MAKING THE GRADE - VII
Emotional problems, 'system' related
(Editor's Note: This is one of a series of articles about grades and grading systems at KU and the problems they create.)
By Elizabeth Rhodes
"I had to walk down the street everyday, and they all knew. You can't imagine how much it hurt."
The person who spoke is a senior at KU. He became a senior the hard way: by flunking out, spending a year at a junior college, and then coming back.
He spoke of the times he walked
down the street in his home town, where the junior college is located, and saw the people he had known all his life, the people who knew him when he was a high school leader, respected in the community, and then knew he was no longer going to KU because of grades.
THE HUMILIATION this student felt was acute. It was something he would rather not deal with, but did anyway because he
had to. His feelings sorang not so much from the fact that he had flunked out, but that he had not lived up to his image and everyone he cared about knew it.
Neither this student's grade problem, nor his reaction, is unique according to Dr. D. H. Kerkman, head of Watkins Hospital's Mental Health Clinic. Students having grade problems usually exhibit anxiety, not over the grades themselves, but over the
results of bad grades. Or poor grades often mirror emotional, personal or interpersonal problems.
But rarely do grades themselves cause mental health problems. "Grades might be a reflection of problems, but not the cause," Dr. Kerkman said.
76th Year, No.132
Heart of Saigon sees 40-minute gun fight
SAIGON —(UPI)— U.S. and Vietnamese guards, panicked by a Viet Cong terrorist bomb, fought a tragic 40-minute rifle and machine gun battle in the heart of Saigon during the morning rush hour today with civilians caught in the cross-fire.
A U.S. military spokesman said five Vietnamese-three of them women and one a child-were killed and 29 other persons, including 8 Americans, were wounded.
HE SAID THE blast panicked guards at nearby American officers billets, confirming reports of
witnesses that they rushed into the street from three directions firing at each other.
A high Vietnamese police official said the only Viet Cong around was the one who pushed a bicycle with a homemade bomb and a timing device into a nearby street intersection "and he was probably home in bed and asleep when it went off."
The bomb, described as a pellet-firing Claymore mine, exploded in front of the Suzie Wong tailor shop which caters to American servicemen. It is just a short distance from the Ambassador and
Brinks billets for high-ranking U.S. officers.
BOTH U.S. AND Vietnamese guards charged into the street and began firing at each other, catching pedestrians in a two-block area in a withering cross-fire.
Bullets from an American military police jeep riddled a truck carrying Vietnamese men and women, turning it into a mass of tangled, groaning civilians bathed in their own blood. Another machine gun sprayed a U.S. Navy passenger bus injuring at least two civilians.
DJ sets two records in 77-hour broadcast
After 77 hours of consecutive broadcasting, Cole Walker, Topeka junior, left the Information Booth where he had broadcast a marathon disc jockey show since 10 p.m. Friday.
Mao appearance ends death tale
TOKYO—(UPI)—Red Chinese Communist boss Mao Tse-tung met a visiting delegation of Albanian Communists in Peking, the New China News Agency said today. It was the first publicized appearance of the Chinese leader since last Nov. 26 and spiked rumors that he was seriously ill or dead.
Peking's foreign ministry denied 10 days ago that the 72-year-old Mao was ailing.
The broadcast said only that Mao met with "comrades of the Albanian party," and that he led discussions which were "extremely intimate and friendly. . .
Albania is Red China's only eastern European ally in the Sino-Soviet dispute.
"BOTH SIDES were completely at one on all questions," the news agency said.
Besides Mao, others present at the meeting included Premier Chou En-Lai; Communist party Central Committee Vice Chairman Lin Piao; General Secretary Teng Hsiao-ping and other high ranking party and government members, the broadcast said.
He established an outdoor record, "since no one has ever broadcast outdoors before," and also broke the 48-hour Midwest record, said Bill Mauk, Overland Park junior and KUOK station manager.
"It was a matter of my saying it was time to quit." His voice was giving out and he was tired. We walked him over to the hospital where the doctor checked his blood pressure. He was all right so he just went home to rest, Mauk continued.
"We'll wake him every six hours and walk him around to get his metabolism up. If you sleep too long your metabolism drops and you don't come out of it. It's now a matter of a good long rest," said Mauk.
WALKER'S EFFORT is the second longest intercollegiate endurance broadcast. The record is 100 hours at St. John's College. The previous second place record was 71 hours, Mauk said.
U. S. Army medics dodged in and out of the fire treating the wounded and dragging others to safety.
MAUK, OTHER KUOK staff members and Walker's friends, took three hour shifts during the weekend to keep him awake. Engineers played records girls cooked dinners. The others stayed around the Information Booth to keep him company.
Walker went to a criminology class at 8:30 yesterday. He was excused from his afternoon radio and television classes. He plans to attend his afternoon classes today, Mauk said.
DIPLOMATS AT THE U.S.
