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University Daily Kansan Tuesday. Feb. 7,1961
By Blackbeard's Beard!
The recent hi-jacking of the Portuguese luxury liner Santa Maria probably has caused Blackbeard and Long John Silver to turn over in their graves. As an act of piracy on the high seas, the whole affair was a total flop.
In the first place, the Santa Maria was captured by infiltration instead of through a running sea battle. The ship's officer who was killed was shot, not keelhauled. None of the passengers were asked to walk the plank. Most important of all, Capt. Galvao apparently did not know what to do with his prize once it was taken.
BY PROCESS OF ELIMINATION, GALvao's action probably was meant to be and was interpreted to be a rallying point for those who oppose Portugal's dictator, Antonio Oliveira Salazar.
If this is true, then the goal was buried by the means of achieving it. If Galvao wanted to show the world that opposition to Premier Salazar does exist, he showed the world that this opposition operates in a haphazard fashion. For two weeks the Santa Maria incident commanded front page headlines. Everyone wanted
to know where the ship was going and what would be the fate of its passengers. Somewhere along the line, people forgot to question Galvao's motives. Then the leader himself became so engrossed in the affair that he forgot to tell the world just what he was trying to do.
LOOKING AT THE INCIDENT AS A whole sheds light on a more important issue. The very fact that the group opposing the Portuguese dictator is organized at least enough to attempt hi-jacking a large ocean liner is evidence that all is not well in Portugal. In these days when the fate of Europe seems to be identified with the economic boom of Germany, the Santa Maria incident serves to remind Americans that Europe is composed of many countries. Germany is one of these. Portugal is another.
Dan Felger
More Highway Safety
If a lesson can be learned from the Santa Maria incident, it is the fact that the theory of piracy should be applied only to the acquisition of booty. It is human nature to be more interested in the fate of a ship with 600 passengers aboard than in the existence of any political scheme. Capt. Galvao probably realizes this now.
Kansas is one of 22 states which find out about unsafe automobile drivers through a system of points scored to each driver's "account." This account contains information about all offenses in which the individual's license was revoked. The account is also credited with a certain number of points after the licensee is involved in a traffic accident or violates a traffic law.
This law is not only insufficient, but it is near ineffective. There is no legal provision for the use of such records. Although the Kansas General Statutes indicate that such records shall be available for consideration by the Kansas Highway Commission when the individual's license is up for renewal; the statutes do not make it imperative that the records be consulted before the renewal is granted. There is no specified number of points which, when accrued, constitute grounds for a mandatory revocation of the operator's license.
Probably 25 million American motorists have not had an official driving test because their licenses were issued before these states required tests. South Dakota, for example, did not require driver's tests until 1954. Many people with failing eyesight and other physical or mental defects are on the streets and highways.
Operators' licenses in Kansas are automatically revoked for negligent homicide, driving while intoxicated, failure to stop to render aid if there is an injury or death resulting from a
nearby auto accident, and for conviction on three charges of reckless driving or of speeding more than 10 miles per hour over the speed limit; provided the mandatory revocation for speeding or reckless driving occurs within one year.
The renewal process in Kansas and in 30 other states is to fill out an application and pay a fee. No examination is required. Under this system, even blind persons can renew their licenses. In fact, several cases have been discovered in which someone else renewed the license of a dead person.
While 18 states claim some kind of renewal tests, many of these tests are weak. Only California and North Carolina provide adequate renewal tests. The renewal tests in North Carolina are given every four years. That state's accident rate is now at an all-time low. About 13 per cent of all renewal applicants fail the test every year.
- Lynn Cheatum
Kansas' point system of recording traffic accidents and violations is a good thing, aside from the lack of provision for its use. But Kansas could have an accident rate as low as that of North Carolina if a periodic renewal test was required of all drivers. Aside from the relatively inconsequential fee, a driver's license is practically a natural right of anyone over 16. It should be a privilege, not a right.
Editor:
In the security of the outside world (off campus K. C. Kan.) I was lucky enough to obtain a copy of the UDK in which the letters from B. L. Redding Sr. and Mike McCarthy appear. As an alumnus of K.U. I have a working knowledge of the integration attempts by various groups both on and off campus. I am also familiar with the full range of people from the staunch segregationists to the faint-hearted pseudo-liberals who can very easily talk out of both sides of their mouth at the same time. In truth I have more respect for the former.
