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Wednesday, October 31, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Impeachment Mania
Polls indicate that 42 per cent of the American people favor the impeachment or resignation of President Nixon. The usual approach in speeches given before any of the strata of society has become a censure of Nixon and a criticism of his policies.
Thus, both Democratic and Republican members of Congress clamor for impeachment proceedings while George Meany reads to his labor organization the AFL-CIO demand its resignation students on the reservation of the University of Kansas and other universities sign petitions advocating the ever-popular impeachment of Nixon.
At last Nixon appears to have achieved one of his campaign slogans: Bring us together. In what other than Nixon has the U.S. been using medicals, hard hats and political conservatives and liberals find a common cause?
That cause, however, as yet has no justification.
The polls usually ask only whether Nixon should be impeached—not on what grounds—and the American people, answering, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"," have taken on the appearance of a lynch mob bent on hanging the only man they can find to blame for all the possible troubles of the country and the world.
Any judgment, whether by a housewife shopping at Crown Center or by Carl Albert, Speaker of the House, concerning the impeachment of the President must be based on a rational analysis of information about the actions, decisions, emotional response that makes the economic and social problems of the country Nixon's worst crime.
If Nixon is guilty of a felony, he should be impeached and proved guilty. But if he is guilty only of the crime of being a president who lacks the charisma the American people demand or, even more heinous, who lacks rapport with Congress, Nixon should not be set upon by the non-thinking masses in search of a scapegoat.
—Carol Gwinn
Campus Observers
A new batch of observers have descended on campus to tell the world what students are up to these days. The observations that appeared in a recent Kansas City Star Forum section represented a typical analysis.
According to this report, "the campuses are peopled with clean-cut kids, studying hard and looking for jobs." The present success of the college was distinguished from the "flamboyance of the last decade."
Hair is shorter, clothing is dressier, and beer baskets, business careers and grades are the primary concerns on campus, according to the report. Across the bottom of the article were photographs taken by the KCU students when the figures appeared as poised and pacific as models in a Montgomery Ward catalog.
All this must be delightful to the troubled citizens who were so alarmed by past campus disruption and to college administrators who are trying to woo money from the troubled citizens. The report supports the theory that, during the campus disorders, only two per cent of the students were written American test were good Americans after all. The more moderate would say to each other, "Oh, the kids are kind of weird sometimes but they are basically as sound as you and me."
Observers come to the campus with the attitude that universities are closed off places that provide a controlled experiment for society to study. This partially accounts for the over-simplification that the campuses were so apathetic in the '50s, so frivolous and wild in the '60s and so mellow at the start of the '70s.
But the altered image of the college campus is mostly due to changes in society rather than changes on campus.
The Star report said that campus drug use had diminished. Yet, at another point, the report asserted, "Marijuana is simply a fact of life at most schools. It's there, people use it, and that's that." If this statement was true, it would have caused unbridled furor among the citizenry. Now it is presented as a fact of life that must be accepted by the public.
The idea that hair is shorter and clothing dressier on campus is an absurd notion at least at KU. Long hair and more casual styles have
infiltrated the whole society and therefore the extremes on campus are no longer extreme. People aren't as shocked by long hair and clawed fingers, but they simply become more socially acceptable and less conspicuous.
Any social revolution is fated to achieve only partial success and burn itself out eventually. It was no surprise that campus unrest subsided.
Many of the direct, if sometimes trivial, issues on campus which angered students in the past have been resolved. The university has essentially abandoned the role of surrogate parent. Students have other restrictions on the lives of students have disappeared.
Minority programs abound on most campuses. Many college professors and even some administrators, who are sometimes more liberal-minded than the students, have actually led the way in efforts to recruit minorities, update teaching techniques, and change segments of the system.
One reason for fewer campus disturbances is fewer causes for complaint.
Many of the burning issues on campus are now less volatile because fewer people dabble with things like drugs and revolution for the sake of fashion. Experimentation with these potentially dangerous elements is carried on by the minority that regards the issues seriously and can handle them.
