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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, March 14, 1961
Not Worth It
The KU-MU controversy, brought to a head by last Saturday's brawl, now centers on the relationship between the two schools. There is a possibility that all connections between the two will be severed for an indefinite period.
Perhaps this should be. The hostile feelings present at every encounter are something far beyond what was intended to be a part of intercollegiate athletics. What was once considered healthy competition and grounds for spirited loyalty has now become nothing more than a date for interschool bloodletting.
KU HAS PLAYED ITS PART AND HAS contributed its share to the hostilities but not to the degree that the University of Missouri has in the recent past. The disgraceful conduct of students at Columbia has never had a counterpart at Lawrence, despite the Kansas City Star's report of a game here.
It is unbelievable that a rivalry could warrant or engender what has happened this year alone: gang-beatings of individual athletes on the court, attacks on band members, spitting on officials and players, littering the playing floor with refuse, and unnecessary vocal harassment.
THESE ARE NOT THE ACTIONS OF rabid partisans; they are the vehement frothings of animals. Something has been lost somewhere whether it is decency, maturity or the basic standards of sportsmanship doesn't matter—it has been forgotten. And without it, there is no reason to continue the relationship.
The series has been a long and honorable one. Nothing has meant more to either school than to beat the other no matter what the sport or the ranking of each. Great moments and great stories have come out of the rivalry. It would be a shame to end it. But nothing will be gained from further clashes that could compensate for the abuse that the University and its athletes inevitably will receive.
A COOLING-OFF PERIOD IS NEEDED. Perhaps it won't be necessary to end relations permanently but a two or three year break would relieve the tension somewhat. It is not hard for one to imagine what next fall's homecoming game at Lawrence will be like if something isn't done now.
KU doesn't have that much to gain by meeting Missouri in any kind of competition. It's not worth the trouble.
— Frank Morgan
Let's Blow Our Horn
Let's do a little horn-tooting here for a moment—KU's horn-tooting.
It's all too rare that anyone really starts spouting off about how good this University is. Most everyone is too wrapped up in various sections of university life to look at the whole ball of wax. But eight thousand bodies and minds milling around through classrooms, libraries and buildings do present some sort of total picture that is measurable. And that picture measures bigger every day.
FOR INSTANCE, YOU ARE CONSTANTLY reading about more grants, loans, fellowships, honors and awards coming in to Oread. We have some highly qualified and distinguished people teaching here and more coming each year. As a jumping off place for teachers and administrators, KU's record has to be unsurpassed. (Right. UCLA, USC, Chicago and Cornell?) Industry thinks enough of us to endow a multitude of research projects and experiments. The NCAA certainly recognizes our athletic ability. And the
brainpower of the institution gives us the best reason for tooting our horn.
Of the hundreds of publicly supported colleges and universities across this nation, KU is the only one to have Rhodes Scholarships awarded its students for three years in a row.
And this year the University has been awarded more Woodrow Wilson Fellowships than any other publicly-supported school.
THIS IS AMAZING. THE AWARDS WERE given to 1,333 out of 10,453 nominees from most every school, large and small, in the nation, and KU had more than schools such as California, Illinois, Wisconsin, UCLA, Penn State, Maryland, and Minnesota. These schools have twice the enrollment that KU has.
Amazing.
This horn-tooting is a little unnecessary in view of the record. It speaks much louder than any noise we could make from here. Just let the academic varsity keep playing.
Frank Morgan
By Richard Byrum UDK Music Critic
Last night, in Hoch Auditorium, an enthusiastic audience enjoyed a program performed with a vocal flexibility of which few singers are able to boast.
ROBERTA PETERS, leading coloratura soprano of the Metropolitan Opera, sang with instrument-like precision in a program designed to highlight just such a talent.
The fluidity of the vocal music of Bach, Handel, Bellini and Donizetti, and the difficult voice leading with tricky intervals characteristic of the modern French and English composers, could only appear on the same program as part of a plan to demonstrate a facility for immaculate vocal artistry.
