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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Monday, February 19, 1968
mini-torials
Random jottings
Complaints from KU women concerning dress codes, closing hours, and housing regulations occur again, as they should be until they are allowed into the twentieth century with the rest of us. C'mon in, the water's fine.
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From what we can tell, it appears highly commendable for Dr. Raymond Schwegler, director of the Student Health Center, to support the ASC bill asking that dependents of married students be treated at Watkins Hospital. Space and staff problems would have made it understandable for Dr. Schwegler not to ask for more trouble.
A gift of $25,000 has been made to KU's Program for Progress by the Vendo Foundation of Kansas City, who are responsible for KU's vending machines, so be a little forgiving the next time you pay 15 cents to watch a paper cup not appear, your root beer fired down the drain, and your ice shot from the machine neatly into your left cuff.
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Continued thefts from the KU Art Museum of valuable rings and sculptures due to inadequate facilities for surveillance are irritating, but we really do wish somebody would return the night watchman.
KU co-eds are justifiably hesitant to go up on the hill at night because of the improper lighting in some areas, and makes one wish somebody would transplant all those very unpopular bright lights in Oh . . . Zone.
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Since most people who arrange blind dates generally pick people who are much like themselves as an ideal date, this new computer dating system where the machines match people up leaves the nagging fear that one could get matched up a toaster of a pencil sharpener or something.
John Hill Assistant Editorial Editor
letter to the editor:
Mandelker statement
Editor's note: The following is a statement by Mark Mandelker, assistant professor of mathematics, who allegedly asked three ROTC students to leave his class because of his attitudes toward the military. He has denied forcing students to leave his class.
"Not only are those fighting in an immoral war guilt of any crimes committed, but teachers in military training programs are also guilty. The situation becomes complicated, however, when military training programs are interwoven with civilian education. Certainly, any student enrolled in a course is entitled to be taught, and all should receive the same fair treatment. Thus, one cannot avoid war teaching except by also
unjustly refusing to teach his civilian students. This dilemma has no solution. We can only ask: Why does the university participate in military programs? It is hard to find a reasonable explanation. The military individuals should work to eliminate war teaching from the University of Kansas."
To the Editor:
It is a sad commentary on the state of a university when its students cannot understand the depth of commitment that causes a man to act in such a way that his beliefs be heard by all.
The settled blanket of apathy is
so heavy that, accustomed to the sticky security, the bodies become aghast with horror at the strange step of conviction that falls between them, pulling the covering away slightly from its nearly air-tight position.
And, even this reaction is performed something like the indignant snorting of an old man rolling over in his sleep at the draft from the window he forgot to close.
"Yeah, Chief, But On The Other Hand, Tyler, Polk, Fillmore, McKinley And Hoover Were Criticized Too"
"Dissent is all right in its place," retort the sleepwalkers. "Don't disturb us." And the sheets are drawn back irritably over their heads.
I, for one, applaud the action taken by this math teacher.
He acted firmly and without violence. He sat on no "train tracks." No one's precious "rights" were "infringed upon."
Students indiscriminately choose their professors, for such noble motives as "fear of their grade."
Why shouldn't a teacher request the withdrawal of persons whose royal blue consciences clash with the deepest allegiance of an educator who in turn has every right to choose not to teach them what they can use to kill people.
—Carolyn Cogswell Topeka senior
Perhaps someday such live decisions at KU could transform the steadfast comforter of apathy into a rising curtain of action.
...quotes..
"My hat's in the ring. The fight is on and I'm stripped to the buff."
—Theodore Roosevelt
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"If nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve."
—William Tecumseh Sherman
editorial essay
Role of modern girl has new challenges
By Don Walker
Joan Baez, Baby Jane Holzer, Lenore Kandel, Barbra Streisand, and Julie Christie have something in common besides their fame and their sex, observes John Clellon Holmes in the January issue of Playboy magazine.
While diverse in their life styles, Holmes writes in his evaluation of "The New Girl," they share a radical attitude toward a woman's role. Their attitude is exhibited by their rejection both of woman's traditional roles—largely created for her by men—and woman's traditional reaction to male domination—feminism.
Holmes sees the attitude of these independent and creative women as the outgrowth of feminism; they are apotheoses of the Postfeminist Girl. The feminist was really more concerned with attacking male privileges, he says; the Postfeminist Girl strives to be a female human being.
Helen Gurley Brown, author of "Sex and the Single Girl" and editor of Cosmopolitan, has for more than a decade counseled American women to break out of the unfulfilling roles assigned to them by male prejudice. The woman who has listened to Mrs. Brown's espousals and who is capable of following them jars men not so much by proving herself man's equivalent as by the gracious manner she goes about it. Like Mrs. Brown, she is urbane, intelligent, and witty—traits heretofore all but monopolized by men—and yet retains her womanliness.
The New Girl is presenting an honest challenge to men, not a call to renew the "battle of the sexes." Are men "man enough" to admit that a woman can be their contemporary; i.e., equally a child of the times? Mrs. Brown is reservedly optimistic; Holmes is hopeful; Marshall McLuhan in an article entitled "The Future of Sex" (Look, July 25, 1967) pronounces inevitability.
The sad fact of the present, however, is that most men have been as ill-prepared by their environment for dealing with the New Girl as most women have for becoming one. The New Boy and Girl are still a small minority, but they constitute an advance guard for the next generation's norm.
Perhaps that generation's most significant characteristic will be an honesty and unashamedness in sexual relations. This is certainly the most sensational contribution today's New Girl is making. For example, Julie Christie lived openly with her former mate, said that marriage was not among her plans, and declared that it was no one's business but her own.
The antiquated girl, in contrast, must play games in the Bernean sense, driven partly by her own taboos and partly by fear of male exploitation. At the same time, antiquated men view women as objects to be exploited because too often they are objects.
The transition being made toward non-exploitive sex, then, was initiated by the New Girl who refused to be an object, who earned respect by being a worthwhile individual. In creating herself, she has been an important factor in creating the New Boy who accepted her challenge and, by meeting it, became what he is.
The reconciliation marking the end of the myth that the sexes must stand opposed to each other will, as Holmes says, make it possible for the masculine and feminine to coexist, acknowledging each other's similarity of desire and difference of consciousness, both dedicated to cultivating those aspects they share as human beings.
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