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University Daily Kansan
Friday, May 4. 1962
Anderson and Liquor
It's generally conceded in Kansas that if you are a Republican and keep out of controversy the governorship, once gained, can be yours until you decide to quit.
The rest of the success recipe consists of taking a firm stand, close to election time, in an area favored by a majority of the voters.
At least this appears to be the rationale behind Gov. John Anderson's latest position on Kansas liquor laws.
YESTERDAY morning, in a Topeka news conference, Gov. Anderson said that "Kansas does not want open saloons. Our present liquor laws, properly administered are the best in the nation."
He added that he has conferred with the attorney general on the problem of key clubs and when the "time comes something will be done about them."
Atty. Gen. William Ferguson said that his office has been studying the lines between strictly private clubs (where each member brings his own bottle and receives his drinks from that bottle) and the so-called private clubs where a "temporary" membership can be obtained for a small fee.
He said his office was preparing a case to test the legality of private clubs where liquor is available by the drink.
ALL THIS sounds fine, especially to the Kansas voters who have the power to carry Gov. Anderson to another term in the governorship. And it's a good start toward joining the election issues.
IT IS COMMENDABLE that the incubent administration has made this move toward enforcing the "best in the nation" liquor laws, but it is interesting to note how close to election time the move is, and the small scale it's on.
That it took two years for the administration to realize that many private clubs are not as private as they should be is almost inconceivable. Its apparent failure to realize that there are many other violations of the "best in the nation" liquor laws is also doubtful.
PRACTICALLY every town in Kansas has at least one saloon, not "open" in a legal sense, but with bottles abounding under every table.
Perhaps as Gov. Anderson says, "our present liquor laws, properly administered, are the best in the nation." But, as administered now, they are the most absurd in the nation.
If they are impossible to enforce, they should be changed. If they can be enforced, this administration and previous administrations are guilty of laxity in upholding the law.
-Karl Koch
Reflections
The Grading System
Attention has now been focused sharply on the necessity for working with the best students; but what about this little matter of grades? Without wanting to be too dogmatic about it, I suggest that there is real value in them, that they are far less arbitrary than is sometimes supposed by non-professionals, and that they classify with surprising accuracy a number of sharply differing types of human beings. It would be as ridiculous to give up grading and talking about A, B, C, D, and F students as it would be to give up referring to one sex as male and the other as female. Removing a label does not change a fact it, simply obscures it.
IT SEEMS to me that the students in the second highest group, the B's, are the sturdy ones, the backbone and conscience of the country. They become the solid, school-supporting, tax-paying characters of above average income. And a B will fight as well as work—he will fight for an idea or principle, not hastily, but persistently, durably. The genuine B will never in the usual course of things become an A or be mistaken for one except by some notoriously easy marker. Serious, hard-working, his marks rarely go up or down, and he shows a capacity for getting the same grade in any subject.
The C's are members of the great mass, generally docile, law-abiding and respectable, because it is the thing to be, because it is easier, or safer or, on the whole, the best policy. A real C never has an original idea, although he may think that he has. He will almost always study at least part of an assignment, but rarely enough to make it thoroughly his own. All C's write alike, they love cliches, they are never convinced that there are observable discrepancies between paragraphs of their own composition and those which they have laboriously mis-copied from Newman, Thomas Brown or Ernest Hemingway.
**AS LONG** as he is carefully checked, C will say, "It doesn't ..." but if he is left unended for a short time he will certainly revert to "It don't..." It is puzzling that, out of all the errors he might make, he and his group have settled on this one as a kind of trademark. C is frequently kind, well-adapted, eager to please. If urged to do better, he will try. Occasionally he will get a B more or less by accident, about as often as he gets a D. As for defending a principle — that is possible — but it needs to be very old or plainly marked: otherwise, he is likely to fight if everyone else is doing it or because he has become heavily involved emotionally. C's often pride themselves on being fine, solid-citizen types whereas, in fact, they are simply slow-moving or immovable in either direction, for good or bad.
The D's don't matter much. This is a catch-all, rather unstable division, quite uninteresting. It is comprised principally of unusually lazy C types who will normally struggle out of it to stay in college. Now and then a frantic F will move up to it, but he will rarely stay there.
THE A'S, the top group, are by far the most interesting and difficult to assess—few generalizations will hold for them. They are the future teachers, healers, judges and, occasionally, destroyers. Some of them, often the science-oriented members, are so steady as to be almost stolid but, as a group, they seem less stable than the B's and a different breed of cat. More often than not, the A does not work as hard as the B's. The A's are less likely to slog away at the books for hours, brows corrugated, shoulders hunched — consequently, they are the despair of the B's who frequently resent them.
