Campers were great!
One of my colleagues just met me in the hall and said, "Well, they're gone." For a few seconds I was puzzled, wondering if somebody had been in town that I should have known about; then I realized he was talking about our high school kids.
They're gone, all right, and Flint Hall is quieter. Maybe you noticed it when you drove to work this morning: No kids streaming from Daisy Hill, holding up traffic at the Murphy Hall intersection. The whole campus seems quieter. And though we can relax a little, we must admit that we've lost something from our lives: in our case 86 bright young people who sometimes wore us out but who gave us six inspiring weeks.
Some of us who have worked with the high school students over the years (seven summers, in my case) sometimes wonder if the University as a whole has any real appreciation of the significance of the campers. Some people, we gather from their comments, think we're playing a game for six weeks, and that we're not engaged in the real work of the world as we piddle around with our high school kids.
Others maybe know what we know: that a full-fledged academic program is in operation for six weeks. That it's a strain. But also it's something extremely gratifying to the camp faculty.
We often think of the good will (and, in some cases, the bad will) felt toward the University of Kansas by those 2,000 young people who have returned, now, to their homes in all of the 50 states. We look for some of these people to return, but we know that even those who don't return have good feelings toward the place where they spent six inspiring (and hot) weeks in the summer of 1969.
We in journalism have a special involvement with these students, for they work with us on the Summer Session Kansan and on Tempo, and they publish their own supplement to the Kansan. We come to know most of the students well. We are almost always impressed with their ability.
But what we remember most is the enthusiasm. High school students have not yet taken on that blase attitude that so many university students have. They behave like high school students, and this is what some of us like best, especially when we can observe that in many cases they think as well and know as much as students on the university level.
They're a little more sophisticated than they used to be, and some are a little readier to go out and fight great battles against injustice and the hated establishment (two terms that to some students seem synonymous). But they are still excited about putting out a better school paper or yearbook, and they come back to us to report, delightedly, that they have just
seen the Museum of Natural History and think it's really "cool." How many KU freshmen would make such an admission?
The summer of 1969 was a special one for our campers, because it was the summer they watched three men leave for, land on, and depart from the moon. It was an especially hot summer, too, and an especially wet one, and we wonder how many parents of campers were puzzled by depressing weather reports from their children: the day camp started was cool and lovely, and the day it ended was the same, and those are the two days father and mother were in town.
Little vignettes brightened the summer for those of us who taught the camp bunch. There were always a few who discovered the freedom of being away from home and decided to experiment with things Dad or Mother forbids: long hair, short skirts, smoking. There were a few who preferred sitting under the trees to coming to class, and occasionally a summons was necessary. There was the usual student bitterness toward identification tags. There was a panicky last week when students, parents and camp officials became convinced that it would be necessary to get the kids off the campus before air transportation was halted.
There were the teary goodbyes, and the Tempos to sign, and a lot of squealing girls running through the halls. And, for us, a thrilling awards program, when those who had not been bused to Kansas City saw some of their friends recognized, heard their own names called out, and unselfishly applauded those who received the top recognitions. And the long hot six weeks came to an end, and the weekend became an anticlimax, and Monday morning we realized that we really missed the noisy, enthusiastic, extremely able Summer Class of 1969.
—Calder M. Pickett (Journalism Camp Co-Director)
The Lighter Side UFO's sighted
"It passed right over my head," said Mrs. Maudie Tribling, who lives in Crater 22.
"I could see two wierd-looking creatures peering out of the windows as it went by."
By Dick West — UPI Columnist
Despite official skepticism, however, residents of the Sea of Tranquillity insisted they saw a strange vehicle land on Sunday and take off again Monday.
THE MOON (UPI) — The lunar air force disclosed today that it is investigating reports that an unidentified flying object (UFO) was sighted last Sunday in or near the Sea of Tranquillity.
However, an air force spokesman scoffed at suggestions that the UFO may have been a space ship from earth or some other planet.
"We get reports of this type quite frequently and we routinely check them out," the spokesman said. "The so-called 'flying saucers' usually turned out to have been optical illusions caused by crater gas or something of the sort.
"We have no evidence that there is any kind of life on earth. And even if the planet were inhabited, it would be ridiculous to think that the earthlings would be able to fly to the moon."
Asked to describe the vehicle, Mrs. Tribling said it "looked something like a
spider with spindly legs and dishes instead of feet." She said it was "breathing fire" when she first saw it.
She said it seemed to hover briefly over the crater and then descend a short distance beyond the rim.
Mrs. Tribling's story was corroborated to some extent by Clyde Kipper, who vowed that he actually saw the vehicle land and two unmoonly figures emerge.
"They were white all over and had big square backs and glass faces," Kipper said. "I couldn't tell if they were robots or living things, and believe me I didn't hang around to find out."
Kipper was asked what the creatures were doing when he saw them.
"I know you aren't going to believe this," he said, "but they were kind of leaping around and picking up rocks. Once them stopped and . . . I'll swear I'm not making this up . . . they stopped and set up a red, white and blue cloth and saluted it."
A lunar air force official called Kipper's statement "sheer fantasy." He said, "I've heard some wild stories in my time but this one tops them all.
"He must have been reading too much science-fiction."
The Summer Session Kansan, student newspaper at the University of Kansas, is represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 Street, New York, N.Y., 10022. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester or $10 a year. Published and second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas, every Tuesday and Friday for the duration of the Summer Session. Accommodations, goods, and employment advertised in the Summer Session Kansan are offered to students without regard to color, creed, or national origin.
The opinions expressed in the editorial columns are those of the editorial staff of the newspaper. Guest editorial views are not necessarily the same as those of the editors. Any opinions expressed in the Summer Session Kansan are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas Administration or the Kansas State Board of Regents.
Executive Staff
Managing Editor Don Westerhaus
Adviser James W. Murray
Photography Bill Seymour Gary Mason
Business Manager Rodney Osborne
Adviser Mel Adams
Office Manager Helen Ross
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