4
Tuesday, March 18, 1975
University Dally Kansan
KANSAN
ratorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the
ominions of the writers.
A break for some
Happy Spring Break. Humbug.
Unless you were one of the few who could afford a nice sunny vacation in Miami or Padre Island, this break probably ended as if it never happened.
If you were stuck in some urban Kansas paradise such as Great Bend, Salina or Junction City, your vacation was probably especially bleak. If you were in a larger city, chances are there were some good movies at some of the local theatres. You could watch television or read a Book. A book is always a good time to catch up on homework even if it does defeat the purpose of having a break.
Why does it not seem as if it were a vacation? Maybe it is the absurdity of calling the period, Spring Break, when it occurs during winter. School has already started and it still isn't spring. At least the weather has improved, and we can enjoy it while we're sitting in our classes.
It is rumored that there was a time when University of Kansas students actually did have a spring break. This was many years ago, before the energy crisis. Students were able to go out and enjoy the weather, get spring fever or whatever. They came back from vacation relaxed, sometimes worn out, but at least with the feeling that they had a vacation.
This spring break was a period of shuffling books, nervously turning the radio and TV on and off and reluctantly trying to do homework. The result was frustration and self pity.
Reportedly, spring break was moved up so the University could save some money in heating and electricity bills. If that is true, some people are merely fooling themselves at the students' expense. Nearly all of the buildings that are when classes are in session were open during break, so it is doubtful that much money was saved.
Let's face it. Unless one had money to spare, break was a bust. The solution? Why not move it to April. Chances are that the weather will be better. Temperments will be better and maybe students and faculty will be able to have a real vacation.
Dare one suggest that spring break be the same week as Easter, or is that a violation of some rule? Christmas conveniently falls during semester break, and nobody seems to complain.
Perhaps that is asking a little too much of those who decide when to have spring break. Actually, most students would be content with just one thing—having spring break during spring.
—Kenn Louden
Who knows you?
The time of year has come when graduating seniors realize they need references and recommendations from their advisers and teachers for prospective employers and graduate schools.
Many of them have the sudden revelation that nobody knows their name. Nobody knows them well enough to write a recommendation or serve as a reference—at least no one they would trust.
Some of these students claim that this is the result of an impersonal academic system. They complain that the large sizes of classes negate a student's opportunities to establish and initiate a student-teacher relationship. They complain that teachers are too impersonal and have little interest in the education or career preferences of their students.
It is true that some faculty members are impersonal and have no desire to be involved with a student's problems, but with the exception then rather than the rule.
These students believe they are victims of the system. Seldom do they realize or admit that the real problem is their use of this problem, is themselves.
Students must realize that the teacher is under no real obligation to initiate a personal relationship with students, although many teachers do so anyway. This obiliation ultimately rests upon the student.
Granted, that during a student's freshman and sophomore years there may be few opportunities to cultivate and develop meaningful and potentially useful relationships with students. A student has selected a major field, the opportunities exist. Students just don't take advantage of them.
Unfortunately, many students just breeze through their college major with a minimum expenditure of energy. They fail to get involved in departmental activities and fail to take advantage of educational opportunities that might lead to closer student-teacher relationships.
Their interest in their field is usually limited to the simple processes of going to classes, taking tests and doing homework. Because students often lack this sincere interest in their majors, they fail to cultivate potential sources of references and recommendations.
When a graduating senior does realize that he needs these references and recommendations, it's usually too late. Sometimes he will approach teachers with no clear goal in mind and with little or no preparation of materials such as resumes or portfolios that would be helpful to the teacher in writing a recommendation.
If nobody knows your name,
then it's a good chance that it's your own fault.
John Brooks
It was almost five years ago that, with chief of state Norodom Shanukon in Europe, Lt. Gen. Lon Nol seized control of the Cambodian government.
Aid to Cambodia a waste
He did so with the clear urging and connivance of the United States, which only eight months earlier had sweeted into a resumption of diplomatic relations with Shanuko.
