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University Daily Kansan Thursday, May 7,1964
Too Permissive
Changing Student
Adding its voice to the recent chorus of articles on the college student, the Daily Texan calls student immaturity "one of the byproducts of education. The more knowledge one has, the more one is exposed to the evils as well as the benefits of that knowledge. We're discovering problems we never knew existed. We haven't learned yet what to do about them."
The following opinion that the University of Texas' paper reported is especially notable because of its opposition to the growing plea for academic and social freedom on American campuses. This is the rest of the editorial;
STUDENTS MAY BE SMARTER than they used to be, but according to one writer, they may not have the maturity to go with their brains.
Fred M. Hechinger, New York Times education writer, rounded up opinions of several experts which seem to indicate today's students might be intellectually superior and emotionally inferior to last generation's.
Suicide rates among collegians are rising, more students are getting hooked on drugs, more students are dropping out because of academic battle fatigue. At Columbia College the number of undergraduates seeking professional counsel and psychiatry has tripled in the last ten years. This is but one of a long list of indicators of the rise in
student emotional disorder in recent years.
Why? Dr. Sutherland Miller Jr., director of Counseling Service at Columbia, says it's partly due to the diminishing influence of family, church, and college faculty. Families aren't as tightly knit, teachers are bogged down with research and "productivity," as Dr. Miller calls it.
"GROWING UP is especially difficult in America because, although teenagers have extraordinary privileges in our society, college students enter the new world of adult values — status, wealth, power, and security — and suddenly find themselves at the bottom of the heap," Dr. Miller says.
Other experts in the field indicate that colleges should define more explicitly the limits of permissiveness, as students don't know what is right and what isn't. They mistake lack of denial for sanction.
What is the answer to student lack of direction? "Dean and college both agree," says Hechinger, "that less permissiveness is part of the answer — even if the college is subject to protests."
"Psychologist and psychiatrist also agree that, in the face of facts and realities, better counseling and psychiatric services, far from being signs of "coddling," are a necessity," Hechinger says.
Consider
Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and their propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.
The political merchandisers appeal only to the weaknesses of voters, never to their potential strength. They make no attempt to educate the masses into becoming fit for self-government; they are content merely to manipulate and exploit them. For this purpose all the resources of psychology and the social sciences are mobilized and set to work. Carefully selected samples of the electorate are given "interviews in depth."
Pirases and images aimed at allaying or, if necessary, enhancing these fears, at satisfying these wishes, at least symbolically, are then chosen by the experts, tried out on readers and audiences, changed or improved in the light of the information thus obtained. After which the political campaign is ready for the mass communicators. All that is now needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look "sincere." Under the new dispensation, political principles and plans for specific action have come to lose
most of their importance. The personality of the candidate and the way he is projected by the advertising experts are the things that really matter. In one way or another, as vigorous heman or kindly father, the candidate must be glamorous. He must also be an entertainer who never bores his audience. Inured to television and radio, that audience is accustomed to being distracted and does not like to be asked to concentrate or make a prolonged intellectual effort. All speeches by the entertainer-candidate must therefore be short and snappy. The great issues of the day must be dealt with in five minutes at the most — and preferably (since the audience will be eager to pass on to something a little livelier than inflation or the H-bomb) in sixty seconds flat. The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to over-simplify complex issues. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth. The methods now being used to merchandise the political candidate as though he were a deodorant positively guarantee the electorate against ever hearing the truth about anything.
— Brave New World Revisited,
SPCA Special or I Liked Ike
Aldous Huxley, 1958
He did it again. That's twice. President Johnson is bad, bad, bad. It was there on the front page of the Times—double photo spread. Papers get the significant news.
The first time wasn't so bad. Maybe he just grabbed the wrong part. I want to be for him—I admire his mind. He has done a good job. Still, he did it twice? I'm smart. I know the second time was significant. No slip-ups. They got photos. I saw them. Right there on page one.
