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University Daily Kansan
Thursday, May 20, 1965
Picket Line
"Will SPU members please report to the parade ground at 0200? We're going to picket the Chancellor's Review again."
One SPU member emphasized that they were picketing militarism.
Is it militaristic leanings that make a draft-age male enroll in the ROTC program? I seriously doubt it. The ROTC program is a very effective way of helping to fulfill his military obligation.
According to the United States law, nearly every physically and mentally fit unmarried man is subject to the draft. Picketing the ROTC review is not going to change that law, nor is it going to change the attitudes of those enrolled in the program.
IF THE DEMONSTRATION was going to cause any action, there would be some use to it.
But, as the situation now stands, the demonstration is useless.
It seems that the ROTC cadets and midshipmen are being used as a convenient symbol of actions of the government in Viet Nam and the Dominican Republic. It was pointed out in an interview with one SPU member that "we have to take this down to the individual, instead of Washington." It is inconceivable that picketing the ROTC review is bringing the problem down to the individual level. It seems, rather, an attempt to embody the problems of a country's military policy in college men attempting to fulfill their military occupation or educate themselves in their chosen career.
— Leta Roth
-The People Say...
Editor:
EDITOR:
IN RESPONSE TO A RECENT article in the UDK on the Arab-American Club and certain statements by Mr. Shaltumi it will be of great interest to find out the way the Egyptians in the Gaza Strip treat their own "brothers," the Palestinian refugees.
The following are direct quotes, which have been taken from an interview with Abdallah Muhamed Salem, an 18-year-old high school student in the refugee camp, Jabalieh, in the Gaza Strip (at the present administered by Egypt). The words in brackets have been added in order to explain.
"... The Egyptian (officials) in the Gaza Strip treat the (Palestinian) refugees like dogs . . ."
Anybody (refugee) who comes to look for a job in the Egyptian government offices, they kick him, throw him out and yell at him; Yalla, go away, you Palestinian dog, you lazy, you nothing."
The Egyptians are doing all kinds of propaganda against Israel, but the refugees are tired, they do not want to hear. They tell the Egyptians: First, give us work."
"Suppose we want to travel into Egypt—we cannot. You need a special license and a license costs lots of money!"
"They (the Egyptian officials) look upon us as if we are dogs. For instance: A refugee teacher earns 12 pounds a month and an Egyptian teacher earns 100 pounds a month. Is this fair?"
"If they (the Egyptian officials) catch a refugee who reads a newspaper regularly he is accused of being a zionist spy."
I think the above statements speak for themselves.
Ruth Adam.
Ruth Adam
Lawrence graduate student
Dear Sir:
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS is currently making elaborate preparations for its centennial celebration during the 1965-66 academic year. It promises to be a very significant event, with such highlights as a new American opera about Carrie Nation and a seminar of world scholars on the future of man.
The May 16 Kansas City Star quotes Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe as saying "the university centennial celebration is an occasion to pay tribute to those who have built this institution into the magnificent university it is today. It is a time as well to look ahead to what the university will become and what it must do. The celebration has been planned as an event meaningful in itself. We plan it to be of lasting benefit to many and an event that will reflect credit upon the university and the state."
Since the centennial will be such a meaningful event, it seems appropriate for the university to plan a significant opening ceremony which would reflect the university tradition and how this tradition will be carried on in the future.
With the definite steps for future development recently outlined for the campus, it would be fitting to launch the centennial celebration with the initial demolishing blow upon old Fraser Hall, and a simultaneous groundbreaking ceremony for new Fraser. This event would
certainly be a symbolic tribute to the past—"to those who have built this institution into the magnificent university it is today." It would also signify the future by prompting us "to look ahead to what the university will become and what it must do."
