An era ends ... let's look ahead
Well, it finally happened. After sifting through years of rumors and complaints, KU will have a new football coach next year.
It has been the custom for many newspapers to ignore the records of former coaches at the time of their resignations, to heap laudits upon his memory and to say what a genuine contribution he was to the athletic program and to the game itself.
But ours is not to heap laudits, nor is it to further injure the memory of the last nine football seasons.
WEWOULD, HOWEVER, like to express our concern for the future of the football program at KU, a concern which we are confident is felt by the Athletic Board, by Coach Mitchell himself, and by anyone connected with the athletic program, whether spectator or participant.
KU has a fine athletic tradition, and has had for a good many years. The top sport has always been basketball, and track has run a close second. Names like Clydè Lovellette, Wilt Chamberlain, Glen Cunningham and Wes Santee come immediately to mind, and the great teams and championships which they helped to win have become history and tradition.
There are other names: Ray Evans, Otto Schnellbacher, Oliver Spencer, Gil Reich, John Hadl, Gayle Sayers. Football All-Americans from Kansas. There are still other names: Curtis McClinton and John Peppercorn stand out on a long list.
KU HAS HAD GREAT PLAYERS, outstanding individual stars. But we have only managed to win the conference championship three times in the last forty years, and have only sporadically had a team which gained some national recognition.
But our concern lies with the future, not with the past. It is our sincere hope that the Athletic Board will consider every possibility and spare no reasonable expense to insure the escalation of the entire program; and that includes the acquiring of the best and most qualified coach available.
We have every confidence that we mirror the opinion of students, faculty, administration and alumni when we say this, and we hope for that reason that every effort will be made to carry out this wish.
THERE IS NO REASON that a school with the sports tradition that KU has cannot manage to get its football team consistently into the winning column. We have the resources and the need, and no obstacle should prove insurmountable as long as those responsible remain so.
The people say...
We have heard about too many "next weeks" and "next years." It's time that football at KU caught up with the rest of the world and the rest of the sports in the athletic program.
Jack Harrington
To the editor:
During the past few weeks, the students at Michigan University have been protesting the university's policy of sending class rankings to the local draft boards, and their protest has once again brought to the fore a serious problem which has been repeatedly swept under administrative rugs by students and faculty alike.
For years now educators have realized that the meaning of student "grades" and "ranks" has been gradually and thoroughly distorted, but this particular policy of using grades as a guage for the selection of soldiers adds a wholly new — and incredibly frightening—distortion. Originally the grade was meant to be an indication ONLY of the student's progress in a particular course: an "F" in chemistry meant simply that the student did not understand chemistry, and hence should not be offered a job as a chemical researcher.
The Selective Service System's message to us is clear: the "F" student goes to war, the "A' student stays home; the unintelligent fight and die,the intelligent study and live. Simply put, the message comes down to this: some of our students are scraps of useless refuse, and their lives, if lost, will not be missed.
BUT NOW, with the need for increased military manpower, it seems that the grade has taken on a far greater significance. Now an "F" in chemistry indicates, apparently, that the very LIFE of that student is not as valuable as the life of the "A" student.
THAT IS THE message, and its implications, to say the least, are revolting. More and more the humanness of the student is pushed to the background and suppressed by the mechanical power of the grade. Our universities gradually take on the appearance of military factories, where the slow student (who may be simply a victim of poor family background or improper instruction) is quickly weeded out and pitched, so to speak, into the fire.
The boasts of silver-tongued administrators about the importance of student dignity and student freedom become sickeningly
empty. When a student is cold that his life is valuable only if he produces strings of A's and B's, his dignity has been raped and his freedom stolen.
Perhaps the students at Michigan have decided that they would like to be treated as human beings—as something more than just IBM cards, punched, filed, and ready for shipment. The students at KU have apparently not made this decision—nor, indeed, have the faculty. Here, we continue our little game: the blind lead the blind, grades are worshipped, students become toys, and the watchword is "don't rock the boat."
But the boat, I fear, is sinking.
Hamilton J. Salsich
Asst. Instr. in English
★ ★ ★ ★
To the editor:
to the editor.
Re: Editorial entitled: "Declaration" by Pyrhrus and Cineas in the UDK of Tuesday, November 29, 1966.
Referring to the results of the last general election the editorial comments: "Some of the bright stars in this (Democratic) constellation were Lurleen Wallace, Bob Docking, and probably Lester Maddox."
Surely the editors of the UDK have been taught the differences between the capricious and smear type of irresponsible journalism, and the kind of responsible journalism which freedom of the
press rightly entails. The authors of this editorial obviously have not absorbed this lesson.
AND FURTHER on in the same editorial we learn: "Another big factor (in the Docking victory) was his Goldwater-like anti-tax stand."
This, of course, is arrant nonsense. Governor-elect Docking's tax philosophy is at the opposite pole compared with Goldwater's position. For example, Docking proposes that the state personal income tax on the lowest brackets be reduced, and that the revenue lost by this reduction be compensated for by raising the interest rates which bankers pay on "idle" state funds held in the commercial banks of Kansas.
With a minimum amount of research Pyrhus and Cineas could have found out that the Goldwater branch of the Republican party is not in favor of taxing bankers in order to lower the taxes of the relatively poor.
If the objective of Pyrrhus and Cineas was to promote a conflict between the Governor-elect and the university, I can assure them they have already achieved a "pyrrhic victory."
Leland J. Pritchard Professor of Finance
2
Daily Kansan editorial page Monday, December 5, 1966
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