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University Daily Kansan Thursday, May 3, 1962
The HRC's Investigation
The investigation of the Human Rights Committee of the All Student Council into discriminatory clauses in fraternities is nearly finished. One thousand questionnaires have been returned to the committee and more will be received. A report to the ASC has been scheduled for May 15.
Seventy per cent of the student questionnaires returned so far show that students think discriminatory clauses should be removed. Brian Grace said that "most of them also thought that the fraternities must decide to remove them on their own without pressure from the University."
THERE IS NO doubt that the fraternities should eliminate discriminatory clauses themselves, and there are many fraternity members who agree with this viewpoint. It may be that they will manage to eliminate the clauses. However, until there is clear evidence that this progressive element among fraternity members is making progress on its own, the pressure from outside groups will undoubtedly continue.
Grace has indicated his committee's report
will also deal with the discrimination problem at KU in general and attempt to point out the areas where it exists and the groups involved in it. An official ASC report of this nature that was comprehensive and thorough would be extremely useful.
THE HRC HAS moved slowly in its investigation of discriminatory clauses in fraternities. This has been due mainly to the time needed for distributing, collecting and tabulating the questionnaires. In the course of this activity, the members of the committee have talked to many people about the problem of discrimination at KU. Thus its report will deal with more than just the answers on the questionnaires.
Precisely what form the report and recommendation of the committee will take will be seen at the May 15 meeting of the ASC. It is this report which should be the basis for judgment of the committee's work and ability. The report can and should be a significant step forward.
—William H. Mullins
A Reply To A Reply
Yes, I have been taught that truthfulness and accuracy are hallmarks of the journalism profession. I have also been taught to recognize clever word manipulation and propaganda techniques that Mr. Alsbrook so aptly used in his letter of April 30. Indeed, sir, your services could be put to use in the public relations bureau of the John Birch Society. But enough idle claims—to particulars. And since we've established the statement and the truth format, I shall use the same.
Or should I say Mr. Alsbrook (whoever you are).
By good propaganda techniques.
Mr. Alsbrook accused me of membership in radical Southern groups.
My error in percentages is also pointed out. For this I apologized in the same edition of the Kansan. It is a regrettable error and inexcusable. Score one for Mr. Alsbrook.
THE TRUTH: I am not a member of the Ku Klux Klan, I am not a member of any White Citizens' Council, and God knows, I am not a member of the John Birch Society. And what are these six points of "methods" that Mr. Albsrook refers to? Are they out of his head or from NAACP literature? Whatever their source they are completely irrelevant. Merely, sir, a matter of opinion, AND A GOOD CASE OF LIBEL (as a journalism student I am also familiar with these laws).
...Letters...
I am one of two "Southern white students who evidently desire to contaminate KU with their Dixie-crat and segregationist ideas," says Mr. Alsbrook.
The truth: When the Student Directory was published my home was 1432 Narrow Lane Court, Montgomery, Alabama. My family resided in Alabama for exactly 18 months, during which time I was home for approximately five months. Born in Chicago, Illinois, I have lived in Montpelier, Ohio; Gary, Indiana; Kansas City, Missouri; Montgomery; and Kalamazoo. My rather low opinion of the NAACP was nurtured by their tactics in Gary. You see, I am not only trying to leave the "impression" that I am a Northerner—I am. This sterilizes two-thirds of Mr. Alsbrook's clever vindictiveness.
"REV. KING (Martin Luther) had to be protected by his own church members and by the national guard when local police failed and refused to halt a mob of white Alabama hoodlums threatening to lynch him," says Mr. Alsbrook.
But where is the proof of all this —truthfulness and accuracy—remember, Mr. Alsbrook? My information that the riots were largely made up of King's own people was drawn from official records during a summer's investigation AND interviews with Montgomery
Negroes. I was not holding a gun to their heads nor threatening physical violence. Our neighbors in Montgomery did not even possess whips.
Let me get one thing more clear, Mr. Alsbrook My point is not that discriminatory clauses are good, but that no one outside of the fraternities themselves are given license or spiritual authority to tell the fraternities that they have to be removed. Force, Mr. Alsbrook, that's my objection.
ONE MORE question. Where in my letter did I refer to the "all people are created equal" section of the Declaration of Independence? Perhaps you'd better re-read it, sir.
Yes, Mr. Alsbrook, I have been taught to look for facts. I have also been told to verify all rumors. Where did you get the rumor that I had written a letter signed by Mr. Ken Costich? I have admitted no such thing and do not do so now. I am well-acquainted with Mr. Costich. He is quite real and quite capable of writing his own letters. Are you capable of writing your own letters, sir?
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Yes, Mr. Alsbrook I have been schooled to investigate techniques, which is why yours were so easily identifiable. Might I suggest, sir, that you try to stress your points in the future without personal attack. This "method" is even more gross than those you outlined and sullies the worth of your letter.
May I congratulate you. Mr. Alsbrook, on your (or someone's) beautiful job in word-twisting. I shall keep it with me as a guide to propagandist techniques and a reminder of the principles of truth I have learned at KU.
Tom Turner
Kalamazoo, Mich., senior
(Editor's Note: In regard to Turner's point about not having written a letter for Costich and his questions as to whether Alsbrook could write his own, it should be pointed out that both Costich and Alsbrook consulted other interested parties (Costich consulted Turner). However, the substance and the major part of both letters were written by the individuals who signed them. Alsbrook accepted suggestions on two sentences in his letter. Therefore the help he received cannot be said to have had any significant effect on his letter.)
