2.
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, February 29, 1968
McCarthy thwarted?
Those who claim they want peace the most have abandoned the best hope they have.
Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy's avowed decision to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 was to give those Americans who opposed Johnson's handling of the Vietnam war a chance to voice their dissent.
Yet, as the elections grow closer, it is becoming evident McCarthy is not the choice of a great part of those disillusioned by the war.
Tuesday, Carl A. Auerbach, founder of the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), resigned from the ADA to protest the endorsement of McCarthy's candidacy by the executive board.
Auerbach, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, said only President Johnson can end the Vietnam war speedily and the endorsement of McCarthy was poorly timed.
Many other opponents of the war have indicated their reluctance to back McCarthy because they fear he is a candidate who cannot win. At this time, it appears the very group McCarthy was hoping to provide a clear-cut choice for have deserted him.
Yet, without McCarthy, anti-war liberals will have no alternative.
As the situation looks now, Democrats will surely renominate Lyndon Johnson, whose policy is so offensive to so many.
On the Republican side, there is a growing acceptance of Richard M. Nixon as the likely presidential candidate. And Nixon's Vietnam policy will likely be even more hawkish than Johnson.
Even if Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller is able to secure a draft at the convention, there is no assurance his Vietnam policy will be any different than Nixon's. For, to date, he has evaded questions about his stand on the war.
So, as the elections grow closer, prospects for a peace candidate look bleak.
McCarthy has incurred the undying wrath of a good segment of the Democratic party that does not look kindly upon bucking a presidential incumbant by offering the voters a chance to revise U.S. foreign policy for a generation.
Will liberals miss their chance to realize their dreams with McCarthy? Or will they not risk backing a loser, and be forced to construct airy dreams during four long years under Johnson or Nixon?
— Diane Wengler Editorial Editor
Letter to the editor
Sophomores disfranchised
To the Editor:
Freshman women who will be classified as sophomores next fall will not be able to vote for their living group representatives, or run for living group representative, in the All Student Council election this April. Why? Because of the new sophomore deferred rush system, these girls will be "districtless."
Except for the small women's district (Scholarship Halls), whose numbers are fairly constant, and except for the girls who have already made up their minds not to participate in rush next September, the women of the present Freshman class will have no vote. This number is between 700 and 900 girls; the total number of freshman women being 1419.
The question that occurs to me is why did the Dean of Women's office change the rush system? Last spring, the Panhellenic Rush Council distributed questionnaires
to every sorority girl. The questionnaires, in effect, offered to retain our mid-semester system or to change it, the main alternative being sophomore deferred rush.
The results of this question-
naire were never made public.
However, the general opinion of
most sorority girls was that they
desired to retain the mid-semester
rush.
Newsroom—UN 4-3646 Business Office—UN 4-3198
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $6 a month, $10 a year. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 66044. Accredited goods, services and employment advertised offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Regents.
Apparently, this is why the results of the questionnaire were never made public because the dictate was issued from the Dean of Women's office that sophomore deferred rush was now law—and there was no explanation as to why it was done when the opinion was against it.
Granted that the Dean of Women's office did not intend to take the vote away from freshman women (although this is a most serious consequence) the problem remains: who really does make the rules around here?
Managing Editor—Gary Murrell Business Manager—Robert Nordyke
— Susan Trottmann Kirkwood, Mo., junior
Faculty forum
Salsich off base
By Judson Briegel Instructor of Speech
Wilhelm Leibnitz once declared that "this is the best of all possible worlds." Although we all might sympathize with the German scholar's religious zeal, the force of reason dictates that we recognize, like Voltaire's Candide, the need to "cultivate our gardens." In short, Leibnitz's theological doctrines are simply repugnant to mature thought and, therefore, should be promptly dismissed.
Applying the same "test of reason" to arguments recently advanced by Mr. Hamilton Salsich, a University English instructor, the parallel to Leibnitz's case is almost complete. Editorializing in a recent Daily Kansan, Mr. Salsich launched a fierce attack against the so-called "tough" instructor. Ironically enough, Mr. Salsich's rhetoric is also appropriately described as "tough." The harshness of his words is perhaps understandable; however, his analysis is, like Edward's spider, precariously situated over a fiery pit.
With uncanny perspicuity, Mr. Salsich peers into the catalogue of teachers employed by our University and draws some truly remarkable conclusions. Let me give you an example. According to his analysis, the "tough" teacher is a "curiosity" who constitutes the rule rather than the exception. In other words, Mr. Salsich would have us believe that the majority of our teachers are sick—"mentally and emotionally." Something is sick alright, but is it our teachers?
Let me expose Mr. Salsich's analysis for what I believe it to be—a patent attempt to propagate his own peculiar philosophy of education. Latent in his thought seems to be a laissez-faire view of education. Whether or not this system is workable and desirable will be discussed in academic circles for some time; however, it is both unfair and unschoolly to identify those who disagree philosophically with the laissez-faire notion with those few instructors who use the classroom selfishly.
---
To put it another way, it may well be that those who require student attendance are not afraid that their students will "walk out in a minute" without the rule, but are only concerned about student welfare. What rational man could caricaturize such a teacher as power-seeking, valueless, hollow, or, indeed, brand him as "sick"?
Paperbacks
---
The Continental Op, by Dashiell Hammett (Dell, 60 cents); The Saracen Blade, by Frank Yerby (Dell, 75 cents); The Listening Walls, by Margaret Millar (Dell, 60 cents); Tall Wyoming, by Dan Cushman (Dell, 45 cents)—Some light reading for you. The titles here range from the tough guy school of detective writing, represented in Hammett, to a western yarn. There's a mystery by one of the best, and there's the sex-and-history school of Frank Yerby.