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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, April 27, 1965
The Easton Protest
The firing of track Coach Bill Easton by Athletic Director Wade Stinson sparked the largest protest the campus has witnessed this semester.
The protest has not been so dramatic as, say, the civil rights sit-in at the Chancellor's office, but if some group had felt compelled to so demonstate, the forces probably would have numbered more than that which the Civil Rights Council mustered for its protest of grievances.
NOW, MUCH TO THE REGRET OF MANY students and alumni, the Bill Easton issue is a dead horse, so to speak. Saturday, the Athletic Board approved Stinson's hiring of Bob Timmons, assistant to Coach Easton. Timmons had had a highly successful coaching career at Wichita East, where he has developed such standouts as Archie San Romani and Jim Ryun.
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There is no reason to suppose that without Easton KU's track team will suffer. Timmons has the qualifications to become an outstanding collegiate track coach, and we wish him success in the delicate position he has now assumed.
As was reported in the newspapers, Timmons accepted the head track position only after there was no hope that Easton would be reinstated. Timmons and Easton are friends, and it is regrettable that these two men were brought into this kind of situation.
AS TO THE PROTEST OVER THE FIRING of Easton, it is a great tribute to the man that so many have risen to his defense. The timing of the dismissal of Easton and the way in which Stinson and the administration handled the consequent publicity have put the University in a bad light. I suggest that the blame for this kind of publicity rests with Stinson and the administration.
The letters we have received will not help the situation either. We feel that everyone should have a chance to voice his opinion, but the issue was settled Saturday with the hiring of Timmons.
Some of these letters contain malicious statements attacking the character of Stinson and his qualifications as athletic director. These statements, which do not fall within the realm of fair comment and criticism, have been edited out.
Gary Noland
The statements by Stinson were that Easton failed to abide by "administrative and financial procedures necessary to the successful functioning of the athletic program." Specifically, the public was told about some controversy over a pole vault box, which hardly seemed like adequate justification for the dismissal of a man with Easton's stature.
This, as Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe said in his statement supporting Stinson's action, generated a considerable amount of "emotional response." What, may I ask, did Stinson and Chancellor Wescoe expect when the reasons for firing Easton appeared vague and trivial?
We regret the firing of Bill Easton and the bad publicity which followed. Whether or not Easton's dismissal is justifiable may be debatable, but the deed has been done. In the future, we hope that such incidents will be better timed and more adequately justified by those in power.
CHANCELLOR WESCOE APPARENTLY permitted this "emotional response" to intensify by waiting three days to make any kind of statement about Easton's dismissal. This kind of delay did not help the situation.
Editor:
The People Say...
AS WAS POINTED OUT IN AN article in the Daily Kansan last Friday, the Henry Mancini concert required months of preparation by Student Union Activities committees. It also required many hours of hard work on the part of technicians from the Department of Buildings and Grounds and the KU Traffic Police, plus much help and advice from the heads of these departments, Mr. Harry Buchholz and Chief Moomau, and from Mr. Glenn Replogle of Allen Field House.
A major problem at such events as the Harry Belafonte Concert, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and the Mancini Concert, is that of keeping the building cool enough for the comfort of the very large audiences. In an effort to maintain a comfortably cool temperature Saturday night, the technicians at Allen Field House, at my specific request, kept a limited number of exhaust fans in operation at the beginning of the concert. Mr. Mancini and those in the audience were quite right: the noise was too great, and the men in charge turned the fans off promptly. This distraction at the beginning of the concert was thus entirely my fault and was not due to an oversight on the part of the skilled mechanical personnel on duty at Allen Field House.
Those of us involved with Student Union Activities are grateful indeed to those persons on the University staff and in the community whose help has made it possible for us to bring large concerts to KU.
Frank R. Burge Director, Kansas Union
MY FIRST REACTIONS TO the firing of Coach Easton by Mr. Wade Stinson were mixed; I wanted to laugh and cry simultaneously. On the one hand, Mr. Stinson's action surpasses absurdity. Let us first examine Mr. Stinson's statement.
Editor:
"Mr. Easton's unwillingness to follow the administrative and financial procedures necessary to the successful functioning of the athletic program . . .." This sounds like an indictment against an extravagant, wasteful, and losing coach. Look at the record. Coach Easton's teams have won more conference championships while he has been here than have all other conference schools combined. Three other conference schools have larger track budgets. Coach Easton's budget has not been sufficient to buy adequate equipment. Mr. Easton's only "sin"
is that he has refused to have his already insufficient budget cut still further without protest. Mr. Stinson is the one who has no concept of the "administrative and financial procedures necessary to the successful functioning of the athletic program . . ." to use his own words.