Anyone who would do that is bad, bad, bad. Sure glad we got papers. Democratic process you've got to know what the president is doing. I sure know.
- Albert Stroon
"Listen, Mac, You Trying To Spoil Our Fun Or Something?"
People Say: Power Politicking Threatens ASC
Power Politics
Tuesday's ASC meeting demonstrated just how low a political party will stoop when it cannot get its way. Over 15, I repeat, over 15 Vox (haul) members failed to show up for the meeting, thus preventing any committee appointments from being enacted. It was a perfect example of power politics, whereby certain members hoped committee appointments would be changed.
This act was an interesting political maneuver and, indeed, very effective. But is this responsible student government? Isn't it ironic that Vox, the party which claimed it could do so much for the students, should deliberately prevent any business from being conducted. Surely retaliation is to be expected? Heaven help this university if the student government has reached such a low ebb as to become a pawn for controlling committee appointments. Can Vox now claim the better absentee record? Can they be called the more responsible party? Hardly!
Where are we heading? Is this a way to run our student government? Is the ASC, which has no party with a clear-cut majority,
always to be at the mercy of Vox in order to get a quorum together so business can be transacted? The proceedings will become a farce (they came close Tuesday evening) and will remain that way until the student body becomes more important than political affiliation.
* *
Howard Hoffman
Cranston, R. I. sophomore (Editor's Note: Vox members were at the meeting, but did not answer the roll call.)
IFC Responds
While Tom Coffman may have talent as an editorial writer, he is very inept as a reporter. His comments about the panel discussion on discrimination (editorial, "BRITTLE," Monday, May 4), indicate that he neither understood the discussion nor bothered to read the Kansan news account of the discussion (Story entitled "STUDENT PANEL REVIEWS DISCRIMINATION CONFLICT," by Susan Flood. April 30 issue).
Coffman first states that he had the "distinct impression" that the
IFC is unconcerned about the problem. He apparently attributes this impression to an alleged statement by IFC President Jim Johnston, which Coffman states as, "the IFC should stay out of the area of integration entirely." In the first place, Johnston did not make this statement. Secondly, Coffman failed to note three obvious refutals of this alleged statement: 1) Close work of the IFC with Sigma Nu on study of their discriminatory clause; 2) Johnston's appearance on panels of the type that Coffman served as a member do not seem to point to the fact that the IFC should stay out of integration; 3) As stated in the April 30th news article, the IFC has formulated a committee of seven IFC members to meet with the members of the CRCC, the administration, and Greeks, and to recommend policy and procedure to the IFC, both immediate and future. Coffman did not take the time or initiative to discuss these programs on the panel, so it is really not so surprising that he "forgot" to mention them in his editorial.
Coffman again exercised a rather loose and uninformed interpretation of the proceedings of the panel, when he stated."...Johnston pulled out the rush pamphlet and pointed to two pictures of a president of a Negro fraternity sitting down with the white fellows." This picture is, in truth, in reference to a picture of the IFC executive council, of which Art Spears was a member. In opposition to the impression conveyed by Coffman, this picture was not an appeasement, an "undue honor," or anything to imply that the "IFC thinks they've got a tame one." It does show that a Negro, or any other Greek has the opportunity to be an officer of the IFC. Spears' position as secretary of the IFC did call for him to "sit down with the white fellows" and exercise his right and obligation as an officer to conduct IFC leadership.
Coffman compares the Greek system to "a hollow and crumblly thing, . . ." only a skeletal form. It seems that the analogy better suits him. He apparently refuses to leave his shell to hear what is really being discussed rather than what he would like to hear. Perhaps Coffman should have stated
So In A
at the end of his editorial: FIC TION. Facts are to be found in the Kansan article of April 30th.
The IFC Civil Rights Committee recognizes the fact that it is not a member of the debate team, and does not wish to carry a running debate with Coffman. It does, however, request that he pay more attention to facts when he determines the policy for editorials against "fraternity discrimination" as he states in the Kansan article of April 30th.
IFC Committee on Civil Rights
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