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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, March 8, 1963
Students get raw deal
A silent cheer went up as students read that KU's system of fining may be unconstitutional on the grounds that only courts have the right to levy fines.
Rare is the student who hasn't discovered an obnoxious blue ticket on his car after parking a minute over the five minute limit near a dormitory, or a second too long in a loading zone.
If the tickets were issued on a flat rate basis, it wouldn't be so bad, but the graduated fee basis poses a definite hardship on the student who gets a third or fourth ticket.
A recent Kansan article quoted Keith Lawton as saying that parking fines from KU students are kept in a fund to build parking lots. Apparently, the Legislature doesn't allocate money for this purpose.
So the burden of providing parking lots goes to the students by means of paying exorbitant parking fines. Yet, students cannot even park in most of them.
Perhaps a better system of regulation with a different type of penalty being assessed could be
devised. But students shouldn't be required to finance parking lot maintenance.
Lawton stated that "hitting them in the pocketbook is the only means of teaching them self-discipline." Yet one wonders whether the real purpose of the fine is to teach this discipline or raise revenues at the student's expense. Either purpose is questionable.
After a student has received a ticket for his overparking, he has no recourse but to either pay the fine or appeal to the student court within ten days of issuance of the ticket.
Yet, despite the fact that parking violations in Kansas are listed as a misdemeanor, students are without the chance to be heard by a legal court. This is hardly fair to the student who as the Arizona judge ruled, is denied his legal rights as a citizen.
The evidence is strong that students aren't being given a fair deal. The $50,000 yearly students pay for parking fines without the benefit of a legal hearing is outrageous and should be changed—now.
— Diane Wengler Editorial Editor
"So You See It's Actually Another Victory For Us, Because We have Reason To Think They Really Wanted To Take California"
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY kansan
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Letter to the editor
Comedian Judd
To the editor:
If you missed the Walter H. Judd show Tuesday in the Kansas Union you really did miss one of the finest variety acts to appear here in sometime. For those unfamiliar with the name Judd I should explain that he is a comedian of sorts who specializes in comedy of the absurd.
To recount his whole act would be to inflict nausea; to select a few of the lines that brought the audience to the threshold of hysteria might give you, gentle reader, some indication of the wit of this master craftsman:
- Contrary to the current mores, what the world needs now is war, a lot of it, and in keeping with the American spirit, against anyone, regardless of race, color, or creed;
Ho Chi Minh is not out to conquer South Vietnam, rather he also wants the whole world (which initially I thought to be somewhat greedy of Ho); secondly that he is cluttering up the field as there is only one world, and lastly that if any of us want some of the "action" we best become either a Republican, an historian, or a Ho Chi Minh;
Communists are not really people, rather historians who want to take over everything (which aligns them very closely with the Republicians);
The reason Communism is so successful is that millions of Americans are not doing their homework;
In reviewing this show I should say there was never a dull moment. The man is capable of talking for extended periods of time without pausing either to breathe or think, while all this time restraining a most obvious urge to check under the speaker's podium for a communist; ostensibly he would be able to recognize the uniform.
- And finally, the easiest way to win the war in South Vietnam is to starve North Vietnam out.
All in all a delightful afternoon with Dr. Judd demonstrating the depths to which blaten paronoia allows a man to sink. A graduate student next to me said he thought he had heard of a tribe of people inflicted with this unfortunate illness. He said they were plagued with riots, racism, guerilla warfare in their cities, militarism in their foreign policy, social chaos and political decadency. I ask him what they were doing about it, he said nothing, that they called it freedom and wanted everyone to have it. That's rich, I've got to remember that one.
William Hansen
Shawnee Mission
Jan. 1968 graduate
Kansan editorial essay
Vietnam is a Pentagon lab
By Don Walker
With monotonous regularity, Time magazine devotes an article to the ingenious American advances in weaponry made possible by the Vietnam war.
At least twice a year since 1964, the country's most prostituted journalists glowingly have reaffirmed the ancient truth that, necessity being the mother of invention, from man's necessity to wage war spring war's daughters, weapons.
A sampling of Vietnam's daughters, American stock, as described in Time includes:
- The M-16 rifle which fires at a rate of up to 750 rounds per minute a .222 magnum bullet so devastating that it can rip off limbs at 100 yards.
- A sniperscope with an image-intensifier so sensitive that it can detect a man illuminated only by starlight.
- The "Ontos," a tracked vehicle that can level its six 106-mm. recoilless rifles for close-in, line of sight artillery support.
The tiny, gnat-like "Mohawk" helicopter which bristles with rockets and 20-mm cannon for precision air support.
The exuberance with which Time and others detail new ways to zap Charlie reflects the elation of its news sources, American commanders in the field and spokesmen for the weapons development research teams in Vietnam.
The Pentagon naturally is pleased that technology has helped to offset the advantages inherent in guerrilla tactics. Sophisticated weapons have vaulted the Yank soldier into the position once occupied by the Viet Cong terrorist as king of the elephant grass.
From the experience of Vietnam, the United States has fostered the capability to wage a war of counterinsurgency. This capability is applicable to a conventional war of the magnitude of the Korean conflict or greater. Vietnam has thus been a boon and a blessing to the Army and Marine Corps which had become the weak sisters of the services during the 1950's when the nation prepared for all-out war, convinced that the nuclear age had made conventional warfare obsolete. As late as 1964, the Pentagon was woefully lacking in the ability to wage any kind of war save the ultimate
The enbuffance the military feels at its Vietnam-wrought capability, however, is cause for worry since, the necessity of the war being highly debatable, it is strange that anyone would refrain and oppose a peaceful negotiated conclusion as much as the American military does.
Why does the military want to stay in Vietnam?
The Pentagon may or may not realize that implicit in continued U.S. escalation and perhaps even in pending victory without further escalation is Communist Chinese intervention. Apparently, it makes no difference. Since a confrontation with Red China is held inevitable, since the American people now are resigned to losing a portion of their youth, and since U.S. military strength at last is equal to the task of executing a massive conventional war, the Pentagon's attitude is that we had just as well get on with it.
In short, Vietnam has been a conditioner for the title fight.
That a nation will use one war as a preparation for another is ironic. It is not unprecedented, however, and it is the precedent that makes this realization about the Vietnam war such a shocker.
In only one instance did the aggression of Nazi Germany fail to yield tangible spoils—Spain. Nazi intervention in the Spanish Civil War was materially unproductive—no territory was commanded and France proved a worthless ally. The only reward was the valuable experience and supreme confidence in Blitzkrieg ("Lightning War") which enabled the German army to overrun all of continental Europe, most of North Africa, and Russia to Stalingrad.
Is Vietnam to America what Spain was to Germany?
Two similarities are striking: (1) in both cases, the battleground may be equated with a field laboratory for weapons; (2) in both cases, the nation field-testing weapons and techniques anticipated a larger, final war in the very near future.
The conjecture that the Pentagon is delighted to be able to test weapons under actual combat conditions and even that it is glad for the war since it dictates what weapons are needed is really not so incredible in perspective. Before Vietnam, Congress would appropriate heavily only for nuclear armaments. As the M-1 and M-14 rifles proved inadequate in Vietnam, Congress clamored for and financed the development of the M-16.
Considering the perils of our time even without Vietnam, perhaps the United States should have developed the M-16, the "Ontos," et al. But is it necessary to have a war to prepare for a war?
apparently the Partagian thinks so, and we continue to prepare at the expense of the Vietnamese.