Editorials
Wake Up, Mr. Carlyle
Dear Bert.
Your nationally influential column has, as you are aware, been perused by the sons and daughters of the steadfast American parents whom you say have been so derelict in sending their children to KU. I regret to inform you that it has been read, not with avid curiosity, but with sardonic amusement by most KU students and faculty members.
WE'RE AMUSED, BERT, because your techniques are so obvious. Most people who are interested in spreading empty allegations and ideology are aware of the various propaganda devices and consequently use a deft touch in disseminating their ideas. After, the uninformed reader is taken in because he cannot recognize that what seems a logical piece of writing is actually a mosaic of skillfully assembled propaganda.
Bert, I'm afraid you're just a little too heavy-handed to convince any but the most dense among us that "there is one of the most active Communist cells in the United States in the Kansas University faculty and student body."
WHAT YOU'RE DOING, Bert, is jousting with wind mills. But you're even funnier than Cervantes' Sancho, because you're jousting with non-existent wind mills.
You may not be aware of what are termed "logical fallacies" or propaganda devices, so just for your benefit, I am going to tell you what you have been doing, and why no one believes you.
The most obvious devices you're using include over-generalizing; guilt by association (ad hominem); the "figures prove" technique; double talk and a sundry assortment of half-truths, assertions and lies.
IN A WAY, Bert, you have gotten a foothold
in the big leagues of the propagandists. If you can take the time to examine some of its charges and techniques, I'm sure you'll discover that the late Senator McCarthy used each of these devices, particularly hominem.
You combine over-generalizing and the "figures prove" technique, which results in double talk. First you asserted that we have one of the most active Communist cells in the U.S. here. Then you noted there is "a minority in numbers." Further reading showed you thought the minority amounted to "less than one per cent of the student body." You admitted you didn't "want to paint everybody with one brush," that you were "not so alarmed with the numbers of Communists at KU as with their activities and the directions they have from people of the same philosophy."
YOU TOSS OUT vague words like "leftist," "crackpot" and "socialist causes" with the abandon of chaff blowing in the wind.
You assail a campus organization, Students for a Democratic Society by saying that an SDS resolution parallels material published in the Communist Daily Worker. Bertie, don't you realize that without documenting this and all your other assertions, no one is going to believe you?
If you will permit me, I'd like to suggest that you find some other crusade. I seriously doubt that you are going to perpetrate a Red Scare on the campus.
The administration and faculty, whom you say have been so lax in allowing certain organizations to exist here, has done an excellent job of teaching us to beware your ilk.
Yours.
— Karen Lambert
Unfunniest Thing!
I'm a senior.
Today I feel it for sure. I have my senior sweatshirt, an almost useless crimson cowboy hat, a senior key. And the panic of the next six and one-half months to face.
These four years are often called the best of our lives. The first year was fun: hour dances, speech 1, and that first kiss under the Campaign. The second was a little harder: Western City. English II themes, and getting the nerve to go t.g.i.f. with the girls. The third year flew: declaring a major, the English Pro, and that final week sandbar party.
THE LAST YEAR—maybe the best of the best years—is only three weeks old. Although it's just begun and that June 6th commencement could be light years away, I find myself looking back—as seniors have a tendency to do.
A senior notices a lot of growth in his four years. He sees the University growing. Four years ago he could walk down Jayhawk Boulevard without consciously dodging pedestrians. Four years ago the freshman football seats weren't quite so far around the stadium horseshoe. Four years ago Blake, Ellsworth, McColum, the TKE, Phi Psi, the Pi Phi, and AKL houses, the new gym, the engineering building and half the library did not exist.
Four years ago we didn't exist—not as we are
now—the product of four years of experience, experiment and excitement: our education.
WE WERE VERY much alike—all 2,500 of us—when we entered four years ago. We had much the same backgrounds whether we came from Kansas, Kentucky or Connecticut for high schools are the great levelers in America.
In the University we grew. Eyes which had seen no more distant vistas than western Kansas sunsets suddenly saw Oriental smiles, Harvard book bags and bearded poets. The ears which had grown accustomed to the flat Kansas twang suddenly heard New York's nasality, Georgia's drawl and a patois of foreign accents.
The mind, which had only worked by rote in high school, suddenly encompassed new thoughts: Social Contract, John Donne, liberalism or conservatism, the Turner thesis, Einstein or existentialism.
On the safe world is the continent of our campus. These best years have been easy years. Though we learned responsibility we've seldom had burdensome problems. Though we've worked for our money, we've seldom supported more than one person. Though we've made decisions, we've made few that would affect us unalterably for a lifetime.
The continent of our campus is a safe world the other world we can only see over the horizon.
The People Say...
Favors Tolerance
It was rather distressing to learn from your article, "Weekly Publisher Assails Campus SDS" (October 5) that it is still apparently impossible to discuss Communism in unemotional terms in the U.S.A. From your article it would seem that both sides take the traditional line that Communism is all that is evil and both are unwilling to concede the immense contributions made by Communist governments to the welfare of a large proportion of the earth's population. I was
Dear Editor.
shocked to see, at the World's Fair in New York, a shrine dedicated to those Lithuanians who were struggling against the "ungodly Communists." If this is the attitude of the U.S.A. how can we ever hope for real peaceful co-existence?
1 COME FROM a country, Scotland, which tolerates and even respects the extreme left. I know that many of my fellow students in Scotland regard 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. Dismissing Communism as a tool of the devil will achieve nothing.
If you could only adopt a more sympathetic approach to the ideas of Communism it might create better understanding and ease international tension. Who knows, in Communism you might even find some answers to the problems which beset modern America.
Yours faithfully,
David Forbes
Scotland graduate student
2
Daily Kansan Friday, October 8, 1965
"You Ugly Devil!"
On The Side...
The other persons in Lawrence, the townies, are displaying a large red and white button on their lapels, saying "Buy Lawrence." We didn't know it was for sale. Maybe they're trying to sell the place to raise money for those swimming pools.
We wonder if the proposed overpass connecting the east and west sides of Iowa Street will have twin towers, combining the traditional and the modern forms of architecture. Or maybe have red tile paving. Or bells. Or a traffic booth. We know a good architect for the project, one who has had years of Republican experience designing towers, red roofs and modern and traditional (simultaneously) buildings.
Ol' Bert C. Carlyle, publisher of the nationally influential "Lawrence Outlook," informs us that KU has an active communist cell, the SDS, and that this group will be converting us "to communist and socialist causes." We won't comment, as this statement speaks for itself.
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An acquaintance asked why we keep picking on freshman girls. We could pick on upperclass women, but they can read and might get mad. Actually, it's not so much that they'll get mad, but they might stop going out with us, and that would mean an end to those endearing Freudian slips, malaprops, and wistful observations on life.
$$
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One of our best friends, who has recently become engaged, now says that it isn't that he's too young to get married, but rather he's too young to be engaged. Besides, you can't get out of the draft anymore by being married. What we're looking for is a shapely brunette, about 19 years old, with seven kids. Anything is better than Viet Nam.
Speaking of Viet Nam, we're now informed that tear gas is "camp." We guess the situation over there is so bad now, it's worth crying about. The gas will save our G.I.'s from killing Viet Cong women and children.
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With all the starvation in Asia, we had thought Jonathan Swift had a modest proposal for ending hunger. That's for those few of you who can read.
Harry Krause
Dailij Hänsan
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