The University Kansan.
The official paper of the University
of Kansas.
EDITORIAL STAFF:
JOSEPH W. MURRAY - Editor-in-Chief
EARL FISCHER -- Managing Editor
BUSINESS STAFF:
HOMER BERGER -- Business Manager
CLARK WALLACE - Asst. Bus. Manager
HENRY F. DRAFER ---- Treasurer
J. E. MILLER --- Circulation Mgr
MEMBERS OF BOARD.
LOUIS LACOSS CARL CANNON
M. D. BAER RALPH SPOTTS
Entered as second-class mail matter
September 17, 1910, at the postoffice at
Lawrence, Kansas, under the act of
March 3, 1879.
Published every Tuesday, Thursday
and Saturday of the school year, by
the Kansas University Publishing
Association.
Address all business communications to Homer Berger, Business Manager,
1411 Tennessee street, Lawrence,
Kan.; all other communications to
Joseph W. Murray, 1341 Ohio street,
Lawrence, Kansas.
Subscription price, $1.50 per year, in
advance; one term, 75c; time subscriptions,
$1.75 per year.
Office in basement of Fraser Hall.
Phone, Bell, K U. 25.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1911.
TIME TO GET BUSY.
Now that the University governing board has voted to stand by its own action taken a year ago regarding athletics, the matter may be regarded as settled and the activities of the University should be turned toward getting awards in shape to conduct athletics according to the new poney. One tiring demands immediate attention: the selection of a coach who will take charge of the chief University sport, football. The Regents owe it to the students of the University to find a coach without loss of time, in order that the new regime may be inaugurated with as little disturbance to sport as possible. As matters now stand, Missouri is in better shape than any other school in the Missouri Valley conference Brewer, the M. U. coach and director of athletics, was on the job at Columbia as soon as the 1910 season in football had closed. By this time he doubtless has a good idea of what he is going to do next year. A striking contrast is presented in Kansas. Here every thing is still "up in the air." We have still to find a coach, and to make him acquainted with conditions after he is engaged. With every week of delay a still greater handicap is placed upon Kansas. It is up to the Regents to "get busy" at once.
The decision to play the Kansas-Missouri game at Lawrence or Columbia will open the way for many interesting developments. The Kansan does not believe for a moment that sport will become extinct at the University just because the great spectacle at Kansas City has been discontinued but it will be modified in many ways by the change. Sport will have to get along on less money, for one thing. The problem of lowering successfully the "standard of living" will prove a difficult one in athletics as elsewhere. Interest in the contest with Missouri probably will be lessened to some extent, though not a great deal; and this loss of interest is likely to be compensated for by increased interest in some of the other games.
The Regents of the University for the first time went counter to the recommendations of the Student Council, when they decided against playing the last game of
the season at Kansas City. The argument which the Council urged for keeping the game at Kansas City was that the University needed a new stadium and the money derived from the Kansas City game would come in handy in building it. The experience of former years does not indicate that the University would have a stadium very soon if it depended on the surplus from the Kansas City game to build it. After many years of financially successful contests there, the stadium is as far from being a reality as ever. It seems paradoxical that the stadium can be built at the same time that the Athletic Association's income is being cut down, but it would not be surprising to have it turn out that way. With the big game coming to Lawrence, the need of a stadium will be felt as it has never been felt before. When the feeling of need becomes keen enough, steps will be taken to satisfy it.
DO WE NEED A SCHOOL OF MEDICINE?
The hard work which the Regents of the University have been doing to secure for the state of Kansas a good school of medicine has been objected to by some persons who brought forward the query, "Does Kansas need a medical school?" There can not be too many good schools of medicine. In spite of the triumphs which science has won over some diseases, many problems yet await solution. It should not be possible to say of the state of Kansas that it is willing to spend any amount of money to fight hog cholera, but is unwilling to spend money for the study and treatment of human ailments. The following editorial from the Topeka Capital indicates the important field which the new University School of Medicine will find waiting for it:
Statistics now show that since 1880 tuberculosis as a cause of death before the age of 40 has decreased by 48 per cent, typhoid by 42 per cent, diphtheria and group by 80 per cent while smallpox has become almost a negligible quantity. In this period the general death rate has materially decreased, the reduction being almost wholly due to the saving of ives from communicable diseases and the prevention and arrest of epidemics.
A less gratifying fact is that above the age of 40 the general death rate has been and is on the increase, and this mainly because diseases of old age, affections, namely, of the heart and other vital organs, as the arteries and kidneys, show themselves seriously at an age much earlier than in former generations. Evidently this effect is to be attributed to prevailing conditions and customs to the fact that people work less out of doors, draw too much on their vitality by brain work and are far more than in any former age engaged in sedentary occupations. Since 1880 cancer as a cause of death has increased 104 per cent, and diseases of the heart arteries and kidneys have steadily increased, in all periods of life from childhood. Maladies properly belonging to old age, or what may be called the actual symptoms of the age of the body, are reaching down to the younger ages.
