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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, February 28 1968
Three bad laws
Three categories of laws that ought not to exist are here with us. It is time we have them reconsidered.
A law that cannot be enforced, or one that is unjust, or even one that fails in its objective is useless and unworthy of the people it is supposed to protect.
Despite a prohibition that no alcoholic beverage should be consumed on state property or in student residence halls, few obey the law, or see to its adequate enforcement.
Many times spectators at sports events sniff the unmistakable smell of liquor while someone takes a familiar jig from the all purpose thermos flask. Beer cans have been found all over this campus, and off-campus parties in student homes tend to be more popular because of the availability of drinks.
A University regulation is also in this category of unenforcable laws. Practically every classroom on this campus displays the "No Smoking" sign. But countless times, both students and professors ignored the signs and smoked their cigarettes.
We also are burdened by our Regents' ban against the sale of cigarettes on the KU campus.
But for the little inconvenience resulting from the ban, nothing else happened except maybe an increase in the number of smokers here. And the ban was supposed to cut down that number!
As for the unjust laws, a typical example lies at the very basis of the events leading to the founding of this country. "Taxation without representation" was a very popular slogan. Now, of course, nobody gives it heed except those who have any reason to complain.
They are the out of state and foreign students. They are required to pay property taxes when they are not residents of the state and when they won't be staying here all their lives to reap the benefits from their contributions. Isn't it enough that they pay out of state fees?
Of course, there are those who would argue that they use public facilities in the state. In that case, then, is it not better justice to reduce the sum they pay in taxes in recognition of their being out of staters?
Let's think about these points. They at least warrant a reconsideration of their merits and demerits.
Swaebou Conaten Assistant Editorial Editor
— Swaebou Conateh
"And Where Do You Think YOU'RE Traveling?"
New in paperbacks
Paperbacks for the past several years have been providing historical documents of the merit once confined to the more respectable hardback volumes. Here are three of the newer volumes, all inexpensive, that will suit the course needs of many university students. The first is called COMBAT: THE CIVIL WAR—THE CURTAIN RISES (Dell, 95 cents), edited and with a commentary by Don Congdon. The book has narratives by actual Civil War participants from Fort Sumter to Antietam, and a second volume will continue the story. A number of striking illustrations, plus maps, make the book one the Civil War enthusiast will enjoy.
Two others are in a new Political Perspectives Series from Fawcett Premier. They are BLACK PROTEST: HISTORY, DOCUMENTS, AND ANALYSES — 1619 TO THE PRESENT, edited by Joanne Grant (95 cents) and LATIN AMERICA: REFORM OR REVOLUTION? — A READER, edited by James Petras and Maurice Zeitlin (95 cents). In the first of these you will find writings not only by such contemporary figures as Martin Luther King and James Farmer but by such persons as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Weld. The list of writers represented is a long one.
The Latin America work takes a critical position, demonstrating that "progress" in Latin America appears to mean that as the rich get richer the poor get poorer. Contemporary authorities are represented in this scholarly volume.
X X X
One of the big commodities in paperbacks these days is suspense, of the James Bond spy type or the thing the publishers call Gothic novels. Here are some new ones: James Hall Roberts' THE FEBRUARY PLAN (Crest, 60 cents), which is cloak and dagger stuff of the age of the atom; Mary Paradise's THE MARRIAGE CHEST (Crest, 60 cents), which of course has a young girl and a castle (in Spain, this time) and family mystery and sinister doings, and Stanley Ellin's
HOUSE OF CARDS (Dell, 75 cents), which is sort of in between these other two, with mysteries and mansions and assorted derring-do but with contemporary implications, too.
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From James Jones has come another of those monstrous things of many pages and plooding style and atrocious grammar—and plot and characterization that keep you reading. This one is called GO TO THE WIDOW-MAKER (Dell, $1.25). The book is absolutely crammed with sex and action and what we used to call dirty words, plus Caribbean fishing and skin-diving. Jones, like some others of his contemporaries, keeps trying to beat Hemingway and reveals mainly that he is a poor man's Ruark—but Ruark could keep you reading, too.