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letters to the editor THE PEOPLE EO.1
A Statement On the Peace Movement
NEWS DEPARTMENT
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher ... Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Bill Mullins ... Editorial Editor
Without ideals, progress would stagnate and mankind would return to the jungle. Yet idealist that I am and agreeing as I do to the basic motives of the SPU and the peace marchers, I cannot agree with their reasoning.
Nuclear weapons, they say, are immoral. But which is really imoral—nuclear weapons or the distrust which has spawned them? They, of themselves, are only the latest progression in weapons development since one tribe first used sticks and stones against its neighbor back in the pristine simplicity of our prehistoric ancestors. A nuclear bomb is not more immoral than a club—it is only more efficient.
Editor:
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Charles Martinache - Business Manager
WE HAVE a national guilt-complex over Hiroshima. It is, in truth, an unpleasant thought that our nation was first in the field with nuclear weapons. There is absolutely no evidence, however, that any other nation would abstain from their use if it possessed the capability. Furthermore, I am not yet sure that the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused more suffering than the incendiary raids on Tokyo, the Nazis concentration camps, or the blitzkrieg. Stalingrad alone cost countless lives without the use of even the tiniest of atomic weapons. Are nuclear weapons more immoral than the Katyn Forest massacre, the Warsaw Ghetto, or the wanton murder of hospitalized Algerians?
A protest against testing is feeble without efforts to end distrust. But here there is no easy answer. As long as Arabs and Israelis, French and Algerians, Indonesians and Dutch, Indians and Pakistanis, Americans and Soviets regard violence as a legitimate recourse, distrust and war will remain with us.
It is easy to preach trust,but trust is a most evasive and perplexing commodity.
WE ARE TOLD that we should take the initiative toward building trust. We should love the Russians, as one man has hinted. I personally do not hate the Russians. In many respects I admire them for their rich and productive culture in spite of centuries of oppression. But as long as we are by Communist definition untrustworthy, it is they who rule out trust. It is they, not we, who declared war.
We disarmed after World War II. We rearmed only when it became evident that the U.S.S.R. had not disarmed. It took Korea to make the point. It was Soviet initiative
that led to the Berlin airlift, the Korean War, our military bases and nuclear testing, which built the Berlin wall and broke the test moratorium. We should take the initiative? What's the use?
The only bases upon which the SFU would base its hopes are Soviet pleas for "peaceful coexistence," world public opinion, and internal pressures behind the iron curtain. But "peaceful coexistence" is not a pledge. It is a threat. By Soviet definition, it is the continuation of the class struggle by non-nuclear means, a device to disarm us while leaving the Communist Parties free to subvert their governments and Moscow free to exercise its "right" and "duty" to support and aid this subversion. It is merely the "one step backward" to prepare for the later two steps forward toward world communism. This is open for anyone to see who is willing to take the time to read what the Soviets say about coexistence.
UNTIL THE Soviets call off the war, until Marxism-Leninism is revised to eliminate the built-in distrust and world mission, unilateral initiatives on our part are meaningless and futile. World public opinion? They will use world public opinion where they can to advance their long or short-range goals and will callously disregard it when they cannot use it or when it stands in their way. Remember Hungary? Remember last fall's test series? Where was world public opinion? Internal pressures in the U.S.S.R?. It's a pretty nebulous peg on which to hang unilateral initiative, when the Soviets possess a complete monopoly on communications media and a highly sophisticated means of molding public opinion in the directions desired.
I do not profess complete innocence on our part. But I do assert that today's bipolarized world was made in Moscow. Remember that we and the Soviets were—at least we thought—friends during World War II. Remember that it was they who destroyed the camaraderie that existed, and we who were taken by complete surprise at the shift.
The necessity for nuclear testing, heartbreaking though it may be, was forced upon us. It is a responsibility which we cannot and should not sidestep until there are more effective means for controlling hate and distrust — and until people can cease viewing the mandate of God or History as justification for violence. I deplore war; I deplore the need for nuclear testing. But I, for one, would sooner be dead than Red.
John R. Swanson
Baldwin senior
the took world
By Edgar Wolfe Assistant Professor of English
MAKING A POEM, by Melville Cane. Harvest Books, $1.25.
Edgar Allan Poe once wrote, "I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written by an author who would . . . detail, step by step, the processes by which one of his compositions attained its ultimate point of completion." But most poets "prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy—an ecstatic intuition," which of course they do not do.
Melville Cane, a lawyer who writes verse, attempts in this book to carry out Poe's suggestion. "Authorial vanity," he says, "has not deterred me." I agree. It has not. What it has done is spur him on. It has made him do it, not for one of his compositions, but for dozens.
EXHAUSTIVELY he describes, recounts, and analyzes the occasions when he was inspired to write, or took it into his head to write, and the poems which finally resulted. He is often not satisfied to quote only the (possibly) final version of a poem, but treats the reader to every other version the poem ever had, indefatigably explaining each change and never failing to recall any compliment a reader may have given him.
I can see hardly any value or interest in all this, especially since Mr. Cane's poems strike me as hopelessly mediocre. Even if they were genuinely good, I do not see how a detailed account of the successful search for the right word in his poems would help Tom, Dick, and Harry find the right words in theirs.
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