This event would definitely help to "reflect credit upon the university and the state," for it would show that, by turning our backs on our heritage, we may sacrifice our aesthetic human values, for the stark, impersonal void of functional progress. New Fraser, symbolic of this new heritage, will occupy the "crowning point on a magnificent campus site." Is this indicative of what the university will become and what it must do? Perhaps this will be Kansas University's centennial prediction for the future of man: "Progress At All Cost." If so, New Fraser will serve as a significant epiphath for the only meaningful heritage—the one it destroys.
Donald Morris.
Parkville, Mo., junior
Dear Editor:
IT SEEMS THE UNIVERSITY of Kansas is to be saddled with yet another atrocity. I am referring to the plans for new Fraser Hall. I think it unfortunate that our state's otherwise fine universities have a tradition of singularly poor architecture. Mediocryan can be excused to some extent by noting that rarely is campus architecture outstanding. However, recent buildings erected at the University of Kansas are not simply poor, they are deplorable.
Architecture is more than enclosure of space to keep out the weather. A building has a psychological effect on those who use it. It can be exciting or dull, give one a set to work or to play, make one feel expansive or bored. But this is primarily a concern of the people who use a building. Though boring architecture built with taxpayers' money would be a sufficient reason for this letter, it is not my primary one. Architecture has a second and, from a laymen's point of view, a more important function. It stands as a symbol; for a corporation, for a church, for an area.
Now, few people outside of the state of Kansas will know that Fraser Hall is being built. To the extent they do know about it, it will confirm their prejudices about Midwest parochialism. But, the point is that exciting, top-quality architecture would be widely known outside the state and go a long way toward revamping our image.
If you doubt the image-making ability of architecture, recall Lincoln Center in New York, the Houston Astro's stadium in Texas, or the new and sparkling Los Angeles County Art Museum. The Midwest has, in the rest of the country, an image of anti-intellectualism and provincialism. Whether this is harmful to us in attracting industry and outstanding people in education and business is a question. But certainly it does not help us.
There is a third reason for wanting good architecture at our state's universities. That is pride — in our state and in our universities. New Fraser is all the more disappointing when one remembers that it is to
replace our exciting and well designed old building, which has become a veritable symbol of the University of Kansas.
Good architecture costs no more. I wonder how long the people of Kansas will continue to subsidize mediocrity. Kansas taxpayers are about to spend 2.2 million dollars for a building. We are not getting 2.2 million dollars worth of design. Why is architecture at our universities so deplorable?
The problem is that university architecture is in the hands of the state. We have a fervent belief, in our society, that competition is invigorating. Competition in architecture is no exception. Architects can be most creative, and will be, when they know they are competing with other architects for the acceptance of a design; and when they know they will be judged by a competent panel of jurists. Under the current system responsibility for building design is parceled out by the state architect to other architects. Now, I don't know how it is decided which architects get projects but, let us say that, political patronage is not necessarily excluded. This is the way to insure mediocrity and aesthetically impoverish our state's otherwise fine universities.
Certainly the majority of architects in Kansas could design a building far superior to the existing design for Fraser. Certainly no student in our state architectural schools would dare turn in the design for Fraser, except as a joke.
What should be done? First, responsibility for university architecture should be taken out of the hands of the state architect and placed in the hands of the Board of Regents. This takes architecture out of politics. Second, the Board of Regents could appoint a committee of Regents and professors of architecture and art history from the university for which a particular building is intended. This committee would act as jurists in competitions for building designs among Kansas architects. Such a method would insure the best architecture our state can produce.
A system of this type currently exists in California and, while it has not generally produced outstanding architecture, it has produced architecture which is incomparably better than that which exists on university campuses in our state.
Sincerely,
J. Mark Dowell
Shawnee Mission resident
Dailü Hansan
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EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Leta Roth and Gary
Noland Co-Editorial Editors
BOOK REVIEWS
THE MAN WHO WAS NOT WITH IT, by Herbert Gold (Random House. $1.95).
Shock is part of the formula of contemporary writing. Shock and characters quite different from what you'd find in Henry James or Jane Austen. A few cuss words, some sex, of course, perhaps narcotics addiction. If possible make the people who inhabit the pages seem to have the tragic stature of Othello. Be a bit poetic in your style. If you write for the New York Review of Books suggest that there is more nobility in a prostitute than in what used to be called "a good woman."
