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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, April 23, 1968
Token enfranchisement
Students on more than 1,000 college campuses, including KU, tomorrow will enjoy a token participation in the most basic process of democracy when they vote in Choice '68, the national collegiate presidential primary, an unprecedented plebsite sponsored by Time, Inc.
Ballots include the names of all candidates Time considers to be contenders for the nominations of the two major parties and blanks for suggestions of independent or creative voters. (The names of Hubert Humphrey and Martin Luther King are absent and present, respectively, reminders of powerful instants in history.) Collegians also will opine succinctly on three paramount issues-U.S. presence in Vietnam, the character of the bombing of North Vietnam, and the urban crisis-by checking one of five courses of action for each.
Expression on the issues should be consistent with results of the candidates if students are as informed as they are patronizingly cracked up to be by the media and their elders. A massive demand for the South Vietnamese to shoulder
more of the burden of the war without further U.S. escalation should be a concomitant of a mandate for Robert F. Kennedy.
Sectional differences will be apparent. The West Coast will exhibit a strongly dovish stand on Vietnam, George Wallace and the American Independent Party will carry Southern campuses, and a demand for a quick decisive victory under the Supreme Commandership of Richard Nixon will mark the Midwest. (Perhaps even more illuminating will be tabulations of individual universities. Is Kansas State as reactionary as its reputation? Is KU progressive by comparison?)
Forward-looking candidates and malleable, youth-worshipping voters will pay close attention to the Primary. For that, students who vote tomorrow may feel a greater satisfaction than will November's ballot casters, knowing that because they voted first and at a rather crucial point in the election race, their ballots carried the greatest weight of any.
— Don Walker
Assistant Editorial Editor
Communications for Watkins
What happens if a seriously injured student is rushed to Watkins Hospital by ambulance and cannot promptly be treated because the doctor is already performing surgery? The ambulance must be redirected to Lawrence Memorial Hospital or to the KU Medical Center. Valuable time is lost, and the cost is perhaps a life.
The possibility of such a tragedy would be eliminated if the All-Student Council passes a proposal to be put forth tonight by Allen Merritt, co-chairman of the council's Student Health Commission. Merritt will ask that $500 be drawn from general funds or from any unused funds
of other committees to buy Watkins an FM shortwave radio with an emergency frequency. The transmitter-receiver would enable ambulances to warn the hospital of emergency cases en route, and the hospital could redirect them if a doctor is not free or if the particular case can be more readily administered to at another hospital.
Watkins' needs are many, but few are so pressing and yet so meetable as that of a direct link with ambulances. If the money is to be had, the ASC could find no better use for it than to accommodate Merritt in his proposal.
—Don Walker
"The South Vietnamese stole the railroad track . . .!"
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Letters to the editor
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Of a 'misrepresented' Nixon, an urban riot
To the Editor:
The letter from Monroe Dodd (UDK, April 17) has encouraged me to join in protest against the perpetration of the inaccurate image of Richard Nixon found in the "Seven Bells" editorial (UDK, April 1).
I have always been told in my classes that no opinion should be based on secondary sources only. If you want an understanding of Richard Nixon (i.e., his speeches in toto) and not a mass media representation which must necessarily be selective because of time-space limitations. An example of this selectiveness in quotation can be found in the news stories regarding Mr. Nixon's comments on civil disorder. The only statements by Mr. Nixon presented were short comments regarding the necessity of maintaining law and order and the unjustifiability of arson, etc., as a method for change. Few know that Nixon has stated his full position on that matter thus: "We have to defuse the causes for the protest, the fact that some of our people don't have an equal chance at the starting line, lack of jobs, lack of adequate housing, and so on."
If Don Walker wants to, he may look up Nixon's speech "A New Beginning—A World You Can Change." He will find: "It's time to move on to a new freedom. The old negative freedoms—freedom from hunger, freedom from want—are no longer enough. The new freedom has to mean freedom for the poor as well as the rich, freedom for black as well as white." And: "The question today is not whether we provide food for the hungry, homes for the ill-housed, jobs for the jobless. The question is how."
Nixon's "how" for breaking a perpetual dependency cycle and working toward the eventual reduction of welfare rolls to only the severely handicapped is sensible, better for the undeprivilleged, and more efficient than the Johnson "how."
Anyone who wants to form his
own views and not have them formed for him should read for himself. These are not the words of a reality-divorced reactionary. They represent a constructive approach to a realized conflict.
