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University Daily Kansan Friday, April 13, 1962
Dissension in the Parties
Political parties are hectic things at election time. All sorts of interesting things begin to happen, and the parties are all fearful that something unexpected will happen to them.
Their fears are usually justified. Some party member is bound to muck something and then the party has a problem on its hands. The University Party got an early start on KU's other two political parties when two of its members (Michael E. Miner, Lawrence freshman and ASC representative from the unmarried-unorganized district and Michael McCabe, Topeka sophomore and UP treasurer) expressed dissatisfaction with it this week. McCabe changed his party affiliation to Action and Miner threatened to leave the party.
EVERY POLITICAL party has members who are dissatisfied with something about the party. The two UP members simply took more drastic action than is usually the case.
This dissension might seem to mean that there is general dissatisfaction among UP's members,
but it should not be interpreted in this way. It is all part of the campus political caldron. Action has attracted many people who formerly belonged to either Vox or UP, and it is worth noting that Brian Grace, Lawrence sophomore and the independent vice president of Vox, is a friend of Miner's and has been urging him to change his affiliation.
THE DISAGREEMENT of Miner and McCabe with UP is just one of the opening incidents in the annual spring revival of the campus political parties. Other altercations of various kinds will undoubtedly follow.
Disputes and disagreements of this kind are really no more than interesting sideshows. They do almost nothing to change the policies or make-up of the parties unless most of the officers or membership of the party deserts, and there is little chance of that happening.
—William H. Mullins
The Conservative Battle
The Republican counterattack against the violent spokesmen of the John Birch Society is finally beginning to make some progress.
This counterattack is being led by men long identified with anti-Communist and anti-statist causes within the Republican party, who feel that Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society is tarnishing the conservative movement, betraying the cause he professes to serve, and gravely weakening the Republican party.
FOR EXAMPLE, the conservative weekly, National Review, this week asserts in a brilliant leading editorial: "Our opinion is that Robert Welch is damaging the cause of anti-communism . . . By the extravagance of his remarks, he repels, rather than attracts, a great following. . . ."
Fulton Lewis Jr., the conservative radio commentator, recently told an anti-Communist rally here that the John Birch Society was "silly" in waging a campaign to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren and urged his audience to draw a distinction between conservative leaders such as Senator Barry Goldwater and Birchers like Welch.
"You're not going to get anything more to the right than Barry Goldwater, believe me!" Lewis told a conference called by the conservative Washington newsletter, Human Events.
ANOTHER PROMINENT conservative, Russell Kirk, also said recently that Mr. Welch was a "likable, honest, courageous, energetic man," who nevertheless, "by silliness and injustice of utterance," has become the "kiss of death" for any conservative enterprise.
More prominent leaders of the G. O. F., from former President Eisenhower and former Vice President Nixon to Representative Walter Judd and Senator Goldwater have recently talked privately about this same problem, so a move is now afoot to dissociate Welch and his kind from the Republican party.
As a general proposition, this is an argument that had better be left to the conservatives themselves, but one aspect of it may deserve some attention elsewhere. This is the tendency of some Democratic leaders not to help isolate the Welchers, to to identify them as much as possible with the Republican party.
For example, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, John B. Bailey, recently said: "The Republicans are more and more taking their ideas from the reckless radicals of the far Right and echoing the efforts of those extreme agitators to breed fear and suspicion in our society."
MUCH MORE of this kind of thing has been creeping into Democratic campaign oratory, and it is obviously effective in scaring
the independent vote into the Democratic column. The trouble with it is that it just doesn't happen to be true.
As Mr. Bailey knows, Welch is not representative of a great many members of the John Birch Society itself, let alone the Republican party, and any organized effort to identify the G. O. P. with the extreme Right is as unfair as the Republican efforts in the past to identify the Democratic party with the extreme Left.
The Democrats have a large enough conservative target to shoot at without going to the right of Goldwater. The chairman of the Republican National Committee, William E. Miller, has been going around the country arguing that President Kennedy should have ordered the wall knocked down in Berlin. Barry Goldwater is dubious about the policies of collective security overseas and social security at home. There are fair topics for honest debate, but "guilt by association" is no more attractive coming from the Democrats than it was in the past from the Republicans.
If there is a major political problem developing in America today it is that the balance of power is swinging so heavily against the Republican party that the G.O.P. will no longer be a vigorous opposition in Washington or in the nation.
The Democratic majority in the Senate is 64 to 36 and in the House 260 to 174 (3 vacancies). The Democrats have 34 Governorships to 16 for the Republicans. The President's popularity is at a record high, and his Administration is dominating the news to a greater extent than any Administration since Franklin D. Roosevelt's first. In fact, if it weren't for the conservative Southern Democrats, there would be no effective opposition in the Congress right now.
