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Summer Session Kansan
Tuesday, Aug. 3, 1965
In Memoriam.
My friends, we are not gathered here today to eulogize the passing of Old Fraser, hallowed and honored symbol though it has become. There comes a time when we must all heed the call from Up Above. The Great Campus Planner has called Old Fraser and ours is not to reason why, ours is but to sit on our hands and grit our teeth.
Many things transpired during the life of Old Fraser which neither you nor I shall ever understand, my friends. Our campus was graced with the additions to Dyche, Snow and the Union, Malott, Murphy and Strong—the aesthetic beauty of which is living testament to the faith and reverence we should hold in our hearts for the Great Campus Planner. And yet, neighbors, student rabble-rousers have heaped the abuse and scorn of heresy upon the Great Campus Planner these many years.
And when He descended from on high to talk with representatives of these student rabble-rousers, lo, the words flowed forth from his mouth: "Mortar and cement are more permanent than student discontent."
For as He says in the 85th verse of the nth chapter, "Thou hast the most beautiful campus in the Midwest through the work of my hand and the tillers of my soil. By landscaping it has been made, and by landscaping alone shall it be saved."
And now, my friends, let us bow our heads and pray that the cottonwoods shall grow six stories high. . .
— Jacke Thayer
With a Sigh of Relief
It is with deep regret, but a sigh of relief, that we say farewell for the summer. To some, this page may have seemed trivial or tedious. But to this student editor it was a learning experience worth its weight in printer's ink. To the faculty adviser—well, it kept him wondering!
If you were bored, consider what we could have written about: what happens to all those paper clips that people keep buying? What is wrong with the American-way-of-life when a yo-yo company in Luck, Wis., goes bankrupt? Why did the Post Office goof and put Gabrielle (instead of Grabriel) on the 1966 Christmas stamps?
If you weren't bored, and your latent brain cells were stirred from their summer lethargy—thank you. That's all we asked.
— Jacke Thayer
Personally Speaking...
By Frances Galawas
Most American conveniences are built for people who are right-handed. Few right-handers know the extent to which a "leftie" has to adapt himself.
Nobody knows why some people are right-handed or left-handed and, as yet, no one has bothered to find out.
One of my guesses is the public water fountain. The handle is on the right side and turns clockwise. In this way the handle not only is on the right side, but the handle turns the most natural way for a right-handed person — clockwise, naturally.
DOUBLE DOORS are another great problem to the left-handers. The door handle is on the left, the correct side for the right-handed person.
Some other odd examples of right-handed objects include gum wrappers, pencil sharpeners, automobile ignition switches and bannister posts.
POCKETS ARE placed on shirts in a position that is very inconvenient for the left-hander. It would be much easier for someone to manufacture a shirt made especially for left-handers.
Another tough situation for left-handers is a pair of scissors. The use of the scissors can be a very tedious affair. It can be made so nerve-racking that you might as well give up and use your hands or just forget about it.
Have you ever tried buying a coke with your left hand from a right-handed coke machine?
The general welfare requires a two-party system in the United States.
Little States Offer Hope To the GOP
By Lyle Wilson United Press International
This, in turn, may require amendment of the Constitution to enable the Republican party or any opposition party to survive.
The amendment can be bad. But first Republican politicians must understand a situation that gives them an enormous potential advantage over the Democrats. The Republic big chance is to rally the little states against the big ones. It can be done.
THE SITUATION which demands this Republican breakthrough is the political favoritism accorded by the Electoral College to the great urban areas where the Democratic power structure is firmly founded on racial, religious and economic minorities.
Republicans can cut the Democrats and their minorities down to size if they have the will to do it.
Voters in the great concentrations of population such as New York, Pennsylvania. Michigan and California tend to follow the lead of their big cities in presidential elections. The United States, in turn, tends to follow the lead of the great industrial states. The smaller, less populous states are unable to cope with these massive political currents.
THE GIMMICK which so benefits the greater states and so penalizes the lesser is the system by which members of the Electoral College are chosen by state-wide vote. They run at large on what is known as a general ticket. This permits the most outrageous excesses of multiple voting.
