KANSAN Comment
Medicinal law
Preventive medicine is the Kansas Legislature's favorite tactic this session.
Rev. Bill Holloman and the United Dry Forces are deciding alcoholism can be stalled by a return to prohibition so that our state will again be saved from the demon rum.
But a bit of shining preventive medicine now hiding its light under a bushel basket is the little publicized House Bill No. 1144 and it's compatriot, Senate Bill No. 83.
The House bill provides that any student at an institution of higher learning which receives all or any part of its financial support from Kansas public funds can be expelled if he or she, while participating in a demonstration or disturbance, fails or refuses to obey the lawful order of any peace officer.
The Kansas legislators who drafted this bill are cagey men. Kansas is a peaceful state, they reason; the legislators want to keep it a peaceful state', unmarred by student uprisings, strikes, marches or small squeaks. Therefore, the way to clamp down on the not-yet-existing disorder is to beat the students with a predetermined iron cudgel.
The right to freedom of speech is one of our most cherished constitutional laws. The rights to dissent and civil disobedience are
shady areas but still the concepts are respected parts of our heritage.
Kansas, however, is going to insure law and orderand do this, giving the police the right, not only to enforce laws, but to expel students.
And to "fail or refuse to obey the lawful order of any peace or police officer," covers an awful lot of territory. If a guy quibbles with an officer giving him a traffic ticket and refuses to pay it until he sees his lawyer, can he be expelled? This is not to mention the different shades and varieties of campus dissent that could be construed as failing or refusing to obey the law.
The Senate bill was tabled this week. It included dismissing faculty members for dissent as well as students.
But, never fear, the Senators supporting the bill are now rewriting to include not only faculty and students but also other state employees.
If these bills are passed, our state will be safe and protected from the ills of dissent by any of its citizens. It would be an even safer place if each state campus were surrounded by barbed wire, lighted with flood lights and watched over by gray uniformed guards equipped with fixed bayonets. (AMS)
On a passing bus...
By RICHARD LOUV Kansan Staff Writer
Sometimes a person can think about a problem for days and never seem to get it in the right perspective. And then in a simple act or experience everything seems to fall into place, and the problem can be seen as it is, not as someone tells you it is.
I walked down the bus aisle and took the third seat, banging my head on the baggage rack as I backed into the seat, struggling with my suitcase.
"That was stupid," I said to the man next to me. He was black, and he seemed welded to the glass, staring out at the station. I could hardly see him in the dark. He turned and looked at me and I remembered my grandmother in her long dead shaking voice saying, "Never call them niggers, cause they'll bop you on the head."
I rubbed my head and muttered, "God it's cold."
"Yeah cold." He looked at me a moment more and then returned to his window. I opened a book and reached to turn on the light.
Then he said something and I was startled, because I didn't think he wanted to talk to me. He asked me if I went to KU and I said yes.
"Do you learn much?" he asked.
"No, not too much. I learn more outside of class. Where are you from?"
"Kansas City, but I go to college in Emporia." He was big and had a little beard, and for the first time I noticed his youth and sad eyes. We talked about classes and what was hard and what was easy. English gave him trouble, he said, and I remembered Don Jenkins in the Union one day, spitting out, "I don't speak English too good. I'm a nigger." I told him I still had to count on my fingers.
We talked about high school, is Wyandotte, and mine Shawnee Mission North. "I came to North once," he said, "but that was a
long time ago, and it was only for sports."
"I've never been to Wyandotte." I said quietly.
And then we began to talk about deeper things; about black study programs, and the black student union, and white fraternities. "In a way Emporia is still like high school. There aren't even any colored fraternities," he said.
"I guess it started a long time ago, in high school, or before that," I said, watching him closely. He was staring at his hands. "I expected it to be different, when I came to college," I said, "did you expect it to be different?"
"You'd think it would end in college, when we're in school together, instead of segregated."
"Yes, but there's nothing we can do about it. It's too late."
"Yes. That's the way it is," I said, staring at the back of the next seat. I leaned forward thought how best to phrase my question. Then I turned to him. "Listen, would you go through
"But we are segregated, now, in college, more and more."
Reporters Notebook
"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg."
men's rush if you came to KU? I mean white men's rush."
Samuel Butler
Ted Owens, commenting on the basketball team's 1,000 victory, said, "I still think we would have been first except for the Lexington YMCA."
His eyes widened and he shook his head. "No! Too much pressure. Why would I want to?" Then he returned to the window once again, with his forehead against the cold glass, and I leaned back in my seat. It was a silly question anyway, and it probably came too late.
Ever wonder why the sign on the Lawrence Bus Company bus reads "19th and Nesmith?"
The Hill With It by john hill
Noise is an important part of college. And not just on the academic level.
Noise is a very significant aspect of where a student lives without it, we immediately are open to such hazards as a chance to study, enough sleep, hearing yourself think, and other pitfalls of modern collegiate living.
Being somewhat of a connoisseur of noise, I find my new apartment fascinating. Especially the conjecture as to what causes the Muzak of strange, loud sounds.
The walls are alive with the sound of media; next to my apartment lives a married couple who, to infer from the complete silence except for the continual sound of the television, are hypnotized by the tube.
I have a mental picture of a young couple sitting on an orange crate in the middle of an otherwise unfurnished apartment, their eyes glazed over, staring blankly at a gigantic television screen, waiting for a deep voice to say, "We now return control of your television set to you."
When the late, late show ends, they check out the star spangled banner, catch the prayer, and then quietly watch test patterns all night.
An elephant is being taught to jump over hurdles in the apartment above me. He is religiously preparing for the Grand National, a steeplechase in England. The elephant has been having trouble of late with a water hazard; the one with the hedge followed by the water-filled ditch where when the animal fails to clear it, it sprawls flatly, the full length of its body. But it keeps working at it, and that's what counts.
It's all in preparation for a re-make of the classic movie about the Grand National, but instead of Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor, it will star Tiny Tim and Raquel Welch, and will be called "National Elephant." Raquel Welch will get her hair cut short so she will look like a boy. So will Tiny Tim.
That's only one of the activities upstairs. I hesitate in mentioning some of the others for fear of being thought of as against physical fitness. I'm not, I think it's important.
But the combination of an overweight hippopotamus exercising by riding a jack hammer like a pogo stick while Jim Ryun jogs around the room carrying Kate Smith can get to be a bit much.
get to be a bit insecure. Another thing, someone or something above me is persistently learning how to juggle. Anvils.
But don't get the idea that it's always noisy. A slight craving for walnuts is the only flaw in many an otherwise quiet period in the early hours of the morning.
The elephant gets up in the middle of the night, tiptoes to the kitchen cabinet, gets out a walnut, gently places it in the middle of the floor, and quietly pushes over the refrigerator to crack it . . .
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'Don't worry, Honey. A new administration won't effect the state of our union.'