Election reflection
The elections have come and gone again, and we feel that something should be said for them before we all forget the issues and politics for another semester.
Elections for ASC district representatives were quite a disappointment this year, and different people have blamed different circumstances for the low voter turnout and the general apathy with which the election was met last week. So we'd like to blame our own set of circumstances.
FOR ONE THING, the election was not publicized. Fault here lies partly with the Kansas and partly with the political parties and candidates. Many residents of the large dormitories have said that they thought the candidates were running for hall offices, because immediate living groups were the extent of their campaign coverage, if they campaigned at all. Votes, with possibly a few exceptions, consisted of friends of the candidates and almost exclusively those friends living in his or her hall.
The Kansan should have played the election more prominently and more frequently. It seems, however, that in the fall, with no real issues and most of the candidates running more or less on their own, that there is no real news to report during the campaign with the exception of announcements from the elections committee. An editorial get-out-the-vote stand probably would have helped matters.
Finally, the Hare preferential ballot has got to be done away with. This system, which would take volumes to explain, allows a candidate with fewer votes to be elected to office, as long as his vote total reaches the predetermined quota before another. As we said, though, the system is not nearly that simple, but that is the essence of the problem. The fact remains that the candidates elected do not reflect student opinion as indicated by the direction in which the voting runs.
THESE ELECTIONS WERE NOT mirrors of student opinion for another reason: simply that only 28 per cent of the student body turned out at the polls.
One member of the elections committee was heard to say that student apathy was at fault, because "the students just don't realize what the ASC does for them." It could start doing something for them by giving them a clear-cut election procedure, and one that will effectively represent the entire student body at KU.
And the parties could follow suit by giving them responsible, informed candidates who know more than what the letters A-S-C stand for, and who are prepared to do more than ask a few friends to vote for them if they happen to stumble into Strong after their eight-thirty.
Apathy toward student government will persist as long as student government is apathetic toward the students...
- The Editors
The people say...
To the Editor:
Notice how we men like to write you about the Fill!
A strange fact it is that men are ultimately the group most threatened by the Fill. The girl now holds the possibility of controlling her own fertility. Who knows but what a mood of discouragement over grades or/and impatience with the development of a relationship could cause the best of courtships (and marriages) to take on new dimensions or proportions?
Our sympathy must be directed toward the authorities at Watkins Hospital (and the bulk of the medical profession). They are being accused of assuming religious prerogatives as moralists, when actually they are reflecting and operating according to the mores of our society.
THIS IS not to propose that certain mores are wrong or right in themselves. Indeed any imoral mores ought to be changed. We of the university community ought to be more discriminating in labeling our accusations.
The questions raised by the Pill are not one-sided and are many—development of the most significant interpersonal relationships, responsibility for population explosion, achievement of responsible parenthood, to name some.
Use of the Pill within or without marriage does not remove the necessity for those qualities which are still required for the most meaningful and successful relationships between a man and a woman—namely trust, confidence, communication, commitment, discipline and love. In fact, the Pills might delude one into thinking that these elements are no longer important.
To have the new possibilities of the Pill is wonderful and exciting, but maturity in the modern man is demanded as never before.
Some KU Religious Advisors,
Some KU Religious Advisors,
Don Conrad
Dick Dulin
John B. Craber
Tom Moore
Tom Rehorn
John Simmons
Norman Steffen
Maynard Strothmann
Thomas B. Woodward
To the editors:
To the editors:
RE: Maury Breecher's editorial in the University Daily Kansan of November 11, 1966
Admonishes Mr. Breecher: "We must guarantee Hungary's independence in the event of another revolution."
If Mr. Breecher is not prepared to live with the Communists in this nuclear age, then and he and his fellow zealots had better be prepared to die with the Communists.
And if they are not prepared to die with the Communists they had better get off their Messianic kick
Leland J. Pritchard Professor of Finance 297 Summerfield
To the editors:
What would "the people say" if they had to be completely honest? It's a terrible thought, but here are ten instances of what I believe some people might write to the UDK if they were forced to be honest with others and themselves:
Completely yours,
Curiously, there are two quite different methods used by the people of KU to escape from the world. For the professors there are the stacks, and for the students there is the Gaslight Tavern.
Thousands of students at KU spend their entire waking hours trudging in big crowds from class to class or between the University and their tiny, mass-produced cubicles on Daisy Hill. Can you call that living?
Stack Supervisor
Whenever a university must introduce each year with a Convocation proclaiming its own incomparable greatness, you can be sure that something is amiss somewhere.
Yours forever.
Truly yours.
Hall Contractors, Inc.
Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe A plumber in my home town has read and reread all the major works of Charles Dickens. Dickens would feel more honored by this than by all the scholarly treatises praising his artistry.
Chairman of the English Department
Chancellor W. Clarke Westcott
Sincerely,
My professors have forgotten
that books are about life, life is not about books. They have as a result withdrawn from life into the stacks and have trapped me there with them.
