Page 2
University Daily Kansan Friday, March 19. 1965
Guest Editorial
It may be a trite way of putting it, but the Civil Rights Council has bitten the hand that has been feeding it.
Whether willfully or not, the CRC has drawn the administration and All Student Council into the battle of whether the University Daily Kansan shall accept certain advertising which is found to be discriminatory.
Let it be said here that this writer does not favor allegedly discriminatory advertising. What concerns me is that the Civil Rights Council has made it look (willfully or unwillfully) like the Kansan is against integration.
WITH NO RISK OF OVERSTATEMENT, it may be said that the University Daily Kansan put the CRC "on the map." Without crusading Kansan editorials and investigative Kansan news reports, the Civil Rights Council would still be in the somewhat obscure position it occupied before 1960 and possibly even later than then.
The Kansan has been a leader in the civil rights movement on the University of Kansas campus. The facts support this statement.
In 1959, a series of Kansan editorials pointed to the discriminatory way in which a University housing list was prepared. At that time, separate lists of landlords willing to rent to KU students were kept for Negro and white students. When the practice was called to the attention of the administration it was immediately discontinued.
- In October of 1960, the Kansan's attention was called to its own practices. It was discovered that the Kansan was printing advertisements which promoted discrimination in housing. The governing board of the Kansan unanimously resolved to ban such advertisements.
- In 1962, the Kansan became concerned with the discriminatory renters on the University housing list and urged the discontinuance of this practice. On Nov. 8, 1962, Chancellor Wescoe announced that discriminatory landlords would no longer be listed on the University housing list.
- In 1963, the Kansan Board voted to ban the use of phrases suggesting discrimination in advertisements.
- All during this period the Kansan has been militant in securing the rights of all KU students to patronize Lawrence businesses.
- All during this period the Kansan has sought to have discriminatory clauses removed from fraternity and sorority charters.
- Of late, the Kansan has been critical—to say the least—of undue delay on the part of the All Student Council to draft and enact civil rights legislation.
Further, it must be pointed out that on March 27,1962,it was announced that the Kansan had won the National Brotherhood Mass Media award for editorials. This marked the first time that the award sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews had been awarded to a student publication.
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That should set the Kansan's record straight. But further comment is necessary to interpret the amendments passed Tuesday by the ASC which regard Daily Kansan advertising. In some apparently last-minute amendments, the word "commercial" was inserted before advertising in all references.
ARE THE MEMBERS OF THE CIVIL Rights Council aware that this word destroys what must have been one of their goals? Had the word "commercial" not been used, it is conceivable that the amendments would have been interpreted to mean that no Greek organization could advertise in any student publication.
From their list of demands, it is to be interpreted that the Civil Rights Council believes fraternities and sororities practice discrimination. Thus, advertising of these organizations could not be justified under the original forms of the amendments.
Maybe the administration, All Student Council and Civil Rights Council should re-examine their stands. Do they know what they want? And have they been aware of the University Daily Kansan's role in the KU Civil Rights Movement?
Roy Miller
The People Say.
Dear Sir:
YOU INDEED DESERVE TO BE congratulated for your editorial entitled "ASC Meeting" which appeared in the Wednesday, March 17. 1965 issue of the Kansan. Throughout the last several days of controversy and confusion several editorials and articles have appeared in several local and nearby newspapers, none of which have
exhibited the clarity of thought and intent which you have displayed in your editorial.
Your reporting of the events of the Council meeting last Tuesday night is accurate and valid. Few people were unaffected by Miss Thayer's comments — neither were Mr. Stewart's arguments left unneeded. By combining an editorial with a succinct effort to report the
actions precluding it, you have produced the first truly objective position published in the last two weeks (concerning the recent ASC action, that is). Although you state your opinion and make your position quite obvious, you do not thrust your words down the throat of readers; neither do you attempt to locate the final situs of guilt on any one single group or action.
Perhaps the real tragedy of the entire situation does not lie in the fact that the Kansan is now somewhat restricted in its advertising policy, rather in the fact that the rift — certainly it can be called nothing less — was allowed to exist and increase by otherwise responsible members and representatives of the ASC, the Kansan Board, and the Administration.
The editorial represents (I hope) a new outlook and approach to the existing situation. After such an excellent — although belated — attempt to clearly present the situation, I would consider it a blunt injustice to those concerned if efforts to analyze the situation and insure that nothing similar shall arise again should now be dropped.
