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University Daily Kansan Monday, Nov. 9, 1964
Student Government
HO-HUM! Student government elections are coming up again.
"The ASC is just a playground for social climbers."
"Don't waste a good vote—support Mickey Mouse."
The primary problem is that students have come to take student government for granted. Student government has come to play an important role on this campus. It has contributed a lot to "Hill" life, but these contributions have come to be accepted as routine procedures by the student body.Rather than trying to build upon them by strengthening student government, students naively tear them down by not taking an interest in their government.
THESE ARE TYPICAL COMMENTS made every year by indifferent students and uninformed gossips. With the next elections only three weeks off, students who are not aware of the importance of student government should make some effort to find out. Because-student government is important.
IT IS TIME to take a close look at exactly how student government has effected campus life this semester.
Naturally, the student officials are not responsible for our victory over Oklahoma, but that played an important part by their work in organizing the pep rally before the game. This was an essential part in booming the Sooners, as it helped not only in school spirit, but team spirit as well.
STUDENTS HAVE FOR many years complained about the counseling given them by faculty members during enrollment. The student government has looked into the matter and set up the Student Advisory Board to ease the problem.
Along these same lines, student government in cooperation with the KU-Y has aided in setting up a tutoring service to help out students during the semester. The cost is nominal, and the tutoring is done by top students in the various schools on campus.
NATIONALLY KNOW SPEAKERS come to the campus every year to play an important part in making KU the best university in the Big Eight. It is student government that brings them here.
Student government plays an equally important part in the operation of the Kansas Union, the Athletic Corporation Board, and Watkins Hospital.
Through student government efforts, the students were offered the benefits of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance during enrollment.
IT IS THE STUDENT GOVERNMENT which regulates the social and disciplinary activities of the students.
It is an easy task to criticize student government and the individuals who spend their time working with it. Persons who have never been to an All Student Council meeting have no difficulty in objecting to its functions. Just as in any other activity, it is the person who fails to participate who yells the loudest. If student government were non-existent, everyone would be yelling. But, now that it is here, no one wants to take the time to support it.
IF YOU BELIEVE student government does nothing and is nothing then go ahead and criticize without the facts, and go ahead and vote for Mickey Mouse. You may succeed in shaping reality to conform to your beliefs.
— Clare Casey
Sweden: A Practicing Neutral
THE WORLD TODAY is massed into three great power blocs which are cemented together for mutual protection by ever-tightening rings of alliances. The Communist East and the Free West lined up in Europe soon after the war. From their struggle to out-alliance each other in the remainder of the world a third great bloc, known for lack of a better name as the non-aligned powers, has been created.
There is very little opportunity for a nation to remain completely neutral today.
YET AT THE RECENT meeting of the non-aligned nations, one neutral power remained unrepresented. This absence was neither surprising nor unexpected, for Sweden had been neither asked nor expected. Although often labeled as an honorary "Afro-Asian" and accused in Europe of un-European ideas, Sweden also has refused to become too deeply involved in the cause of the non-aligned bloc. It remains today one of the few acting and practicing neutrals.
ESSENTIALLY Western by tradition and location, Sweden considered becoming a part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after World War II, but once more made the decision then not to tie itself down with the alliances it has been avoiding since after Napoleon. Unlike most of the non-aligned nations, it maintains its position from strength rather than weakness. Its main concern is its independence and the necessity of asking favors of no one. Sweden is determined, as it has always been, to rely on its own powers to provide for itself.
AND SWEDEN HAS proved itself to be a nation very capable of taking care of its own problems. In less than 100 years it has advanced from one of the
poorest rural societies to one of the wealthiest industrial societies of Europe, increasing the real income of its people over nine times. And all this had been accomplished with a minimum of internal strife.
IN ADDITION, the growing Swedish industries had a tendency to locate in the country rather than in the larger population centers. This eliminated the large factory cities which have contributed so many of the hardships to early industrialism. Even today, only about 50 per cent of the Swedish people live in the large cities.
Always an area agriculturally self-sufficient, Sweden had no question of how to feed the displaced farm workers once industrialism began.
FINALLY, the nation, because it began its breakthrough so late, tended from the very first to adopt those social measures to help ease the pains of industrialism which came late in the process for most other nations. Yet Sweden was able to achieve the most comprehensive welfare state in Europe while still leaving 90 per cent of its industry in the hands of private ownership.
