Editorials
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
by Dick Bibler
Welfare aims miss target
Johnny, a 16-year-old boy, is the oldest child of a family on welfare. His father, disabled by bone cancer, is unable to support his wife and the other five children. The family is desperate, has no income and relies completely on a monthly welfare check.
At the same time, a welfare worker near Johnny's home has been instructed to cut her budget and eliminate a few families from the welfare rolls. The worker knows that if she does not yield to pressure from superiors she may find herself unpromoted. She goes to work trying to compose a more stringent budget.
JOHNNY becomes a key figure in the welfare worker's budget-cutting program. Noting that Johnny is 16 years of age and may legally obtain a job, the worker suggests that Johnny apply for working papers and scout around for a job. Johnny secures a job at a local carwash for $30 a week. To his impoverished family it is a splendid achievement, and the welfare worker is able to report a victory in her budget slicing. With Johnny's money partially supporting the family, the monthly welfare check may be drastically reduced.
At this point Johnny has dropped out of school and will probably never progress beyond the tenth grade. He has no future employment plans or even any skills which may raise his pay level. Uneducated and unskilled, Johnny is doomed to become another welfare case like his father. His chances of rising above his environment without a high school education, or even returning to school, are almost nil. Johnny and his progeny are doomed.
BUT DID THE WELFARE agency really gain anything or cut down? Perhaps this individual worker may have received her promotion or raise, but for every Johnny that she, or any other welfare worker, pushes into premature employment without a complete education, the welfare workers of tomorrow will have five times as many people to cope with. By bogging one person into the poverty mire, the worker insures a welfare-dependent family. By these
present welfare tactics, the number of people on welfare will multiply in the years to come. Insuring one failure insures a similar generation to come.
The means by which the welfare agencies are trimming their budgets are actually defeating their own purposes. Their goal is to help the poor, give money and other things when needed, but above all, they aim to help the people lift themselves out of their engulfing poverty. They help the people help themselves. While older slum residents may be somewhat hopeless, the children never are. They all have a potential if guided in the right direction. The children are the only real hope of the impoverished. They still have the chance to cast off the ugly cloak of poverty if they are willing and shown the way. But here the welfare agency fails.
AS IN THE case of Johnny, many children are being persuaded by social workers to seek employment. They are destroying the only hope the poverty-stricken child really has. This hope is a good education. This does not necessarily mean a college education, but merely a high school diploma. The high school graduate finds new avenues to pursue that a drop-out would fail to realize even existed. This education is available to even the most underprivileged child.
If welfare workers would emphasize the need for an education to the children and parents they would be decreasing the number of future slum residents. The slum community's potential lies in its children and the slum child's potential lies in the schoolroom.
To persuade a slum child to begin work before finishing school is to destroy the child's future. By failing to concentrate upon his one hope, the welfare worker is violating the aims of her profession, which seeks to aid and elevate. This welfare worker has only succeeded in guaranteeing that Johnny and his family, for many years to come, will be dependent upon the monthly welfare check and another welfare worker, who hopefully, will not receive the same letter as her predecessor.
— Jane Larson
Beebee's days, nights amusing
Beebee Fenstermaker is a girl so afraid of failing that she doesn't try to succeed. Unlike its heroine, however, William Snyder's, The Days and Nights of Beebee Fenstermaker, succeeded admirably last evening in its opening in the Experimental Theatre of Murphy Hall.
The plot centers around Barbara Ann (Beebee) Fenstermaker, who, shortly after graduating from college, moves to New York and tries to "make good" as a novelist.
UNDER THE DIRECTION of Richard Gibson, the 3-act play runs almost without a flaw. Gibson, working with a vehicle that could tend to bog down in its own talkativeness, has done a more than commendable job in his direction. Not only is the show paced well, but blocking on the cramped stage is quite clever.
For the most part, characterizations are clearly drawn and sustained throughout the two hour production.
Ann Thompson as Beebee performs her role with the naturalness and timing that it requires. Miss Thompson should be especially commended for her moments alone on stage when she must deliver several lengthy monologues. The play, however, covers a time period of four years and Miss Thompson needs to show more change in the third act. The taste of defeat that Beebee has continually experienced is not quite as believable as the rest of Miss Thompson's performance.
MIMI FRINK, AS Beebee's New York neighbor, overplays her girlishness in the first scene of the play. In her later scenes, however, Miss Frink settles down to a slower pace which helps her achieve the believability her character lacks at the opening of the show.
While Beebee is in New York, her mother and her two aunts continually bicker at home over whose fault it is that the three of them never really made good.
Alma Allen as Beebee's embittered Aunt Betty does an amazingly convincing job in her continued arguments with her sisters. Miss Allen's characterization could use some vocal variation and an occasional line needs to be thrown away.
ADA McALLISTER is spotty convincing as Beebee's alcoholic Aunt Virginia. Miss McAllister's performance suffers at times because of her apparent awareness of the audience.
While in New York Beebee invites a man to move in with her. Jack Wright, in his role as the housemate Ed Busby, is excellent.
Joanna Jenkins as Beebee's mother provides a sedate and pleasing contrast. Although always convincing, Miss Jenkins is at times hard to hear.
A man from the South with an eighth grade education, Smith accidentally pairs up with Beebee in the final minutes of the show. Jack Garrison, as Smith, plays his role quite naturally, much to the delight of the audience.
PERHAPS THE MOST entertaining character in the show is Bob Smith.
The technical aspects of the show deserve a note of recognition. The lighting is especially effective in setting many of the stage moods.
All in all. The Days and Nights of Beebee Fenstermaker is a smooth production thanks to the naturalness and ease apparent in both acting and directing. The production will run tonight and tomorrow night and again next week on Dec. 14, 15, 16 and 17. Curtain time is 8:20 p.m.
-Bruce Levitt
Worldly collegians
They say when you become a man, you put away childish things.
We, as collegians, are too sophisticated to be concerned with the crab grass, the discarded litter, the erratic sprinklers.
IN OUR EDITORIAL sections, we expect interpretations of worldly account. Whether we accept or reject the Playboy philosophy, we staunchly state we are more worldly attuned than students a decade ago.
— TCU Skiff
On The Side...
A Defense Secretary may be nebulously defined as a former corporation executive who turns left and attacks enemies, both foreign and American.
★★
The peace demonstration proved one thing to us: There are 25,000 able-bodied students available for the draft. If they can march on Washington, they can march on the Viet Cong.
★ ★ ★
Can you imagine being picked up by revenue agents for smuggling cigarettes to the
KRAUSE
★ ★ ★
campus? It's about time for the little old ladies in sneakers to start chopping the remaining vending machines here with hatchets.
"Zorba the Greek," Prof. Clifford Ketzel says, was advertised in the Journal-World as "Zorba the Great." He wonders if that means we can call the next one "Alexander the Greek."
★ ★ ★
The KU Young Republicans had 300 for dinner a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, reservations were made for more than 700.
— Harry Krause
We were thinking...
I have three personal ideals. One, to do the day's work well and not to bother about tomorrow . . . The second ideal has been to act the Golden Rule, as far as in me lay, toward my professional brethren and toward the patients committed to my care. And the third has been to cultivate such a measure of equanimity as would enable me to bear success with humility, the affection of my friends without pride, and to be ready when the day of sorrow and grief came to meet it with the courage befitting a man. * * * * *
The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.
— Sir William Osler
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