"A large measure of the responsibility for that (national) prominence has been the enthusiastic support of the track program by the KU Athletic Board, the student body and the University administration. KU track and field will continue to have that support." This is one of the most absurd arguments I have ever heard. The "enthusiastic support" Mr. Stinson has given the track program has been to fire the greatest and most successful coach in the nation. He is irreplaceable. Track is also enthusiastically supported by refusing adequate funds for necessary equipment (pole vault boxes, for example). I will concede that student body enthusiasm is conducive to good performances. But if student body enthusiasm is a valid reason for the success of an athletic program, why haven't football and basketball teams had records as outstanding as track? I do not mean to be criticizing these two sports, but merely to point out that victory is determined by more than the number and enthusiasm of the fans.
Stinson has been quoted as saying that he is not "for" any sport that does not pay its own way. This is a complete and absolute denial of the principle of amateur athletics. The purpose of athletics is to achieve physical and mental fitness. It is a discipline, a way of life, the culmination of which is competition. It is a direct and complete denial of the spirit of amateurism to compete for money. Since competition is the culmination, being paid for performance denies this end. Not only is making money not the purpose of amateur athletics, it contradicts it. Stinson apparently wants to destroy amateur athletics. The handwriting is on the wall for all the other "minor" sports.
The Jayhawker is the symbol of a proud and great tradition to which great, if not irreparable, damage has been done. Do you think for an instant that track or any other sport will ever again achieve the prominence that track has if Coach Easton leaves? Don't be naive. Why should any good coach wish to work in an atmosphere that reeks so? Why should any good athletes (not only trackmen, but any athletes) wish to come to a school which did such a thing? Why should even the present members of the team stay, after having the rug pulled from beneath them?
What can be done to "make up" for this gross injustice? Nothing. Nothing can ever undo the damage that has been done personally to Coach Easton, the track team, the track program, the tradition, and the University.
Bob Boyd Houston, Texas, senior
Bob Boyd
Editor:
IF THIS IS THE TYPE OF thanks that one may expect from the University of Kansas for years of devoted, loyal service, then I am no longer sure that I am proud to be called a Jayhawker.
Even if Coach Easton had committed some dastardly deed, he deserved sufficient respect from the members of the present administration to prohibit the making of the announcement of his dismissal until track season ended, and especially less than a week after the Kansas Relays which he loved so much.
Surely the University of Kansas can only be poorer and not richer by this rather undesirable action. I suspect that there are other alumni like myself who were once very, very proud to be called Jayhawkers, but now are not so sure.
Sincerely yours,
Stanley S. Thurber
Class of 1963
Austin, Texas
Mr. Stinson:
Mr. Johnson
I HAVE JUST READ IN THE Dallas, Texas, paper of your feud with Bill Easton and its results.
I have always been proud of the University of Kansas. Proud that here is one of the few such institutions where academic excellence is not sacrificed for the phoney headlines of professionalized sports. Now it seems that the citadel of individual achievement is being further downgraded.
Someday compare the trophy case of the track and field group with the football honors, also compare the relative achievements of the competitors after college.
You have made a grave mistake.
River C. C, Boardman, President
Camp County Clay
Products, Inc.
Col. '54
1900 HERBLOCK
THE ECONOMIST PRESS
"That's Showing 'Em The Way"
BOOK REVIEWS
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE CROWD: A STUDY OF IDENTITY IN AMERICA, by Hendrick M. Ruitenbeek (Mentor, 60 cents).
The university student who has been beaten over the head with de Tocqueville, Fromm, Riesman and Whyte may think there is nothing new in another academic type telling him that he's part of the faceless crowd. These insights appear, however, in a book by a European sociologist who has made an investigation of factors in American life that he feels have contributed to the "alienation" of modern man. The book is small, thorough and perceptive.
It again will be no surprise to read that Ruitenbeek sees the "identity crisis" as the central problem of modern society. Technology has alienated man from traditional values, from family and from religion. Group involvement cannot solve the problem for man; he must arrive at an understanding with himself.
Ruitenbeck takes a look at history and finds that the condition of man today is quite different from in the past, when man was able to rely on concepts and values no longer in the world of today. Though the ideas presented here may seem repetitious to some, to others they will represent a reaffirmation of that which they have been reading about, or feeling in their own lives.
MARXISM AND EXISTENTIALISM, by Walter Odajnyk (Anchor, 95 cents).
* * *
Many isms have roiled the water in these troubled times. Most notoriously, of course, Marxism has been on hand for more than a century. Coming after Marxism was that all-things-to-all-people philosophy called existentialism, and Walter Odajnyk treats both in this new paperback original.
this new paperback original. He points to the two philosophies as being central to our times, the one for its stress on society, the other for its stress on the individual.Both have a common root in Hegel, he observes, and there are both differences and similarities.
The author's method is to present the existentialist argument first and then the Marxist reply or counterargument. Odajnyk's existentialist in this case is Jean-Paul Sartre.
Daili'ji Yränsan
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