Police Photo Pharce?
To the editor:
What's wrong with photographing demonstrators? After all, unless they have something to hide . . .
That's the line, and it seems to make sense. The UDK editorial of Wednesday, written in understandable haste, is unclear on this: it says "such picture-taking is interference" but doesn't explain why.
THE REASON is simple. There is nothing wrong with confidential files, kept in case trouble later develops. Except files don't stay confidential.
They become available to "interested parties" —it didn't take the Police Chief long to announce that the University could use the photos too. (In Washington it's Drew Pearson; in Lawrence, the Dean of Men.)
Files get leaked to outsiders—and, for self-protection, only to friendly outsiders. Say Martin Luther King came to Lawrence and phoned the Police Chief, asking for names of people who might want to join in a demonstration—can you imagine King would get the names?
The Provist, to his credit, said the University wanted no part of this. He's right; at no time would it matter that a student up for discipline had cheated on tests and opposed the war. The cheating would be all that counted: anything else is a smear.
UNLIKELY: THAT'S PARTISAN. Besides, King's demonstration might cause trouble for the police. Why King might even tell the press about inaccuracies in the files.
But what if the Chicago Tribune called, asking for background on some peacenik? Or an employer, checking on a job application? That's non-partisan, and a lot safer, too. How confidential are the files after the file-clerk has quit, off to his new job with a non-profit foundation which opposes the demonstrators?
None of this makes the Police Chief a member of the Gestapo. More likely he's a man who's damn sick and tired of hysterics who call him a Fascist, a man who's gratified when he can do a favor for someone who's sympathetic to his work.
MAYBE THE PROVOST was unwise. Maybe the University should have thanked the Police Chief for his generous offer, taken copies of the files, and then ignored them.
Because the Chief of Police can't admit that he wasted taxpayers' money on the pictures—someone has to get some use out of them. So they must be leaked. You can bet on it.
Let me repeat—there is nothing evil in keeping files. It is good to know that police use mug shots and computers to apprehend bankrobbers; the robbers have grown more sophisticated,
But bank robbery, and overthrow of the government, are crimes. Dissent over foreign policy is not.
and the cops must, too. Abuses of such information may also occur, but it's a risk necessary to preserve civil order.
An accused bankrobber will land in court, where data in his files can be contested. The protesters aren't as fortunate—since dissent is legal they will never be permitted a trial.
AN ACCUSED BANKROBBER can fight his accusers; the protesters can never rule out irrelevancies in their files, can never put half-truths in context, can never rebut lies. A bankrobber is convicted by evidence. The protesters face publicized smears, which drown out attempts at rebuttal, or covert smears, which don't even permit the try.
Of course the peace vigils may develop into conspiracies to rob banks or overthrow the government. It's possible.
But it's also possible that the First Baptist Church is a front for bankrobbers and revolutionaries. Do we snoop there, too?
OR DO WE SAY that we have a governmental system so strong it could defeat Nazi Germany, so powerful it could impose Daylight Savings Time on Kansas farmers? That we are strong enough to risk keeping our hands off the Baptists and the protesters until we have better grounds than the possibility that trouble may develop later.
I'm not endorsing the protesters: there is something irritating in their continued complaints about apathy—as if political involvement were the only sort of involvement that's meaningful, and that people who stand in front of the Library are just a little more pure and aware than those who go inside to study. But this is beside the point.
It is possible that the protest may develop into trouble; it is also possible it may enlighten us. The Constitution balanced these possibilities and decided we had to take the risk: the right to assembly is guaranteed.
Beyond these possibilities is a certainty: unless we protest arbitrary harassment that curtails one of our rights, it is certain that all our rights are doomed.
UNLESS WE PROTEST, good and loud, what's to keep the police from taking pictures inside the Library, too?
Reading Chaucer? He tried to undermine decency and subvert elements of the Church. Swift? Advocated cannibalism.
Reading guys like that can develop lots of trouble, too.
OFFICIAL BULLETIN
**Foreign Students:** Turn in forms from local or international Campus newsletter.
Grad. Phys. Math. Log. 4:30. p.m.
Grad. Phys. Math. Log. 4:30. p.m.
Fritz. Stuttgart, Germany 278
Malbott
TODAY
Student Peace Union Open Meeting, 7:30 p.m. Kansas Union.
AIA  Lecture, 7:30 pm.  Dr. McDavis'orbigan Visiting Prof., KU. 106 Fraser.
Harry Adler Chicago graduate student
Senior Recital, 8 p.m. Shirley Potter,
soprano. Swarthout Recital Hall.
TOMORROW
Lecture, 2.30 p.m. Dr. Joseph Lieber, Kansas City. "Medical Expert & Testimony on Medical Injuries." Green Hall Courtroom.
College Faculty Meeting, 4:30 p.m.
Forum Room, Kansas Union.
1985 Winners National Student Film Festival, 7 & 9 p.m. Dyche Aud.
Faculty Club Annual Meeting, 7.30 p.m.
Faculty Baroque, 8 p.m.
Faculty Baroque, Trio, 8 p.m.
Experimental Theatre, 8:20 p.m.
"The Wicked Cooks."
Fachy* Barque 110, 8 p.m.