Mission expressed their sympathy to the "innocent victims" of the "tragic event" and offered to render all assistance possible.
"Our heart goes out to the innocent victims of this affair," a spokesman said. "But the root ... heart of it is the Viet Cong terrorism in the heart of the city."
Take the case two years ago of the freshman woman who decided to major in nursing. She chose the profession because her mother, the undisputed head of the household, was a nurse. Actually, the student did not want a medical career. She wanted to marry the boy she had dated during high school.
IN AN EFFORT to achieve her goal, the student had postponed applying to the University of Washington, the school her mother had graduated from, until a week before the admission deadline.
Her mother found out and the daughter was enrolled in the school which was over 2,000 miles from her home and boyfriend in Dallas. The student had little talent for medicine, almost no interest in college, and hated being away from home.
She flunked out because of academic reasons. Actually her personal problems had been, from the start, too great a handicap to overcome.
Then there are the students on
the other end of the spectrum who take their studies too seriously. They are the ones Dr. E. G. Collister, director of Bailey Hall's Guidance Service, sees experiencing grade-related mental problems because they are "perfection strivers."
A STUDENT IN this category "thinks he can be more perfect than he is." Dr. Collister said. "No matter what he is doing, he doesn't think he is doing enough. The grading system doesn't make much difference. Just a pass-fail system would create tension."
The tension is generally expressed by either anxiety or depression.
Many pressures stem from adjustment problems and insecurity about the possibility of failing. Often students feel they have to make high grades, either because good grades are considered a status symbol, or because high grades are a prerequisite for something the student wants. Entrance into graduate school, or a high-paying job are two examples.
The emotional and intellectual climate of a school can also make an appreciable difference in a student's attitude toward grades. Many larger schools have not only "freshman flunk-out courses," but "everyone flunk-out courses."
See GRADES MIRROR, Page 6
Problems cut facilities bill from ASC meeting tonight
No major legislation is expected to be introduced at tonight's All Student Council (ASC) meeting at 7 p.m. in the Kansas Union, according to leaders of both political parties.
Two amendments introduced at last week's meeting—one dealing with the ASC Social Committee and one with datebooks—will be considered by the council.
The talked-of bill concerning university facilities will not be introduced at tonight's All-Student Council (ASC) meeting, according to Jerry Bean, Abilene sohomore (Vox-Large Men').
BEAN EXPRESSED concern over misconceptions centered around the proposed resolution.
He said, "The bill did not arise from the plans for Spencer Library which is privately financed.
"The committee provided for in the bill will primarily be concerned with landscaping projects which arise more frequently and directly affect the students."
Beam added that a resolution such as this one has been under consideration since Vox Populi platform caucused last fall
'PAST REPEATS?'
Bean said, "The problem is where to effectively inject the student committee into the existing framework."
The bill will be introduced after further research and improvement of form.
Thompson criticizes Allies
A discussion of Allied intervention in the Russian civil war following World War I recalls similar parallels in recent Western involvements in the internal affairs of other nations, according to John M. Thompson, a professor at Indiana University.
Speaking before an audience yesterday afternoon in the Kansas Union, Thompson noted that an analysis of Western participation in the Russian civil war could enable Americans to appreciate the difficulties and complex problems the Allies face in Cuba, Viet Nam and perhaps the ones they will eventually face in Indonesia.
IN THE 1920'S, said Thompson. Western powers ignored Russia and Germany, making them outcast powers. The Allies called this handling of Russia "containment and isolation." Today the popular phrase is "containment without isolation."
The Western powers entered phase one of Allied intervention
in Russia with President Wilson's decision to intervene in Siberia, Thompson explained. In phase two, the end of World War I also ended the public purpose for intervention, but the noise of gunfire distorted statements by Western officials that they were not "at war." How the Allies got into this position of intervention possibly holds parallels today, he said.
Thompson said the Allies then had two alternatives: all-out intervention, which was an obvious response, or acceptance of the new regime with peaceful negotiations, which was also a logical conclusion; but Western powers chose to straddle the fence between the two possibilities.
The Allies vetoed the possibility of negotiation, Thompson said, because the Bolsheviks clearly
THE ALLIES DID not actively push intervention because there was not enough strength among the Allies, said Thompson. Warweary soldiers would not volunteer to fight, he said.
pointed out that any settlement would be temporary and that they had every intention of mounting their forces. Strong Western political opinion, motivated by anti-Bolshevik sentiments which feared Bolshevik action in Europe, also helped prevent peace talks, he said.
"Of course, the Soviet goal was Western destruction," said Thompson, "but the Allies should not have avoided possible negotiations. The long-range goal of the Soviets could have been dealt with later, he said.
"I don't claim that history repeats itself or that conditions can be duplicated again today, but—"
WEATHER
Cloudy and warmer tonight and tomorrow. Scattered showers and thunderstorms developing late tonight continuing through tomorrow night. Low tonight 48 to 52. High tomorrow near 70.