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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, March 2, 1965
Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie is stirring up conflict because of her current adventures in a mental institution. Irate readers are writing to newspapers saying the strip is misrepresenting life in general, and mental institutions, in particular.
Since when were comic strips supposed to represent life as it really is? Having followed comic strips for a long time, I was always of the opinion the discouraged and worried reader turned to the comics after reading the news and editorial pages, which, these days, could send anyone to a mental institution if they thought about them long enough.
If nothing else is funny, the size of the people and their often inane facial expressions is enough to laugh at. Since when did anyone take the Flintstones as a serious commentary on life in the Stone Age? Or since when did Brenda Starr become so realistic as to make journalists pattern themselves after her? It is well known (someone has probably written a master's thesis on this
one) that L'il Abner is a social commentary. Me,
I read it because it's funny.
LIFE HAS become too serious as it is, without dragging comic strips into the area of interpretive and serious dialogue on the state of the human race. I sometimes think people have forgotten how to laugh.
At the risk of being called a Pollyanna, I still think there is a great deal to laugh at, including the comic strips. Movies have to conjure impossible plots and characters for the film to be termed a comedy. Have we so lost our sense of humor that we cannot laugh at the real? Many have recently prescribed laughter as a good psychological escape. Can't it be an approach, rather than an escape? The idea of laughter being a medicine has always rather nauseated me, anyway.
To ask for a return to the time when life was fun instead of a bore and a trial is perhaps asking too much, but could we not at least approach it?
— Leta Roth
Language Crisis Faces India As Shastri Attempts Unity
By Phil Newsom
By Phil Newsom UPI Foreign News Analyst
India's 1961 census disclosed that in the huge sub-continent there are 845 different languages and major dialects.
Of this polyglot, Hindi and its dialects are used by something less than half of the population, mainly in the north. Among them all, the single unifying factor has been the English language, an inheritance of years of British colonial rule. Particularly this applied to the civil service.
The great diversity of language made hopeless the task of unifying state and national administrations without a common denominator.
AND SO IT WAS that the constitution of 1950 directed that English should be the official language for the first 15 years and on Jan.26,1965,should be replaced by Hindi.
In 1963 Parliament passed a law saying that non-Hindi speaking states could, if they wished, retain English as an "associate language" for another 10 years. But it failed to appease the fears of millions of Indians who feared loss of their jobs to Hindi speakers or the resentment of those states proud of their own native tongue.
Rule by riot not being uncommon among the explosive Indian
population, it was not too surprising that on Jan. 26, in the state of Madras in the south mobs began taking to the streets.
Madras is a Tamil-speaking state, a language used by about 34 million.
THE RIOTERS attacked trains, burned stations and cut telephone lines in an attempt to halt communication.
The mobs seized two policemen and burned them alive. Seven persons burned themselves to death in protest suicides.
The riots then spread to Mysore and Kerala states where students attacked trains and post offices and stoned Hindi teachers.
In Calcutta where Bengali is the principal tongue, student demonstrators smashed windows of bookstalls and burned Hindi books.
FOR MILD-mannered Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri the language riots were just one of many burdens but they threatened to have widespread repercussions.
Neither the Indian president nor some members of Shastri's cabinet approved of his handling of the situation.
The rioting put new strains on the ruling Congress party, already bursting at the seams as result of the loss of former Prime Minister Nehru.
Dailij Hänsan
111 Flint Hall
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Excalibur
The greatest of these is a faltering economy unable to feed India's exploding population. Hand in hand are inflation and mounting unemployment. With all of these facing him, Shastri seemed ready to compromise on the language issue.
It is a tragedy of India that Nehru left it with a heritage of 17 years of democracy but failed to solve any of its other major problems.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Leta Roth and Gary Noland ... Co-Editorial Editors
NEWS DEPARTMENT
KERALA is the only Indian state where the Communists ever have held power. They were in office from 1957 to 1959.
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.
Editor's note: The following is a reprint from the Carolina Israelite, a bi-monthly newspaper published by Harry Golden, author of Only in America.
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.
In Kerala state elections are scheduled for next month, and the Communists who made political profit out of the food riots of last November seem likely to make further gains out of the language riots.
WHEN MORDRED REVOLTED, King Arthur was sorely wounded. He asked Sir Bedivere to take his sword Excalibur to the sea and throw it into the waters. Twice Bedivere went and twice refused to throw away the valued sword, telling Arthur each time he had given the sword to the sea. But Arthur told him he lied and finally true to his trust, Bedivere hurled the sword into the sea and a hand rose above the waves to catch it and shake it. Then Bedivere took the bleeding Arthur to a barge on which sat many ladies clothed in black, among them Arthur's sister, Queen Morgan Le Fay. Arthur told Bedivere the barge would take him to Avalon and there he would recover from his wound and come back to help England when she needed him.
In the mid-twentieth century Excalibur became fingers gesturing V for victory and Arthur smoked black cigars and saved England.
Harry Golden
The Carolina Israelite
The People Say...
MR. LANGFORD MUST HAVE known that blatantly not describing a women would bring a response from her. I am the "no description, just a girl" that handed Conway a pamphlet in the Union (Langford's "A Slice of Cam-pi"). I thought I'd give a waiting world my description.