Certainly the campuses have quieted but it is not because students have come to their senses. A substantial number of students have always viewed the university as merely a launching pad for their climb up the ladder, or as one of those obstacles along the path to success and suburban living. And student interest in general now tends toward more practical concerns.
But it is unlikely that students will rush into the arms of the "real world" unaffected by the political, social, and spiritual consciousness that was so explosively awakened in the '60s. This consciousness evoked a frame of mind that examined life in terms other than just money, success, and position. It is a philosophical bent that the outsider was unable to perceive despite his attempts to analyze all you clean-cut and hard working college kids.
—Bill Gibson
The 'Americanization of America'
U.S. Encroached Upon by Sameness
By DAN MORGAN
Second of Two Parts
There are surprising parallels between the bewilderment of Communists and capitalists in these times. One thing both systems have in common is a necessity to compromise, to adjust to global demands, even against their will.
The Russians and East Europeans, forced to compromise their principles of economic self-sufficiency, have now invited in Western technology and capitalists. And we, too, have made compromises, buying Russian goods from foreign companies deluged by foreign products. At the Wrangler Department Store in Cheyenne, Wyo., ("Famous for Ranchwear Since 1943") I bought a western-style shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons—on the label "Hammer." The company buys up textile plants in the Carolinas suggests that the world is closing in on us.
SOMETHING SEEMS TO BE BEHAPPENING to our prized market economy. No country still has as many products and gadgets, but not all countries do. Our overcontrolled sales economies, we
Farmers told me that there had been a sudden shortage of baleing wire for hay, but that they didn't understand why—unless the Japanese were getting the steel. An Oklahoma rancher said that none of the wire was used to build the fence. A Wyoming rancher said the soaring price of the wire was one of the main reasons for his rising farm costs.
have not to apply, more costs so that in a real market economy, shortages just aren't supposed to happen as often as they do here. Beef this week. Paper next. Washington stores are running out of all the draining boards—not enough meat.
"A million tons of corn and a million tons of wheat committed to the Russians—that'll hold prices up," said a man in the front row. "You get a short crop in this country, then a short one in that, so they'll have to imitate our root price are going to be maintained."
There is a similar bewilderment among the old men who watch the financial tickers in little brokerage houses around the country. In the Equitable Building in Denver, the ticker is on the first floor, and men sit there kibbitzing—and worrying.
A WHITE-HAired MAN said, “If you’re on Social-Haired MAN, you have to wait a year before you get your 5 per cent cost-of-living allowance. That’s when you’ve gone up, it’s already wiped out . . .”
Where America really is changing for the homecoming traveler is back on the beaten track, along the broad Interstate highway systems into which $38 billion has been poured since I last wandered through the West in 1966.
The old transcontinental highways, U.S. 30, 40, 50 and 66, have been relegated to secondary status. The Interstates have been extended in places even obliterated them entirely in places.
Steinbeck and Kerenau captured the poetry of those old roads, chronicling their journeys down them through farm communities, shabby ethnic neighborhoods, perilous Rocky Mountain passes and hot deserts. But the poetry of intercontinental landscapes. The Interstates bypass the neighborhoods and cities that the guts of America.
THE FORMER ROUTES have given way to the feverish tempo of nationalization, a process which is making America a more standardized, uniform country. Little
diners, truck stops and handicraft stores that used to feed off the traffic have been replaced by nationwide service industry conglomerates, lending a saneness to the commercial landscape from one coast to another.
Driving into Denver along East Colfax Drive (the Old U. 40), the signs flash by: Holiday Inn, McDonalds, Autowash, Mobile Suits, Amtrak, American Airlines, Insurance, Cut-rate liquor, Gas-Oap.
I stoped at a little motel, tarnished and obsolete in appearance next to the gaudy new commercial franchise. I went to the display chewing gum and frozen ice cream, they don't take transients anymore. The clients are construction workers who pay by the hour.
