If the torch is passed
Although neither the Daily Kansan nor most of the student body can muster the obsequious flattery given the Chancellor by some alumni upon the report of his possible departure from Strong Hall, we can always treat our Chancellor to the fair and honest appraisal he himself would prefer.
Indeed, it is too early to wave good-bye to Dr. Wescoe—the reports of his transfer to the University of Minnesota are rumors, and will remain rumors until he decides to accept or reject the offer.
MUCH TO HIS CREDIT, W. Clarke Wescoe has ridden out some of the roughest years this university has seen since its birth 100 years ago.
When he replaced Franklin Murphy as Chancellor, KU was at the crossroads: The University could either vegetate and die a mundane death at the hands of a hostile state, or it could circle the wagons, beef up the perimeter and start fighting.
Chancellor Wescoe decided to fight. Locking horns with everyone from Regent to Powerful Alum, the Chancellor pushed KU into the front lines of American Higher Education.
HIS "PR" SENSE, although it at times offended the academic purists, brought mere classroom space and more and better paid faculty. Treading a thin line, the Chancellor brought compromise between civil right's marcher and GOP oligarch, between "free love" advocate and legislator.
It was this duty of treaty maker that made him unpopular with both lobbies. But it was his duty, and he pursued it with both human force and frailty.
Indeed, it is too early to write the "obit" for Dr. Wescoe. He is not gone and he may never leave. We may yet have more years to alternately praise and damn him.
But if the torch is to be passed, we stand ready to dip the flag. —Dan Austin
A look at the Northeast
Fraternities in trouble?
Pu PANDOLPH SEALEY
(Editor's Note: The author is a graduate of Columbia College in New York City where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity.)
The American fraternity system flourishes today, particularly at the rapidly-growing educational centers of the West, but fraternities in the Northeast, their very birthplace, do not share this prosperity and, in fact, face a decline in influence at colleges where they have existed for 142 years.
At such a school—Williams College in southwestern Mass. a board of trustees voted in 1962 to carry out a report proposing the college take over the fraternities' social, housing and eating functions. Today, two fraternities exist only as non-residential clubs at Williams.
WHILE WILLIAMS is an extreme case, fraternities at many northeastern colleges are faced with problems which can be expected to alter radically their role on college campuses.
Ironically, the same criticisms leveled against fraternities when they began are being made today.
In the years after 1825, when the Kappa Alpha Society was established at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., fraternities enjoyed a period of rapid growth. By 1841, Union had five secret societies, including Sigma Phi and Delta Phi which, with Kappa Alpha, formed the "Union Triad" at the "Mother of Fraternities." The
The first in a series of three articles
Union fraternities were accompanied by the establishment of other societies including Alpha Delta Phi, Chi Psi and Delta Kappa Epsilon at other schools.
Despite this rapid growth, the character of these societies drew heavy criticism from many faculty members and students.
THE EARLY FRATERNITIES were quite different from those of today. They had secret grips and rituals, but were primarily literary societies for the academic improvement of their members.
The members of these societies sought to bring honor upon their fraternity by securing the best scholastic honors and debate prizes. Meetings devoted much time to the development of skill in rhetoric and debate.
But the fraternities' prosperity engendered
antagonism from jealous people who watched fraternities get the best men who won the most honors. In 1836 Alpha Delta Phi established a chapter at Columbia College only to arouse so much envy that the chapter was forced to disband two years later.
CHARGES SIMILAR to those of the early days are being leveled today against fraternities, but with a new twist: critics say fraternities now are "anti-intellectual" but still exclusive while serving social functions which can be better met by the colleges themselves.
At the same time, the fraternities' influence has declined at many campuses—fewer students are beating the doors down to get into fraternities—and in some places a majority of faculty and students favor their abolition. At nearly all the leading schools in the Northeast, fraternities have to face problems of some sort.
At some colleges fraternities are faced with housing problems, forcing them to accept university-owned housing or, in other places, to move further from the campus.
ANOTHER PROBLEM is alleged racial or social discrimination. There is pressure on many campuses in the Northeast to require pledges of non-discrimination and even demands to "prove" non-discrimination by calling upon chapters to take members of certain minority groups.