Noting both the perfidy and the stupidity of this U.S. action, I wrote in my column of March 29, 1970:
'RECENT DEVELOPMENTS in Cambodia suggest that the United States has not made a significant change from history as it might have.
"With unseeming haste we have bestowed our blessing on the anti-Communist group that overthrew Prince Norodom Shanouk while he was out of the country.
"A brief review of the record in Laos should have reminded American officials that the day might come when we will be
It did not take long for Americans to realize that Lon Wolsted was a disaster. Cables from the cell tower were abandoned, honesty and hapless he was
capital of Phnom Penh starvation threatens to cut an even more ghastly swath than bullets and bombs.
delighted to have Sihanouk back in power, however much he might irritate Uncle Sam from time to time."
In Washington, still caught in teverish debate over Indochina, the domino theory," and notions of "treatment," the Ford ad-
By Carl Rowan
Copyright 1975 Field Enterprises, Inc.
soon became sources of belly laughs in the State Department.
Since that coup ousting Sihanouk, who promptly set up a government-in-exile in Peking, things have gone from bad to worse to tragic in Cambodia and to Communists just about about what we just threw this wretched excuse for a country, and in the besieged
ministration wants you and me to believe that another $222 million in military aid might save Cambodia.
million would bail out the Thieu regime in Saigon.
Put it on' the basis of humanitarianism, or just use it if it's Communism," and in either case I would say send them the money and the arms—if I would also would make any difference.
But the money being argued won't make a bit of difference in terms of the destities of the destitutes of American politicians it is now little more than an issue around which American politicians can spar as they draft future charges about who is responsible for Indochina to the Commissies.
CAMBODIA HAS THE appearance of a patient who is terminally ill from a dreadful illness, and is in pain. More arms and money for Cambodia would be like giving more costly "miracle" drugs to that patient, with each dose being delivered only after offering no hope of survival.
The prognosis for South Vietnam is not so immediately
grim, but just about every story coming out of this war-ravaged country shows the Thieu regime is still far more efficient at closing down newspapers that offer even mild criticism, throwing political opponents in the face of foreign newsmen that heads of foreign newsmen then winning support from the mass of the Yippee people.
IT IS NOT EASY to give up on a government for which your country already has wrecked its economy, committed some of the nation's men and undergone the political agonies of hell. It is not easy to say, "We're had it!"—no, even when the people for whom sacrifices are made persist in this world much of the world with rebellion.
But the time comes when we all must stop shielding and shoring up our old mistakes. Especially the costly ones. That is why we should be better prepared for Vietnam, and there will be no wiser time than right now for us to stop compounding yesterday's errors.
"BECAUSE WE'RE FIGHTING COMMUNISM IN INDOCHINA, THAT'S WHY!"
To the Editor.
Lefty is a discrimination victim
I would like to call your attention to a massive practice of discrimination in progress at this University. This practice has been present probably since the founding days of KU, Tim Porter and his death of the funding for women's athletics. That has all
been heard before. And we've all heard or read the complaints of black students about the policies of the Minority Affairs Office and Gary Flamanam. I'm not a major humanist, but humane treatment of yet another minority on this campus—left-handed people.
The left-handed individuals of
Indochina war is our business
The congressional delegation to Vietnam returned recently. Some of the eight members were sobered by what they saw and heard, but the prospect for renewed aid seems not to have greatly changed. It still appears that the country may be termed) is to turn our backs and to let the whole of Indochina go.
By JAMES J. KILPATRICK
THESE ARGUMENTS plainly have appeal. They may prevail. Yet it seems to me the arguments rest upon two conditions: we are prepaRED unless we are prepared to accept the decline of the West and the ascendance of Communist power throughout the world; then premise is strong, struggle is无穷无尽, freedom on our own borders, is none of our business; the second is that even if we make it our business, we freedom, our commitments must be limited.
