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University Daily Kansan Monday, April 26, 196
Search for Answers
Twenty years ago, 1945, Norman Thomas visited KU. Last week, the prominent and likeable socialist leader, now 80 years old, made his audience wonder how spry and witty he must have been at 60.
The challenge of years and old age has hardly phased the elderly gentleman who spoke before a crowded room in the Kansas Union.
AN 80-YEAR-OLD SOCIALIST WOULD have all the answers, one would think. Not so with Mr. Thomas, who opened his remarks with something like this: "We don't have all the answers. We have to be in a search for answers. You can't open a book to a certain chapter and find the infallible answer."
Here are some of Mr. Thomas's remarks concerning the problems which confront us today.
Some of the questions to which we must search for answers: How do we establish peace in the world? How do we eliminate poverty? How do we erase unjust discrimination? How do we make life worth living?
CIVIL RIGHTS: "Progress is almost to an end as far as legislation is concerned, but we are not to the end of the problem. Outside of law there is
a field of personal relationship" that is controlled by our attitudes toward each other.
POVERTY: "We can't go much farther until we eliminate poverty." Johnson's program is a start, but much more needs to be done. "We have to deal with our economy by comprehensive planning" for the good of all.
PEACE: "Man is the most dangerous animal to develop on this earth." We can't trust ourselves to play around with the arsenals we have developed. "We are hardly saner than little children." We need universal disarmament with international control. As for Viet Nam, Mr. Thomas said we must rid ourselves of the notion that God had made us a policeman to enforce righteousness around the world. A policeman soon begins to seek his own interests.
Norman Thomas has been called the conscience of this nation and a voice crying in the wilderness. He is both. How often shall we disregard the warnings until it is too late? We don't have the answers, but we know the direction in which we must move. The search for the answers must be stepped up.
Gary Noland
The People Say..
Dear Sir:
NEW FRASER?
Absolutely the biggest and greatest old-fashioned,earthy double-barreled Hallowe'en joke west of the Atlantic Ocean and east of Pearl Harbor.
In these tame and decadent trick-or-treat days the full flavor of that word "Hallowe'en" may be quite lost. Ask your father about Halloween. Or, better yet, ask Granddad. Say, "What did you use to do, Granddad, for fun on Halloween night?" If he's frank and in the mood, then, he'll tell you about the outhouses.
How easy they were to tip over! What a gratifying crash! And a gang of enterprising big boys could do a lot more than just tip the things over. An outhouse could go far or reach the heights on Halloween night. Next morning one might grace the front steps of the high school or the band shell in the park. Or a simple knockdown-and-reassembly job might make it possible for one of these facilities to ascend from its humble place on the alley to undignified prominence on the roof of the Community Building or a brief apotheosis beside the steepe on the Methodist Church.
But New Fraser outdoes everything. There it is. There it will be. That huge seven-story box, its roof graced by, not one, but two outhouses as a monstrous and perpetual practical joke upon the unsuspecting and impotent people of Kansas.
Sincerely yours,
Edgar Wolfe
Associate Professor of English
Dear Sir:
THREE YEARS AGO AS A senior in high school I was trying to decide where to attend college. I knew I wanted to spend my university years at an institution which would offer me the best opportunity to develop my capabilities, whatever they might be. I knew Kansas mainly for her outstanding athletic teams, especially her track team.
So I chose KU hoping to participate in track in her renowned track program. Mr. Easton would be unlikely to remember me as I hardly distinguished myself in track and was unable to continue beyond the freshman year.
But I still remember his kind, if always firm, words of encouragement and his inevitable, omnipresent slogans challenging everyone to do better. Such statements as "That which is used develops. That which is not decays!" and "The difference between the champion and the also-ran is the effort expended when you don't think you can do any more" come to my mind immediately.
These statements are appropriate to intellectual as well as physical development as are almost all of Mr. Easton's reminders. No one could justly say that Coach Easton develops physical at the expense of
intellectual prowess. He knows better than most the importance of the mind in human accomplishment. His frequent admonitions to keep on top of studies even when the going was most difficult certainly helped me attain the academic goals I have had. I don't think it's kidding anybody to say that Mr. Easton's super-record is all due to his having that much better talent with which to work.
My point is this. A good number of high school seniors must today find themselves faced with my choice of a few years ago, wanting to attend a university which excels in a number of areas to best assure themselves that it will provide them with an atmosphere conducive to the pursuit of excellence. As Herald Hadley, captain of this year's Jayhawk track team and NCAA indoor two-mile champion noted in Wednesday's UDK, "If Easton goes, track goes." And as far as I'm concerned, that's a heck of a chunk of excellence to throw away.
How much more can a coach contribute than Mr. Easton has? Knowing "Bill" Easton even as little as I do, I am not at all surprised that he is the former coach of Billy Mills, the first American ever to win a distance race in the Olympics. Bill Easton's influence has been felt even in the realm of international relations. The communists can no longer use our failures to win in the longer, more grueling distance events as evidence of the moral and physical decrepitude of the American people. This is a typical example of the results obtained by a man who always gives the best he has and expects his boys to do the same. This type of attitude is one reason why he will assume the elected position of president of the Track and Field Coaches of America for the coming year.
