Editorials
Trivia, tried and true
Here we go again. Our favorite campus politicians have formed their usual impossible political platforms, each side hoping enough students will swallow what they have to offer.
There's nothing particularly wrong with this; as a matter of fact it's a great old American tradition. But, can the campus political parties tell us what they really hope to accomplish with their proposed projects?
THE WORTHWHILE promises such as better lighting facilities on Jayhawk Boulevard, Memorial Drive and stairs leading from Flint to Malott and the free speech forum stand on their own merit and need no comment.
But, what about some of the tired old issues they've brought up that have been vetoed already by higher-ups? If the University Party thinks it is going to lift the ban on campus cigarette sales, we'd like to know how. There's such a thing as fighting for causes and there's also such a thing as beating one's head against that familiar stone wall. Why not let the issue rest until the climate is a little more receptive and try doing some things that are possible?
RUSSELL WILEY, DIRECTOR of the KU band, has had plans for a performing arts center
for quite a few years and has been unable to do anything about it. If Vox Populi wants to jump on the band wagon with someone else's plans, that's fine. But, whatever happened to originality? When are they going to quit kicking the same old dead horses around?
And another thing, when are they going to give up on this irksome campaign for campus enthusiasm?
All this interest in Kansas and Lawrence is a little unrealistic. It would be fine if KU could have a lobby in the state legislature. But, this was vetoed last year by Chancellor Wescce. Where will they get the money? It doesn't seem probable the state will pay to have a group of students lobbying against it.
Why all the to-do about doing so much for Lawrence? How about putting more emphasis on doing something for KU? After all, the All Student Council is a part of the University, not the Lawrence city council.
ALL IN ALL, THE "new" party platforms are giving us the same old things in a new form. They really don't give anyone much to go on when it really comes down to voting.
Janet Hamilton
Plea for thought
Last week, on the Stanford University campus, plans were announced for a rally for money and blood for the North Vietnamese Army. Last week people on a New York sidewalk walked over a 7-year-old boy for 15 minutes, while he lay bleeding from a beating, before someone came to his aid. Every day we hear of another beating or murder where witnesses looked the other way.
Do you see a trend? Is it my imagination that people are willing to stand by while others get murdered? My country flaunted by traitors?
Yes, I see a trend. Legislators see a trend. Everyone sees a trend!
But at this point everyone becomes puzzled. Exactly what is it? Where is it going? Who or what is at fault? What is wrong with a society willing to stand by and watch?
SINCE WE BEGAN the socialization process, and as we continue to become educated, we have been taught to think, "Is that really true?", to question everything. We question history, philosophy, authorities, authorities on authorities, religion, faith, rules, laws, policies, and so on and so on. But have we ever questioned the soundness of the questioning process? Is it right to question everything? What happened to positive thinking? faith?
Before every educator and thinker in reach is down my throat let me clarify this point; no, I
do not believe the questioning process is wrong as long as it does not envelop one's entire attitude and philosophy of life. If this attitude completely takes over the individual, his only frame of reference is his own knowledge, thus resulting in total individualism.
It is this trend (and right now just noticeable) toward total individualism that I fear. As a small fraction of evidence toward this complacent attitude I submit the news which reaches us almost daily of cancerous patriotic decay . . . draft card burning, picketing for the enemy, petitions against the United States. This is not only permitted—or passively accepted—it is condoned publicly by many respected citizens.
AT THIS POINT I MUST plead, if we are to preserve our great republic, the remaining hope for the suffering humanity, the haven for the oppressed, the shining beacon which allows the right to question, if we are to preserve this gift from God to mankind, I ask you, the mad rushing 20th Century American, to stop and THINK. Let us arrest our reverential admiration of material success, and return to the spiritual and ethical values upon which our country was founded. Let us rekindle the so-called old-fashioned devotion to principles and ideals.
Then we are ready—with integrity—to question.