God save us,
The most regrettable thing about the University is this: if students could be given the chance to omit from their lives the years separating them from their degrees, they would be tempted to do so.
Rhodes Scholar
Devotedly,
Dean of the College
Any human being or institution which is truly great will be the last to say so. This is why Kansas University, the "Great Society," all advertising and all politicians merit distrust.
Thanking you.
Old men who set up stumbling blocks for the youth of America in the form of censorship, closing hours or anti-birth control policy are actually compensating for their deep sexual frustration and jealous desire to be younger.
Robert Docking
Faithfully,
Persons of high social status in positions of great influence tend to forget their earlier idealism while revelling in their own personal success. Thus, if our young rebels were given the high positions they so ardently desire, they would become self-satisfied, self-praising and complacent people just like their elders. Who do they think they are kidding, anyway?
Dr. Schwegler
Humbly.
The Pill
If a person has any imagination or originality whatsoever, he will not be a graduate student in the humanities at KU. Our graduates in the humanities are therefore all uninspired, passive people whose only hope is to receive their degrees by meekly doing the bidding of their professors. They should be done away with altogether.
Cineas and Pyrrhus
Respectfully.
James D. Bono Lawrence graduate student in humanities
2
Daily Kansan
By BARBARA PHILLIPS and ERIC MORGENTHALER
Monday, November 21, 1966
Other schools report
The problem of the Pill is not unique to the KU campus. Other universities have experienced recent controversy over its usage and distribution.
Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge recently experienced an unfortunate incident in connection with the distribution of the oral contraceptives at the university clinic.
The Daily Reveille, the campus newspaper, sent three unmarried university coads to the infirmary to obtain birth control pills. Three different girls, all 21, sought the pills from a doctor on separate days.
"ALL THE COEDS sent did obtain birth control pills. In four of five requests for the pills, they were obtained without the girls' revealing why they wanted the pills. All obtained the pills without any type of physical examination," the Reveille reported.
The director of the University Health Service at LSU, Dr. Eula Palmer, said she doubted that the indiscriminate distribution of the pills was the case. She added that it had not been University policy to issue the birth control pills indiscriminately.
The Reveille stated the dispensation of the oral contraceptives did not follow the three pre-requisites for the health-safe prescribing of birth control pills set by the Louisiana Medical Society.
The guidelines are:
- The determining of the patient's need by the doctor.
- The completing of a thorough physical examination of the patient or the consulting of results of a physical examination, if it is less than a year old, and
- The studying of the findings of a complete female examination of the patient.
THE REVELLIE plans to bring the Pill distribution question before the Louisiana Medical Society's Board of Censors for its consideration.
In an editor's note which prefaced the front page story, the Reveille stated, "The purpose of this story is not to pass judgment. It is merely to report a situation as it exists. We are taking no stand on morals or medical ethics. We are simply stating the facts."
The Reveille article stirred considerable comment from both students and faculty members at the University, Dr. Palmer later stated, "We plan to work on it from both angles."
Other colleges have experienced similar upheavals. In the fall of 1965, a doctor at the Brown University Health Center admitted having prescribed birth control pills for unmarried coeds.
A SOPHOMORE'S letter to the Daily Spectator at Columbia University maintained that by not prescribing pills, Barnard (College) is "enforcing chastity . . . (or) deliberately placing the girls in danger."
The University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Conn., recently had a birth control speaker on campus and ran an article in The Scribe, the campus newspaper, which gave information on the Planned Parenthood League, an organization which gives out contraceptives to unmarried women over 21.
The newest organization at the University of California at Berkeley is the campus sexual freedom forum, which sells membership buttons. Its goals include discussion groups and lectures on birth control; and is also concerned with crusading for "freedom of dress or undress, including nudity and transvestitism."
PERHAPS THE most forthright comment from a college woman on the subject of contraceptives was that of a Barnard sophomore quoted by Gael Greene in "Sex and the College Girl": "It's one thing to be in love, to be swept away by love . . . but once you start planning ahead to the extent of a diaphragm, it's like wearing a sign: 'I'm a girl who screws.'"
Thus, last year's women's regulations controversy is this year's contraceptive debate, and the impact has been felt at the KU campus and other campuses. We wonder what next year's Problem will be.
Dr. Clinton, whose office is on the lower floor of City Hall, said there is no evidence that oral contraceptives are the cause of any diseases or that the pills react unfavorably in the presence of any diseases.
Lawrence is one of the few Kansas cities with such a center, and Dr. Clinton said he, as a physician, will give a prescription for pills to any woman at least 18 years of age who requests one.
He said he does not require a medical examination before giving the pills, but does ask for a short medical history.
Women 18 years of age or older can easily obtain contraceptives in Lawrence whether they are married or not, according to Dr. Dale Clinton, city health director.
Dr. Clinton said Kansas law provides for the creation of state-financed health centers which are authorized to give birth control devices and drugs to women with doctor's prescriptions.
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