Never-never land
Tonight someone will die in Viet Nam. It will not be an easy death, but will be attended with all the pain that a bullet or the white hot steel of shrapnel can inflict.
Tonight someone will split someone's skull wide open on some dark street because someone was a mick, a spic, a dago, a jig, a chink or a whitey.
Tonight KU students will have a dance at Sigma something, talk about the hottest car or go watch the football players romp around the field.
THEY WILL TALK about some athlete and the possibility of breaking his old record, but they will not talk about the 19-year-old kid from Kansas City who lost his arms last week in a rice paddy. They will debate about the coolest girl at Chi something, but they will never speak of the mother who held her headless baby in her arms and asked why.
It is very sad that an institution which serves knowledge can be so devoid of concern, so unaware of the cold, naked, brutal, hungry world beyond it.
Students who will supposedly be the leaders of tomorrow's nation will never come in contact with the real conflicts of the world. From kindergarten, to grade school, to high school, to even college within a college, to the job which awaits their diploma, it is doubtful they will ever step out into the cold.
TIME IS ONE of the greatest luxuries of life. A university offers such time; it can also offer thought. Regardless of the thought's value to other people's opinion, it is thought. It can provoke interest in what is hopefully important which is the awareness of man's plight and some way to improve upon it.
Probably the most obvious example of such blatant disregard of the world is the student paper—a paper that concerns itself with bus fares for students too lazy to walk six blocks. It ponders the great difference between Vox and the other student party.
THE UNIVERSITY is not a small community, a self-contained Disneyland. For within its compounds live Socrates, Lincoln, Churchill, Kennedy, Milton, Shakespeare, Orwell, and even Hitler and Marx.
It should be boundless for all names, all thoughts, and lands. If it has but one purpose it should be to aware the disciples (at least they could be) of truth and reason of the needs of all men.
There are many reasons why a university cloaks itself in the sweet land of never-never. But there are more reasons why it should not. The university need not, nor should not, give answers to the world's problems and needs. But it should provoke minds to seek understanding and to inquire.
By JOHN LOVEKIN
Black power
What impressed us most about Wednesday night's black power panel discussion was the notion that there really is no one definition of black power.
As Robert Waters, a Kansas City NAACP leader put it, "Black power is a magic formula with which we can give every individual his wishes. The people who expound on it are saying more about themselves than about any racial concept."
WATERS' IDEA WAS backed up by the four panel members—each had his own interpretation of the slogan. One said it was an attention-getting and unifying device; another felt it meant little and would soon disappear; another felt it was solidarity in Negro ghettos; the fourth felt it was a social concept more necessary than integration for the welfare of the poor Negro.
The real meaning of black power, apparently, depends upon the individual who is applying it. In the hands of the responsible individual, it is a responsible concept.
AFTER HEARING last night's panel, we felt reassured. All the panel members talked in
terms of social improvement and upgrading of the ghettos; no mention was made of black superiority or of terrorist activities. The four speakers were all responsible, well-educated Negro leaders; they discussed the black power concept with reason and thought. There was none of the emotion-pitched trash that characterizes certain national civil rights leaders and certain national journals.
We are still wary of the black power slogan. Not all Negro leaders are as responsible as the men who spoke Wednesday night. We think the slogan is still a dangerous and explosive one.
BUT THE PANEL discussion provided us with an insight into the slogan which we had not been exposed to in news journals or in statements of Negro and white leaders. We learned that black power can be a reasoned and responsible slogan as well as an emotional and reactionary one.
The Civil Rights Council deserves commendation for bringing the program to KU. It was an informative experience and a new approach to a misunderstood and often terrifying slogan.
— Eric Morgenthaler
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
"WELL, IT'S CERTAINLY PLEASANT TO HEAR STUDENTS SAY SOMETHING *NICE* ABOUT ONE OF YOUR FINALS FOR A CHANGE!"
Official Bulletin
University Theatre, 8:20 p.m. "The Rehearsal." Murphy Hall.