Dear Sir:
I am not a draft dodger. I have close relatives in the service and close friends in Viet Nam, but, it's funny—I can still believe that the Viet Cong is in no way connected to the enemies of World War II who fought my relatives at Guadalcanal. I believe we signed a peace treaty.
I and the Student Peace Union that I represent are trying not only to strengthen our own government but fight communism as well.
"The more the Americans fight Communism in the way they are fighting it in South Viet Nam, the more they'll spread Communism over the region." Norodam Sihanouk. Cambodia.
Conway is to me without description. Is he one of the fellows who fights for his ideals by calling "no-description" girls by dirty names? Perhaps he is one of the "unidentified" counter - picketers who cheer yes when their leader says, "Are we warmongers?" I notice he is in school and not himself in Viet Nam avenging his brother's death.
My sympathies go with Conway. He's at the bottom of the same ladder on which all America is sinking into the quicksand. But Conway fails to see the reunited Communist bloc busy at the top of that ladder pulling it apart rung by rung. He also fails to notice that the more we struggle to get up that ladder the less firm it becomes. The more we fight the less there is of South Viet Nam to "liberate."
If Conway wishes to have his description known, a Student Peace Union member is willing to debate publicly with him.
Christine Bray Kansas City senior
Dear Sir:
LAST NIGHT I HAD A TERRIBLE dream. I dreamt that I was living in the future, in 1984. I found myself in a discussion with a member of the journalism faculty of a university in a country (unfortunately I don't remember it's name) that regarded itself as the most freedom-loving country in the world. At this university an editor of the students' newspaper was punished for having violated the principles of "responsible journalism" by writing an editorial, which (for the first time in the history of that newspaper) did not express the official opinion of the University. This affair was severe enough to take some disciplinary measures against this ignorer of "journalistic ethics" and "breaker of the code of the profession": he had to drop out of school, lost all his scholarships and honors, and was sent to a student's prison (excuse me I mean: an education camp) for $21_{2}$ years.
After some hesitation the chairman of the journalism school of that university received me and I was able to ask him some questions:
"What has actually happened?" Dr. Censure, I asked him.
"Well," he replied, "something truly incredible. A student dared to express his own opinion in our students' newspaper. We were shocked because we had really believed that such a thing would be impossible today. We had taken numerous measures to prevent exactly that; but it was obviously not enough! What would happen," he added, "when every fool had his own opinion, his own conscience?
Chaos, revolution, anarchy, communism would be the result!"
"Yes," I admitted, "it would change a lot of things, if there were more of those dangerous individuals with their own ideas!"
"I knew you would agree with me," Dr. Censore beamed, satisfied. "Colleges and universities are, after all, the institutions where we want to educate young people which later can help us to manipul . . . err . . . to educate the masses. We only want the happiness and the satisfaction of the people of our country. Even students have a right to this happiness. Controversial editorials in a students' newspaper disturb this harmony; students start to think independently and the more they think the less satisfied they become with the situation they find themselves in; finally they want to change things. This is exactly what we have to prevent."
"Surely," I nodded agreeably, "that sounds logical. Now I understand why it is necessary for the sake of the whole student body to censor controversial editorials."
"That's not censorship, it is simply responsibility," he replied angrily. "You know that censorship would violate our beloved constitution."
"Oh, now I understand," I said happily, "responsibility simply means that journalists should only write what people already know how. Why burden people with knowledge and problems that might confuse them and finally perhaps cause conflicts? He who violates this healthy principle is irresponsible?"
"God be praised," he responded, radiant with joy, "finally you have it. But another problem is that students still have to learn how to become responsible. With some it really takes time to adjust them, to make them a happy conforming member of our great happy university family. This is why we sometimes have to force students by some unusual educational measures to become responsible students, and thus, responsible citizens. But I can assure you that more than 99.9 per cent of the student population is responsible in this sense of the word."
"How terrible." I said.
"Yes, how terrible," he agreed, "that there is still 0.1 per cent of ir-responsible students left who tend to join dangerous liberal organizations like Peace Union and Civil Rights Councils. But we hope to solve this problem soon: some of our most responsible psychologists are trying to discover that these potential revolutionaries experienced some frustrations in their childhood, making it impossible for them to live without using their brains . . . err . . . I mean, without being able to live harmoniously with others. Co it will soon be possible for us to send these students where they belong: to a hospital for mentally ill people."
"No," I cried, truly horrified,
"please, think this over!"
At this moment I awoke, bathed in perspiration. You can imagine how happy I was when I discovered that it was only a dream, and that I lived not in 1984 but in 1965. We have freedom of press, even freedom of the students' press; and certainly no government or university official would ever dare to prevent even the publication of articles he completely disagrees with. Authors of controversial articles are not punished, but bounced for their courage to write some troublesome editorials. Everything is so wonderfully different from the 1984 of my dream.
Sincerely yours
Volker Meja
Frankfurt, Germany
Graduate student
BOOK REVIEWS
THE MENTOR BOOK OF IRISH POETRY, edited by Devin A. Garrity (Mentor, 95 cents)—These must be good times for the Irish. Here we have a compilation of Irish poetry from the 18th century to the present, with modern translations of old Gaelic songs, ballads and myths. Such names as Moore and Synge are here in this anthology, 80 per cent of which has never before been placed in a collection. Garrity is regarded as the leading American publisher of Irish literature, and he feels that the poetry he includes brings out the Irish landscape, weather, wild life, past, destiny and traditions.