Old dogs—new tricks
Probably the most famous analogy of a newspaper is the one which likens the medium to a mirror. Each page reflects the community, the culture, the sorrow, the joy, the bad and the good which pass before it.
Often newspapers are called "Sensational" if they focus their pages only on the bad and the sorrow. They are labeled "unrealistic" if they focus only on the joy and the good. Within the community and the culture a newspaper serves, all of these things take place. The newspaper must, if it is to be an accurate mirror, present each of these phenomena without distortion.
And that's not all! The Kansan has added a few new twists to its pages for Spring 1969. An Arts and Review department will review new films, books, records and plays. Look for this new twist on page five Mondays and Thursdays.
A new Graphics department will make use of a large staff of photographers to bring you the best photography yet within the pages of the Kansan. Look for the special picture pages appearing weekly in the Kansan.
department will bring, in addition to good reading, the latest fashion and society news along with a special weekly run-down of what is happening when and where.
The Feature and Entertainment
The Sports department will continue its drive to bring you not only the best in local sports news, but national and international sports news.
Look for a change in the editorial page. It too will be receiving a facelifting as did the front page of the Kansan during the Fall of 1968. Its content will be challenging, enlightening and most of all it will be readable—not a perplexing conundrum of words.
The Kansan can proudly claim it is not a tool of any political organization located on campus, in the nation or the world. The Kansan will present all sides of an issue FAIRLY on its news pages. Look to the editorial page for the Kansan's opinion.
We at the Kansan are waiting. You make the news. We will report it on our news pages and analyze it and comment upon it on our editorial page.
If its news you can read it in the Kansan.
Little can be done now but some comment is probably needed on the excuse for snow removal conducted by the City of Lawrence and the County of Douglas after last week's storm.
Sun works best
Ron Yates Editor-in-Chief
Fortunately for a number of students, they were out of town when the storm hit. To fill you in a little bit, the major part of the snow fell Saturday night and Sunday morning. Sunday evening there were still six to eight inches of snow on all but a very few streets in Lawrence.
KU's buildings and grounds crews did a much better job. By Monday morning all the KU streets and sidewalks were plowed and stairways had even been shoveled and sanded. (ATJ)
By Monday afternoon, most of the main streets had been plowed but many residential streets, especially around the campus were never plowed. Wednesday evening there were streets in Lawrence that still had not seen plow or sand. The fastest and most effective piece of snow removal equipment in Lawrence is still the sun.
"It's a sad state of affairs when a militant minority can forcefully take over a campus."
Dear General Ann
United States Marine Corps Department of the Navy Washington, D. C. 20380
Dear Sirs:
In an age of rampant cynicism and hostility toward the military, I would like to personally thank you for the brochure you sent to me recently. When you gentlemen take the time to send brochures to simple pacifist civilians such as myself, I think it certainly casts doubt on the argument that the military is dehumanized.
But I am afraid your investigative teams didn't do a very thorough job of researching me before you put me on your mailing list. Boy, did they miss, though I hope no one gets reprimanded for my telling you this. I imagine with the great number of persons in whom you have a personal interest it is quite difficult to research each one thoroughly.
When you asked me to "be a leader of men; be an officer of Marines," you were enticing enough. But then you went on to suggest that I become a Phantom jet pilot. Me! Why my insurance company will cancel my policy if I have one more wreck with my car!
Then you say (whew!-your investigators weren't even warm!) that I might fly a "verticle assault helicopter capable of delivering an attack platoon on a postage stamp in the jungle." Hah! Though it's reassuring that you are using these potentially dangerous machines for landing on postage stamps rather than on someone else's property, let me tell you in all confidence, I couldn't even hit a three-car driveway with my car, and my car has dents to prove it.
I have sideswiped telephone poles as far away from the highway as 20 feet, and I didn't even know I had tapered off onto the shoulder.
I can't even keep the little metal roadster on the monopoly board.
"The training is tough but sheer drive and application pull most men through," obviously was meant as a comment on my high school physical education record.
(I've never disclosed this to anyone, but since you have taken a personal interest in me, I'll tell you a secret: I didn't use sheer drive or application to pull me through phys ed. I used to make my nose bleed so the coach wouldn't make me run or play ball. You do it by pressing hard on the sinus area and then blowing your nose real hard into your gym tee-shirt. With a secret like that, I'd be dangerous at training camp.)
The very enticing notation in your pamphlet about 30 days paid vacation every year sounded good. Then I looked at the picture below with the crew-cut marines standing beside a pool with two un-marine looking women and I decided right then I wouldn't fit in. I look ridiculous in swimming gear and I can't swim anyway.
I'm afraid I'd be a real bore, what with all that "unique camaraderie felt by all men who fly with the Marine Aviation team."
Wishing I could fly, swim or be athletic in any small, helpful way, I remain truly yours,
Mike Shearer
Paperbacks
EDGE OF GLASS, by Catherine Gaskin (Crest, 75 cents)—A thriller about a stolen inheritance, a thing called the Culloden Cup. The heroine goes to Ireland to an ancestral home, naturally, where there are all kinds of nutty folks. These things must come out of plot cards.