ACCORDINGLY, NO matter what the provocations of the old McCarthy days might have been, the Democrats can afford to play the battle straight and fair. The
Welchers are not their problem, except may be in Texas, where General Walker has had the bad judgment to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor, and will no doubt destroy himself in the process.
The violent Rightists have been greatly overrated as a popular movement. They have money which can be effective in some Congressional races, and they are now the most active pamphleteers in the nation, but as a serious national political movement they are a tragic joke, and scarcely worth another divisive and dishonorable squabble between the two major parties.
(An article by James Reston in the Feb. 7 New York Times)
* *
"Song of a Modern Vigilante"
I sometimes fancy as I spy
That I excel the FBI
Right now I'm making little lists
Of folks I think are Communists
I have no proof on anyone,
And yet the lists are loads of fun.
All friends of foreign aid, I think,
Must be set down as rather pink.
A little pinker, not far off.
I list, perforce, the college prof.
And pinker yet the college crowd That lauds the Bill of Rights out loud.
U.N. supporters, as I've said,
Are also inso facto red;
And redder still, on my red lists,
Are all the integrationists.
Just for good measure in my labors.
I add a few of my good neighbors.
Thus I rejoice that you are,
Resides alone in you and me—
You may,good friend,be listed too.
Although, before my work is through.
Thus I rejoice that loyalty
This poem first appeared in the "Catholic News," publication of the Archdiocese of New York, and was later reproduced in "America."
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
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EATON'S FRIDAY CARTOON
WELL CAMPUS ELECTIONS COMING UP, AND WE'VE GOT A MILLION THINGS TO DO! POSTERS TO PAINT, DEBATES TO HOLD, SPEECHES TO WRITE, AND SINCE THIS IS FRIDAY AFTERNOON—LET'S GO DRINK!
From the Magazine Rack
Reflections on Teaching
In 25 colleges across the country, I have heard students say that their chief complaint is that there is no communication between students and faculty. The lack works both ways. The professors suffer by being isolated from the students, who, after all, are their reason for being there. Without contact, the teaching must necessarily become cut and dried. Let me repeat a noignant anecdote that I have published esewhere. At a small prestigious liberal arts college in the East a respected teacher was not promoted (read dropped). The students who, by waiting at tables, etc., know everything, indignantly told me the details. But the professor said to me, "How did you find out about it? And did they really care? If I had known they cared, I should have put up a fight."
THE LACK OF communication is often built into the architecture. A new building will have a good cafeteria for the students and a sumptuous common room for the teachers, yet there will be no place on the entire campus where a professor can have his cup of coffee with the students, signaling by his presence that he is available to chat. At some places—e.g., Carleton in Minnesota—they have tried to institute a regular common coffee hour, but few attend, it is too stiff.
Scheduled office hours also do not produce significant contact, because they are structured to "important questions," something to justify taking the teacher's time. (A student has remarked that he had to invent a "personal problem" if he wants an admired teacher to pay attention to him.) The worst abomination, though, is the English-type High Table, which subjects the faculty to being "with" the students during meals, without being with them at all.
Recent studies, reviewed by Rob
ert Knapp (in The American College), show that to the student the excellence of a teacher depends on his "interest in students," "fairness," "sympathy," "helpfulness," "sincerity," and "enthusiasm." (What is noteworthy, but not surprising, is that such student ratings correlate high with faculty ratings of one another in terms of "research" and "originality")
NEVERTHELESS, in our society, student-faculty relationships are inevitably embarrassed. Students are afraid of being rebuffed and "rejected." Teachers are afraid of becoming "emotionally involved." At its best, the teaching function is an erotic one; thus it always threatens to seem or to become, sexual. So the reinforcements of the idiotic sexual mores of society by the academic necessities of self-defense makes the professors timid altogether. It is an unusual scholar who, like Milton Konyvitz at Cornell, asks a fatherly question as a matter of course and follows up with practical concern.
To be sure, young people are cannibals and will mercilessly devour the time and the attentiveness of their respected elders, who have family and business of their own. Yet apart from the needs of the young, and the graceful and grateful rewards that the young know how to give, there is not much in teaching at a college. Teaching is worthwhile if it is teaching a subject matter for someone, or if it is teaching someone by means of a subject matter. If it is merely lecturing on a subject matter or hearing lessons, it is better done by tapes and films and teaching machines (which is, of course, what we are coming to).
(Excerpted from an article by Paul Goodman entitled "The Community of Scholars" in the March issue of Commentary)
Worth Repeating
A O
... professors are poor rebels. They have in fact, largely abdicated their responsibilities as members of the ideal faculty, probably for the same shabbily genteel reasons that have made them shy away from anything so sordid as the discussion of pay and working conditions. They have shown less professional character in making themselves respected than have plumbers and steamfitters...
"And the point behind the point is the fact that our faculties in all but the most depraved institutions still have the power if they will demand it and exercise it... A faculty incapable of self determination is incapable of governing a classroom dedicated to the discipline of mind in good order..."—John Ciardi