While I must admit my unfamiliarity with the details of the events which precipitated the firing of this exceptional man. I would say that I cannot imagine any circumstances short of treason which could lead to such a drastic step. But Easton's loyalty to Kansas is irreproachable. What else could it be? Mr. Stinson says Coach Easton can't manage a track team. And Mr. Stinson is an honorable man. Stinson says Easton can resign or be fired. And Mr. Stinson is an honorable man. You all get the point I'm sure.
It is my understanding that such an action must have the approval of the administration of the University. If this is indeed the case it would seem that the administration has lost its concern for excellence. No word better describes Bill Easton than this. For coach Easton has developed in his trackmen a burning desire for excellence. The pain these men must endure to excel is incomprehensible to one who has never suffered it. And the satisfaction they get from knowing that they have given it everything and then some is
equally unknown. But the desire, once cultivated, and striving for the satisfaction of giving your best plus, once realized, is never lost. That is what Millard E. "Bill" Easton produces in his trackman.
John Lawson of this year's team of victors in two relays at Texas and one last week at our own magnificent KU Relays (of which Mr. Easton is director) publicly thanked coach Easton at a gathering in front of Strong Hall Wednesday night for all Easton had helped him. And I'm certain that the rest of Easton's boys both today and in the past silently agreed with John. Easton's boys of today are the men of tomorrow who will do their best their whole lives and it seems to me that this is the kind of men we want as representatives of our great University of Kansas. Mr. Easton has indicated his desire to stay at KU if possible. And we can all help to effect this by actively indicating our support for Coach Easton. I would hope that everyone feels as I do that if there is disagreement and someone has to go, it should not be the man who has done so much for track and KU. Until this incident I had never found anything at KU I disliked. But if Bill Easton goes, I shall seriously reconsider returning to KU next year. That's how much I think of the man. And I don't think I'm alone.
Hank Bisbee
Toledo, Ohio, junior
Dailü Hansan
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"They Didn't Like This Get-Up Any Better"
An End to Panty Raids
April is in full flower and perhaps, after all, the college students of the nation will abandon their several rebellions and revert to the old conformity of panty raids, poetry, and the mysterious ways of a man with a maid. But again, this is unlikely.
The campuses have experienced a severe winter. From Plymouth Rock to Berkeley Bay the Groves of Academe have been shaken by gusty winds of controversy and rebellion. (In addition, the Air Force Academy repeated the sad story written at the academy at West Point some years ago. A covey of students, including a heavy percentage of the football team, were expelled for cheating on examinations. In both cases we were assured that the rigors of football had no connection with the offense.)
It took the boll weevil almost a generation patiently to move from Mexico, across the Rio Grande, and into the cotton South. It has taken even longer for the Latin American student commitment to political and social issues to reach American campuses. But it is here. That it is also in full flower in more remote areas symbolized by Saigon, Tokyo, and Moscow serves to remind us how wrong were those who laughed at the late Wendell Willkie when he wrote a book titled "One World." We do not have one world at peace or agreement on how to attain it, but we assuredly have one world of ferment about the issues of our time.
The modus operandi of student discontent is the demonstration. Usually it is more or less peaceful, though raucously loud. Now and then stones, ink, and other items are thrown. At times the demonstrations are against more or less faceless things. Others have objectives. African students in Russia, long restive, are again disturbed by what seems to have been the murder of a Ghanaian student. They demonstrate to quit Russia—thereby embarrassing the presidents of their various countries, particularly Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana. Tokyo's students demonstrate against the presence of a U.S. nuclear submarine in their waters. The objectives are many.
American students are fed up with their elders over such things as mass faceless education and civil rights in general. The murders and beatings, dynamitings and violence, practiced by southern communities who perpetuate—with standard deplorings—the actions by "the low and violent" among them are too much for most students to take calmly. Obvious hypocrisy riles them and makes them willing to demonstrate and be among the "outside agitators" who upset the Black Belt towns. American students are weary, too, of much of the Christian church and of ministers who do a verbal soft shoe dance in the pulpit each Sunday. "Where do all those guys disappear to between 11 a.m. one Sunday and the next?" is a common question.
American undergraduates are disenchanted about the hugeness and "facelessness" of much of our present day education. The larger colleges and universities suffer most. Graduate work increasingly occupies the more notable teachers. Teaching undergraduates becomes more and more impersonal at a time in life when such students need, or at least wish, a more personal experience. We forget how heavily "the bomb" hangs over all sensitive life today. (Only Barry Goldwater and his followers want to go on to the ultimate in Southeast Asia. Goldwater violently protests any negotiated settlement.)
Many students see the values of life unattended. They know the bulldozer is here to stay, but they don't understand why builders should be such crass fellows as to destroy all contours, trees and beauty. They do experience a spiritual frustration. Every church youth leader knows this. A vast drama goes on—complex and awesome. Students want to feel a sense of participation. It is doubtful if the panty raid will stage much of a comeback this spring.—(Reprint by Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta Constitution)