My thanks for a genuinely effective stand on a generally misunderstood and exaggerated situation.
Literacy Test
Bill Robinson
ASC Representative
Great Bend sophomore
Sir:
"SPEAKER SAYS GOD NON- Existent." blurts the headline, and the story bears out the head.
Unfortunately, both are untrue.
What kind of idiot would be able to conceive of a Christian existentialist asserting that God is nonexistent?
Answer; A UDK reporter.
We come forward to vindicate M. Marcel's very high reputation. No, students. M. Marcel did not kill God. A UDK reporter did.
Evan Charles Richards Kansas City, junior
A Slice of Cam-Pi
It has always been my contention that the life of a college student was a happy one. I'm beginning to think that my contention was wrong. Joe College used to be the perfect picture of a hedonist in a sweater with average grades and a helluva lust for anything that might come his way.
The picture has changed somewhat, but I wonder if it's for the better.
Reed Harris, director of the USIA information-center service was quoted in Newsweek on campus rebellions. "Protests show that students are thinking, are questioning traditional attitudes," he said.
Chancellor Wescoe was quoted in the same issue as being, "encouraged by the awakening of students we have seen in recent years."
I shall not try to correlate either statement to anything. However, permit me one questioning thought.
How much rational thinking is involved when a student smears his blood on a bulletin board?
\* \* \*
I remember distinctly ole Ferdinand LaCruce from my early college days down South. Now there was a character. His friends called him Ferdy.
Ferdy could get more out of one day of college than anyone I have seen since.
Upon seeing Ferdy strolling across campus it was only natural to cry out, "Ferdy, where you heading guy?" Ferdy was always going someplace.
He would reply, "I'm going to my arc-wielding class, and then there's a guest lecturer at Memorial Hall speaking on 'Kumquat growing in Southern California.'"
"Where you going after that?" his questioner would question.
"There's a panel discussion on the economics of Mesopotamia in the Student Center, a film on the life of Frank Buck, then I pick up Grinelda, (that was his girl) and we're going to the art exhibit and then go look at flowers in the Botanical Gardens."
That was Ferdy. Always going somewhere and doing something. It's a shame he didn't have time to question traditional attitudes.
- * *
Other words of wisdom: I understand some of our local dry cleaning establishments are now worried about their Freedom of the press.
Jim's Little Gem: "God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it."
— Jim Langord
BOOK REVIEWS
NEW AMERICAN PLAYS, edited by Robert W. Corrigan (Mermaid Dramabooks, $1.95); THREE PLAYS, by Elmer Rice (Mermaid Dramabooks, $1.75); THE BRIG, by Kenneth H. Brown (Spotlight Dramabooks, $1.75).
And still the paperback people throw the play collections at us. This one stretches from naturalistic drama of the twenties to the experimental things being done today, by people whose names you aren't likely to recognize.
Elmer Rice was once one of the great names of the theater. He seems antiquated today. Once he was an experimenter, when he did plays like "The Adding Machine," and he gave us sharp social comment with "Street Scene." "Dream Girl" is entertaining, but little more. Yet this man must be studied to get a true picture of the drama in this country.
Now as for "The Brig," this is the Living Theatre production that has occasioned considerable comment—a brutal, bitter, shocking drama. The names you'll find in the collection of new American plays are Anna Marie Barlow, Kenneth Cameron, Claude Fredericks, Dennis Jasudowicz, Alfred Levinson, Charles L. Mee Jr., Lawrence Osgood, James L. Rosenberg, Deric L. Washburn and Lorees Yerby. Anthologies of 1990 may list these as figures in a class with O'Neill—or possibly Elmer Rice.
Daili'Ifänsan
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University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
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$3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Leta Roth and Gary Noland ... Co-Editorial Editors
NEWS DEPARTMENT
**Don Black** ... Managing Editor
Bobbie Bartelt, Clare Casey, Marshall Caskey, Fred Frailey, Assistant
Managing Editors; Judy Farrell, City Editor; Karen Lambert, Feature-
Society Editor; Glen Phillips, Sports Editor; Janet Chartier, Telegraph
Editor; Harry Krause, Picture Editor.
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Tom Fisher ... Business Manager
Nancy Holland, Advertising Manager; Ed Vaughn, National Advertising Manager; Dale Reinecker, Classified Advertising Manager; Russ Calkins, Merchandising Manager: Bob Monk, Promotion Manager; Gary Grazda, Circulation Manager.