Student Plea Clarify Adviser Role
This is the first in a series of editorials discussing the adviser program at KU.
The student-adviser relationship can be one of the most important aspects of a student's career. Here at KU, however, something is amiss.
Students often complain they are not getting proper guidance. They sometimes go into their junior and senior years without having completed underclass requirements for their majors and for graduation. Freshmen are enrolling in courses they do not want and which, they feel, will not benefit them.
WHOSE FAULT IS THIS? Many students are not aware of the adviser's actual role. This is easy to understand because the adviser's responsibilities are outlined in several different handbooks in different ways. No one really seems to know what the adviser is supposed to do or to know.
On the other hand, students often expect the adviser to serve as their father-protector in every phase of education. This is impossible.
THE STUDENT, therefore, must take some of the blame for the ineffectiveness of the adviser program. A well organized and clear definition of the adviser's responsibilities must be provided.
Next time—the system as it exists now.
Janet Hamilton
THRUSH Story Unfolds
Editor's Note: Is Watson Library more than a venerable repository for over one million books? Communiques to a reporter on the Daily Kansan staff hint that the library is a hotbed of intrigue between agents of U.N.C.L.E. and THRUSH. The exploits of THRUSH were exposed in Thursday's Kansan.
From the private quarters of Mr. Alexander Waverly Kansas University
MY DEAR MISS PHILLIPS,
Since your exposition of the location of Security Section #1, North American Division, of THRUSH, has forced them to relocate elsewhere on campus, it is now safe for us to assure you that no danger to the University was ever posed by its existence in Watson. Since March of 1965 we have known of their position and have maintained surveillance of all their activities. Their reason for establishing themselves there was not to further their own schemes for the domination of mankind, but merely to keep track of our operations from IE—where we had already maintained an office for quite some time.
Naturally, there was a considerable volume of espionage and counterespionage conducted in the building, considering the fact that our two respective headquarters were side by side. Especially important to the Western world were
the smashing of a plot to overthrow the government of Spain and the interception of the traitorous Herr Strindhoff—both of which actually took place within the confines of Watson.
OUR RECORDS SHOW that THRUSH, previous to your exposé and their subsequent retreat, had in its employ three agents who are students hers—none of whom is employed as a stack boy (so you may inform the "girl at the desk" that her "educated guess" was incorrect). We must also relieve you of the false impression that you had penetrated inner THRUSH. Not even our agents were able to get in, though we did pinpoint the entrance—it was the door opposite the old elevator on Level One.
We shall keep you posted on any further activities of THRUSH which can safely be released to the press. Included in this letter will be a note, not for publication (on the chance that you may see fit to print this particular letter), telling you how you may contact us if you desire further information.
Until we may next be of service to you, we remain.
Your humble servants,
Alexander Waverly
Napoleon Solo
Illya Kuryakin
The People Say...
Dear Editor:
I CERTAINLY DO NOT BELOING to those people who consider it a must to write a letter to the editor whenever they do not agree with certain opinions in a newspaper. However, when I read what on Oct. 8, 1965, Mr. David Forbes from Scotland had to say about Communism my hair stood on end.
I fully agree with him when he writes that it is apparently impossible to discuss Communism in unemotional terms in the U.S.A. but as to the rest of his letter—which was just out of this world—I can only be shocked at the ignorance displayed by this Scottish gentleman. He refers to alleged immense contributions made by Communist governments to the welfare of a large proportion of the earth's population. What contributions other than constant pressure of the party on the population, extremely low standard of living, systematic defiance of human rights, in short slavery and tyranny does he have in mind? Mr. Forbes preaches tolerance towards Communism, conveniently forgetting that the most intolerant system in the world is Communism itself. If someone in the Communist Empire stood up publicly favoring tolerance towards western Capitalism as opposed to Communism, he would most certainly find himself very soon charged with reactionary thinking and eventually in one of the thousands of prisons for people of his kind. What Mr. Forbes can afford here in the U.S.A. with impunity, he could never afford it.
let's say, the East German "Workers' and Peasants' Paradise" or in the Soviet Union itself. Numerous political trials in Communist countries bear witness to this sad fact. Is Mr. Forbes really unaware of this?
I readily admit that not everything that is done by the U.S. Government meets with my approval, but from relatively long experience in the U.S. I can say that I certainly prefer to live in this nation where I can enjoy the right of a resident in a democratic country rather than to live under Communist knot.
When my doorbell here in Lawrence rings at 5 a.m. I can be quite sure that this is either some friend of mine or a messenger delivering a telegram, whereas when
Furthermore, he writes that he was "shocked" to see the Communists being called "ungodly" at the World's Fair in New York. I think, we all—except for Mr. Forbes, of course, who is completely out of touch with reality—know that their system and regime is based on ungodly atheism. So why not call a spade a spade?
IF MR. FORBES is so sympathetic towards Communism and regards "the policies of the U.S.A. as at least as great a threat to world peace as those of China and the U.S.S.R." why did he not choose to study at the famed Lumumba University in Moscow where he could enjoy all the "blessings" of Communism and, in addition to that, would find lots of adherents to his ideas? This question, I believe, seems very logical.
BEING A EUROPEAN myself,
I have often been in Great Britain
including Scotland. For the last time some four weeks ago, I even spent several months at the University of Aberdeen and from this experience I feel free to say that I never heard more peculiar, unrealistic and whimsical political ideas than in Scotland. Fortunately enough, however, the Scotch aren't taken too seriously by their English compatriots.
the doorbell rings at 5 a.m. in East Berlin or Prague I'd better get prepared for an interview with the secret police. Is Mr. Forbes really that uninformed about the differences between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R?
