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University Daily Kansan Wednesday. March 10, 1965
Problem Here Now
A sizeable portion of the campus is now involved in a cause only too just, only too long overdue. Most would agree that those involved in the civil rights movement had long been ignored as a mere minority screaming for candy because they had nothing better to do.
Before Monday, the issue had been largely hypothetical to a large majority of the students, something that was discussed in the classroom, read about in the newspapers, but not one which concerned us as individuals.
IT IS GOOD THAT the issue is no longer an abstract academic question, that it is a potent fact with which we have to deal. A minority has been concerned with these KU problems, but the problems have been largely ignored by the student body. It is good that they no longer can be ignored. Many say that the points demanded by the students are unfair, biased and unreasonable. Others will say that the points are valid and long-needed.
Neither side is that right. In the mass hysteria and excitement of a demonstration, someone always draws the hypothetical line with the sword and demands that everyone wholeheartedly accept or reject the program. Name-calling and generalization cloud the goals of both groups, and any kind of effective coordination is blocked by antagonism on both sides. This, as is obvious, will not serve either of the parties concerned.
This attitude excludes those most directly involved with the issue here on campus—the CRC, the administration and other interested students.
The demonstrators are not to be condemned as
radicals and idiots. They know what they want and they went out to get it. The spirit of their protest was measured and sure. The chancellor has given them the opportunity to express their views and has expressed his. There must be some sort of answer. It will not come with hoots, shouts and hisses. It will not come with hatred and prejudice. It can come only through an intelligent and calm discussion of the issues and their possible solutions.
The demonstrators say they are tired of waiting. Men are tired of trying to solve a problem that involves ingrained suppositions of a century. The conflict cannot be solved overnight, nor can the University immediately issue the demands that the CRC is making. The enactment of the demands, if they are accepted, will involve many hours of work, time and consideration, as well as many people. The demonstrators say they have been waiting 100 years for the problem to be solved. So have most people.
The demonstration has brought the problem to the campus. Everyone now has an obligation to deal with it . . . not with violence, but with intelligence.
The University cannot be run by a demonstrating band of students. Neither can the University refuse to give credence to some of the points involved in the statement.
LITTLE IS ACCOMPLISHED by force. The Civil War proved that. The Negro was not freed, and the conflict between the North and the South is still raging, only in more sophisticated forms.
There are many on this campus, probably a strong majority, who will express their disgust and contempt for the minority that sat outside the Chancellor's office.
— Leta Roth
Who Can Blame Them?
The KU campus has been shaken from its lethargy. This is good.
There are those who will sympathize with their cause, but detest their methods. There are those who will delight in the method of the protest, but care little for the cause.
The issue at stake in this protest is the fact that there are no mixed fraternities and sororities on this campus. There are now no fraternities or sororities on campus with discriminatory clauses. This is irrelevant as far as the demonstrators are concerned, and it has never been a real issue—only a superficial one.
The Negroes know that it was not clauses they were fighting in the past, but prejudices, fears, and traditions among fraternity and sorority undergraduates and alumni.
THE ABSENCE OF DISCRIMINATORY clauses is no comfort for the Negroes, nor will this provide any comfort for fraternities and sororities.
The issue goes much deeper. It is time for fraternities and sororities, if they wish to survive, to take a serious look at the situation they are in. The pressure, only light now, will continue to grow, and a real crisis will develop unless these institutions do something about this problem. If they do not, eventually there will be a civil rights law that applies to these institutions. Fraternities and sororites yet have the opportunity to prove that they are worthy institutions.
THE PROBLEM IS THAT THESE PEOPLE have been listening too long. Their minds have been open to reason, but they see only procrastination. They no longer care to participate in vague discussions which only show how difficult it will be to reach a solution.
IN A STATEMENT FOR YESTERDAY'S
Daily Kansan, Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe noted that discussions have been conducted for several years on this subject. "Now these young men and women want to stop talking and start acting. . . Their unwillingness to listen is one of the most unhappy aspects of this somber situation. I had hoped for better responses from a KU student group. I had hoped we could establish facts; I had hoped that minds were still open to reason. I had hoped we could work together; I hope we still can," Chancellor Wescoe said.
THEY FAIL TO UNDERSTAND WHY THE University can place a fraternity on social probation because of social habits which the University does not condone, and yet the University does not take similar action to eliminate subtle and varied forms of discrimination in fraternities. These students have a legitimate complaint.
This does not mean there are not two legitimate sides to the issue. But too often, the majority consciously and unwittingly ignores or discards the reasoning of the minority in this matter.
They have no desire to negotiate until they stand to gain from negotiations. They will listen when they have something concrete before them. Is this such a deplorable tactic?
Who can blame these students when they tire of talking and take to demonstrating? Only those who can find no fault with themselves.
— Gary Noland
Peacekeeping Body
BOOK REVIEWS
THE PRIVACY INVADERS, by Myron Brenton (Crest, 60 cents).
The bookstores are filling up with expose-type books like this one. Myron Brenton had the misfortune of bringing this one to print about the same time that the celebrity writer, Vance Packard, brought out "The Naked Society." A number of critics gave precedence to this over the Packard work.
We get here a pretty grim picture, one to which we are contributing, that reveals how there's very little of our lives anymore that isn't being investigated by somebody (the picture is probably overdone, but maybe the time has come to halt some of this stuff). Charge accounts, life insurance policies, loans, jobs in government, jobs in education—all these bring us, according to Brenton, under the eye of a prober.
Well, we know that privacy is a relative thing. This book may cause many readers to try to stop the invasions, which if they're as bad as painted by Brenton are a creeping curse of modern-day America.
Dailij Hänsan
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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
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South Viet Nam Problem Giving Johnson Big Headache
By Phil Newsom UPI Foreign News Analyst
Both bear on the risk that the escalation of the U.S. military effort in Viet Nam eventually could lead to a head-on clash with the Red Chinese, with the further possibility that Soviet involvement could lead to a world nuclear war.
Two recent events help to illustrate the complexity of the problem facing President Johnson in South Viet Nam.
In the one instance, an anti-American demonstration in Moso-
THE CHINESE followed it up with a sharp note of protest, and in Peking 400 students staged a protest outside the Soviet Embassy.
cow failed to follow the script, and Soviet soldiers and police who finally crushed it broke some Red Chinese heads in the process.
The Peking demonstration was the first of its kind since Communist take-over of the China mainland.
The succession of events was a special embarrassment to the Soviets since they coincided with the dismal failure of a Moscow "unity" conference originally designed to re-establish Soviet leadership of world communism.
FOR THE United States, the over-all effect was of special significance.
Obviously it was to United States advantage to forestall if possible joint action by the Soviets and Chinese in Viet Nam.
Thus it was possible to question U.S. political wisdom in launching the Feb. 7 U.S. air attack against North Viet Nam at the same time Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin was on a visit to the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.
MOMENTARILY, at least, it forced the Russians into a position identical with that of the Red Chinese.
But the Chinese themselves have made it clear they intend to become the dominant power in Asia and in demanding apologies to the Chinese students injured in the Moscow demonstration they
imposed a new set of conditions which the Soviets could not accept.
IN EFFECT, the Red Chinese have told the Soviets that coexistence within the Communist world depends upon total surrender to Chinese terms.
So long as these two remain locked in their own power struggle neither has the flexibility it needs to carry on large-scale adventures elsewhere.
And, for the Soviets, it becomes possible that even a U.S. presence in Viet Nam is preferable to a total Chinese takeover.