TODAY
SATURDAY
Peace Corps Examination 8:30 a.m.
Department office. No pre-registration necessary
KU African Club, 6:30 p.m. Kansas Union. Special program commemorating the independence of Lesotho and Tanzania. Everyone is cordially welcome.
International Club, 9:30 a.m. Weekly meeting—Roller Skating Party. Meet at 9:30 a.m. in front of Kansas Union for bus ride to the Rink.
University Theatre, 8:20 p.m. "The Rehearsal." Murphy Hall.
Cricket Club Practice, 10 a.m. Intramural Field east new Robinson Gym. Everyone welcome. For information, call Zafar Isaelli, VI 2-3784.
Oread Friends Meeting, 10:30 a.m.
An unprogrammed meeting for worship followed by discussion of topics everyone welcome. Danforth Chapel.
University Lutheran Church: Disc
cussions. 9:45 a.m.; Sunday worship.
11 a.m. Gamma Delta, 5:30 p.m. 15th
and Iowa, Sts.
People-to-People Picnic. 5 p.m. For Foreign Students and foreign faculty. Potter Lake picnic area. In case of rain, east side. Memorial Stadium.
Lutheran Student Association, 5:39 p.m. Alceve C. Kansas Union. Talk on Peace Corps & Thailand by Rolfe Gielstad
KU's Creede, Colo., Theater Com-
pany, "Born Yesterday"
Murphy Hall
Daily Kansan
2
Friday, October 7, 1966
"Just use another passage or something-think we run this building for your convenience?"
NEW BOOKS
--national origin whose names expressed in the editorial column are those of the students whose names are signed to them. Guest editorial views are not necessarily the editor's. Any opinions expressed in the Daily Kansan are not necessarily those of The University of Kansas Administration or *U.S. State Board of Regents*
Most of us aren't likely to manage this big, complex, somewhat lumpy novel, but probably we must say that one of the top paperbacks of the fall is Gunter Grass's Dog Years (Crest, 95 cents). You may have stumbled through "The Tin Drum," and if you did you know what you have in store. "Dog Years," like the earlier work, is already a considerable international success.
Germany is the setting—Germany in, roughly, the Hitler era, though it starts earlier and goes a bit beyond that time. The shocking treatment of the Jew, and the interrelationships of Jew and Nazi, are vital to the story. If you are ready for something meaty this is it.
Noah Gordon's The Rabbi (Crest, 95 cents), also a big one these days, is likely to be more to the taste of most readers. There are no stylistic complexities, and it's the kind of book that, well, makes you feel good. You know. It's the story of an American rabbi and his non-Jewish wife.
DON'T PUT THIS ONE down, however, as being one of those books that tell you many things about the Jewish state of mind. It's not in that group. The setting is mainly eastern cities, and there are those predictable Jewish characters. But Philip Rothtype stuff? No.
Now about the last Robert Ruark book, The Honey Badger (Crest, 95 cents). This man's works always sold, and they do have a singular quality. They're not well-written but they're absorbing, for Ruark was a good story-teller.
This one is, perhaps, the story of Ruark himself, one of the more flamboyant journalistic characters of his generation. There's this guy, trying to find himself in Washington during the war, in London, in Manhattan and, ah ha, in Africa. Africa was where Ruark seemed happiest in his last years. Most of what was happening in liberal American society was not at all to his taste.
IF YOU HAVENT read a novel about the war in Viet Nam there's one waiting for you at the drugstore. Title, A Tract of Time (Crest, 60 cents); author, Smith Hempstone. The hero is an American agent sent into the jungle. Viet Cong, rioting, Buddhist martyrdoms, intrigue, blood and war, sex and betrayal. Rough, tough, 1966.
Comes now Frederic Morton's The Schatten Affair (Crest, 60 cents). This one should have broad appeal. It's a love affair, set in Berlin, the participants (yes, that has to be the word these days) an American Jew and a beautiful German aristocrat. It's a suspense story, too, which brings us to the next category.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
kansan
Serving KK for 77 of its 101 Years
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