The death of the New Left
This university's version of the New Student Left is dying.
No funeral arrangements have been made because the death, when it comes, will not be noticed.
PULVERIZED BY BITTER, singular-thinking membership, the Lusty Left, as it was known in its heyday, has succumbed to the sickening power of student opinion. For when KU's Left was lusty, the students watched it, got mad at it, and listened to it.
Now, that Left is lethargic—and the students it set out of educate laugh.
They laugh at a Students for a Democratic Society which, frothing with anger at some ethereal bureaucracy, cannot master the more frivolous points of democracy needed to hold a simple meeting.
THEY LAUGH AT a Student Peace Union, organized to portray the stupidity of war and now reduced to engendering enough fanaticism
They laugh (and shudder) at a Civil Rights Council, secretly embroiled in a struggle over the new horror. black versus white power.
against "the administration" and "the draft" to start its own war.
But laughter for idealists is murder. In their death throes, some of these idealists search for a new group, a new club, a new ad hoc committee that will stave off the end and perhaps breathe life into the skeleton. The odds are not theirs.
Nevertheless, if the Lusty Left does pass on, its passing should be greeted with dismay. While it lived, the Lusty Left counterbalanced the idiocy of its campus counterpart, the Rusty Right. While it thrived, the Lusty Left pricked the conscience of some administrators who should have known better. And in its greatest glory, the Lusty Left performed its most valuable service to this university—some of us not-so-lusty, not-so-lefters were forced to think instead of dance.
By DAN AUSTIN
Speaking out
KUPA outlines its goals
The Kansas University Progressive Alliance was founded on two basic beliefs:
First, if KU student government is ever to be relevant to the lives of KU students and have a reason for existence, it must more effectively represent student opinion in all aspects of university life-academic questions, student regulations, athletics—any area that affects students.
Second, the current structures and habits of government are inadequate to this task.
THE MEMBERS of Alliance sought the flaws in KU student government, and concluded that the excessive strength and influence of campus political parties was responsible for many weaknesses. None of these problems can be solved within the existing system. Flamboyant campaigning, appointments for political rewards, legislation and platforms written solely for their propaganda value, meaningless party antagonisms—all these were the foundations of the old party system, inseparable from it.
So the Alliance concluded that the only answer was to break away completely from the old
parties, to start a new organization with a new enthusiasm and a new goal. Reform of student government is our sole purpose; the extent of our power or the length of our existence is not our concern.
We have a number of goals for the reform of the structure of student government itself: revisions of the elections system which will de-emphasize political parties and bring representation closer to individual living units or districts; the elimination of the Hare system of preferential voting; changes in the structure of All Student Council Committees that will give each ASC representative definite duties and an area of specialization; and seeking a stronger voice for students in student-faculty committees and other policy-determining groups.
ALLIANCE HAS BEEN working on these projects both alone and with members of other political parties. Concrete results may be expected soon. In addition, Alliance's ASC representatives will see that the ASC expresses student opinion in regard to all campus affairs.
Some confusion has arisen on
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
"JEEMS LIKE EVERY YEAR WE HAVE TO PLACE MORE OF OUR ENTERING FRESHMEN INTO LOWER LEVEL MEDICAL CLASSES!"
campus concerning the nature of the Progressive Alliance. It is a political party, and will run candidates for various campus offices. We will, however, wage campaigns with dignity and maturity without the unnecessary fanfare and political games that have characterized campus politics in the past. The specifics of this approach to campaigning will become more clear with time. But we do promise that Alliance will have no part of the senseless partisanship and wasteful display of past campaigns.
We hope that this article has answered many questions about what the Alliance is and what it hopes to do. We will soon be explaining our goals and answering questions in all campus living groups. Once again, we say: watch us. If you agree with our goals and our approach, join with us to work for these goals.
—The KU Progressive Alliance
Rent-a-ricksha
Peking's intensive campaign to eradicate bourgeois vestiges has taken some curious turns. Consider, for instance, the pedicab—a sort of tricycle pedaled by a driver with a seat behind him for the passenger.
According to a sign outside a pedicab depot, things have changed. It says these vehicles may still be hired, but the passenger is to do the pedaling while the driver sits in the passenger seat.
No doubt the commercial is:
"Let Mao put you in the driver's seat."
Official Bulletin
—The New York Times
Ph.D. Exam. 9-30 p.m. Ray Max
L. Ph.D. administration &
Supervision
112 Bathroom
LAST DAY TO CANCEL ENROLLMENT.
