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University Daily Kansan
Thursday, April 29, 1965
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Senior Gift
A silver tea service and a scale model of the campus have been two of the most notorious senior gifts of the past few years. This year's senior gift committee did improve on the suggestions to be voted upon.
One of the suggestions made for the 1965 gift was a scholarship to be awarded annually to a senior who has attended KU for at least five semesters. There was a great deal of dissension concerning this suggestion because some people felt there would be no visible sign that this scholarship was being awarded by the senior class of 1965. The other two suggestions, the refurbishment of the English Room in the Union and the tablet of distinguished professors, would have direct attribution to the 1965 senior class. This, according to some, is one of the more important reasons for seriously considering these suggestions.
If the senior gift is a sign of appreciation for the educational opportunities the University has
offered us, why should we care whether or not we can point to a plaque and see written there, "Given by the senior class of 1965?"
IT HAS BEEN NOTED that we can come back in 20 years and show our children what we gave to the University as a senior class. To be honest, how many of us are going to remember or care what our class gave as a senior gift.
It was facetiously suggested by one person that if we chose to award the annual scholarship, we could present the recipient with a plaque which, in large letters, would name the donors. This seems to be the spirit in which some people considered the various suggestions made by the committee.
If one of the major purposes of the senior gift is to have our class contribution engraved forever on one of the more than numerous plaques on the campus, then the gift is meaningless.
— Leta Roth
The People Say...
Dear Sir:
A ROUGH ESTIMATION yields that at least 80 per cent (if not 100 per cent) of the U.D.K.'s letters are negative. If the writers of these letters would use more of their time constructing positive solutions to their problems and praising favorable elements at KU, how much better a school we would have!
If noteworthy works of architecture on campus or elsewhere had been praised, the state architect could have given us a new Fraser that we would have liked. If Coach Easton had received open support and enthusiasm for his record of success, his dismissal would have been much more difficult to give.
We have a great University that is rapidly improving itself amidst vigorous competition of other universities. Let's praise KU's accomplishments and superb leadership, lest we lose what we have to irresponsible criticism and adolescent rebellion. True leaders think positively!
John Hastings
Topeka sophomore
Dear Editor:
THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER TO the University of Kansas students. Congratulations KU students — we did it again!!
I was frankly disappointed when we did not bring Henry Mancini out by force. It was 20 minutes before he showed up, remember? But no, you did not let me down! Shortly after concert started I looked towards the upper seats and, alas!, what did I see? Nothing but a mass migration of hypnotized music lovers, moving to the empty side of the Field House.
Our guest surely loved that demonstration. After all, it showed him that some of us cared so much for his music that we could not restrain ourselves until the intermission. No, we had to get closer to him and the sooner the better. I am certain he understood.
I have just one more thing: Why do we not request from the concession stands people to go back to selling pop cans? That way, during our next concert we can all follow the music by tapping our cans on the floor.
Proudly yours,
Charles Alfonso
Havana sophomore
Dear Sir:
REGARDING ONE OF THE resolutions by KU-Y Model UN, it will be of interest to point out a recent contribution toward world peace by President Nasser from Egypt (United Arab Republic): More than 50,000 Egyptian troops to take part in the bloody civil war in Yemen, where more Arabs have been killed than in any other place in modern times.
Ruth Adam
Lawrence graduate student
Sirs:
PERHAPS IT IS NOW TIME TO put the controversy over the design of New Fraser Hall into some sore of perspective. It seems to me that we are demanding that the state architect conform to standards that most of us are unwilling to meet ourselves. In our efforts to meet deadlines, pass courses, and
get that degree, we all cut corners, compromise unnecessarily, and neglect to put forth the best effort. Aren't many of us satisfied with getting by with as little sweat as possible? It is obvious that the state architect is.
More specifically I would ask that the editors of the "University Daily Kansan" consider carefully their own product before they embark on future critical harangues. (Indeed, the design for New Fraser and a typical issue of the Kansan are very much alike. Both are unbelievably banal.) Your feature stories are so banal that they are downright amusing—"Music Creates Many Effects, Mancini Says"; "Daisies Return to Daisy Hill; Green Thumb Fever Spreads."
The typical Kansan editorial page consists of a student editorial (the gist of which is usually that if one looks at any problem rationally from a liberal, humanitarian point of view, it can be solved), a Herblock cartoon, a reprint from a magazine or newspaper, and several petulant letters. Is there not enough talent and intelligence in the School of Journalism or on the campus generally to eliminate dependence on syndicated cartoonists and reprints? I realize that the Kansan is a learning instrument, but it seems that very few people (except those who do those full page laundry ads) are getting a chance to show what they can do.
Don't you think there are too many pots calling kettles black on this campus these days?
Keith McCoy Graduate student
"Those Sneaks!"
BOOK REVIEWS
PEACE AND WAR IN THE MODERN AGE, edited by Frank R. Barnett, William C. Mott and John C. Neff (Anchor Original, $1.45).
No questions are more burning today than those concerning peace and war. Households and classrooms and offices rock with debates on Viet Nam, and here at the University of Kansas a flourishing peace movement keeps things in a ferment. Here is a collection of essays on the question, and the writers are people of stature.
