Party time-'67
It has proved true over the years that the best and most spirited class (school, fraternity, sorority, dorm floor, club—choose one) is the one that knows how to party together.
This is not to suggest that KU become another Arizona, Colorado or even Missouri university—we will never be known as a "Country Club," or even as a Big Party School.
BUT WHY IS IT that the stories we hear about "the big blowout the XYZ's had that year" or how great "that senior party was a few years back" seem to fade farther into the past and no new ones are told to take their places?
And don't get us wrong. We do not advocate mass drunkenness or large bacchanalian orgies; we just like a good party, an institution which seems to be dying at this campus.
And why, speaking of parties, and especially senior parties, is it that the traditional Senior Day activities every year bear less and less resemblance to anything but a sweatshirt day?
SENIORS ARE, AFTER ALL, pretty special people, and ought to express the fact in an appropriate manner. Why is it that alums of
most schools come flocking back to football games and to reunions ten or fifteen years later, so full of school spirit that even the present students have to laugh? So they can remember all the wild times they had listening to Prof. Crank's poli sci lecture? We doubt it.
So this year, we learn that there won't be any pre-party or senior cheerleaders, and that the party is "tentatively" planned for no less than the week after senior day, so as not to conflict with the Activities Carnival. We'll all look at each other, many years from now when we have "inherited the earth," and say, "Hey, man, remember that day we all wore our sweatshirts to the game in unison?"
Again, don't get us wrong. We can place no blame on the Senior Class officers or the senior committee; we realize that decisions are not entirely in their hands, as with many of the "student" activities at KU.
We suppose that we, too, will come flocking back to football games in years to come, like other alums. And, like other alums, we'll do our partying then.
— Jack Harrington
Great to be back
It's great to be back. Back to the same long wait under the sun that rose out of the tropies, back to the same dreary buildings to pick up the same silly cards that have to be filled out with the same information five times over. Back to the harried guides in the reg lines and the diligent and patient teachers who, with a deep sigh, answer once again the same silly questions we asked last year.
It's great to be back. Back to the easy life of studying, meeting deadlines and running around to obscure offices in dreary corners to ask insane questions about things I don't understand. Back to the friends of last semester who manage either to slap me on the back hard enough to jolt my teeth or to drape their huge arms around me and give me the old boola-boola bear-hug that sends my ribs screaming for release.
It's great to be back. Back to the teachers who require 10 books for their classes and the roommate who wears all my clothes.
Yes, it's great to be back. Back to the educational standards that will lead me to the pathway of higher income, greater social knowledge and, in the end, to the same place the most impoverished hobo will go. Back to the byways and ivy-covered buildings where my future is planned as I scream and holler every inch of the way.
But I am back. And I'd scream even louder if I couldn't be. It is great to back.
- Spartan Daily San Jose State College
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
'QUIT WORRIN' ABOUT WHAT KIND OF A COURSE IT IS!
WITH A LINE THIS LONG IT MUST BE A 'SNAP.'
To the editors:
The people say . . .
The "ugglification" of Lawrence continues, with the University taking the lead. To add insult to injury, the illac hedge east of Fraser Hall has been removed. The street should appropriately be renamed "Lilaclass Alley—a memorial to the destruction of beauty."
Channing Horner
Lawrence graduate student
★★★
To the editors:
To the dismay of many Daisy Hill dwellers, the Lawrence Bus Company has raised its fares. This infuriates me, as the service was barely worth ten cents.
Many stories have been circulated as to the reason for this atrocity. One is that Oliver and Naismith Halls require extra bus service; another is that the drivers threatened to quit if they did not receive a raise. Of course the bus company passed on any inconvenient rise in costs to the public.
For the most part, it seems that only three buses run on campus, and they usually run together instead of being staggered for the convenience of the students. And if service in the fall seems poor, it is ridiculous in the winter!!! Now they want to charge us 15c for a one-mile ride, during which we stand up packed like sardines because of a lack of buses.
I think that the bus company is taking advantage of college students. Realizing this, there is only one action to take—don't take the bus! A student boycott may bring them back to their senses and reasonable prices! I sincerely hope so.