TOMORROW
TODAY
DANFORTH DEVOTIONS. 4:33 p.m.
Supported by Lutheran at Danorth
Campus.
Classical Film, 7 p.m. "The Last Bridge." Dych Aud.
Carillon Recital, 7 p.m. Albert Gerkun.
Faculty Recital. 8 p.m. David Hol-
liver - bartons-barrtion. Swearout Ri-
cational Hall
2
Daily Kansan
editorial note
Tuesday, October 4, 1966
DECLARATION
(Editors' note: The following column will be a weekly editorial page-feature. It is written by two KU graduate students, who prefer to remain anonymous. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors.)
Seeing no need to gloat over past glories, we will dedicate "Declaration" to the discussion of some of the problems and failures, rather than accomplishments, on the national, state, and campus scenes.
WE THINK that students, properly stimulated, can and will do some constructive and creative thinking about issues. We hope to provide that stimulation. From time to time, we may offer our ideas on the solution of a problem, but we probably will not. That is your job! When we raise issues, don't merely sit there; ponder them, discuss them with your friends, argue about them with your enemies. In general, do something.
Possibly, to avoid later misunderstanding, we should explain our fundamental position. We are dedicated to quality in government and quality in education. We are quite prone to lay the caves on the table, calling a spade a spade and a jerk a jerk. We might offend people . . . but only if they are people who ought to be offended.
FROM TIME TO TIME there arises in history a person with a masochistic complex, who, for reasons known only to him and or his phychoanalyst (who may well be one and the same), seeks to burn himself, his reputation, and his cause in the fire of emotional public reaction. Presently, there has entered into this hall of fame a gentleman, who, in addition to being a martyr to a less-than-crucial-cause, is publicly billed as being skilled in mental theology, debate, philosophy, psychology, and sexual relations. We are further assured that this gentleman also possesses a remarkable insight into the proper interpretation of the United States' Constitution.
You may well wonder why we choose to mention this recent act of self-immolation in our first column. Actually, we did it to please the martyr himself. We have here a case of a man begging to get shot to shreds. First, he attacks the state. Finding no one there really willing to take issue with him, he then turns on the university and the supposed basic beliefs of many of its members. And what does he find here?—Only one lone Elijah of the God-Squad bothering to waste the time and effort to provide the whipping this masochist so dearly needs. So, out of mercy, we join in the flagellation.
Our "hero" began with an attack on the Kansas loyalty oath. Important as the case against the loyalty oath may seem to its protagonists, we wonder if a greater service might not be done both for civil liberties and for the people of Kansas if reasoned argument were to displace coercive force as the method for abolishing the oath. Consider how the people could profit from a free and open debate of the matter. Consider how the prestige of scholarship and learning could be enhanced through the meeting of concerned educators and concerned legislators. We must always be careful that we do not fall prey to a sophisticated concept of holy power. Let us not forget that persuasion and reason are our proven tools of permanent effective change. Indeed, our first recourse must always be to the intellect of men. Only in times of extraordinary stress or after an exhaustion of rational appeal can we seriously consider the sanctioning of naked coercive force, whether that force be a military crusade or a unilateral court order. (Of course, we might be giving our "hero" too much credit. Considering the length of his name, we wonder if it might have been an inability, rather than an unwillingness, that led to his failure to sign his name.)
IF, HOWEVER, WE RAISE questions concerning the methodology of the loyalty oath fight, we denounce, outright, any rationalization of sexual ethic which produces, at best, a hopelessly naive self-justification of any and all sexual activity. For some reason, perhaps the biological one, the omnipotent rationality of man is of questionable value in moments of human passion. Let us not be deluded into thinking that because we are Christian or humanist or atheist or Existentialist the problem of sexual morality has an easy solution, be that solution absolutist or relativistic. The humanist has offered the modern man a back alley to license; the Religionist has offered him a turnpike to the psychoanalyst.
FF
Not wishing, however, to carry this constitution-sex slop to its logically ridiculous conclusion, we make this one final irrelevant observation. Because of the infatuation by some members of the Student Peace Union with the humanistic philosophy of sex, we are led to wonder if these students might not have some trouble spelling the King's English.
— Pyrrhus and Cineas
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The opinions 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 Kansas are not necessarily those of The University of Kansas Administration or the State Board of Regents.