THE SHADOW WIFE, by Dorothy Eden (Crest, 75 cents)—A horror tale, Gothic tale, romantic suspense—you name it. The setting is Denmark, and it's about an English girl who goes with her husband to his ancestral home, Moon Castle—that's right, Moon Castle—in rural Denmark. If you've read "Rebecca" you've got the plot.
VENUS EXAMINED, by Robert Kyle (Crest, 95 cents)—A book in the genre of "The Chapman Report," dealing with people involved in sex research. That should make it sell by itself, along with that cover. But the book is far less sensational than many on the market today, and it treats understandingly the field of sex research, as well as commenting on American sexual values of the sixties.
Kanam Telephone Numbers
Newsroom--UN-4 3046
Business Office-
student newspaper serving the
viversity of Kansas, Lawrence,
of Kansas, Lawrence,
(Dr. Pickett is a professor of journalism and an instructor in the western civilization and american studies programs at the University of Kansas. This is the first in a series of columns he will be writing from time to time this semester.)
It is about my experience, my life with college professors in the dark ages of the early forties. My college was a cow college in the west. Its enrollment seemed considerable at that time, and I know it is considerable today.
When you enrolled you filled out a form and, if you wanted to take a class from a certain professor you took that class-assuming that you had the prerequisites, and the officials didn't seem too fussy about that. You took an English placement exam and then chose (really) the teacher you wanted to listen to and write for throughout the quarter.
Personalism lost?
This is a reminiscent kind of article, written in the course of watching University of Kansas students go through the hated task of enrollment. It is about university life a quarter of a century or more ago, and for that reason it will bore those students whose only concern today is with what they call relevance.
A voice from the establishment
University of Kansas, Lawrence,
Kansas.
Published at the University of Kansas
daily during the academic year except
holidays and examination periods.
Mail subscriptions rates $6 a semester.
Mail second season. Season 2004-
at Lawrence, Kar; 66044. Accommodations,
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Kansas or the State Board of Residents
Like most freshmen I knew nothing about the teachers of the classes, though I had heard the customary legends passed on about some of the more eccentric people, and of course all of us knew the name of the football coach. So when I went into something called college grammar, taught by a man named Wallace Vickers, I had no idea that 12 weeks of sentence diagramming would prove to be one of the most valuable and enjoyable experiences of my life. I had no way of knowing that anatomy and physiology,
There was a two-man history department, and I took practically everything that was offered. I can still hear Jelox Ricks going up and down each row, trying to get someone to answer a question in american history, and I still remember my embarrassment when I went to sleep in J. Duncan Brite's renaissance and reformation and made some dumb reply to a question. These men were great, in my opinion, and their office doors were always open, and the generation of students that learned from them was a fortunate one.
From then on I took courses not by the title or even the catalog description but largely by the teacher. Distinguished college officials throughout the country might laugh at my little Silo Tech, but I have an idea that, in retrospect, I received a fine education there.
There was a man named Stevens, who taught Bacteriology. I don't remember much about Bacteriology but I remember the excitement of hearing him lecture.
There was a man named Milton R. Merrill, who taught political science, and he paced the room, beat the air, engaged in lively metaphors, and had a faithful group of followers (we old alums still talk about him, fondly).
consistently fascinating, or that college algebra, under a man whose name I have conveniently forgotten, would be a dud.
There was a man named King Hendricks, who taught a terribly hard class called history of the English language, and one called comparative literature, which introduced me to Balzac, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and one called scientific vocabulary.
And most of all there was a man named Wilford D. Porter, our sole teacher of journalism, who gave us a warm philosophy of life along with instruction in how to be reporters and editors. He I cherish, from my undergraduate days, most of all.
There was an English professor named A. N. Sorensen, from whom I took world literature and victorian literature and an undergraduate class in Browning. He acted out the stories, he pranced across the room as he recited the Cavalier poetry, and he once leaped from the floor to the table top to emphasize a point. He made me love poetry and the English language.
These were some of the teachers I had, along with many more. And this is why, as I talk with University of Kansas students who have gone through two, three or four years with absolutely no inspiration, as I scan the Official Schedule of Classes and see that almost no professors are listed on the freshman-sophomore level, and as I contemplate that vast game of Academic Russian Roulette that our students play in the pen-sectioning process, that I am saddened, and angry, too. And I think I know one reason why young people are in revolt in America against their system of education.
There were several courses in writing from a man named Moyle Rice, who taught us along with good writing to have a healthy skepticism and a sense of humor, and he made us see that James Thurber and E. B. White were worth reading along with the great names of English literature.
there was a second course from Prof. Vickers, this one in the Bible as literature, and it was a healthy dose of iconoclastic thinking as well as literature.
Calder M. Pickett Professor of Journalism