Expansion came in 60's
Student freedom at KU
By JOANNA WIEBE
Kansan News Editor
The University of Kansas stuck a pacifier in the mouths of radical KU students this fall, silencing at least temporarily, their strident demands for student rights.
The University's decision to admit 75 students to the University Senate, already stuffed like an anchovy can with faculty members, seems to have calmed the activists. As they suck contentedly on their pacifier, their activity has dwindled to some frenetic mouth action.
Rumblings from smoky apartments, campus political meetings, and local watering holes intimate that new explosions may occur. however.
No one would be too surprised if the activists choked on their pacifiers. KU has had its share of demonstrations, peace rallies, marches, sit-ins, demands, confrontations and petitions.
Unique role
The University is providing a unique role for committed youth, aside from the traditional student function. The Hill is a place to practice various forms of violent and nonviolent protest against the "establishment." What the "establishment" is cannot be defined clearly, although some say it is the hard-core, materialistic powers that be and the bureaucratic system of this generation once removed.
Students at KU have always worked either to curtail or expand the rights of the students. In 1943, the embryo All-Student Council felt it within their bounds to protest student smoking on campus, for example.
Yet the "in loco parentis" attitude of the Administration was rarely questioned by KU students until the early 1960's.
Expanded freedom
Laird Wilcox, KU's civil libertarian at this time, spoke for expanded freedom for all men. Publisher of the Kansas Free Press, he described his liberal, leftist publication as a newspaper which is "radical in exposing injustice and challenging unearned privilege, conservative in defending and maintaining our liberties and the Bill of Rights, and above all, pragmatic in proposing new solutions to the many problems facing Kansas."
The mimeographed issues carried definitive articles on conditions at Haskell Institute, and exposed conditions affecting academic freedom at
Central Missouri State College in Warrensburg, Mo..for example.
Wilcox, the grand old man of the New Left Movement, sought to correct or expose injustices wherever he saw them. His writings never displayed, however, the current demands for student power in the running of the University.
Civil liberties and freedom of speech are the two issues which he considers most important, Wilcox said this year.
The current New Left Movement is "nothing but a kids' movement," Wilcox said with some disenchment.
Black activists disqusted
"Black activists are disgusted with these kids and are working on their own. It's a fad, a hip thing to do. Most of the kids find an emotional catharsis in protest. They're getting back at mom and dad." he said.
What is this "kids' movement" Wilcox speaks of?
It's a fairly recent movement, which gained momentum early in the fall of 1967, and attained full speed during the spring of 1968.
A group of freshman girls in the freshman residence halls were irate over a ruling which forced them to attend floor meetings every Monday night. The girls enlisted the help of student activists, leaflets were distributed to the freshman coeds informing them of their "rights," and conferences were held with University officials. The folks felt like they had scored a victory when the hassle was over—the meetings were declared no longer mandatory.
From these inauspicious beginnings sprang the movement.
Original demands
As is the case on most campuses, original demands focused on "the University's increasing complicity with the military establishment."
Three students gathered one night in March of 1968 in the living room of Hamilton Salsich, assistant instructor of English and New Left charisma-man.
Sitting in on the meeting was a Kansan reporter, who listened to the four organizers prepare a list of demands to be presented to Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe the next day.
Since the reporter possessed quick typing fingers, she was recruited to type up the demands, perched on the edge of a sofa, pounding on a
portable typewriter.
The demands:
- that the University ban all military recruiters from the campus.
- that the University forbid all military research projects on the campus.
- that the University abolish ROTC programs on the campus.
Chances slim
- that the administrators of the University and the Board of Regents "face squarely" the educational problems created by the draft laws, and "take a public stand against the intrusion of the draft onto the campus."
They knew chances were slim that their demands were going to be granted. They also knew, however, of the old proverb in the Movement—aim as high as you can before working towards compromises.
They wanted a voice in the way things were going at KU, and this was how they began.
To put some backbone behind their demands, the group suggested a sit-in in Strong Hall—a plan which was later discarded.
The group-expanded to 20 students—met with Francis Heller, acting provost and dean of faculties, in early April to discuss their demands. The atmosphere of the question-and-answer period was grim. Faces were serious, and the discussion was generally carried on an intellectual, not emotional level.
Heller sidestepped
Neatly sidestepping most of the questions, Heller fancy-footed through questions about the University's social responsibility, the presence of ROTC programs, military recruiters and military-funded research on campus.
It was a "confrontation" in the sense that the two sides met and talked at each other. It is relevant here to note the existence of two distinct sides to the debate—the University, and the New Left students.
As events progressed, the students launched various attacks on the walls of the fortress. University officials were reluctant to relinquish.
Voices rose and tempers flared in an emotion-charged 21/2-hour confrontation between Heller and a group of the same students later in April.
About 90 students, faculty and administrative
What should reaction be to harmful threats? By MERRIMAN SMITH UPI White House Reporter
WASHINGTON (UPI)
Back-stairs at the White House:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Secret Service may have an interesting situation—how does the government evaluate an assassination threat?
Several weekends ago, a prominent Washington figure was in a fashionable lounge and restaurant with several friends. Near them was a young white man who was later described as a foreign student.
The prominent Washingtonian heard the foreign student say that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., would "have to be killed."
The Washingtonian, a friend of the Kennedy family, turned to the foreigner and asked whether he had understood him correctly.
Knows Kennedys
The younger man repeated that Kennedy would "have to be killed." The man then punched the student in the face.
The man who threw the punch said he had every intention of reporting the incident to either the FBI or the Secret Service the next morning.
The astounded Washington figure got the name and local address of the man he slugged.
He changed his mind, however, after several days of thinking about the matter. He did not want to be responsible for punishment of a young man who may have been only expressing his thoughts on Kennedy policies.
10 KANSAN Apr. 16 1969