Readers Respond
EAST COLFAX IS SAID to be “one of the finest fast food strips in America,” and the big conglomerates have moved in, in force. The standardization is a sign of a shrinking country—of the "Americanization of America."
The plains and mountains still seem amazingly empty, however. About 90 per cent of the country's 3.5 million square miles is only thinly settled, where it at all. In Wyoming, a motorist travels for miles through the grassland and forestland that suggests the African Transvaal here; the Swiss Alps there, the Arid, burned mountains of Anatolia somewhere else.
Yet the nationalization of the country is proceeding a probe, probing even into remote areas. The Old West still survives in the Plains Hotel in downtown Cheyenne. Railroadmen in overstuffed armchairs in the lobby, puffing cigars and trading bills of gossip. A few men still work at the hotel in the corner pocketets. Or they sit at the bar, gazing at the color pinpim girls fired onto a wall by an automatic slide projector.
For anybody who cares, the woman bartender will tell about the grand days when the Plains Hotel was the center of Chheyeen activity, alive with wedding confections and bourbon conferences. But not many travelers see the Plains Hotel nowadays. Those who pass near Chheyeen on the two big intersecting Interstates, 80 and 25, stop, if at all, at "Little America," a comfortable, modern motel complex on the outskirts of town. Today, Plains belongs mostly to the Pacific men who still board them. And to history.
(The writer returned to the United States in July after $^{\frac{1}{2}}$ years as the Washington Post's Central European correspondent. He has since traveled across the country, stopping in many places where he had stayed on a similar trip 18 years ago.)
To the Editor:
IF TAYLOR AND the events committee really cared about what the student body would do, they would never have rejected the Allman Brothers on such ridiculous grounds. By just taking a little bit of initiative and perseverance they could have scheduled both bands.
For instance, what would have been wrong with scheduling the Allman Brothers for an alternate date? Perhaps they could have come the following weekend,
The rejection of the Allman Brothers as performers here at KU is a grave injustice to the band, the University and the student body. The Allman Brothers have been given is that of merely filling a concert sheet; then we don't deserve to have them at all. The Allman Brothers are respected as one of the finest performances of today, and they deserve this recognition.
In regard to the article that appeared in the Kansas (Thursday, Oct. 25) concerning the rejection of the Allman Brothers合唱团 in a high school opinion should be taken into consideration.
The rejection of the Allman Brothers comes, frankly, as a shock. When the University of Kansas has the opportunity to contract the Allman Brothers to perform here, I can't understand why a conflicting relationship with the Miracles couldn't be found.
Allman Rejection Draws Student Ire
This isn't to say that the Miracles should be blamed for the situation, nor should their
HOWEVER, THE BLAIME should be directed to those who are responsible for this injustice—specifically towards Emily Taylor, dean of women, and the University Events Committee. Any committee more concerned with mere scheduling of concerts than with the content of the program should be replaced, or at least set straight!
Griff and the Unicorn
Shawnee Mission junior
Tom Wilbur
Salina sophomore
This action by the committee reveals to me why the quality of concerts at KU is so tremendously impressive. Lack of planning by the SUA cost the students a great concert and Mike Miller's excuse about basketball practice interfering was hilarious.
The University Events Committee obviously does not realize how much effort has gone into trying to bring the band to Kansas. One KU student, who was concerned enough to expend his own time and money to bring a good concert together, said he would be responding with the promoters even when the SIA felt there was no hope of booking a band of that caliber.
It is my hope that this rejection of the Allman Brothers won't go unchallenged. The student body has the right to protest this action since we are the ones who will attend whatever Taylor and the events committee decide to schedule. It is time for you to before the dean and the committee make any more of their irrational decisions.
The choice is ours. We must answer the question of whether we are going to allow the Allman Brothers to fall to the wayside or to be received and appreciated here at KU.
assuming that the band's own schedule would accept this type of arrangement.
Concerning the Allman Brothers concert, I agree wholeheartedly with Michael Dunham that the action that is most accomodated for students should be the route that is taken.