There are names from the military, from diplomacy, from the White House, from governmental agencies. There is history, of the cold war, the central fact, perhaps, of our time, unless it is atomic power. The United Nations is analyzed, along with the Cuban question, the concept of peaceful coexistence, the question of intelligence, of changing policies in the Communist world.
DailijiHänsan
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EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Leta Roth and Gary Noland
Co-Editorial Editors
Da Nang Air Base is Likely Target for Viet Cong
By Phil Newsom
UPI Foreign News Analyst
UIT Foreign News Analyst SAIGON — A splotch of red spread like a bleeding wound across a U.S. military map of South Viet Nam. It shows the areas under Communist Viet Cong control. It is bigger this year than last, and bigger last year than the year before.
The U.S. and South Vietnamese air attacks which have been hitting North Viet Nam since last February show no signs of weakening enemy determination or bringing him closer to the peace conference table.
Both the South Vietnamese and their American advisers believe Communist forces are massing for major effort which could involve organized units backed by artillery.
And the deep U.S. involvement in South Viet Nam may become deeper before the North Vietnamese Reds are ready to talk.
Da Nang Likely
They believe the most likely target to be the big American air base at Da Nang and the 9,000 U.S. Marines who guard it 385 miles northeast of Saigon.
It is from Da Nang's dusty runways that U.S. jet fighter-bombers scream on their night and day missions against North Vietnamese supply and communication
lines and in support of South Vietnamese ground forces.
The jets have been killing off Communists at the rate of one thousand a month since coming into action and the Communists have a two-fold reason for hitting the Da Nang base.
One is the destruction it is wreaking against the Viet Cong and against the North Vietnamese economy by destruction of its roads and bridges.
The second is the desire to humiliate the Americans against whom the North Vietnamese infiltrators are being told they are coming south to fight.
If the Reds do hit it, then the war will have escalated another notch and U.S. ground forces will be involved, just as they already are in the air. The advisory role will recede further. And another challenge will have been posed to Red China and the Soviet Union.
The wound marked off in red on the military maps has been draining the life of South Viet Nam for 11 years.
Escalate More
The effort to close it is costing the United States $2 million a day, a figure which shortly will be increased.
As the war has escalated, so has the cost in American lives. The number of American dead now
stands at more than 350, double what it was a year ago. The more than 32,000 American troops in South Viet Nam are twice their number of a year ago.
Aid Has Failed
Up to now, despite the massive U.S. aid, the record is one of failure.
In the last five years the number of infilttrators is believed to total at least 34,000 and possibly another 10,000 beyond that.
As the U.S. has increased its aid in the south, so the Communists of the north have stepped up their own flow of infiltrators and supplies to the Viet Cong.
U. S. air attacks may have slowed the flow, but it continues at a rate possibly as high as 1,500 a month. This is a faceless war and a nasty
Yet this is not the war of a year ago or even two months ago.
Lark Shot Down
In the beginning, as defenses in neighbor Laos crumbled and the Communists began turning their attention to South Viet Nam in earnest, the United States under-estimated Communist determination and it over-estimated South Vietnamese capabilities.
U. S. military men began arriving with their families in what seemed almost a lark. They were to play a
strictly advisory role. It didn't last long. U.S. advisers in the field were being shot at and they were shooting back. U.S. casualties began to mount.
Terrorist bombs threatened the American families and they were sent home, leaving their husbands behind.
Then came the Viet Cong attacks on American installations at Qui Nhon and Pleiku.
The climax came with the terror attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in which more than 20 were killed and nearly 200 injured.
Concrete street barriers and an ugly scaffolding along the embassy outer wall are today's memory of that attack.
For a year and a half South Vietnamese Buddhists and generals virtually forgot about the war while they scrambled for power and six governments fell.
Nearly Won
The Communist Viet Cong built up their forces and seemed about to win the war almost by default.
In Saigon, a new regime took
Since February there has been a change and the development of a new, cautious optimism.
The arrival of the U.S. Marines gave new confidence to the wavering South Vietnamese of the United States' own determination.
over headed by Prime Minister Phan Huy Quat.
In Saigon and the ancient capital of Hue, Buddhist demonstrators quit the streets and both the Buddhists and the Catholics promised their cooperation.
Just as important was the fact that the Quat government received the support of the two South Vietnamese generals without whom no South Vietnamese coup can succeed.
Two Ton Generals
They are air force commander Brig. Gen, Nguyen Cao Ky and Brig. Gen, Nguyen Chanh Thi, the tough commander of the 1st Corps area, which abuts North Viet Nam at the 17th parallel.
The Quat government is a quiet one but so far has worked effectively.
In an interview with this correspondent, Quay banned a neutralist settlement of the war, which he described as the final test between communism and the free world.
Appeasement, he said, only could lead to an Asian Munich and new gains for the Communists.
The shifting nature of North Vietnamese tactics, he said, made it impossible even to predict when peace talks might be possible.
The civilian program he is pressing hardest is "hop toc," literally, working together.