The government itself has an almost phenomenal stability. In thirty years there have been only two prime ministers, in spite of the fact that the major party, the Social Democrats, does not usually elect a dominant majority to the riksdag. But the Social Democrats have been able to establish a coalition with the Farmers Party and the other middle-of-the-road parties that have kept it in power since 1920.
THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS also have developed a method of policy making that leaves little for anyone who controls any power in the nation to be dissatisfied with. Policy usually is reached through compromise, with every possible interest taken into account before a decision is reached. Government and party officials are not the only individuals given a voice in government. On some major questions a multitude of official and unofficial bodies of organization and industrial representatives are asked to comment and make suggestions. From their various positions a final decision is ironed out, usually satisfactory to everyone.
Between 1956 and 1960 production in the Swedish industries increased more than 25 per cent, while total employment increased by only 3 per cent. But this is not an indication of a developing labor problem. Sweden today maintains full employment; the number of unemployed runs slightly below the number of positions remaining open.
TROUBLE HAS BEEN PREVENTed through a system that includes labor, management, and government. Three-fourths of all workers in Sweden belong to the same trade union, and management is organized just as effectively. However, in the rare case where the two organizations cannot reach some sort of compromise, the government maintains a labor court which can order a settlement.
IN THE WORDS OF A Swedish writer expressing his ideas about his nation for The Economist. "Somewhere between the anarchy of the purely individualist society and the loss of individual identity in stagnate collectivism, there ought to be a tolerable society that offers 'the good life.' Easier said than done, but perhaps we in Sweden, thanks to good luck and favorable conditions, may have come a little along the road."
Jackie Helstrom
1964 HERBLOCK
THE WASHINGTON FOUR
"Once More, Dear Friends ———"
The People Say...
Editor:
THE LEGISLATIVE MUDDLE that was reported in Wednesday's University Daily Kansan must have come as a great shock to a large number of people, particularly as this great failure to submit bills to the chancellor for his signature prejudices important actions now before the All Student Council.
Though it is unfair to criticize individual people for this mess, the fact that all the star people who could be responsible were members of Vox Populi is significant. The party which claims to be the "Voice of the People" had a majority on the Council, and the Chairman, Vice-Chairman, Secretary, and Treasurer of the Council as well as the Student Body President and Vice-President were members of Vox Populi. That such chaos and ineffectual government should be one of the results of Vox domination is surely of great importance as students go to the polls this coming Wednesday and Thursday.
ONE PARTY MAY indeed seek to be known as the "Voice of the People." The question for the People is just how effective is this Voice.
John Keairnes Westfield. N.J.. senior
The purpose of this letter is twofold. One is to report a newly established record. The other is to lappaud the speedy service of the switchboard girls of Lewis Hall.
Editor:
AT PRECISELY 8:30 P.M. Thursday, Oct. 27, I called Lewis Hall and asked the operator if I could please speak with Sandy Watsrname. So began the wait. While sitting there waiting, I got into a conversation with my roommates and didn't realize how much time had passed until one of them mentioned that I had probably set some kind of record. With 15 minutes gone on the clock I was benched with temporary ear fatigue and my roommate took over at the receiver. At 8:56, just 28 minutes after I dialed, the operator told him that she could not find the girl I was calling. The operator did not call her by name, probably because she too had forgotten whom I was calling. Notice also, that she said that she couldn't find her. In 26 minutes she could have checked the library, union, the parking lot, and "O Zone."
I AM SURE that in the official record books I hold the record of waiting the longest for a call to go through at a college dormitory, but I am afraid that on the personal score cards of the readers of the U.D.K. I will go down as M.H.P.O.C. (Most hen pecked on campus).
SANDY, I will write.
Robert Moffitt
Kansas City senior
BOOK REVIEWS
INSIDE THE NUCLEUS—by Irving Adler (Signet Science Library, 60 cents)—A book for adults about the core of the atom. Adler shows how a whole atom is normally 200-millionths of centimeter in diameter, its nucleus no larger than a pinhead even if it were enlarged to the size of a house. Adler has written nearly 50 books on science and mathematics.
Daili Furtasan
111 Flint Hall
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