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University Daily Kansan
Monday, Feb. 17, 1964
People-to-People
Just a few years ago, nationwide attention was focused on the University of Kansas for its People-to-People program which was organized as a result of its students' efforts. The program was founded to serve as a vehicle of communication among the students throughout the world.
The program was followed by all Big Eight schools. All except the University of Oklahoma adopted the same program that KU had, recognizing KU as national headquarters.
Since the program was proved successful on various campuses, a national People-to-People program came into being. Immediately, it received recognition of President John F. Kennedy and many other leading personalities. Vice-President Johnson was at the rededication ceremony at Kansas City.
The Board of Trustees and the Executive Committee of the national People-to-People were formed to function on the larger scale. Former President Eisenhower was selected as the chairman of the Board of Trustees, and financier J. C. Hall was appointed chairman of the Executive Committee. Among members of the Executive Committee were Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe and former Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy.
THE PROGRAM received a large amount of acceptance and publicity throughout the nation. The U.S. Attorney General and 28 governors of various states helped the program achieve its objectives.
At present, there are more than 25,000 American students affiliated directly or indirectly with the program. About 3,500 persons have paid their dues to become national members. More than 42 per cent of foreign students at the U.S. colleges and universities have been exposed to the program.
Fourteen European nations, Israel, Brazil Mexico, the Philippines, and many other countries are familiar with it, and are trying to develop a similar program in their own countries.
Approximately 400 American students are participating in the program at KU. They are involved in activities such as brother-sister, happy hours, industrial tours, farm tours, home hospitality visits, job placement, forums, and many others. Almost all foreign students are acquainted with the program.
While People-to-People is developing rapidly at various places, its stability at KU has become doubtful—because of the conflict between the
People-to- People organization and the All Student Council.
The People-to-People organization wants to be free from the All Student Council since, as the chairman of the organization believes, it is a social, educational and public relations organization. The chairman prefers P-t-P to be administered by the University rather than the ASC. He wants the organization independent from "the campus politics."
The main objection of Jerry Harper, chairman of P-t-P, is to the ASC bill which gives authority to the student body president in selecting the chairman, vice-chairman, treasurer and secretary of People-to-People.
Because of these objections to the ASC control over the organization, the chairman of P-t-P did not present his periodical report at the ASC meeting. And as a result the ASC froze its $2,000 fund, appropriated for the various People-to-People activities.
These funds may be unfrozen after Mr. Harper gives his report at the ASC meeting tomorrow.
Is separation of People-to-People from the All Student Council desirable? Should the student body president select the leadership of all organizations—the activities of which he may or may not be familiar with?
People-to-People should become a responsibility of the University and should be absolutely free from any kind of campus politics. The University administration is in a better position to judge the organization which is involved in worldwide activities.
The executives should be selected by the foreign and American students working in the organization, and not by the student body president. They should be chosen on the basis of ability, seniority, experience and interest, and not on the basis of political affiliation or personal friendship.
The conflict should be resolved immediately. By granting P-t-P freedom from the student government, it can function more objectively. If P-t-P is not released, the organization which has brought fame, recognition and prestige to the students of the University will collapse because of minor personal and political disagreements.
We should not forget, either, the fact that this is the first time in the history of the University that students and citizens of Lawrence have worked together.
- vinay Kotnari
from the morgue
In 1936, the responsibilities of the freshman traditions were handed over by the Student Council to the newly elected freshman class officers.
The officers passed the following rules and enforced them strictly:
1. All of the required meetings during Freshman Week must be attended, and attendance cards must be turned in to the dean of men.
2. All freshmen are required to purchase freshman caps, to don these caps the night of the freshman Induction Services, and to wear them until the close of the football season. Caps will
be worn at the football games and at all times when on the University campus, save on Sundays and after sundown.
3. On days preceding football games and on the days of football games, freshmen will wear ribbons upon their caps. The ribbons will measure eight inches in length and will be worn with the red ribbon uppermost.
4. On the same days freshmen will walk only on the south side of the campus, and will cross the street only at designated zones.
5. No male student will take a date to a football game, except to the Homecoming game.
6. Attendance of all freshmen is required at the Night Shirt Parade. Freshmen are also expected to participate in other student rallies—Vinay Kothari.
