KANSAN Comment
Editor in Chief, Ron Yates
Business Manager, Pam Flayton
Editorial Editor  Alan T. Jones
Edition Editor  Sandy Zahradnik
News Editor  Joanna Wiebe
Sports Editor  Bob Kearney
Ad Manager  Kathy Sanders
So what's new?
When I was in my teens I wondered how my father could be so stupid. On my 21st birthday I wondered how he got so smart so fast.
Slightly paraphrased from Mark Twain
The generation gap is not a new thing. As long as there has been youth there has been a misunderstanding with parents and their society. As long as there has been an idealism, there has been a reality against it.
The impetuousness of youth has always and will always be a nemesis to the older generation whether it be agitation for a Stutz Bearcat, a raccoon coat and bathtub gin or agitation for the reconstruction of society.
The difference in today's generation gap is that the stakes are higher. Youth in other areas of the world, notably Latin America, has been an overrated, but still important, power group in the politics of nations. Parts of American youth have realized the same phenomena can be true in America. There is a difference, however; youth in some South American countries is courted and given the feeling of importance by the political powers that be. This has happened, but to a minor extent in the United States.
The stakes today are not a higher allowance, a right to enjoy jazz or an aluminum intake manifold for a hot rod in the driveway. The stake is now restructuring a society that has shown itself a little too cumbersome, a little too slow in effecting the changes it needs.
Norman Thomas, the late crusading socialist, must have felt the frustration experienced by today's youth. He began his campaign at a time when private armies were used to combat strikes. In this long career he suffered through at least three major Red scares, during which he was suspect. But, he lived to see many of the changes he advocated become the law and policy of the land. At his death, the man who started as a dangerous radical had become a respected social influence and he was given partial credit for much of the social legislation passed in this century.
Not all young people can be Norman
Thomas. Many, over the period of life, shuck the idealism of youth in order to cope with reality. Life, for most college students, has been a well-protected little world free from the responsibilities of reality. For the most part, youth has not had to pay the monthly bills, or put off going to the dentist because he doesn't have the money, or hassle for a promotion, or wonder where the next meal will come from, or face the reality of an income tax surcharge. He has been protected from this for as long as possible.
And, liberal youth tends to condemn former liberal adults for sacrificing their ideals in favor of a job or the values of a capitalistic, status-seeking, seemingly non-idealistic society. It is easy to find examples today of liberals who have been relatively free of personal responsibilities. The rich, who no longer have to fight to become rich, have become liberals. The Kennedy's and Rockefellers are excellent examples. Youth, also, has not yet experienced those financial responsibilities that take idealism from the foreground.
How often have the phrases "don't trust anyone over 30" or "History is irrelevant been reported in the press in the last few years? Experience has been discounted as irrelevant by that part of youth involved, today, in the idealist movement. But, experience has to be important if anything is going to improve. Education is the product of someone else's experience. An amateur philosopher once said the impetuousness of youth allows it to rush into something without knowledge and then youth makes the same mistakes someone has already made, and the time it took for the youth to make the mistake again, is wasted.
So why discount experience? Why not benefit from others' experience and, if need be, use it against them? Throughout history there has always been a youthful idealism. At the same time there have always been wise old men. Why has history failed to remember a wise young man? (ATJ)
Is Shearer serious? He has to be putting us all on. "Age and experience," he says, "one can always feel safely certain, inevitably lead to one end—wrinkles and stiff joints. No other absolute statement can be made about the products of time."
But I would ask Shearer this question (among others): Has he ever been operated on by a 19-year-old doctor? Or is there currently a 21-year-old doctor practicing in the United States—or elsewhere? In case Shearer, in his infinite, though still incubated wisdom has forgotten, it takes time to LEARN. Not everybody is born with the answers to the world's problems as was Shearer. I might ask this youthful guru if he has ever been out of the United States. Does he have any idea about people other than his peers in the University? Has he experienced (oh my, that dirty word again) the problems faced by other peoples throughout the world? If he has not, then how can he dare inflict his bottled-up, book-learned, classroom-oriented ideals and answers on a world which has ALWAYS known and tolerated the impetuousness of youth? Shearer knows what he has read. But what has he seen? What has he (here it is again) experienced? Take a poll Mr. Shearer and ask REAL people, not people with their heads in the clouds, who they would rather rely on—a green—gilled, idealistic college kid or a person who has been seasoned in the ways of life—to guide them out of the wilderness.
If Shearer really believes this, then perhaps he should kill himself now rather than grow old and ignorant. God forbid that young, pure and all-wise Shearer should ever grow into a dirty old man.
Five will get you 10 that the college student can't even get himself out of the forest, let alone leading millions of others. You want proof? Ask KU professors about the ingenious methods students have for procrastinating and shirking responsibility. I don't think I want such a person to lead my country, my state, my city or even my neighborhood welcome wagon. Oh yes, Shearer goes on to say that persons in the 18-21 group "have more knowledge of current events and enthusiasm for politics than any other age group." In that case, Mr. Shearer, why did only 2,900 of KU's 17,000 students vote on the Senate Code? A mere 14.6% according to a recent UDK story were "enthusiastic" enough to vote. Tch, tch Mr. Shearer. Why don't you look in your own backyard?
See the students, Mr. Shearer. See how they don't give a damn about running the University as you probably thought they did. See how our "concerned" few take LSD, STP and other barbiturates in order to escape from reality. They are so concerned they "chicken out" so to speak by floating off into wonderland. Yes, I know not all young people between the ages of 18 and 21 take goof balls and the like. Yes, I know that there are a few who are serious about their ideas. But, Mr. Shearer, the majority are having a good time with their beads, beards and dirty feet. They grow out of it. Just like they grew out of the ducktail haircuts in the fifties, the zoot suits in the forties and the blackbottom of the thirties. Hippies who were throwing rocks in 1964 are now junior executives wearing blue tweed. Even you will cash in your beads someday. Perhaps you can give them to your children.
Re: Mike Shearer's "Youth and age-ia" editorial in March 11 UDK.
Ah youth. It's a cruel world. But you can change it—just keep bombing and burning.
Off the Walls
To the Editor:
"What is worse than being alone in your heart?"
"Time does not exist except for fools"
"Nixon is the one who won in spite of himself—Spiro"
"Save water—Shower with a friend"
"Don't get so hung up with your hang-ups that you can't do your own thing"
"Omnes Gallia tres parta divida est"
Allen Beamer University of Kansas Medical Center
"Chastity is its own punishment"
"This one even made the Kansan"
"Are fairies?"
“Resist! (but nɔt too much)”
"And I am the dazzling product of artificial insination"
"Poor poppy's gone to pot"
"Are you a romantic hero?"
P. S.: I'm 23. Must I go to the Old Folks Home or the concentration camp for old eccentrics oh great, youthful leader?
Kansas Telephone Numbers
Newsroom—UN 4-3644 Business Office—UN 4-4358
Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester, $10 a year. Second class postage paid and enclosed. A certificate of completion and employment advertised to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas or the State Board of Resents.
"Gee whiz! I had to get his attention!"