Fraternities also are charged with lack of social usefulness—that they are non-intellectual organizations whose attempts at "good works" are only window-dressing. Fraternities are viewed as social clubs whose only purpose is to have more parties and less studying.
It is these attacks—and the fraternities' answer to them—that will do much to shape the future role of fraternities in northeastern campuses. It must be recognized that college campuses in this region as well as in others are in a state of change and that fraternities will change too. This does not mean fraternities will have to abandon their old values of selectivity and emphasis upon social as well as academic roles, but only that they will have to be redefined.
(The next installment will deal with the problems of housing and discrimination. The third, and final one will cover fraternities' social purpose and end with the author's conclusions.)
Serving KU for 77 of its 101 Years
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The Daily Kansan, student newspaper at The University of Kansas, is represented by National Advertising Service. 18 East 50 St., New York, N.Y. 10022. Postage paid at Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year 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.
HOLLYWOOD — (UPI) — Walter Matthau will repeat his Broadway characterization in "The Odd Couple," but it will be Jack Lemmon instead of Art Carney in the other starring role.
2
Daily Kansan editorial page Friday, March 17. 1967
Go Hawks!
UDK Review—'A Vision of Battlements'
Burgess-a Virgil for All seasons
The problem with defending Gibraltar during the War was that no one began the seige. Towering and alien, the Rock demanded that hundreds of British soldiers protect it from a phantom danger. To the garrison soldier Gibraltar was more jailed than victim.
By SCOTT NUNLEY
This is the atmosphere of Anthony Burgess' novel, "A Vision of Battlements." Sergeant Richard Ennis sits out the final years of WW II on the Rock. His ambition is to be a composer, to reach not the ears but the "diphragms" of his audience with his music. The Rock, Ennis feels, will grant him only failure.
SO FROM HIS OWN wartime experience, Burgess retells the Aeneas story with an Olympus of minor Army officers and a Hades of Spanish whores. But Burgess has penetrated to the human myth behind the Virgillian form; only occasionally does he remind the reader with wry humor of his literary parallel. The plight of Ennis, rather, is a universal event, repeated on every rock in every wartime history.
Richard Ennis, himself, is highly individualized by Burgess. What is Ennis really accomplishing with his petty acts of hired vandalism? Ennis believes he cannot adjust to the Rock because of his temperament, his inner drive to turn his world into musical composition. He will, he vows, force the Rock to conform to his patterns.
But Ennis is a continual failure, in his military job, in his love-life, perhaps even in his music. According to a professor of Harmony, Ennis "just has no ear." Slowly the reader begins to judge Ennis for himself; and the reader already has discovered what Ennis at last honestly admits: "I must learn to grow up."
It is difficult to draw early conclusions about the literary development of Anthony Burgess. His ten novels have been appearing only since 1960, sometimes drawn from previously completed material, "A Vision of Battlements," Burgess says, was his first novel, completed in 1949 during a slow Easter vacation, but not published until 1965. Certainly it seems to stand earlier in Burgess' work than those novels rolling in a maelstrom of language, dream, and madness.
If this is so, Burgess could hardly be said to have ever written an apprentice novel. "A Vision of Battlements" is a fast, well-controlled, important novel intensely tied up with the molding of one particular young man into a Man. The young man may he bored with life, but his life is never a bore to the reader. His initial attitude may be a shallow one, but he is never presented in a shallow manner.
The Burgess themes of language and sensation permeate this novel in a more subdued key than in "A Clockwork Orange." "The Doctor is Sick," or "Nothing Like the Sun," Violence holds its usual position, as natural a phenomenon in a Burgess world as any other of the human bodily functions. Humor, as always, is the yeast that lightens the otherwise too solid mixture of life.
Burgess most recent production, a unique spy novel "A Tremor of Intent" (1966), has yet to reach a wide audience in this country or to be distributed in paperback by Ballantine. Until it has, "A Vision of Battlements" will capably support Burgess' growing reputation as the best of the contemporary British novelists.