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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, April 25, 1968
Adopt limited pass-fail
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in a faculty meeting Tuesday passed a proposal to allow students to select one course per semester to be graded on the pass-fail system.
Under this system, students who now avoid notoriously difficult courses for fear of getting a low grade might sign up for them. Thus the incentive for students to pursue a more liberal and diverse education would be increased, allowing the student to take courses which would further his knowledge, not just the subjects he excels in and is able to get a superior grade.
Students from other universities, such as the University of Iowa which have a limited pass-fail system, report its apparent success. Universities which are reluctant to give up the grading
system altogether are adopting a limited pass-fail before accepting or rejecting the system. There are even advantages to a combination grade and pass-fail system. The grading system simplifies graduate school selection and the selection of scholarships and honorary awards, yet the pass-fail system is often the most advantageous to the average student pursuing a liberal education.
The proposal by the College to adopt a limited pass-fail is a good one, and the University Senate would be wise to adopt it. By doing so, some of the hypocrisy might be eliminated from the letter grading system in favor of pursuing a true education, not just a good grade.
Diane Wengler Editorial Editor
Faculty forum:
For military realism at KU
By Herbert J. Ellison Professor of History
I wonder if I might be permitted a brief rejoinder to the letter of Professor Maher which appeared in Monday's Kansan.
I was bothered by Professor Maher's use of chices: e.g., "The military is characterized by blind obedience to authority and suppression of free exchange of ideas."
I wonder, for example, if General James Gavin would fit Maher's category of "the military." I suspect not. Such categories are as useless for serious discussion as they are necessary for political polemics.
Surely an intellectual, in a land which has on many occasions in the past shown a lively streak of anti-intellectualism, should be cautious about using such debating tactics. It is not an essential premise of civilized debate that every man is first a thinking human being, and then a soldier, a lawyer, a professor, or whatever?
The quotation from John Gerassi, offered by Maher, describes American universities as "essential . . . in producing the cogs and technocrats and ideologues needed to run, justify and rationalize American imperialism."
I haven't space to argue with the notion of "American imperialism" which this quotation contains, a notion widely accepted by the contemporary American left, a notion which blames America for most of the present world conflicts in as absurdly naive a way as representatives of the right a few years ago blamed "world Communism."
Perhaps it is sufficient to ask why, if American universities were producing the docile puppets of some hypothetical "establishment" they are such lively centers of dissent. To put the question another way, didn't the universities also produce the dissenters?
Professor Maher suggests that "The University should work vigorously against conditions in society which inhibit a free exchange of
ideas," a position against which no respectable academician would argue.
Aside from his polemical stereotype, which it has been fashionable for many years to call "the military mind," (though he does not use the label), Professor Maher's chief argument in justification of the claim that the military work against free exchange of ideas is that military recruiters on our campus "have refused invitations by students to debate the practices of the military."
Surely this is as absurd as to ask an interviewer for IBM to engage in a debate in the Union on the practices of his corporation. Moreover, a refusal to engage in a debate under such circumstances is not, ipso facto, evidence of an effort to inhibit the exchange of ideas.
Professor Maher seems to imply that a student in ROTC, or a similar form of training, is subject to no other, or at least no other more powerful, educational experience. I would have thought that campus military training was a rather small part of a student's total education.
It would be interesting to know what alternative Professor Maher proposes.
The day of swords into ploughshares is not yet with us, and military officers will be trained. Would Professor Maher prefer to have all intending military officers educated in strictly military academies, removed from the general influence of the independent university?
I agree that the university must contribute, in all ways possible and proper, to the free exchange of ideas.
A systematic discussion of the questions and problems associated with a military training program at a university would surely be a worthy contribution, but not when it makes use of such emotionally charged labels as "the military" and "American Imperialism," labels which do far more to hinder serious debate than the silent performance of their duties by recruiting officers.
MASTERS GOP TOURNAMENT
Student films rare
By Scott Nunlev
The YIPPIES "Delight Days" brought to a packed Pine Room the short films of KU students Richard Geary and Leigh Clark
Geary's films varied from animated caricatures of LBJ to a "long" (15 minute) impression of a student-suicide.
But his imagery seemed far more professional than either his screenplays or equipment. A sequence of kaleidoscopic views shot from within a revolving door not only was visual fun but also a fine dramatization of the shattered world of the film's paranoic hero.
Clark's single film showed three young men fighting for the love of a young lady. But their battle was a series of phallic comparisons which Clark represented by larger and more wicked knives.
Both Geary (a Design senior) and Clark (a College freshman) are members of Norman Abrams' class, "Design 85: Special Problems in Design."
Now holding 20 students, the unique film class was initiated by Abrams and seems destined to vanish with his forced promotion to the University of Iowa.
Opportunities for KU students to actively experience creative film-making will virtually cease with Abrams.
Dr. Bruce Linton's Radio-TV-Films "Cinematography" course is necessarily limited by equipment demands to a few journalism-oriented graduate students.
KU needs more film experimentation, certainly. Someone will have to provide a pool of hardware, but black-and-white eight MM film is not itself that prohibitive: 60 minutes for a tiny $50
Watch for Abrams' students' showing on May 21st—and write to someone about your interest. (Would you like to hear about the film I want to make . . .?)
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