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Summer Session Kansan
Friday, July 26, 1963
Legislative Lag
How long will it be before legislation catches up with common practice?
To be specific, how long will it be before the Kansas Legislature makes it legal to buy liquor by the drink?
FOR ALL THE prohibitive affect that the old laws banning liquor by the drink have now, it might as well be tomorrow. Every city of any size in the state already has a club which serves liquor by the drink.
Oh sure, most of them have gone through the corporate niceties of becoming private clubs. But if our legal system still lays stock with the idea of following the "spirit" of the law as well as the word, these clubs violate the statutes.
There is nothing in the statutes specifically stating it, but if experience and practice mean anything, the real meaning of the law is that the poor man who can't afford to join the local country club is the one who is prohibited from buying liquor by the drink.
IF YOU HAVE the coin to "go exclusive, you can buy all the booze by the drink you want.
The practice of selling liquor by the drink is so commonly accepted that the "scandal" in the Kansas City, Kan., police department startles no one.
If there is an element of surprise involved in
the Kansas City affair it is that a law enforcement agency took notice of it and did something.
PERSONALLY, I can see no virtue in making liquor by the drink legal. No virtue, that is, if the laws forbidding liquor by the drink were enforced.
But they are not enforced. And they will not be enforced with any regularity.
So, in lieu of a dream, let us capitalize on reality. The way things stand now, we have liquor by the drink and its ill effects, but we go without the benefits.
IT WOULD really be nice to have the increased revenue which would come from taxing the already existent practice of selling liquor by the drink.
Apparently, law enforcement officials have abandoned all hope of enforcing the existing laws. Most of the pubs where you can't buy liquor by the drink offer the alternative of buying mix so that you may mix your own drinks on the premises.
I look at this business of liquor by the drink the same way I look at the franchise to vote. It should be given to every man, not just the country club set.
So, how about it, legislators? When does the poor man receive the same drinking franchise as his more affluent brother?
— Terry Murphy
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
English Proficiency
This letter is directed not so much to the students of KU as it is to the faculty of the English department and, as might be expected, it concerns the English proficiency examination.
I would like to make it clear, however, that I am not another embittered, complaining "flunkee" of the test. I succeeded in passing on it first try before completion of any English course offered at KU.
HOWEVER, since that time two years ago, many questions have arisen in my mind as to the value and validity of this test. First of all, what is the real purpose or objective of the test? What criteria are used to score the examinations? Is content more important than grammatical correctness or is the reverse true? Who corrects these tests, members of the English department only or others who
are, perhaps, less qualified to judge the correctness of the exams?
Something else that puzzles me is the fact that students who have passed the basic English requirements in their respective schools are still required to take this test before being allowed to graduate. Does not the fact that these students have passed the required courses assume that they have gained some proficiency in English? And does not the fact that so many fail the exam even after completion of English 1, 2, 3, and 4 arouse some doubt concerning the effectiveness and skill of the teachers of English?
It is recognized that a test should be a learning experience for the student as well as an evaluative technique for the teacher. Yet a student may take the English proficiency any number of times before passing it. Of what value is it to the student when the test becomes merely an obstacle that has little purpose for him because he does not understand what is expected of him and, if he fails, receives no real explanation or help to correct his deficiencies?
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Bibler
I myself can see no real purpose achieved by an examination of this sort. Why is English the only subject picked out for a proficiency test? In some schools comprehensive examinations are given to seniors in their major fields which seem more logical to me than a test in an area which may or may not be the primary interest of many students. The English proficiency exam is not even required of all university students and, if it is supposed to measure proficiency, is it not as necessary to an engineer as to an art history or math student?
WHEN MY CLASSES ARE FULL I WISH I HAD PROFESSOR SNARFS KNACK FOR TURNING AWAY THOSE EXTRA STUDENTS WHO WISH TO ENROLL."
I am not in any way denying the importance of facility in English, both written and oral, but in what way does the English proficiency exam promote this facility? Perhaps if the test were more clearly explained to the students, more consistently graded, required of all university students, and used as a corrective device for individuals, it would be worth while. As it stands now, it is merely a meaningless obstacle placed upon the students by "someone up there" and carried on even though its original objectives have been forgotten or, at any rate, are not being fulfilled.
Elementary Education senior
Summer Session
University of Kansas student newspaper
Telephone VIking 3-2700
Extension 711, news room
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Kansai
111 Flint Hall
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
trist weekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
University of Kansas student newspaper
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service (NY) News service. United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University excursion. Exclusive to Lawrence, holidays, and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor Terry Murphy
Staff Writer & Editor Linda Machin
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Business Manager ... Bob Brooks
FACULTY
Adviser ... Prof. James Dykes
MR. MIDSHIPMAN HORNBLOWER; LIEUTENANT HORNBLOWER; HORNBLOWER AND THE HOTSPUR, all by C. S. Forester (Bantam, 60 cents each); TO THE INDIES; THE CAPTAIN FROM CONNECTICUT, both by C. S. Forester (Bantam, 50 cents each).