— Mike Friesen
'Public Interest' ignores young
A new, refreshing publication has appeared on the suburban scene—a magazine written by middle-aged professorial types for middle-a ged professorial types. The Public Interest, published quarterly by Columbia University sociologist Daniel Bell and editor and critic Irving Kristol, is devoted to domestic affairs and seeks to stir up dormant Great Debates and to be "as controversial as possible."
The first issue, 11 articles thick, includes a discussion of the U.S. economy by Daniel P. Moynihan and an examination of the trend toward art-by-actof-Congress by Jacques Barzun. For the university community, Robert A. Nisbet, a professor at the University of California, calls for abolition of permanent appointment on U.S. campuses: "Tenure as we
Noble aims for a noble minority. Hopefully their aspirations will not just line suburban wastebaskets.
— Jacke Thayer
ber rather than to think; middle-age people, seasoned by life but still open to the future, do seem to us—in our middle years—to be the best of all political generations," write the editors.
2 Daily Kansan Monday, November 8.1965
find it in the university today is as nearly impregnable a form of differential privilege as the mind of man has ever devised."
THE MAGAZINE has started with a circulation of 5,000, is non-profit and accepts no advertising. Why doesn't it seek younger readership? "Young people tend to be enchanted by glittering generalities. Older people are inclined to remem-
The KU Civic Action Committee is soliciting endorsements from all organized campus living groups of a drive to raise money for food, clothing and medical supplies to aid the victims of the war in Viet Nam. Under the joint sponsorship of CARE and the U.S. Marine Corps Civic Action Fund, the committee has initiated a pilot project which hopefully will become a nation-wide effort to aid the war-torn people of Viet Nam.
Support KU-CAC drive
We urge every KU living group and organization to support the fund drive this week, not only with words but with donations.
An editorial explaining more fully the drive and its importance will appear in tomorrow's Kansan.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"SO I HAVEN'T BEEN COMING TO CLASS ---WHY CAN'T I GET CREDIT FOR THIS AS A CORRESPONDENCE COURSE?"
Paperbacks reign in mass media field
They're scarcely in hardbook form for a year these days, and then the big announcement comes: someone has acquired for paperback publication the books that have been decorating coffee tables. Paperbacks have become one of the truly fabulous phenomena of the mass media in America.
One of the latest sensations that is now available in inexpensive form is Len Deighton's *Funeral in Berlin* (Dell, 75 cents). This was a big one only a year ago, and the success of his "The Ipress File," LeCarre's "The Spy Who Came In from the Cold" and the many Bond and pseudo-Bond novels will help it go well on the book shelves. Deighton is a cut better than most writers of spy tales, and this one has some contemporary touches that relate it to current events.
A good buy, that's the point. The raiser d'être of Ray Rigby's The Hill (Dell, 60 cents) is that it's been made into a sensational and well-received new movie, starring the one and only Sean Connery. It's one of those books that pours it on and gives a mean lock at war, at a sadistic officer, at the soldiers forced to perform beyond human capabilities. It's big and rough and is not for the tender-hearted.
Easier for most readers will be another Agatha Christie collection, The Under Dog and Other Stories (Dell, 45 cents). That old hand Hercule Poirot is here for you. Still easier will be Frank O'Rouke's The Bravados (Dell, 40 cents), a western of a few years ago that you may recall as being a Gregory Peck movie. This one is about a gang of gallows birds, the woman they hold hostage, the man searching for them.
Two classics also are out this month. John Francis McDermott has edited a series of stories that he calls The World of Washington Irving (Dell, 50 cents). Much of this will be familiar to you—the famous tales like "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," plus sketches from "A History of New York," "Bracebridge Hall." "The Alhambra" and others.
The other is Dickens' Bleak House (Dell, 95 cents). Never was a book better named. It takes the reader through the darkest sections and the darkest themes of 19th century London, and it is social protest at its most extreme. Dickens here is having a go at the judicial system, and he finds the wheels of justice grinding so slowly that you can hardly call the end result justice.
Finally, Phyllis McGinley's delightful Sixpence in Her Shoe (Dell', 75 cents). One of the great ladies of America, the prizewinning poet performs here in prose—giving the philosophy of homemaking, of living, of the house itself.
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