4
Wednesday, August 20, 1975
University Daily Kansan
'30s at KU not disastrous
From page 1
room's warm,' he added as an afterthought.
As a result of conditions like this, Chancellor Lindley made a trip to Washington in January 1934. He met with President Roosevelt, Relief Director Harry Hopkins and the Commissioner of Education, George P. Zook, an 180 KU
THE RESULT OF LINDELY'S meetings was a nationwide federal program called the College Student Employment Program (CSEP).
In its first year, CSEP allowed 75,000 students around the country to attend school.
world was to set down at night and have those lamb chops.
"THERE WASN'T another such as television. We have had so and movies an1,2,3..."
The 1934 Jayhawker yearbook said, "As far as the spirit of fun and frivolity is concerned, there is no depression apparent on the campus at half-mast for the youth of the carnus.
"And as far as for the wolf at the door—
the most popular time on the Hill today is,
at noon."
--students earned an average of $15 a month
of study. The number, the number,
of students helped was 428
Campus traditions at KU in the 1930s ranged from the annual Kansas State game. The tradition is that students
Archives photo
Mid-1930s basketball at Hoch Auditorium
The CSEP lasted from 1834 until the beginning of World War II and was administered by the National Youth Administration.
While the Depression years in Lawrence were difficult, they were not disastrous. The late Reagan made Shirley Temple and the Marx brothers at the Patee or the Dickinson theaters. Radio was very popular, and many post Colliers, early Day Eventing post or the American Magazine.
of the chance that few would skip class in the morning to attend the "Doc Yak" assembly, Chancellor Lindley and his staff of cancelling classes for the whole school.
Cogan said, "Life was much amberer and easier when there were fewer people. We were less careful and more cautious."
Another Depression activity was called the "Nightshirt Parade."
But Lindley's fears weren't realized.
Many students suited up for the factories.
The Kansas reported, "Filling the air with loud cheering, hurrals and displaying team spirit," in a nightshirt-clad University men, led by the University band marched down Mt. Oread in one of the bigest rallies ever staged for the first Big Six home football game.
The Kanas, editorialized. "Let's all forget ourselves for a day and be happy, untidy and even a bit dirty; let's just look you might choose to ape. We go 'lob' you might choose to ape. We go 'lob' you might choose to ape. We go 'lob' you might choose to ape. We go 'lob' you might choose to ape. We go 'lob' you might choose to ape. We go 'lob' you might choose to ape. We go 'lob' you might choose to ape. We go 'lob' you might choose to ape. We go 'lob' you might choose to ape.
student body dressed up as lobos and rallied in support of Javihawk football.
THE HOBO DAY (festivities coincided with the homecoming game with Missouri. Classes were reluctantly shortened by the University administration and the day was climaxed by the traditional "Doc Yak" pep rally.
"Doc Yak" was called "the official disgusor of non."
The University administration warned the students that Hobo Day would be permitted only if the entire student body gave the event their complete support. Because
Although Coogan couldn't recall celebrating Hobo Day or walking down to 7th and Indiana streets in only his night, he did affirm the positive student mood.
DESPITE THE RALLY, KU could only master a 7-7 tie with the University of California.
"I didn't have the impression that people were pessimistic," he said. "I didn't think they took their studies more seriously. There was no problem getting into school."
Because it was easy to get into KU—one had only to pay the costs—they
A Kansan editorial writer rapped KU for accepting any student who could pay聘请
"American colleges are reaping the harvest of the Depression," the writer said in 1934. "And the harvest is a first-class institution, and it takes advantage to the nth degree of the opportunity afforded by the colleges; namely, that no one would be flunked out of an institution as long as his tuition fees were assumed to the resources of the institution."
"FLUNKING OUT THE unfit unit may seem to be a cruel duty. But who can justify the suffering of children who cannot waste time and money at the troughs of public education, all in the name of the Depression, when their advisers and their captors are convinced they have no place in college?"
While few agreed that students were reaping the harvest of the Depression, many Kansas residents were more worried that these students sowing the seeds of radicalism.
One of the most explosive issues in the 1930s was the infiltration of Communists into the student and faculty of American colleges and universities.
Cooag said, "I think that in the late '20s and early '30s, if anyone of course or stature had proclaimed the theory that you had a right to a decent living, a decent job, a decent life, because you had been born, he would have been considered infinitely more perilous to
A MOVEMENT TO purge American colleges of "radical" students and teachers, led by the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst and encouraged by civic groups and the American Legion, swept the country. And Kansas wasn't exempt.
the safety of the United States than Karl Marx, and some kind of a lunatic."
The Universities of Wisconsin, Chicago and California as well as Harvard and Columbia were being exposed as "hotbeds" to the same illness also suspected of barboring Communists.
The anti-Communist atmosphere in kansas was so strong, in fact, that a committee was preparing to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the activities of KU students.
ALTHOUGH A LITERARY Digest Poll of college students in which KU participated indicated that five out of six students would refuse to fight if the United States invaded a foreign country, true radicals at KU were rare.
H. L. Challaull, the director of the National Americanism Commission of the American Legion, wrote to Chancellor Lindley in 1984 complaining of such things as KU's literal opinion newspaper, the Dove, which was printed on a pink stock.
Lindley replied in his calm and reasoned fashion, "I appreciate very much your kind invitation for comment on 'Subversive Propaganda in American Universities and Colleges.' I should like to say, however, that after many years of experience in a state university, where all kinds of propaganda flourish just as in privately endowed inns, I have found that said propaganda is not to be taken too seriously."
The Sour Owl, the campus humor magazine, didn't see what all the fuss was.
"BUT REGARDLESS of what becomes of them afterward," an editorial in the Sour Owl ended, "the radicals are a necessary and not unhealthy influence on college life."
"immensely preferable to those who would make of football a philosophy of life, instead of a game, they are also much more likely to group of indifferent cynics, but not so wise."
"Yes, our hat is off to the campus radicals. Long may they beat their wings. But after all, is life so SERIOUS? And if it is, well, what the hell?"
Lindley, who received letters from hundreds of angry Kansans about reports of communism subverting their children at school, said their cool and replied in an unhysterical tone.
A typical answer came in this 1938 correspondence:
"As regards communism, I think we are in no danger. Our investigation here shows that only a handful—about 17—of our young people belong to such an organization.
*AND MOST OF THESE were not even
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