Meanwhile, I shall rise early, walk to my classes, and rejoice every time a bus with only 5 passengers passes me. I encourage YOU to do the same.
Virginia Schaefer
Webster Groves, Mo. sophomore
Official Bulletin
TODAY
Ph.D. Final Exams: 3 p.m., Byrne Blackwood, speech and drama, 300 Murphy; 4 p.m., Paul C. Franks, geology, 426 Lindley Hall.
Ph.D. Final Exams: 3:30 p.m., Kurt
Gust, history, Conference Room,
Strong; 3:30 p.m., Horton E. Presley,
English, 149 Carruth O'Leary.
TUESDAY
University Senate, 3:30 p.m. Swarthout Recital Hall.
Quack Club Auditions, 7 p.m. Robinson Pool.
Daily Kansan
edutorial news
2
The Explosion Population
Monday, September 26, 1966
New books
THE FIXER, by Bernard Malamud (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $5.75).
There is a natural hesitation on the part of a reviewer, after a book already has received wide praise, to climb aboard and echo the words of Granville Hicks and the other kings. What else do you say, however, about a book like "The Fixer."
Usually when the publisher plumps for the book as being "a major novel" or "a great novel" the inclination is to demand proof. Yet it seems almost beyond question that "The Fixer" is both major and great, and that it will occupy a leading position among American novels.
ONE REVIEWER has been troubled because the book is not "American" in its setting and implications. A strange thing to carp about. Malamud had this story to tell and he told it. "The Fixer" does have universality, and the symbolists, if they work hard enough at it, should be able to relate the book to the American scene.
Another reviewer suggests that the book is a historical novel. Don't jump to find a copy if you're looking for the kind of thing Thomas Costain and Samuel Shellabarger used to do. There is certainly nothing swashbuckling about this book. It's historical in the sense that an episode from history has inspired it. That episode was the arrest, incarceration and eventual trial of a Jew, Mendel Beiliss, who was charged in Kiev with ritual murder, the murder in this case being the stabbing of a boy to drain his blood for use in the making of matzos for Passover. Bernard Malamud has leaned on the Beiliss story for this wonderfully moving (though shocking and revolting) novel.
"THE FIXER" deals with a handyman from the provinces, Yakov Bok, who goes to Kiev after his wife has deserted him. A chain of circumstances brings him into his perilous troubles, beginning with his saving an anti-Semite from dying in the snow. Yakov happens, in a way, to be that one Jew who is selected for a campaign of persecution. The evidence against him is entirely trumped up, and circumstantial at best, but that does not keep him from being held in prison for two and a half years.
His time in prison is utter misery and degradation. Many readers will not care to submit themselves to a reading of these horrors. Yet Yakov not only survives, he grows. He ages, he is treated in the most vile manner. And he overcomes his persecutors, in a sense.
Nor is there a happy ending. At the end of the book he is being taken to court for his long-delayed trial. Impatient readers, who have felt they were going through hell along with Yakov, will be annoyed. But Yakov's fate is like that of other persecuted peoples. For even today the Jew has not achieved true acceptance, and people of his type may be found all over the globe.
Malamud's style is clear and clean. He writes directly, and you don't have to fight your way. If there is anything that troubles this reviewer about "The Fixer" it is that Yakov sometimes talks and thinks like a comic Jew out of the American vaudeville tradition. But maybe the comic Jew talks that way out of his long heritage of trouble—CMP
UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN TELEPHONE NUMBERS
Newsroom—UN 4-3646 — Business Office—UN 4-3198
The Daily Kansan, student newspaper at The University of Kansas, is represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., new york. Daily Kansan also has a second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays and examination periods. Accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised in the University Daily Kansan are offered to all students without regard to color, creed or
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 Kansan are not necessarily those of The University of Kansas Administration or the State Board of Regents.
EXECUTIVE STAFF
Managing Editor Business Manager Editorial Editors
Robert D. Stevens
Carmen Gartley
Jack Harrisonton, Eric Morgenthaler