A writer who seems almost old-fashioned in our jazzed-up jet set literature is Frank Yerby. His PRIDE'S CASTLE (Dell, 75 cents) is out this month. The setting is New York and the hero is a big tough man of the Gilded Age who's after both money and women. This guy was a veteran of the lusty-busty school when many of today's shockers were in grade school.
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A new item on the shelves at the grocery store is a paperback of Allen Drury's CAPABLE OF HONOR (Dell, $1.25). The book had terrible reviews, and that didn't seem to hurt it materially. Why? Well, Drury tells a good story. He knows the interest people have today in politics, and some of the same gentlemen are on hand here who have been with us since "Adwise and Consent." The plot: well, old Harley Hudson and Orrin Knox, the good guys, are up against an ambitious young man, the governor of California, as a matter of fact, who wants to be president. Drury knows the Washington scene and he knows government. He has a conservative bias that offends many people, and his style is comparable to that of Leon Uris or Harold Robbins. But a lot of you will be reading "Capable of Honor."
Faculty forum
'Loose' teachers are sick
By Laurence Day Assistant Professor of Journalism
Outstanding among the educational curiosities of the first few weeks of classes is the so-called "enlightened" teacher, the one who introduces his course by informing his students that "I don't have anything particular for you to do, as a matter of fact I left my notes in my office but let's chat a bit, I don't have any rules about attendance or the content of this course, so don't any of you sweat it." I call this man a curiosity simply because he is mentally and emotionally sick.
He is sick, first of all because he is insecure, and his insecurity shows through from the first day to the last. It is the insecurity of the typical field mouse who finds meaning in life only by not ever getting in anyone's way. Watching such a teacher, one has the feeling that he chose the teaching profession not because he believed in the value of education, but because his position as a teacher would allow him to feel security and peace in mouthing half chewed, half-baked half-assed philosophies that would never be stood for among people who have to work for a living. This type of teacher attempts to let the students control his life and his classroom because his life is out-of-control and empty. By not pushing the students around, by saying one answer is as good as another, he asserts his moderninity, (sis), shores up his ruins, and tries to convince people that he is really with this modern society in which there are no blacks or whites, just beautiful grays. But his students, of course, always know better.
Board's prayer
This type of teacher is a curiosity, but the lucky thing is that he forms the exception, not the rule. Probably only a minority of our professors and instructors use a squishy banana to hide their own fear and insecurity. They are not teachers. They were never meant to be teachers
by John Hill
But they aren't a danger to anyone, neither to their students nor the school. Some people will say, "Until we root them out, and replace them, our institutions will continue to be more like Happy Time Nursery than a decent school." But that would be cruel. Anyone who has seen a terrified field mouse skittering and squeaking down the furrow in front of a tractor knows we must show pity, not hate.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the draft board my deferment to keep,
He is afraid of nearly everything, and when a man is afraid, he sets up defenses—and becomes a field mouse—in order to hide himself in the furrows of intellectual relativity and cover himself with good old secure grey. But, again, his students are not fooled, and they hate it.
But most important of all, he is afraid of his students, because he knows they hate his class, and he knows they would walk out in a minute if he didn't have this loosey-goosey "I'm-a-nice-guy, let's-suffer-together-cause-you-are-all nice-guvs-too, so-please-help-me, I'm-so-alone."-kind of approach.
He is sick, too, because he is afraid. He is afraid of his colleagues, who will laugh at him if he "puts any pressure" on his classes. He is afraid of his supervisors, who have always taught him that a teacher must have the "love" of his students. He is afraid of himself, afraid of the possibility that he is hollow, afraid that he really has nothing of value to teach his students.
If I die in action before I graduate,
I pray it's not due to a grading mistake.
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