C. S. Forester, for many years, has been the favorite writer of many readers who like simple action and adventure, relatively untouched by social content. Here are some of his most dashing novels. The Hornblower books are relatively new, additions to those three which constituted his earlier "Captain Horatio Hornblower." "To the Indies" and "The Captain from Connecticut" date to the early forties, and though they do not deal with Hornblower they are similar in mood and plot.
In these books we find the young Hornblower, first aboard the frigate Indefatigable; then the young lieutenant, fighting the Spanish; and finally Horatio saving the entire British nation in the days of the Napoleonic wars.
"The Captain from Connecticut" deals with blockade running in the War of 1812, when Captain Josiah Peabody defied the British fleet. "To the Indies" is a rousing story of the Spanish in the days of conquest.
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THE FOX IN THE ATTIC, by Richard Hughes (Signet, 75 cents).
Seldom does a contemporary novel achieve near-classic status as rapidly as "The Fox in the Attic." It is one of only a few novels by one of the finest writers in English, whose "A High Wind in Jamaica" is both one of the most chilling and amusing books ever written.
Hughes has conceived "The Fox in the Attic" as one of several novels that will describe the world in his time, up to World War II. The time is England just after World War I, with that country adjusting to the postwar era and Germany going through the humiliations that culminated in the war. His chief characters are a young Englishman, a political assassin, a young girl, and the Nazis then on their way to power.
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AT HEAVEN'S GATE, by Robert Penn Warren (Signet, 75 cents).
This novel preceded "All the King's Men" by three or four years, and came before the true soaring of the Warren reputation. It is a good novel, though not quite in a class with some of his later books.
The setting is predictably the South, the South of a financier who came to control the legislature of his state, and of the daughter who rebels against her father. In Bogan Murdock we have a character even more unscrupulous than Willie Stark of "All the King's Men." In most of the characters, as a matter of fact, we have the bitter, cynical, frequently vicious people that have peopled so many southern novels.
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PICKETTS CHARGE, by George R. Stewart (Premier Civil War Classic, 75 cents).
Few present-day writers can take an isolated event—in some cases a mere instance—and build from it such exciting fare as George R. Stewart does with this history of the famous charge at Gettysburg. In "Ordeal by Hunger" he brilliantly documented the Donner tragedy. In "Storm" and "Fire" he gave fictional accounts of the ravages of nature. Here he tells about a battle that has great symbolic meaning to the American people.
It is no trashy, romanticized fictional account. Stewart has overpowering bibliography to back him up. He has a series of appendices. The story has pace and excitement, and there are fine maps to help explain the action.
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THE CENTURY OF THE SURGEON, by Jurgen Thorwald (Bantam, 75 cents).
Stories of the development of medicine will interest most readers, and this is a history of surgery since 1846. The author has chosen the narrative device of an eyewitness who has seen some of these surgical developments. Though the literary trick is a painful one that is hard to believe, it does not detract from the sweep of the episodes themselves. There are illustrations, and details almost painful at times.
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THEY FOUGHT FOR THE SKY, by Quentin Reynolds (Bantam Pathfinder, 50 cents)—a reprint, in a new format, of an earlier Bantam volume. The famous war correspondent Quentin Reynolds here tells the story of the fliers of World War I, who fought on the western front in matchbox planes, under the most primitive conditions. Reynolds reconstructs the stories of the Lafayette Escadrille; Rickenbacker; Billy Bishop of Canada; Nungesser and Guyenemer of France; Albert Ball of England; Richthofen of Germany, and others.
LOST CITIES AND VANISHED CIVILIZATIONS, by Robert Silverberg (Bantam Pathfinder, 50 cents)—a book for those enthralled by archaeological findings. In this volume, Robert Silverberg describes the uncovering of Pompeii, destroyed by fire and lava; Troy, where mighty heroes fought; Babylon, with its great tower of Babel; Angkor, in the steaming jungle of Cambodia; Knossos, home of the Minotaur, and Chichen Itza, where the great Mayan Pyramid was found.
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ACT OF ANGER, by Bart Spicer (Bantam, 75 cents)—a book typical of some of the violent, somewhat sensational, almost always absorbing fiction that has been so popular in recent years. Bart Spicer tells here about three men and two women involved in a dramatic courtroom affair. It's a good tale that will be forgotten 10 years hence.