This as preamble to a brief consideration of "The Man Who Was Not With It." Not "with" what? Well, not with what carnival life and makes it great. This hero is a "carry" type (that seems to be the word), who is on heroin and who gets lots of kicks unknown (unless one reads Grace Metalious) to Main Street. Sex perversion, things like that.
\* \* \*
And the hero finds, in the climax,
that the square outside world which
is not with it is really desirable. He
finds this out in what is a free-
wheeling tale, with good lingo, atmosphere, flavor and humor. Some
will find that getting with Herbert Gold's language is almost impossible,
and many will see the book as
a basically unpleasant, distasteful
exercise.
CAREFUL, HE MIGHT HEAR YOU, by Sumner Locke Elliott (Crest, 60 cents).
A first novel, this one received mixed praise when it appeared a year or so ago. And with reason. The situation is a familiar one—a custody fight. And the writer got wandering around in so many bipaths that the suspense faltered and the reader was likely to become confused.
Yet the book has its backers, notably Harper Lee of "To Kill a Mockingbird." The setting of the story is Australia, where four maternal anuns are waging a battle for the custody of a 6-year-old boy. Basically this is what one would call a "woman's novel"; there the appeal is likely to be stronger.
Though the book was written by an Englishman and saves more about English advertising than will appeal to many Americans, this is a delightfully written history. The press, as we use the term today, dates only to the early 17th century in England, and we had no newspapers of continuous circulation in the American colonies until 1704. So advertising has a relatively brief history, unless someone wants to go back to tell us that something on the wall of a cave was advertising—but that was prehistoric.
The mighty strides in advertising came in late 19th century, when the
THE SHOCKING HISTORY OF ADVERTISING, by E. S. Turner (Penguin, $1.25).
age of technology and industrialism was triumphing in the western world. But Turner tells about advertising as it existed prior to that time—almost no display, much of a classified nature, blatant and shocking by today's terms, presenting products that we never hear about today (in the open, at least). Some advertising was blunt, and much of it was funny.
Then came the golden age of competition, and railroads, and motorcars, and soaps, and soft drinks, and cigarettes and cigars, and liquors. And radio and television, and singing commercials. And motivational research, which gets a chapter in this book (a revised edition of an earlier work). Some of us think we could write such a book off the tops of our heads. We couldn't. This is scholarship at the same time that it's fast-moving, readable history.
W G
THE DECLINE OF THE WEST. by Oswald Spengler (Modern Library Giant, $3.95).
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Reduced one-half from its mammoth size, here is the abridgment that attracted considerable praise when it appeared three or four years ago. "The Decline of the West" has been a literary and philosophical cause of the 20th century, one that can stir up discussion still. It appeared in 1926, 1928 and 1929, and in its philosophical considerations foreshadowed the earthquakes that were the events of World War II and later.
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Spengler argues, as many bright young men and women know, that civilizations must be studied in terms of cyclical rises and declines. The West is in decline in this century, and what Spengler says may be a forecast for the future, as one views the events occurring in Asia and Africa.
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The book is now in manageable form, and in places the editor, Helmut Werner, indicates where cuts have been made. It is a somber and vast interpretation, an exciting trip into history, in the fashion of Toynbee and Mahan.
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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION,
by Hugh F. Rankin (Capricorn,
$1.95).
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Here is history at its most absorbing. Recent years have brought intensified interest in the American Revolution, as many readers have come to understand the significance of the revolution in the shaping of American institutions. And this, with the military and tactical detail that makes histories of wars so enjoyable, is a history that makes one grasp the meaning of the birth of this country.
of this country.
The story is told by Hugh F. Rankin entirely through first-hand accounts by both eye-witnesses and participants. It is not merely a set of documents, however. Rankin provides the narrative that holds together the excellent sources he has obtained.