The South Vietnamese are sustained in part by fear, in part by hope. With good reason, with historical record of Communist terrorism, they fear the bloodbath that would follow their defeat. They hope that if they can only hold on, peace and justice may yet be won. Are we to disdain the fear and reject the hope?
IT IS A MONSTER TOLY to suppose that limits can be fixed, or lines drawn, or deadlines in defense of freedom. Will we ever defend the freedoms of Friday afternoon? If so, at 4:16 the clocks will stop; the weekend will never come. The Communists do not quit. They must wear theirweariness to the world. What is the South Vietnamese in the world?
These are the principal arguments against further aid; in 1960 United States has sacrificed $150 million and pended $150 billion in an effort to help South Vietnam; that is enough, it is said; that is more. The war on arms and ammunition would be merely to prolong the misery.
is our faith so weak? Is our spirit so feeble? Americans of both century are the principal concepts that date at least from Magna Carta and in other forms from ancient Greece. What kind
Who can say, positively, that continued military aid would allow the South Koreans to money after bad?" The South Vietnamese army has fought bravely and well. Great as our allies are, our enemies are people of South Vietnam have
sacrified infinitely more. What an irony it is, that South Vietnam never having known the United States' liberty, should fight on for a chance to gain them, while we of the United States—we, the trustees and conservators of Congress, the nation's Congress? Not another dumbo!
People and institutions are not the only ones guilty of these acts of discrimination. The dictionary, to which we all turn, is used for describing a left-handed person as unskillful, clumsy and awkward.
The cause isn't yet lost in Indochina. The United States isn't without diplomatic and
economic resources. Given the will to persevere, the West could use its levers to move toward independence always on the defensive? There is no valid reason why the West should be forever retreating, compromising taking back, or handing over of other peoples struggles.
It isn't necessary to embrace the denigrated "domino theory" of strategic confound one left-handed chair at the University. Thank you, Flint Hall, for your kind donation.
this country have suffered long and hard because of their different characteristic. I remember when in my grade teacher used to punish me teacher used to punish me not writing with my right hand. Although she forceably tried to get me to use the right side of my body, my genes kept saying, "to the left, keep to the left."
sequences in Southeast Asia. It is necessary only to reflect upon patterns of ordinary human behavior in order to understand the political environment we abandon South Vietnam. Such a policy will be seen universally as a loss of face, a loss of credibility, a loss of will, and an inability to trustees, will remain of our diminished, neglected estate?
(C) 1975 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
I ask that something be done to end this continuous inequity. If you don't view it as any big thing, take a minute or two to watch a left-handed person try to fashioned for him. It's hard to write while your arm is suspended with only your wrist
In high school other students would look at me as if I were weird because I was seen writing with my hand, but I might be slightly different in college, but they weren't. To this day I have only
providing support, if it doesn't look hard to you, then try it yourself—if you can find a left-handed chair.
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Caroline Howe
I've often wondered why true musical talent appears but few and far between in the Mid-west. At the Ozark Mountain Daredevil concert I think I caught a glimpse of the reason.
From the first sarcastic call for "Chicken Train," a song done by the Daredevils, to the stupendous applause at the announcement of his new single singer brent the brench of a juvenile, obnoxious crowd. Though Chet doesn't write the catchy AM radio tunes that the Daredevils do, and he doesn't vibrate you to your knees with 700 decibels of sound, a musician in his own right.
Unfortunately, he wasn't even given a chance to put his talent to work. He was too busy overlooking the inconsiderate haranguing he was receiving from most of the crowd.
BUT THE PEOPLE DID押 $4 a ticket, so they should be able to voice their opinions of the music, right? Wrong. We can't have the musical ability of a herd of deaf orangutans.
If for no other reason than courtesy to the people who enjoy the music and the performer, who does have feelings, they should keep their negative opinions to themselves. For maybe if they hadn't been so violent in their devilish, they would have experienced the fine guitar and piano work of Chet Nichols.
David Goodell
Topeka Sophomore