I CAN VERY EASILY DISPense with Mr. McCarthy's arguments in that he failed to link a cause and effect relationship to the events he has cited. He takes a truly southern viewpoint (e.g. leave us alone and we'll do it by ourselves). But where he falls down is that left alone, the vicious cycle sets in. That is, with no one to inform you of the existence of a problem would you do anything about it? How often have I heard the statement expressed, "we have no integration problem here"? I would venture the opinion that were it not for the "sit-in" in 1948, the action against the "gentleman's agreement" in athletics
... Letters ...
and the most recent sit-in, the area (on and off campus) would still have its head in sand about the existence to the problem, much less have made the significant strides which it has made.
You see, Mr. McCarthy, the vicious cycle has been broken and by the method you suggested.
"The end is inevitable but a natural, gradual process will be the vehicle of change". For the believers in human dignity for all, peaceful agitation is as natural and gradual a process as the maturation of the seed or the enlightenment of a student. Cause and effect, man . . . . . cause and effect!
MR. REDDING SR. ON THE other hand belongs in that morbid category of misguided liberals who do not really believe in human dignity for all, but thinks he ought to. His poor attempt at the Socratic method (I counted seventeen question marks in two columns) in chastising the UDK for its alleged yellow journalism is only superseded by his ignorance of the intent and goals of the sit-in demonstrators. No, Mr. Redding Sr., they are not interested in "encouraging greater social intercourse on the Hill", nor do they encourage "more dating in a non-discriminate manner"
(how crude) or even "more interracial marriages."
THE AIM OF THE SIT-IN demonstrations is to allow you (yes, even you Mr. Redding Sr.) to be more discriminating than you already are. You have the right to get up from a tavern and leave if you don't like the fellow sitting next to you. The Negro is denied that basic right by preventing him entrance at all. The aim of the sit-in demonstrations is far more noble and healthy than your fears of creeping yellow journalism.
They are only interested in getting a fair shake for a group of human beings. There are many Negroes that I would not want to drink beer with, go swimming with, or even on a date with, but there are far more whites that I feel the same way about. Far more only because I know far more whites.
In closing, I would like to congratulate Michael Landwehr. Tom Heitz and all the other students involved in the sit-ins and encourage them to continue in their efforts.
Someone from the secure outside world.
Don Kissil
K.C., Kan., graduate student
"But I wanna play pirate!"
From the Magazine Rack
Genesis Revamped
In the beginning there was MAN, a rational, thinking, laughing, featherless, sex-driven, passionate creature, who decided he was lonely. And man said: "Let there be light." And there was light: fluorescent bulbs and incandescent bulbs, neon signs and luminescent panelling, sun lamps and mercury vapor lamps. General Electric and Westinghouse, all blinking on and off. And MAN used this light to eliminate the darkness. And the day was night and the night was day. And all was light. (At the touch of a switch.) And MAN saw the light and said he could see.
AND MAN SAID: "LET THERE BE LIGHTS TO RULE THE East and lights to rule the West." And MAN made Connecticut Power and Light to rule New England and Con Edison to rule New York. And to each state he assigned its appropriate light. And the rest of the world burned matches. And MAN divided the greater lights from the lesser lights, and he divided East from West.
And MAN said: "Let there be heaven and earth." And MAN used fertilizer and chemicals to increase the output of his farms; he used dredges to reclaim the swamps and urban renewal projects to rebuild the cities. He used barometers and thermometers and cloud seeding devices to predict and control the weather. And he sent rockets into space to follow the paths of his telescopes and circle the sun. And MAN saw the earth and longed for the heavens.
THEN MAN SAID: "LET THERE BE LIFE." AND HE DISSECTED frogs and injected rats with hypodermic needles and locked mice in Skinner boxes. He saw the amoeba and protozoa and broke into the living cell. He analyzed guinea pigs and even analyzed himself. He invented the world of Id and inhabited it with egos, with psychoses, Oedipus complexes, sibling rivalries, and paranoic schizophrenia. And MAN said: "Here is life."
And then MAN said: "Let there be God." But he couldn't decide what type of god he should have, so he first made him with a cat's head, or a horse's body, or in the shape of the sun. But these didn't satisfy MAN, and so he made God in his own image. He gave him a long white beard and told him he was infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, perfect, incomprehensible, and on my side. He told him that he was so much on my side that he died for me, so what I do is naturally right. And MAN made God and set him on a pedestal and went back to his work and blew himself up.
And in the end there was God.
(From Motive Magazine, Jan. 1961)
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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