Misunderstood Library Bell It Used to Be Sends Students Pell-Mell Jan. 11, 1916 Students of the University of Kansas will be given an oppo tunity to learn something of their University if the Uni Senate is able to back up its recommendations to the Chan that such a course be established
By Swaebou Conateh
A whistle summons KU students to class, and a carillon bell tower set to time sings to them its chimes. A third device connected with time at the University is the bell at Watson library—and that wastes their time.
In September 1960, the closing hours at Watson Library and a number of branch libraries on campus were extended to 11 p.m. Sunday to Friday. This was a daily gain of one hour.
However, most students leave the library some 15 minutes early every night. The reason is apparently their confusion over the purpose of the warning bell.
IN A TYPICAL day at the library, the warning bell rings 20 minutes before the hour. Donald Redmond, Reader's Service at the library, said the warning bell serves two purposes:
● It notifies students that there is 20 minutes of library time left so that those who want to check out books or return books could do so in plenty of time.
- It also warns the library staff checking books in the stacks of the time they have left, thereby serving as a stop to new requests for books.
Contrary evidence has, however, shown that there is no clear idea of the purpose of the warning bell both among students and among some of the library staff. Most students leave the library when the bell rings. There have even been occasions when the lights in the reserve section of the library have been put out as much as 15 minutes before the official closing hour.
"IT CERTAINLY is not our policy to close the library just when the bell rings," Redmond said.
"If it is done, we do not know about it."
The mistake over the purpose of the warning bell and the consequent waste of time over it must lie with the students and some among the library staff who put out the lights in the reserve section before 11 p.m. Since final exams are coming, and the mistake is so costly in time, both students and library staff should now know why the warning bell rings.
With that each student using the library at that time will save six hours of valuable time a month. By our reckoning, if a
What can be done within that time is anybody's guess, but the loss to the individual student is still great. With 10 library staff members paid by the hour at work at that hour, the loss to the tax payer is a modest $48 per month, but to the student, it can be seen by an estimate of the amount of work possible in ix hours.
student loses 15 minutes of his time every day, he is losing no less than $1\frac{1}{2}$ hours a week and that is six hours a month. For every 100 students, this amounts to 600 hours of wasted student time every month.
Daily Kansan Tuesday, January 11, 1966
By Rich Lovett
8
At Basketball Games They Really Mop Up
At every home basketball game there are two fellows who infallably make the evening a little more exciting, a little more fun. They are not the coaches, nor the referees. They are "Blue" and "Red," the basketball court sweepers who, in the performance of their jobs, give the fans an added kick every time they sweep.
"Blue" is really Marion Affalter, 947 Louisiana St., an Allen Field House custodian who, among other things, has swept the KU basketball court for the past four years. His "opponent" in red is Raymond Vandeventer, 329 Missouri St., a KU Athletics department maintenance man. He has helped clean the court for two seasons, and at freshman games sweeps unchallenged.
BOTH MEN derive their nicknames from the clothes they wear as they "race" across the court, pushing their colored dust mops in front of them. Affalter wears a blue shirt, blue pants, and pushes a blue mop. Vandeventer sports a red shirt, blue pants, and drives a red mop.Both men wear yellow tennis shoes and red caps.
“It's just our job,” says Affalter. “The floors have to be kept clean. But right at the first of the year the kids started cheering us as we swept, so we figured we might as well add a little color to it. Really, though, we're only doing our job.”
Job or not, the basketball fans love it, and probably so do Affalter and Vandeventer. Who knows?—KU may have started a tradition, and soon all colleges and universities will recruit floor sweepers who can push a mean broom.
Time to Take Care of Your
(These should be arranged as far in advance as possible.)
ROMAN IN THE GLOAMIN'
Now as the end of the first semester draws near, one fact emerges clearly: you are all going to flunk out of school.
There are two things you can do about it. First, you can marry money. (I don't mean you marry the money itself; I mean you marry a person who has money. Weddings between people and currency have not been legal anywhere in the United States since the Smoot-Hawley Act. Personna $ ^{®}$ Stainless Steel Blades, on the other hand, are legal everywhere and are, indeed, used with great pleasure and satisfaction in all fifty states of the Union and Duluth. I bring up Personna Stainless Steel Blades because this column is sponsored by the makers of Personna Stainless Steel Blades, and they are inclined to get edgy if I omit to mention their product. Some of them get edgy and some get double-edgy because Personna Blades come both in Injector style and Double Edge style.)
But I digress. I was saying you can marry money but, of course, you will not because you are a high-minded, clean-living, pure-hearted, freckle-faced American kid. Therefore, to keep from flunking, you must try the second method: you must learn how to take lecture notes.
According to a recent survey, eleven out of ten American undergraduates do not know the proper way to take lecture notes. To illustrate this appalling statistic, let us suppose you are taking a course in history. Let us further suppose the lecturer is lecturing on the ruling houses of England. You listen intently. You write diligently in your notebook, making a topic outline as you have been taught. Like this:
1. House of Plantagenet.
H. House of Managern
U. House of Lancaster
III. House of York.
Then you stop. You put aside your pen. You blink back a tear, for you cannot go on. Oh, yes, you know very well that the next ruling house is the House of Tudor. The trouble is you don't know the Roman numeral that comes after III.
It may, incidentally, be of some comfort to learn that you are not the only people who don't know Roman numerals. The fact is, the Romans never knew them either. Oh, I suppose they could tell you how much V or X were or like that, but when it came to real zingers like LXI or MMC, they just flang away their styluses and went downtown to have a bath or take in a circus or maybe stab Caesar a few times.
You may wonder why Rome stuck with these ridiculous numerals when the Arabs had such a nice, simple system. Well, sir, the fact is that Emperor Vespasian tried like crazy to buy the Arabic numerals from Suleiman The Magnificent, but Suleiman wouldn't do business—not even when Vespasian raised his bid to 100,000 gold piastres, plus he offered to throw in the Colosseum, the Appian Way, and Technicolor.
So Rome stuck with Roman numerals—to its sorrow, as it turned out. One day in the Forum, Cicero and Pliny got to argue about how much is CDL times MVIX. Well, sir, pretty soon everyone in town came around to join the hassle. In all the excitement, nobody remembered to lock the north gate and —wham! before you could say *ars longa*—in pushed the Goths, the Visigoths, and the Green Bay Packers!
rushed the cotches, and the linger.
Well, sir, that's the way the empire crumbles, and I digress. Let's get back to lecture notes. Let's also say a word about Burma Shave®. Why? Because Burma Shave is made by the makers of Personna Blades who, it will be recalled, are the sponsors of this column. They are also the sponsors of the ultimate in shaving luxury. First coat your kisser with Burma Shave, regular or menthol—or, if you are the devil-may-care sort, some of each. Then whisk off your stubble with an incredibly sharp, unbelievably durable Personna Blade, Injector or Double Edge—remembering first to put the blade in a razor. The result: facial felicity, cutaneous cheer, epidermal elysium. Whether you shave every day, every III days, or every VII, you'll always find Personna and Burma Shave a winning combination.
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$\textcircled{2}$ 1966, Max Shulman
Personnam amo, Tom Personnam amat, Dick Personnam amat, Harry Personnam amat, quique Personnam amant — et quogue amabitis.