KANSAN Comment
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Business Manager, Pam Flatton
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Alan T. Jones
Marian K. Jones
Joanna Wiebe
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Kathy Sanders
Looking up
Things are looking up for Watkins Hospital-finally.
The University hospital, which has operated for years without a sufficient staff and without enough space, may some year soon be adequate for the KU student body.
Two new physicians have recently been added to the staff. Although Watkins director, Raymond Schwegler, says the ideal number would be about 16, the hospital has been handling more patients with less effort. And the loathsome waiting period has been cut substantially, Schwegler said.
The hospital's most pressing problem is space.
No more doctors could be employed now because there's no more room for examining rooms. Every bit of space is utilized now, including closets and hall space.
Architectural plans have been sent to Topeka for study now, Schwegler said, and the plans for an addition to Watkins are moving as quickly as can be expected for a state project.
If the plans are accepted bonds must be sold to finance the project.
More help for Watkins financing has been offered by the World Service Organization. The service club is staging a banquet April 8 as a Watkins benefit.
The organization hopes to make about $2,000 from ticket sales to Lawrence residents and KU students. To do this, approximately 1,200 tickets must be sold.
The problems of Watkins certainly won't be solved overnight.
But as long as the Board of Regents works favorably and as quickly as possible on the Watkins addition project and students show interest in the problems of Watkins, Watkins can't help but improve.
And, maybe, someday, the stigma on Watkins will be lifted and the day of the four-hour wait in Watkins' corridors will be over. (AMS)
Off the Walls
"Honky Power"
"Pinball machines are actually alive"
"I don't give a damn about apathy"
“Oedipus + Jocasta”
"Economics per se refute themselves"
"Get drunk. it's Christian—Mohammed"
"Nostalgia is dead"
"One nation under God is a dictatorship"
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'Isn't it wonderful the way we can get those things together way out there in space?'
Rapping Left
Bv GUS di ZEREGA
People today like to pigeon-hole the strained relations between the young and the old as a "generation gap." To do such is to lose the major significance of a tragic development. More fundamentally, the "generation gap" is a "values gap" of deep and I suspect permanent extent.
Put bluntly, for the most part the older generation is obsolete. The world in which their fundamental values were formed was vastly different from the world today, and it is not likely to return. Our parents grew up during the Great Depression in a world of scarcity when any job was a valuable find and many, as children, had to work not for spending money, but to eat. Even in urban areas the community of the neighborhood was strong and the structure of the family largely intact. Emphasis was on the community and the nation, not on the world as a whole, and of course there was no Bomb. These factors plus World War II helped to produce a strongly nationalistic attitude, an extreme dislike of those who "desert their country in times of peril." Understandably, they place material, wealth and security and the importance of work very highly. Traditional values, although undermined, still hold strong.
Today rapid communication has made us almost as aware of the world at large as of events in Washington. Great mobility has destroyed much of the community of the neighborhood and the family bond has been weakened. A mass society is developing where factors such as mass manipulation and the Bomb have increased the sense of individual impotence and alienation. The mass media taught us early about the realities of political deceit while the civil rights struggle undermined faith in the traditional outlook towards society. Even the problem of accurate communication has worsened because words have been prostituted to mean anything desired while overuse has deadened our reactions to once specific and vibrant words. This is seen most clearly in words like "freedom" and "democracy." And all the while, material prosperity has given us the security and leisure to think about all these factors.
Consequently we have become a skeptical and critical generation, holding fewer old cows as sacred. The flag no longer makes all our hearts beat faster, we are more cosmopolitan, more aware of being citizens of a world community. The alleviation of our material worries has given us a greater concern with ethical and psychological issues. This plus the isolation and powerlessness of individuals today has helped us to see the value of honesty, spontaneity, love, and the importance of relationships with others. We demand more control over our own lives and are willing to grant the same to others, for the 100 million plus so far killed during the twentieth century have brought home the lesson of the perils of losing control over our destinies. We are discovering anew the value of the individual.
We have found demonstrations and sometimes violence to be necessary in a society where normal channels are less and less workable,
where democracy is a fancy word but little else. Ask the McCarthyite idealist, who was in Chicago, about American democracy.
The differences dividing the generations will never be reconciled so long as our elders persist in condemning those with values different from those of their own. The problem will worsen for the factors producing the values gap are even stronger for today's grade and high school students. Fortune magazine estimated 40% of today's college students as susceptible to "New Left" influences, an increasing percentage.
Those who persist in adhering blindly to the old, the traditional, are condemned to become footnotes in future history books. The student movement, though still quite young, had drastically affected American life, its role in the future will increase. These are revolutionary times. We hope those now obsolete will have the grace to step aside.
Readers' write
To the Editor:
A hurried perusal of my handy KU Catalogue for the current academic year has revealed a most alarming deficiency which I should like to bring to the attention of Mr. Westerhaus—that is that Kansas University has no program whatever designed to enhance the proficiency of such of its students who may wish to become prostitutes. If the profession were so lately established that it were impossible to find qualified instructors or to establish an adequate curriculum, then the omission would be, if not defensible, at least understandable—but here we are dealing with a profession which is, by most accounts, the world's oldest.
I do not propose to enter the controversy as to whether or not the military is socially relevant to this country in 1969—that is not where the controversy over the presence of the military on the campus is centered. An army, any army, justified or unjustified, necessary or unnecessary, has two real functions: to kill men and to destroy property—the question is, simply, are those the sorts of pursuits which an institution of higher learning ought to sanction by granting them a place on the curriculum. Further, it appears obvious that, in order to be granted a place in the University, a discipline must be prepared to accept the rules of the institution—notably free inquiry, free speech, rational discussion of disagreements and the ability to terminate, at will, a course of study that is no longer fruitful. If the proposed department is not prepared to meet these minimum requirements, it should be sumarily excluded. I submit that the military, which does not recognize such standards on any level—has no place in the University.
Thomas Kellogg