Swarthout Recital Hall.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
kansan
Serving WL Art 17 of 19th Year
Serving KU for 77 of its 101 Years
NEW YORK—(UPI)—A decision by Church World Service, Protestant overseas agency to provide $300,000 for Viet Nam Christian Service in 1967, compared with $250,000 in 1966, was confirmed by Dr. Atlee Beechy, after his return from seven months as director of the Service.
AID FOR VIETS
KANSAN TELEPHONE NUMBERS
Newsroom—UN 4-3646 — Business Office—UN 4-3198
The Daily Kansan, student newspaper at The University of Kansas, is representative of national Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York, N.Y. 10022 Mail subscription service, the second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays and examination periods, accommodations, goods, services and employment advertised in the University are offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin.
The opinions expressed in the editorial column are those of the students whose names are signed to them. Guest editorial views are not necessarily the editor's. Any opinions expressed in the Daily Kansan are not necessarily those of The University of Kansas Administration or the State Board of Regents.
Dr. Beechy said military action in Viet Nam has created psychological and emotional problems among the refugee population in Viet Nam that are as great as their physical problems and that "a group of caring persons with competent skills can help these people recover a sense of hope." Participating with Church World Service in the program are Lutheran World Relief and the Mennonite Central Committee.
EXECUTIVE STAFF
Managing Editor ... Joan McCabe
Business Manager ... Tony Chapp
Editorial Editors ... Dan Austin, Barb Phillips
If you see news happening call UN 4-3646
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Daily Kansan
editorial page
Monday, May 15, 1967
UDK Play Review: The Wicked Cooks
Most exciting play of theatre season
By GARY MITCHELL
"The Wicked Cooks" is surely the most exciting and the most experimental play of this year's Experimental Theatre season.
German playwright Gunter Grass blends many levels of symbolism into a complex but lucid allegorical drama that concerns itself with politics, religion and philosophy, and the "gray soup" or ideal Utopia toward which all men search by using politics, religion, and philosophy.
These many symbolic levels set up a tension between audience and production, because at no specific time is the play willing to spell out exactly what it is getting at. By the end of the evening, though, after Vasco flees offstage pursued by envious cocks who want to know why he no longer bites his fingernails, the audience has as clear an idea of Grass's message as one gets during the entire show.
NO EXPERIMENTAL PLAY I have seen has been more alluring or more tastefully directed. The play's mysteries tintillate any semi-intellect into pondering what the play means, especially when one's senses insist that there is a coherence and a core to the drama.
To give a complete explanation of the play would take more room than I am allowed; and anyhow, half the fun of the show is thinking out one's own hypothesis. I offer mine in that spirit and encourage you to see the show and think out your own.
Vasco, one of the five wicked cooks, functions as the heart of the play. Springing from a mound of salt, Vasco is Everyman, an explorer and a sufferer, looking for a Utopia, a personal Utopia, where he will be free of deceit and guilt; where, in a Marxian sense, all men will be equal and equally happy, freed from personal conscience. Kip Niven handles the role of Vasco with feeling and deep understanding, turning in his best performance of a long and stellar season.
The Count, nonetheless, seems to have the recipe for a gray soup, and the main action of the play is an oblique struggle by the cooks to get the recipe. John Morgan as the Count is sensitive, poised, and meticulously acted.
THE COUNT SEEMS to have the key to such an ideal existence, though the Count is no longer an aristocrat, aristocracy being one "Utopia" that failed.
The Wicked Cooks are wicked because they all deceive each other and themselves for personal gain, without gaining anything. That is their basic sin, and Grass suggests that that is the basic sin of all man.
Green, the intellectual cook, deceives himself and others by living with his brain and not with his senses. Petri, the head cook, thinks he has power, his trumpet being the mouthpiece of that power. But the trumpet does not always sound, and he is never really in control.
STOCK, ANOTHER COOK, connives without thinking and haunts one's mind as the shadow of a mindless but dangerous tyrant. And cook Bennie senses without reasoning, feels without figuring. They are all wicked cooks, even if they do wear white (unlike the chimney-sweeps), even if they do keep their caps of self-dignity firmly on their heads (except for poor Vasco who loses his dignity at least twice during the play); the cooks are wicked because they are born men with ambitions that go beyond their own brew.
Morris Shahan, Richard Harrison, Jack Garrison, and David Blackwell as the cooks are energetic and believable.
There is Vasco's Aunt Theresa, played by Jeri Walker. Theresa stands for orthodox religion and, consequently, Vasco's conscience. Miss Walker stylizes the old woman extremely well, her fingers and voice conveying great feeling, though her handling of the wheel chair seemed consistently too youthfully exuberant.
Cheri Shuck and Bruce Levitt also give fine stylized performances. Miss Shuck, in particular, has a difficult role to portray, as the figure of womanhood, a nurse, a mother, a conscience, and a woman.
DIRECTOR FARRELL CHOSE, and I think wisely, to have the actors wear masks. The masks were designed and constructed by Kip Niven and must receive special credit as being beautifully done.
A stylized acting was used throughout and it encouraged artificiality of characterization. In this production, however, that very artificiality creates a dynamic theatrical effect, an almost Brechtian dramaticism.
"The Wicked Cooks" is a play to see. Jim Stephen's set and Robert Farrell's professional use of it, not to slight the high quality of most of the performers, make this the finest experimental offering of the season.