TO FUNTHER ADD to our suspicion of her design, Miss Peters brought a fistuit who assisted in many of the numbers. This opened
Daily Transan
The songs and arias that Miss Peters chose to perform were in extremely good taste. They included some of the greatest, yet seldom-heard works in the vocal repertory.
the way for many delicate trills and echoing of note patterns the love of which has become an accepted mannerism of any respect-worthy coloratura.
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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 DEPARTMENT
Frank Morgan and Dan Felger ... Co-Editorial Editors
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
IN HER MUSICAL interpretation, Miss Peters has a decided edge on most singers. She has the rare ability to sing in a completely free style of voice production which allows her to easily move about within her extensive range. Thus she is never plagued with the fear of not being able to execute any given phrase. She may relax and concentrate upon extracting the fullest meaning out of each particular work.
Massa ... Business Manager
THE DEGREE OF greatness of Miss Peters is difficult to ascertain. She is very accurate technically and her interpretation is always complimentary to the style. She is at her best in the works of a lighter vein. When she must color her voice to achieve a serious character, her high notes are not full and well polished. Because of this one cannot help but feel that any excitement that she arouses tends to be more in awe of her faultless vocal technique rather than in her dramatic expression.
All right, now let's have the other one.
Our Restless Scholars
From the Magazine Rack
Since 1932 the university has razed its walls and ceased to be a cloister for thought and instruction. The first Roosevelt Administration brought the academic man into the government. He passed from it into business and has ever since remained a public servant and a public figure. . . .
AN INCREASING number of academic men now owe their allegiance and find their reward outside the university. The university is less and less able to command the time and attention of these "outstanding" men, and their fellows naturally come to look upon the old obligations as provincial and out of date. When it is not the great world that steals away loyalty, it is the grant money lodged within the institution itself that creates a separate little government growing each year in silent competition with the main concern. We can best see the breakup of the corporate unity in the natural sciences; we can measure it by the millions of dollars pouring in through the breaches made in the institutional fabrics, large and small. The large are flooded by government money, the small which lack equipment, are compensated for this disability by the private foundations. (Excerpted from "Our Universities: Unguided Missiles." Think, November 1960, by Jacques Barzun.)
The effect of this worldliness upon the scholar's former retreat, the university, has been that of an earthquake. In the first place, the man of knowledge no longer belongs to the university; he belongs to any outside claimant for his attention. Industry, trade unions, philanthropic foundations, private and public "programs" of all sorts, governments—city and state, federal and foreign—all whistle and bid for his spare time. He is so flattered, and the requests are often so consequential, that his schedule first overflows, then capsizes, the bulk of his time going to public duty (or its counterpart within the profession) and his spare time to the university.
WHEN TO THESE solicitations are added the innumerable opportunities for research projects, traveling fellowships and subsidized retreading at institutes and centers, the restlessness and dissatisfaction of the stay-at-home are understandable. He is a wallflower. His one hope is that this artificial manpower shortage will cause another institution to offer him one of the new posts, the fashionable sinecures, which permit a scholar or scientist to teach or not, as he pleases; to take a term off at frequent intervals; and to draw freely on funds for help in research. To be sure, only a few dozen among the thousands of scholars in universities finds such opportunities in their morning mail. But enough do so to instill a new ambition in the rest, including the young. For the new mood of rights for the underdog means that one no longer needs a reputation to qualify for paid leaves and research grants. All the ranks are therefore moved by the same unrest. The search for prestige displaces the former passion for teaching and puts an end to what, looking back on it, we might call "stationary scholarship."...
The challenge to our liberties comes frequently not from those who consciously seek to destroy our system of government, but from men of goodwill—good men who allow their proper concerns to blind them to the fact that what they propose to accomplish involves an impairment of liberty...
The motives of these men are often commendable. What we must remember, however, is that preservation of liberties does not depend on motives. A suppression of liberty has the same effect whether the suppressor be a reformer or an outlaw...Justice William O. Douglas