reed earnestly support it while actually knowing little about it except what they have heard. Mr. McMullan answers in incoherent form, sputtering wildly about "Americanism" and "Democracy" and that anti-communism is wrong until we ourselves are "without sin." He would rather "march down Jayhawk Boulevard and sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic." Both sides are foolish; one controlled by fear, the other by complacency.
What are the facts? Are the Birches conservatives or coattailers along for the ride? Are they champions of freedom or perverters of democracy? Let's look at the Blue Book.
ROBERT WELCH FOUNDED the society in December of 1958. It is anti-communist, believes in "less government and more responsibility," believes that America is 40-60 per cent communist controlled, and that most liberals are either communist controlled or are dupes of communism. It believes communism is not an ideology, but a gangster run conspiracy to engulf the world, and that this is two-thirds completed.
Implicit, is a belief in Robert Welch. He believes other anticommunist groups fail because they lack dynamic leadership, thus turning into "debating societies." He demands the unquestioning loyalty of all members in the interest of effective action, justified because it is a voluntary organization, which may be left freely.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH this? Quite a bit. Welch's imaginative, even valid picture of communist influence and control, generates fear in members causing them to run blindly to switch their allegiance from principle to a man. A man who, without giving facts, talks of "Walter Reuther's stooge, Jack Kennedy," and of Eisenhower's "treason." Earl Warren may or may not deserve impeachment, but Welch is in favor of it, without explaining why, or what material evidence he has of Warren's—what? Welch doesn't say. Does he object to Warren's flagrant unconstitutionalism? Or does he think Warren is a communist? Smear? Yes!
Welch praises "less government and more responsibility." An admirable principle! But at the same time he runs a totalitarian society with himself as its absolute chief. Individual members are responsible truly, but to Welch, not to themselves. To Welch, this is an expedient measure, which the ends will justify. But I say means are just as important as ends, and that Welch supposedly recognizes this but sacrifices it for "expediency." If he can sacrifice one principle, can he sacrifice another? Obviously he can, and will. I say that Robert Welch is therefore a scourge to all true conservatives, and that his brand of anti-communism is to be regarded with suspicion.
THIS IS NOT TO say anti-communism is bad. On the contrary, it is essential if we are to save freedom and Americanism. We cannot have a co-existent peace with those who conspire daily for our conquest. Let us have our goals clearly in mind—is it "peace" we want (peace today, slavery tomorrow), or do we want freedom and liberty for the individual and society?