A GENUINE A has an extraordinary memory and sense of pattern which enables him to arrange and classify information rapidly. He selects and rejects swiftly and firmly, he reads fast—sometimes words, sometimes formulas—but not always both with equal ease. He may have little respect for authority, although he may conceal his feelings. He sharply distinguishes the merits of his teachers and may refuse to work for one he does not admire. Similarly, he reacts strongly to different subjects—if he dislikes one it is not unusual for him to get an F rather than B or a C. A grade of F is not always a result of his choice; unlike B, he may be brilliant in literature or social sciences and almost helpless in mathematics, or vice versa. This unevenness will sometimes not reveal itself until he reaches the university where he has a different professor for each subject and is, consequently, judged for his performance in one area without reference to his capacity in another.
A'S ROLE in war is almost anything, except that he will usually be where he wants to be, whether that is with a front-line combat unit or a camp for conscientious objectors. If he is a buck private he may resist all efforts to promote him or he may go sailing up to full colonel. Like B, he will fight hard for an ideal, but perhaps never with quite the wholehearted commitment of B. Something, a knowledge of history, a coolness in evaluation, an intellectual's annoyance at the violence and waste, whatever it is, will almost inevitably leave him at least slightly detached, a tendency to view his own sacrifices and efforts, as well as those of others, with a dry and often silent derision.
THE F'S, at the bottom of the heap, are a strange, mixed-up group. At their lowest edge are the real, lifetime members, hopelessly inept, poor readers, almost inarticulate, deficient in memory, unable to organize, incapable of generalizing accurately. The genuine article lasts no more than one semester in a university. However, also to be found here are the love-struck from any superior group and sick or vacationing C's. Here, too, are talented people who have been hopelessly mistaught or ruined in separate educational accidents and, finally, A's-gone-bad or at war with the system.
None of this is doctrine, but did you place yourself as we went along?
(Excerpted from an article by James E. Cronin in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Daily Hansan
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912
University of Kansas student newspaper
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22, N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University holidays and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
By Calder M. Pickett Professor of Journalism
AMERICAN HERITAGE, April 1962. $3.95
This is a well balanced issue of the magazine of history. The editors believe the best thing in it is an article by S. L. A. Marshall about the "liberation of Paris" in 1944 by Marshall and a famous American writer named Hemingway. It was a day of cheering Parisians, affectionate girls, celebrating Americans.
It is an overlong article. What really is best in this American Heritage is a matter of taste. For those who love the lore of the West it might be an article, with illustrations from a primitive 19th century panorama, about the Sioux massacres in Minnesota of 1862. The West is also here in an article about the celebrated marksmen of years past—notably Frank Butler and his wife, Annie Oakley.
A brief article describes that wealthy old miser, Hetty Green. Another tells about that white hope of the Progressives, Robert M. LaFollette; it is a stirring story. One of the better articles deals with the Peary-Cook controversy, and there is little doubt that the author believes Peary to have been the true discoverer of the North Pole.
Perhaps the most interesting article here is an excerpt from a reissued book of memoirs of a Revolutionary War soldier. "Private Yankee Doodle" is down to earth, vigorous, funny, and it seems quite apt that Bill Mauldin illustrated the article for American Heritage.
THERE IS A FASCINATING picture story about motoring across America in 1911, when the only highways of consequence were those right in the big cities, and gummy mud and dust could easily bog down a vehicle. This is an almost forgotten look at the past.
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One finds in "Light in August" or "Absalom, Absalom," novels of the same period, considerable meaning and understanding, as well as humor and compassion. Here is a violent tale of violent people, Temple Drake and Gowan Stevens and the impotent Popeye and the wronged Goodwin. Only Horace Benbow, the lawyer, emerges as a man of nobility.
But "Sanctuary" is better than "Requiem for a Nun." This is third-rate Faulkner. It is the story of Temple Drake a few years later, of her effort to obtain absolution. It is a novel in the form of a play, except for the discursive prose introductions which Faulkner has provided so ostentatiously.—CMP
One goes back to "Sanctuary" after 20 years with a sense of shocks. It is every bit as brutal and pointless as it seemed then. It has ugliness and sensation for the sake of ugliness and sensation, and it takes some expert symbolic interpretation to read into "Sanctuary" any allegorical view of decadent southern society.
SANCTUARY AND REQUIEM FOR A NUN, by William Faulkner. Signet. 75 cents.
B S
ADAM BEDE, by George Eliot. Doubleday Dolphin, $1.45.
Literature is full of noble men, but Adam Bede is probably the noblest. His story is a great novel in the realistic tradition, which, if it were not for the frequent moralistic ramblings of the author, would rank alongside the naturalistic novels of Thomas Hardy.
For George Eliot sees the deterministic forces working upon men. In Hetty Sorrel she has a weak, materialist-minded girl who is not unlike the latter-day Clyde Griffiths. Hetty commits murder because she has let herself be sidetracked by a foolish love.
And her lover, Arthur Donnithorne, also is weak. These characters are set off against the strong village carpenter, Adam Bede, and the young Methodist preacher, Dinah Morris.—CMP