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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, May 14, 1968
Campus humor, ca. 1968
In the same season that SDS-led student activists took such thorough physical control of Columbia University that only rampant police violence could dislodge them, events elsewhere showed that campus frivolity of the most sophisticated kind (i.e., not that of a Spring Fling or Derby Day) has not been submerged by campus politics of the most sophisticated kind (i.e., not that of elected student governing bodies).
University of Colorado students today are renaming their student union grill from "The Roaring Fork" to "The Alfred E. Packer Memorial Grill." (See detailed story elsewhere in this issue.) The former gives rise to the image of a fraternity type and his cherubic pinnate enjoying a barbeque burger at a rustic little hideaway; the latter elicits a vision of "Little Man on Campus" scrutinizing an assembly-line hamburger for eyelashes.
Alfred E. Packer, you see, was the only man in U.S. history to be convicted of cannibalism. Packer was convicted in Lake City, Colo., in 1883 of having killed and eaten five companions
caught with him in a blizzard while prospecting for gold. He was hanged.
CU students, who passed the name-change by referendum, thus have made known their feelings about a university fact of life without giving it more attention than it deserves.
meanwhile at Stanford, sophomore coed and topless dancer Vicki Drake today will probably be elected student body president. In an unprecedented turnout early last month, students voted 1.575 for Miss Drake and 1.232 for runner-up Dennis Hayes. (Miss Cissie Bonini, who ran with a "Vote for Mom" slogan, was a poor third with only 175 votes.)
Stanford students thus have made known their feelings about a university fact of life by giving it precisely the attention it deserves.
Miss Drake, 38-22-36, must compete in a runoff since she did not win a majority, but it is significant that in the last ten years the preliminary victor has won the election.
— Don Walker
Assistant Editorial Editor
"You people are three hours late for our scheduled meeting!"
Letters to the editor
Of channeling and calm cops
To the Editor:
Amid the moaning and garment-rending that has taken place in university graduate schools around the country over the prospect that first year graduate students will be drafted, there has been raised at least one voice saying, "Peace," or in modern terms, "Cool it."
In a recent letter to the New York Times Magazine, Prof. William G. Andrews, chairman of the Department of Political Science, State University of Brockport, N.Y., gave some interesting observations.
Among them:
1. Most overcrowded graduate schools will benefit from the loss of one thirtieth of their students because those remaining will be final year students, women, foreigners, men over 25, veterans, men not classified I-A, I-A's not required to fill quotas, and family men.
2. Those who will not arrive next fall are students whose interest in graduate education may be primarily inspired by sentiments of draft evasion.
3. Those who will arrive two years from now will be the best students that the schools lose this year. They will return after military service more mature and financed by government funds in the form of the G.I. Bill.
4. Good students who never considered graduate school because of insufficient funds, motivation or maturity will have acquired all three and will seek to further their education.
For years, says Prof. Andrews, universities have bemoaned the great burden of maintaining graduate schools. Now that burden can be lightened by the G.I. Bill so why should they lament? Instead of bemoaning the loss of 1,000 first-year graduates who will enter the service in 1968-69, the schools should woo the 65,000 who will leave it, he said.
He concludes, "Most of the hysteria sweeping American graduate education is unscholarly, irrational and hypocritical. Scratch a hysteric and uncover a dove. Their real concern is not over the graduate students they will lose, but the soldiers the Army in Vietnam will gain."
It seems to me this is an interesting counterpoint to much of the material published recently and should be of interest to Kansan readers.
Laurence Day Asst. Prof. of Journalism
To the Editor:
So Rich Lovett thinks that the police should be using their guns to prevent looting during civil disturbances ("Only Guns Will Ever Stop Riot Looting," UDK, April 24). Great! We must protect property at all costs—even that of human life.
Mr. Lovett and others like him are so overcome with righteous indignation that they fail to see the possible consequences of the policy they advocate. (Or maybe they do see them.)
Haven't enough people — many of them innocent onlookers—been senselessly killed by trigger-happy police and guardsmans. Isn't it time to seek new ways of dealing with these problems? Killing looters does not cure anything; it serves only to infuriate the black people of the ghettoes.
I think that the Washington police are to be commended for the way they handled the recent "riot." They kept calm and sought to clear the streets through a curfew instead of shooting wildly.
The police in most cities need to gain the trust and confidence of the citizens if the explosive situation which exists is to be remedied rather than exacerbated. Fortunately, some cities have realized this and are working towards this end. New York is a notable example of this creative approach. Let us support them instead of calling on them to return to brute force.
Myrna Ewart Chicago, Ill., senior
... quotes ...
"For the life of me, I cannot see how we would be endangered by a communist regime in Mali or Brazaville or Burundi; its most likely effect would be to cost Moscow or Peking some money."
George Ball, President Johnson's choice to replace Arthur Goldberg as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in a book he published April 1.
New Paperbacks
Here's some of the popular-level stuff available this month in paperback:
The Tour, by Eliot Fremont-Smith (Dell, 75 cents)—a story of modern-day morality by the man who wrote "Seconds." The plot concerns a group of Americans who make a tour to a backward republic in Central America, and become involved in a scheme of the tour director to test an anti-guerrilla weapon. This is a wild one.
The Coral Strand, by John Masters (Dell, 75 cents)—Adventure and sex in India, which is the usual theme from Masters, author of "Bhowani Junction." From the jungles to the cities this one rages, and Masters, though some of his language is rather dreadful, makes you feel the heat and the dust and the steaminess.
The Woman with the Little Fox, by Violette Leduc (Dell, 75 cents)—Deep and probing drama attuned to NOW. There are shocks and sensations in these three French stories of three French women and sexual adventure.
The Fugitive Pigeon, by Donald E. Westlake (Dell, 60 cents)—Skullduggery, syndicates, drugs, blondes, and a hero trying to solve the mess.
Cats Prowl at Night, by A. A. Fair (Dell, 50 cents)—Another of those enjoyable Donald Lam-Bertha Cool murder mysteries (vintage 1943).
North to Deadwood, by Wayne D. Overholser (Dell, 50 cents) —The Wild West! Sioux! Gamblers! And a hero as big as John Wayne!
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