President Rittenhouse, of the Provident Savings Life, from whose report the above statistics are taken, remarks with a good deal of force that although diseases of the heart, arteries and kidneys kill every year in this country a population equivalent
to that of Indianapolis and tuberculosis sweeps away as many lives as the population of the city of Paterson, yet as progressive a state as New York spends for the protection of game, fish and forests four times more than it expands for the public health, and 148 American cities expend for the health of their people less than 2 per cent of their revenue.
The above notice on one of the bulletin boards in Fraser hall created no little amusement. Of course it was put up by some jocular person who was hard up for some mode of whiling away the weary hours. However, if one would reflect a moment, it would be seen that this might not be such a joke after all.
"Notice :— Tryout for next year's football coach will be held at the gym at 4:30 tomorrow. All faculty members urged to attend."
Since the coaches must in the future be members of the faculty, it would require only a little stretch of the imagination to believe the above notice. Of course every faculty member has the right spirit and would be on hand for the tryout. The ladies of the faculty would also feel a certain amount of responsibility devolving upon them, and might serve tea during the tryout.
CHOOSING A COACH.
One tryout of course would not be sufficient and a series of eliminating tryouts would be necessary. The contestants would have to show their endurance by probably a fifteen-mile cross country run, and demonstrate their ability at line-bucking on the brick pile in front of the gymnasium. Of course this would go only,a short way toward proving the ability of a contestant, but after a series of such tryouts a coach could be chosen.
After the tryout, all classes would be dismissed until the vacancies in the depleted faculty were filled again.
It has long been flung in the faces of American students, who have developed in their athletic sports a great desire for victory when their teams are contending with rival colleges, that Englishmen have a better notion of athletics, which enables them to applaud a skillful play even when a rival player makes it and causes them to place the emphasis not upon the final score, but upon the way in which the playing is done. We have often wondered just how English students manage to gratify the human satisfaction of having "put one over" the opposition in the final outcome of some contest. An article in "The Varsity," a publication of the Oxford undergraduates, seems to throw some light on the question. The article tells of one Saturday night when the students assembled to hear bulletins from the English elections, and of the demonstrations which ensued when Unionist or Liberal candidates forged ahead in the announcements. The description of the gathering remind us of the appearance of the bleachers when the rival American teams line up ready to snap the ball.
"ROOTING" IN POLITICS
"In that hall, as in hundreds of places throughout the kingdom, men--young men—with fevered faces and with flashing eyes, full of the burning fires of fervid patriotism, sat waiting with a tense and terrible patience to hear the verdict of some grand, enlightened, reasoning electorate upon some somber statesman's fate."
And this might have been touchdown:
"As each decision, Unionist or Liberal was announced last Saturday night, men—young men—sprang electrically to their feet. Pure patriotic passion squeezed their lungs. By that irresistible enthusiasm which is, perhaps, not the antithesis to, but the logical outcome of, cold judgment and ripe reason, their vocal chords were established and made strong. Volleys of cheers, tumultuous, terrific, swept to the approving heavens. There were gesticulations of noble jubilation. There were unblamable boos, high charactered cat-calls."
Does the Englishman like to win? Well, rather, it would seem Doubtless things were said or that Saturday night that would look just as bad in print as does the "Kill him," which the American crowd sometimes hurls at the opposition player who seems to be a little too much for our boys. Now that "The Varsity" has shown us that the English student does have moments when he "cuts loose" in the joy of beating somebody, we can cease to hate him for being held up to us as a model of impossible sportsmanlike virtue. That he chooses politics and not athletics as the excuse for his lapse from dignity and sanity is a small matter. Indeed, it may be a shrewd choice. We have heard that the English elections stretch over an unconscionable time.
University spirit of a valuable kind seems to have survived ever the abolition of the professional coach. A subscriber to the UniversityKansan in California sent a three-dollar contribution to the fund that is being raised for Nate Miller, on reading the story of the aged janitor's need.
Those Library Pests Again.
To the Editor of The Kansan:
To the Editor of The Kansas:
There are pests and pests. The shelf-worn variety, many times mentioned and always to be endured who "mooch" books from the library. Then there is the well-known species lately referred to in the columns of the Oread Magazine who try to monopolize an instructor's time in class by a continuous display of their preocous intellectual attainments.
But of all these troublesome, bothersome, tantalizing, pestiferous pests, "he and she,"—it is usually this sort of a combination—who get together in the small reading room at the library and persist in talking out loud and giggling while they peruse the columns of the home paper, deserve the premier honors for their display of asininity.
Of course the folks at home do excurciatingly funny things from the "college kid" angle, and the country editor's manner of describing home events is "simply killing." However, to the average person, these newly-discovered idiosyncracies of the local population in any locality in Kansas, isn't sufficient provocation for the disturbance made. In fact, such titter and prattle is most distracting, and sometimes causes the sufferers to wish the racket-makers would go to——some place else!
READER.
The Mean Thing!
We have criticised the University of Kansas from time to time, but we note with approval the action of the University authorities in refusing the students permission to come to Topeka and give a play.-Dodd Gaston in Topeka Capital.
Protsch Spring Suiting
FEBRUARY 1st
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1009 Mass. St.
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OPEN FOR THE DANCE
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Phones 658
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Rent a Good TYPEWRITER at BOUGHTON'S 1025 MASS. ST.
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Order that Spring Suit Press that Winter Suit
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