Quite obviously Mr. Forbes belongs to that species of British subjects whose political knowledge is hopelessly behind the times, to put it mildly. Great Britain is an island, as everybody knows, and Scotland her remotest part from Europe. Maybe, Mr. Forbes' shocking ignorance of what Communism really means results from this remoteness from events. If he had ever seen—like me—a refugee being fatally wounded and bleeding to death in the barbed wire of a Communist border fence, he surely would not have written his letter.
Bonn, Fed. Rep. of Germany Graduate student
Vincenz F. Krug
2
Daily Kansan
Tuesday, October 25, 1985
Bulky Books Sell
Build 'em big and bulky, say Leon Uris and Irving Wallace, and throw in a lot of sex, and a bit of social comment, and considerable sensation, and you've got a winner. The critics won't like what you're doing, and your books will never be on English Lit. reading lists, but you'll get rich, your names will be well known, and Hollywood will vie for your products.
A description, that is, of Uris' Armageddon (Dell, 95 cents) and Wallace's The Man (Crest, 95 cents). The size is overwhelming—672 paperback pages of the Urs novel; 768 of the Wallace.
And what does the reader have in store for him as he wades or plods through these? Well, some excitement, if nothing else (you don't read these guys for style). "Armageddon" is about Berlin right after World War II, about the airlift, about the boys and girls and their amours and their problems. The setting, that is, that has so dominated our consciousness in recent years.
"THE MAN" IS EVEN more likely to provoke new comment. Because it's about a Negro who becomes president of the United States (yes, it's going to be a movie). Big raw subject matter, the kind of thing that shocks even some liberals. Irving Wallace took us on a tour of the Nobel Prize winners' bedrooms last time around; now we get Washington. The political novel gets wilder every week.
In a secondary position among fictional block-busters of recent months has been Richard Condon's An Infinity of Mirrors (Crest, 75 cents). He's the fellow who contributed "The Manchurian Candidate" to our shelves and to the movies. It's more meaningful, he thinks, than the earlier book, but the impact is less. The story is about a Prussian officer and a French-Jewish girl who fall in love in 1932, as the ghastly era of Hitler's Germany is about to begin.
Stephen Longstreet's The Golden Runaways (Dell, 75 cents) also will win no prizes, but it has the elements that have marked other works of this popular novelist. The settings are the United States and Brazil; the characters are the many fugitives who flee this country for the warm lands to the south. There'll be little to tax your intellect as you read this one.
ANOTHER OF THE CURRENT ones has a movie tie-in—James Clavell's King Rat (Crest, 75 cents). Prison camp stuff, which will remind you of "The Great Escape" and "Stalag 17." There's this GI profiteer, you see, who runs his barbed wire kingdom. Tough and hard and funny. Also on hand is that chief southern expositor of sex and sin, Calder Willingham, whose new paperback is The Gates of Hell (Dell, 60 cents). More than a decade old, this one is done in impressionistic style and it will please those who think the South is inhabited only by Klansmen and nymphomanites.
There's supposed to be a big vogue going for James Drought, author of The Enemy (Crest, 60 cents). He's back with an individualistic hero who's an architect. Drought's attractions are somewhat mystifying. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. has one called Cat's Cradle (Dell, 60 cents), a fantasy about the end of the world but mainly a commentary on our times. Then there's The Great Race (Dell, 50 cents), by Marvin H. Albert. This is one of those curiosities whose appearance coincides with a movie, this one that new Jack Lemmon film about the grand old days of the automobile in turn-of-the-century times.
FOR THE KIDS THERE'S Alexandre Dumas' Robin Hood, Prince of Outlaws (Dell, 45 cents). All the familiar stories are here. Norris Houghton has prepared a special volume (Dell, 50 cents) that gives us both Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and the Laurents-Bernstein-Sondheim West Side Story. And if you didn't know the latter was inspired by the former then you've just been out of it. An even better bargain is a Robert W. Corrigan-edited volume called Laurel British Drama: The Twentieth Century (Dell, 95 cents). Some good bargains here—Shaw's "Heartbreak House," Galsworthy's "Loyalties," Coward's "Private Lives," Enid Bagnold's "The Chalk Garden," Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons" and Ann Jellicoe's "The Knack."
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
kansan
Serving KU for 76 of its 100 Years
UNiversity 4-3646, newsroom
UNiversity 4-3198, business office
Founded 1889
Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York, N.Y. 10022. Mail subscription rates: $4 a semester or $7 a year. Published and second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturday and Sundays. University holidays and examination periods. Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised in the University Daily Kansan are offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin.
EXECUTIVE STAFF
MANAGING EDITOR Judy Farrell
BUSINESS MANAGER Ed Vaughn
EDITORIAL EDITORS Janet Hamilton, Karen Lambert
Assistant Managing Editors ... Suzy Black, Susan Hartley
                                Jane Larson, Jacke Thayer
Circulation Manager ... Mike Robe
Advertising Manager ... Dale Reinecker
City Editor ... Joan McCabe
Wire Editor ... Robert Stevens
Classified Manager ... Mike Wertz
Feature Editor ... Mary Dunlap
Merchandising ... John Hons
Sports Editor ... Scottie Scott
Promotion Manager ... Keith Issitt
Photo Editor ... Dan Austin
National Advertising ... Eugene Parrish