MAKING THE GRADE-XIV
Students choose to attend 'Snob Hill'
(Editor's note: This is one of a series of articles about grades and grading systems at KU and the problems they create.)
By Alan Poland
"Oh, I don't know why. I guess I never thought of going to any other place."
"My dad attended here."
"All my friends were coming so I applied too."
"I WANTED TO GO INTO drama and my high school teacher said one of the best departments was here."
"It's the best school in Kansas and it's cheaper than most out-of-state schools."
These are some of the comments made by KU students when they answered the question: Why are you at KU? For the most part, the students who gave these answers are Kansas residents. They said they did not think much about going to an out-of-state school, and they claimed not to have felt any great pressure to get the best grades possible in order to get into KU. In most cases, they said they always wanted to come to KU.
PROBABLY SOME KU STUDENTS did consider other colleges and universities, and they were worried about their high school grades. However, the impression
one gets from talking to students in the residence halls, at the Kansas Union and around campus is that Mount Oread has a magical attraction for Kansas residents. KU seems to be their natural choice.
Just why it is a natural choice for the Kansas student may be hard for non-Kansans to understand. James K. Hitt, registrar and director of admissions, said that KU is the prestige college in Kansas. "It is the one school in the state around which the people of Kansas unite and call their school."
Hitt said the people of Kansas
look toward KU to represent them, and KU accepts that responsibility. He said there is good reason for the frequent reference to KU as "Snob Hill." "We know KU is a prestige school and the students have a right to be proud of it."
There is no evidence from students now attending KU or high school students who are planning to attend that they think it is an easy school. Although the students know KU will accept any graduate of a Kansas high school, they realize that in order to stay, they must work. Some students admit they feared they would
never complete their freshman year, but still wanted to come to KU.
ACCORDING TO WILLIAM L. Kelly, associate registrar and associate director of admissions, there are as many reasons for students choosing a college as there are students. He said this becomes evident from the questions prospective students ask about KU. Some of the questions they ask are: Will I be able to take a course taught by a certain professor so-and-so? What kind of subjects will I be able to take?
See STUDENTS on page 12
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan Serving KU for 76 of its 100 Years
76th Year, No. 139
WEATHER:
LAWRENCE, KANSAS
CLOUDY
Details on Page 7
Thursday, May 19, 1966
STUDENT PEACE UNION DISCUSSES VIET NAM
STUDENT PEACE UNION DISCUSSES VIET NAM Rick Mabbutt, Shoshone, Idaho, senior, and Dean Abel, SPU president, pass out literature and answer questions.
Faculty petition given to Hitt
Registrar James K. Hitt said yesterday he knew nothing of the petition concerning the Office of Admissions and Records' release of grade information to local Selective Service boards which was presented to him this morning at 10:30 by faculty members, "until I read it in the Kansan."
Hitt added, "Ive never been presented with a petition before."
The petition and the faculty members who supported it are concerned with the administration's policy on supplying grades to the local Selective Service boards. Such a practice, they feel, places an unjust burden on the faculty, who realize that if they give a student a poor grade, he may go to Viet Nam.
THE PETITION SAID, "War is a grave moral issue; as an educator, I cannot—and will not—accept the responsibility for indirectly deciding whether a student will preserve his life as a student or endanger his life as a soldier. Such a responsibility is an insult to my profession. I am an educator, not an executor."
The petition specifically requests that the registrar's office send no information to the local Selective Service board unless at the special request of the individual student. In justification the petition says, "The student
The form which the Registrar's Office sends to the local boards does not give details of grades. It has only a space to designate the college year completed, and a choice of five boxes designated upper one-fourth, upper one-half, upper two-thirds, upper
made his grades, and only he should decide how they are to be used."
The petition concludes, "When the University arbitrarily makes such a connection—when it automatically transfers class rankings to the local draft boards, then our educational program has been reduced to an absurd and hypocritical joke."
THE INFORMATION SHEET makes it clear that "reports of undergraduate class standing will be sent to local boards if the student has furnished his Selective Service number, unless the student makes a written request to the Registrar that a report not be made. If the student makes such a request, a report of standing will not be sent."
THE REGISTRAR'S OFFICE yesterday began distribution of a mimeographed sheet of Selective Service information for undergraduates. The sheet expresses the policy of the Registrar on the release of grades to local boards.
three-fourths, and lower one-fourth "of the full-time male students in his class."
Hitt would not comment on what action would be taken on the petition.
Protest table set in Union
This week the KU Committee to End the War in Viet Nam and the Student Peace Union are distributing informational literature in the Kansas Union.
Student response to the committee's tables has been termed "fair for this time of year" by Richard Hill, Manhattan junior and committee chairman. He said, "People now are just interested in getting through finals. However, interest now is greater than at the beginning of the year."
Hill said that the purpose of the Viet Nam committee, an independent group, is chiefly an informational and educational one. "We want to raise the question and provide material for the interested," he said.
"We want to serve as a focal point for opposition to the war on the campus," Hill said. "We are interested in building a nationwide movement to end the war."
Interest of the Viet Nam Committee is centered solely in stopping the Vietnamese war, while the purpose of SPU is a more general one.
"We are opposed to the Viet Nam conflict in so far as it is one aspect of what we disagree with," said Dean Abel, Michigan City, Ind., graduate student. "War is not the proper means of bringing about social change," he said.
"We want to let people know the alternatives to the draft," he said. "The majority of us feel an obligation to the country, but we feel that there are other ways to fulfill that obligation than to carry a gun."
Abel said that the group's main criticism lies in the fact there is no alternative to the draft now. "We feel that there should be rights as well as obligations," he said.
WEST vs. EAST HILL
Natives are restless
The Lawrence Police Department notified the KU Traffic and Security Office of a disturbance at Gower Place and Tennessee Street at 12:04 this morning.
The report stated that fireworks were being discharged in the area and subjects were talking in a loud manner. It was the second call Lawrence police made to the area. The first was at 11:19 p.m.
When police arrived subjects were seen running on Alumni Place, west on Lilac Lane, and then back east on Gower Place to the vicinity of the Sigma Chi and Alpha Tau Omega fraternity houses.
A POLICE officer answering the 12:04 call told subjects at the Sigma Chi house to go inside and quiet down. Police officers then
contacted subjects at the Alpha Tau Omega house next door and told them the same.
While police were talking with ATO members, fireworks were discharged in the vicinity of the Sigma Chi house's front lawn. Police returned to the Sigma Chi house and later reported that things quieted down.
According to Kent Powell, Wichita sophomore and Sigma Chi, it all started around 11 p.m. when members of the Delta Chi and Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternities renewed an old tradition of raiding between the west hill and east hill houses.
WITNESSES AT the scene reported members of the Beta Theta Pi house caught and painted four or five Delta Tau Deltas and SAEs with green paint when
they showed up in their front yard and threw water balloons.
An intermission of one-half hour followed at 11:15. Representatives of eight to nine houses assembled at the Beta house observers estimated the crowd at 80 to 300 persons.
AS THE GROUP began to break up around midnight approximately 200 of them reassembled at the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house and sang.
Donald Alderson, dean of men, said he had received reports of gatherings on campus last evening but that no action had been taken this morning.
An unidentified person at the Ecta house said, "I don't know what really happened. All I know is that they broke up our study hall."