To the Editor:
Their reason for rejection of the concert is that the previously scheduled Miracles concert on Nov. 10 would put the two concerts back to back, caused by an attempt to one up the only illogical and unfair, but also against the interests of the students whom they supposedly represent.
Every once in a while, the decision makers at this University make a decision that defies all logic and explanation. Emily Taylor, dean of women, and the University Events committee have just done so, because of the Allman Brothers Band concert.
To the Editor:
FIRST OF ALL, the two concerts in question represent two different styles of music and thus appeal to different audiences. Most people who would go to one of the concerts wouldn't go to the other anyway. Therefore, no concerts would lose senior citizens' money due to suiter concert. In the future, we would advise Taylor and her committee to brush up on their knowledge of music before making such decisions.
Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the sponsors of the Miracles, concert, said that they did not care if the Allman Brothers concert was held the day before their concert. Therefore, it appears that the dates of the event seem to bother Taylor and her committee.
The committee's reasoning for its rejection of the Allman Brothers concert is not consistent with their policy. According to the article published in the Kansan Oct. 25, this policy seems to involve requests for University facilities rather than the effect a concert would have on other University functions (such as other concerts).
Another reason given for rejection of the Allman Brothers was that Allen Field House could not be reserved because of basketball that same afternoon. It's hard to believe that the Field House could not have been obtained for a major concert such as this.
In a recent issue of the Kansean, there was an advertisement for cellist Leonard Rose. It stated that "Each generation... produces its superstars. You will have an opportunity to see one of your superstars. If you have an opportunity, you have no one to blame but yourself."
we at KU would have had the rare opportunity to see the Allman Brothers Band, whom many people consider superstars. But thanks to Taylor and her committee we won't—and we have no one to blame but them.
SO FAR THIS YEAR there hasn't been one top-notch group at KU. The rejection of the Allman Brothers, an indication to other top groups that they are not wanted here, will make it even more difficult to get such a group.
Mark Zeligman
Topeka junior
Mike Fitzgerald
Salina junior
Since I started working in the Watson Library Fines Office, it has come to my attention that many students are sadly misinformed about fines.
Fines Clarified
To the Editor:
Yes, Virginia, there is a 'grace period.' If a book is returned by the fourth day after it is due, there is no fine; however, if a book is returned within five days, fines are charged from the date due.
If a book is lost, the library charges for the cost of the book, plus **$5** processing fee. If a book lost is out of print, the cost is a flat **$25** plus the processing fee. An out of print book costs more because it is more difficult to replace.
Overdue fines are 25 cents a day per book.
The library does not profit from the fines money collected. The money is deposited in the University General Fund.
To the Editor:
The fines office can no longer afford to mail reminder notices stating that a book is due. It is important to remember to keep traps and the date stamped in the back of each book.
The hours of the fines office are from 8:30 to 4:30, Monday through Friday. If you have questions or problems concerning fines, please come in and discuss them. But remember before you start complaining about an exorbitant fine that if books were returned on time there would be no need for fines.
Elizabeth Grant Fines Office
It was with interest, then fury and finally with total disgust that I read the recent two-part story by Nancy Harper dealing with the Committee on Grading Practices and Philosophy (Oct. 24 and 25, Kansas). My interest stemmed from the fact that I was once the chairman of that committee and was liberally "quoted" in the stories.
Prof Misquoted
My fury and subsequent disgust stemmed from the fact that, with the minor exception of a few lines taken from a memo I had written to my boss about my work, me was accurate. Some reflected the general content or spirit of my comments to the reporter but, with the exception noted above, none contained my actual words, phrases or sentences in terms of words, feeling and content.
Other than total incompetence or a misjudged desire to make the story more exciting, I fail to understand how the reporter arrived at the quotations she did. The story may have made good reading, but it was terrible journalism.
I was as cooperative as possible with the reporter; I gave her as much time as she asked for and I gave her my entire file related to the work of the committee.
David Holmes
Associate Professor of Psychology
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