Each voter in New York state votes for 43 electors, New York's allotment of electors being equal to the state's representation in Congress. Each Pennsylvanian votes for 29 electors, each in California for 40. A Delaware voter can vote for only 3 electors.
A CITIZEN IN KANSAS votes for and is represented by 7. Maine votes for 3 electors, Minnesota for 10. Massachusetts for 14 and so on. The unfairness of this system to the less populous states is obvious. The advantages the system gives to big city pressure group and bloc voters —Negroes, for example, or union labor—are equally clear.
The great cities in the great states enjoy more than their share of influence in electing a president of the United States. There could not be a more extraordinary example of a violation of the Supreme Court's recent rule on one-man-one-vote.
BOOK REVIEWS
MAIN PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, by Howard H. Quint, Dean Albertson and Milton Cantor (Dorssey Press; 2 vols., $2.95 each); THE AMERICAN CITY: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY, by Charles N. Glaab (Dorssey Press, $3.50).
The paperback field is doing what hardbacks were doing exclusively a few years ago-quality volumes, textbooks, original contributions to scholarship. These three are anthologies of particular pertinence to the student or teacher of American history or American studies. And they have the refreshing quality of not including all the old chestnuts that appear in similar anthologies.
The ground being broken is not virgin land, unfortunately, for the Amherst series on American civilization, the "Great Issues" volumes by Richard Hofstadter, and the recent Doubleday volumes in American studies do a similar job. But the authors of these books have concluded that they could make a single contribution by providing documents understandable to the undergraduate and not generally found in other works.
WHAT THE "MAIN PROBLEMS" encompasses are such concepts as the New England Puritans, Virginia, "the American Enlightenment," the American Revolution, the Constitution, the fall of Federalism, Jeffersonianism, the role of John Marshall, the significance of Jackson, utopianism, the labor movement, manifest destiny, slavery and the Civil War, reconstruction, the rise of business and industrialism, reform, imperialism, America on the world scene, fundamentalist religion, the depression, and the question of civil rights in the 20th century world.
Throughout, important names grace the documents—Bryan, Gompers, Lodge, Booker T. Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson, Samuel Adams; the list is long and worthy.
"THE AMERICAN CITY" considers that great phenomenon which has become so controversial in this country: the city, with its accompanying ills, which is so much under attack today. Since Jefferson gave his view of urban life, one of the most quoted of all American commentaries, many writers have pointed to the city as the agency which destroys the best in man.
Finally, what of the slum, of crime, of civic corruption, of youth in the city, of municipal reform, and of modern developments in what Glaab calls "The Era of the Super-City"?
the agency which destroys the city by Charles N. Glaab chooses to consider several facets of the city in our history. What was the city in the 18th century world? What was the concept of planning, as applied particularly in Washington? What was the meaning of the growth of cities in the 19th century? What were the functions of manufacturing, of town promotion, of developing urbanism? What was the role of urban rivalry, and what has been the significance of the suburb, and of parks and planning?
A NATION OF SHEEP. by William J. Lederer (Crest, 50 cents).
The co-author of "The Ugly American" hit us over the heads with this one four years ago, but what he says still relates in this foreign-policy troubled time. Lederer takes us to task for a good many things in this one:
Our basic loyalty to America. He doubts that most of us really care.
Our laziness. We think everyone should be on our side just because we view ourselves as the good guys.
Our cowardice. We won't take issue with what's going on, so we are cowed into acceptance of national policies.
Our press, which doesn't tell what we need to know; our government, of course; our people, largely.
Lederer blames all of us. Citizen action is the answer. We must inform ourselves, we must demand better policies and better leaders. Only then can we overcome our sheeplike ways.
PATTON: ORDEAL AND TRIUMPH, by Ladislas Farago (Dell, 95 cents).
One of the most exciting and controversial figures to emerge from World War II was Gen. George S. Patton. His biography was one of the most exciting and controversial books of recent years. It's a good buy in paperback.
Ladislas Farago offers a full-blown portrait of the swashbuckling Patton. It is a volume of more than 800 pages, and they are loaded. It is lightest on preliminaries; the author spends relatively little
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