Student's life "normal"
Blindness no handicap
By RICH LOVETT
You've probably seen Roger Corkins, Norman, Okla., graduate student, somewhere on the campus: tall, black curly hair, shiny leather boots. Corkins did not see you. He is blind.
Corkins was born with congenital cataracts on his eyes. At nine he contracted glaucoma and lost sight in his right eye. Then vision in his left eye began fading, and by 13 he was completely blind.
DESPITE this handicap he carries a full class load and was active last year on the Viet Nam Committee. Students for a Democratic Society, Student Peace Union and the Civil Rights Council.
Corkins walks unaided to end from classes using a long walking staff with which he feels his way, and a Braille watch to keep him on time.
He says, "I can walk at about average speed. I run my cane along the edge of sidewalks and curbs and have definite routes I always take. When I cross streets I can hear the traffic coming, except for bicycles. Sometimes I have even pulled friends back when I heard cars coming before they saw them."
Occasionally, however, Corkins does get lost. "One time I was walking from Blake to the Union and somehow ended up over by New Fraser. I still don't know how I did that."
HE PREFERS privacy and lives in an apartment on Ohio Street with only a Siamese cat named YangQuei-Fei. He is able to do some simple cooking, such as TV dinners and pot pies, but eats out much of the time. For pleasure he plays his guitar, listens to his stereo, and "watches" television.
As an undergraduate Corkins went to Oklahoma U. and attended many of its football games. "I took a transistor radio and when the radio told what formation the players were in I would play a little game of 'huh' with the guy next to me, guessing what they would do," he says.
Corkins, a political science major, understandably finds studying difficult. He types all his tests
KU-Y seeks chairmen for frosh camp
KU-Y is accepting applications for chairman and two co-chairmen of its annual Freshman Camp, held in the autumn.
Applications are available in the KU-Y office in the Kansas Union. They must be submitted by 5 p.m., Monday. Interviews will follow next week.
About 60 freshmen attended the 1966 session held in October at the YMCA Santosage Camp at Butler, Mo. The students stay overnight Friday and all day Saturday. The retreat is scheduled after school starts to allow the students time to formulate questions pertinent to their school life.
Tom Moore, KU-Y sponsor, said, "The purpose is to show the freshmen the best of KU." Selected upperclassmen lead discussions, and several professors speak on subjects important to them.
Daily Kansan Thursday, January 5, 1967
and never takes class notes because he says writing in Braille is too slow. He just tries to remember the lectures.
BUYING HIS textbooks long before enrollment, he sends them off to be tape recorded, though he finds tapes unhandy. Corkins can read Braille about as fast as a sighted person can read aloud, but the only books he has in Braille are some of the classics, so friends or hired readers often read his textbooks to him.
Corkins attended the School for the Blind in Muskogee, Okla.,
and says of his years there, "The blind environment is a world of the non-normal, with its own mores and customs and ways of thinking. Children who go to blind schools for too long come out unacustomed to living in the real world and end up as piano tuners or candy stand operators when their minds are capable of much more.
"They should learn to use a cane and read Braille and then go to regular schools. The average blind child will come out pretty normal if put in the normal world."
Hercules theme to be subject of research
The second post-doctoral research grant in three years has been awarded to Ronald S. Tobin, acting chairman of the French and Italian Department, by the American Philosophical Society.
Tobin will use the $1,500 grant to go to Paris in June to undertake research on the Hercules theme in French drama and poetry from 1550-1750.
Tobin contends that the concept of the here has changed in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries.
5
"Some authors," he said, "present Hercules in the typical classic picture of the hero; others portray him as a romantic figure dying for his beloved, and still others see him as a Christ figure. In the 16th century the literary picture of the warrior figure declines."
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Peace groups to join march on penitentiary
KU peace groups will join the ranks of the big time Saturday when they participate in a protest march and rally in Leavenworth with an expected 200 other peace advocates.
Students from such well known "protest" schools as Berkeley and the University of Chicago are also expected to participate.
The rally is to protest the imprisonment of three ex-GI's now "stationed" at the Fort Leavenworth prison. The men, known as the "Fort Hood Three," were sentenced to from three to five years of hard labor, after refusing orders sending them to Viet Nam.
The rally will begin at 10 a.m., when participants meet at the Lansing State Penitentiary and march the six miles to Leavenworth.
At 1 p.m. they will assemble in front of Fort Leavenworth, where they will hear speeches by members of representative U.S. peace groups and will attempt to present a statement to the fort commander.
The Fort Hood Three Defense Committee, a group organized after the three men's trial to sponsor legal appeals and publicize their plight, is coordinating Saturday's protest actions. The committee's sponsors include, among others, Floyd McKissick, Stokely Carmichael, Pete Seeger, Dr. Herbert Aptheker, Ossie Davis and Nat Hentoff.
Hamilton Salsich, assistant English instructor and chairman of the KU Viet Nam Committee, said, "The most important idea is to bring the case of these three men to the attention of the public, but since they have gone to prison in protest of the war, it will also be a peace protest."