Dailii Iiänsan
(In the next issue of UDK, the Night Stalker will be explained in this column ... VR.)
111 Flint Hall University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press.
Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22,
N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates:
$3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon
during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University
holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at
Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Mike Miller ... Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Tom Coffman ... Editorial Editor
Mental Health
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Bob Brooks ... Business Manager
Editor:
The People Say...
I am not quite certain what message the author of the editorial No Cure-All, in the UDK of February 12, intended to convey. He may have wanted to condemn public intolerance towards the behavior of those who have major mental illness. Even if this is what he intended, the effect of what he wrote is detrimental to the dedicated efforts of mental health workers to remove the stigma attached to obtaining treatment for emotional and mental disorders.
It has been my experience that 75 to 80 per cent of the people who seek help for mental illness or emotional problems do so voluntarily. Some of these people are following the advice of a physician, friend, family member, or counsellor. However, many of them come because they have recognized themselves that they can make use of psychiatric assistance.
Unfortunately, mental illness occasionally manifests itself in physically destructive behavior. Restrictions upon the movements and activities of a psychiatric patient are necessary when the patient is potentially destructive, either to himself, to others, or to property.
In Kansas, when a person requires intensive, long term inpatient psychiatric treatment, there are no finer facilities available than our state mental hospitals. Equivalent care on a private basis will cost a patient from 1 to 2 thousand dollars per month. Statements that treatment in such institutions is punishment and is psychologically and socially damaging are misleading and harmful.
S. O. Schroeder, M.D.
Director. Mental Health Clinic
"Let's Not Get Panicky, Fellows——This Could Have Some Pretty Amusing Aspects"
BOOK REVIEWS
I
Many Americans are still recoiling in shock from the knowledge that the President of the United States was assassinated last November. Much of the reason for this continuing shock lies in an article such as that leading off the February American Heritage magazine.
Nor is history a static thing, to be studied with no idea that it has meaning for our own times. The late President believed that knowledge of our own past would help to understand events of today, and developments in other lands. The aspirations of the new nations of Asia and Africa, for example, can be understood in light of our own experience.
The magazine of history presents an eloquent dissertation on history by the late President, John F. Kennedy wrote this statement last year at the request of the magazine's editors, and it first appeared as the foreword to the 16-volume "American Heritage Illustrated History of the United States," which many University people probably have seen on sale in grocery stores. As in Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage," and many of his public utterances, a deep understanding of history and its meaning comes through, an understanding comparable to that of those other practicing historians in the White House, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
To Kennedy, history was never, in the famous word of Henry Ford, "bunk." It was no dull recitation of facts and dates, which it is to many students required to study history at the expense of pleasant and undemanding courses in certain other disciplines. It was what gives meaning to the country and the government which a President, and all other Americans, must serve, as Kennedy seemed to say so eloquently in his inaugural address.
"THERE IS LITTLE THAT IS MORE important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country," the Kennedy foreword begins. "Without such knowledge, he stands uncertain and defenseless before the world, knowing neither where he has come from nor where he is going. With such knowledge, he is no longer alone but draws a strength far greater than his own from the cumulative experience of the past and a cumulative vision of the future."
IT IS PROPER THAT THE KENNEDY foreword appears in American Heritage. Scorned by some professional historians, American Heritage is bringing popular history to many Americans who would never read it in any other format. The February American Heritage is a particularly rich number of this magazine.
Several epochs in our past receive treatment here. One may read an article on the enigmatic Gen. Howe, who several times had Washington's forces at his mercy, but each time failed to finish off the rebel enemy. Two articles bear relation to the Civil War—a discussion of Clement L. Vallandigham, copperhead congressman from Ohio, and an article about the Mason-Dixon line. There is a beautifully illustrated article on how the Indian got the horse from the Spanish conquistadors. A portfolio of photographs helps to illustrate an article on "The Great White Fleet" which Roosevelt sent around the world in the first decade of this century, a celebrated flexing of American muscles.
Other articles deal with a famous Supreme Court decision on governmental intervention in the nation's economy; James J. Jeffries and Jack Johnson, and a young Russian who came to America during the War of 1812.-CMP