Phyllis Culham
Junction City sophomore
* * *
To the Editor:
The following is a series of events that my mother and I experienced on Tuesday, April 9, 1968, at about noon. The reader may draw his own conclusions. Presented here are my reactions to the situation.
We walked into a shoe store in downtown Kansas City. The salesman asked us if we had transportation out of the city; he said "they" were starting a riot. All of the stores were closing.
We went back out into the street and started walking towards the parking lot where our car was parked. But groups of Negoes were gathering at the corners—many were running. We turned a corner. A group of Negro boys were running towards us, and when they had passed, two old women were lying flat on their backs on the sidewalk, about 50 feet apart. From this point on, I felt nothing but terror. We turned another corner and tear gas confronted us; the situation became worse because we could no longer see to escape. I kept yelling at my mother that we had to get out of there. But each street was another mass of running people. And more tear gas. I pounded on the glass door of one of the stores, but the manager would not let us in or his customers out—and all the time choking on tear gas and wondering why all this was happening.
After circling a city block for 20 minutes, we found ourselves back on the street where the two old women had been knocked down. I will never forget one of them trying to put her little blue hat on her bloody head. It seemed impossible to escape the madness of the riot.
Finally, the parking lot appeared at the end of another city block. We crossed the street, passed four policemen wearing gas masks, and reached our car. But still we could not escape the city and the terror. A series of one-way streets led us deeper into the trouble spots. Still many Negroes headed towards the downtown library where a large
crowd had gathered. We had to stop to let about 100 policemen pass—they were headed towards the library. At last we escaped the city and headed south to the safety of the suburbs.
Washington, D.C., now. But the experience was a living nightmare to me. I do not understand why it happened.
I was frightened that Tuesday afternoon for my physical well-being, and I am frightened now—for my country and its people, both black and white.
What I have described here took place in a short space of time and certainly cannot compare to Watts the summer before last, Detroit last summer, or
—Teryl Obiala
Overland Park freshman
'Trains'an impotent tale
Bv Scott Nunlev
"Closely Watched Trains" is a disappointing movie.
Previous products of the young Czech film industry, such as the beautiful "Shop on Main Street," have prepared American audiences for motion pictures of greater impact.
Of course, it might be said that Jiri Menzel's "Closely Watched Trains" is a masterpiece of understatement. But remember REAL understatement? (Perhaps you saw Guiness' "Kind Hearts and Coronets," or some of Sellers' earlier work like "The Amorous General"?) "Closely Watched Trains" is simply under.
Perhaps any film about impotency faces the danger of enfeebling its star. (In "The Family Way," even Hayley Mills caught the sterile disease!) Czech actor Neckar attempts to draw the audience into his huge childlike eyes and parlay innocence for potency, but the trade is scarcely profitable.
The bouncing vitality of Neckers young conductress girlfriend, the brooding intensity of his doctor, or the carefree potency of his fellow dispatcher lend more life-interest to the film than Neckar's grin-stumbling young "hero." If there truly is life in death, if premature ejaculation can be made to appear satisfying in itself, no one does so here.
The grace-that's almost-saving lies here in the gentle theme of the movie itself. An adolescent heir to a family of loafers finds himself faced with the Nazi occupation—before which he must attempt some type of patriotic resistance.
"Closely Watched Trains" cannot be dismissed this quickly, however. No film the Motion Picture Academy chooses Best Foreign Film of a given year can be all bad, can it? (Even if you emerge from the theater muttering "What ever could they have been thinking of!")
But his grandfather chose an epic method: hypnotism. Of course, he was crushed beneath a column of Panzers for his effort.
But our apprentice-dispatcher agrees to cooperate in a plot to dynamite one of his railroad's ammunition trains. There is nothing particularly foolish about the plot; in fact, its execution is carefully planned for him by the film's most sensible character. His chances of success and escape are equally good: the bomb is expertly built and timed. At no point does the young Czech's sabotage echo the quixotic heritage of his ancestors.
He is killed, in fact, by what Camus might have considered the absurdity of life—but which looks like a hell of a lot like a bad break.
"Closely Watched Trains" sacrifices any progression of logic that might have made its grinning young hero an archetype of the congenital failure. Both his impotency (curable) and his death (accidental) seem to lie outside the almost-mythic tradition of his memorable family of failures.
If Neckar himself had been able to generate a more believable performance, or if the direction or camera work had added any vitality to the film, "Closely Watched Trains" might have closely approached its predecessors in the impressive Czech movie industry.
But after so many repetitions of that post-sex scene, did any one in the audience doubt that it was going to be the whistling young man who turned around?