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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, Feb. 20, 1963
The Rise of the 50-Miler
It is not enough that last week brought word of the return of the Asian flu. Now we also have the 50-mile hike to contend with.
A vague recollection of a Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment comes to mind. But since Bobby Kennedy is doing it, and he is supposed to be an expert on such things, we shall assume that there is a loophole through which the 50-mile hike can slip without going against the Constitution of the United States.
Whether or not it goes against the Constitution of Joe College is something else to consider. This normally sedentary creature of the college campus appears to have made an abrupt shift from his normal habits. He can now be seen trudging down the road with others afflicted by the same malady.
Evidently some new force is motivating the previously immobile hikers. The spring-like weather is one possible explanation. But it usually brings on such innocuous and relatively sane pastimes as filling the Chi Omega fountain with soap suds and floating down the Kaw on an innertube.
What has brought on this urge to wear out shoes? First President Theodore Roosevelt suggested that U.S. Marines should be able to hike
50 miles in three days. And then, only recently, Gen. Shoup stumbled onto the Rough Rider's suggestion and sought to bring it back to life. This may have been enough to entice Marines to walk 50 miles (under orders, of course), but it was still without popular appeal.
Then the President touched the 50-mile hike with his magic wand, or more precisely, he included it in his physical fitness campaign. And all over the country otherwise sane persons took to the road—on foot. Even the President's brother Bobby wandered off down the road, but this could be expected from such a well-known touch football jock.
Backing from the Kennedy family gave the fad its necessary impetus. Now everybody is doing it—well, not quite everybody.
Pierre Salinger, hero of the sedentary set, is making a name for himself as a holdout against the 50-mile fad. He says the jaunt from his office to the President's is far enough—none of this 50-mile nonsense for him.
If Salinger were not part of the Kennedy administration, the fad might be considered as nothing more than a devious plan by the President to revitalize the national economy through the shoe industry. —Dennis Branstiter
Author Describes Execution
Excerpts From "The Idiot"
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
By Fyodor Dostoevsky
“It’s practically the minute before death,” Myshkin began with perfect readiness, carried away by his memories and to all appearance instantly forgetting everything else, “that moment when he has just mounted the ladder and has just stepped on to the scaffold. Then he glanced in my direction. I looked at his face and I understood it all... But how can one describe it? I wish, I do wish that you or some one would paint it. It would be best if it were you. I thought at the time that a picture of it would do good...
"At five o'clock in the morning he was asleep. It was at the end of October; at five o'clock it was still cold and dark. The superintendent of the prison came in quietly with the guard and touched him carefully on the shoulder. He sat up, leaning on his elbow, saw the light, asked 'What's the matter?' 'The execution is at ten o'clock.' He was half awake and couldn't take it in, and began objecting that the sentence wouldn't be ready for a week. But when he was fully awake he left off protesting and was silent—so I was told. Then he said, 'But it's hard it should be so sudden...' And again he was silent and wouldn't say anything more...
"There were crowds of people, there was noise and shouting; ten thousand faces, ten thousand eyes—all that he has had to bear, and worst of all, the thought, 'They are ten thousand, but not one of them is being executed, and I am to be executed.' Well, all that is preparatory. There is a ladder to the scaffold. Suddenly at the foot of the ladder he began to cry, and he was a strong manly fellow; he had been a great criminal, I was told.
"The priest never left him for a moment; he drove with him in the cart and talked with him all the while. I doubt whether he heard; he might begin listening and would not understand more than two words. So it must have
been. At last he began going up the ladder; his legs were tied together so that he could only move with tiny steps.
"The priest, who must have been an intelligent man, left off speaking and only gave him the cross to kiss. At the foot of the ladder he was very pale, and when he was at the top and standing on the scaffold, he became as white as paper, as white as writing paper. His legs must have grown weak and wooden, and I expect he felt sick — as though something were choking him and that made a sort of tickling in his throat. Have you ever felt that when you were frightened, or in awful moments when all your reason is left, but it has no power? I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction — if a house is falling upon you, for instance — one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, what may...
"When that weakness was beginning, the priest with a rapid movement hastily put the cross to his lips — a little plain silver cross — he kept putting it to his lips every minute. And every time the cross touched his lips, he opened his eyes and seemed for a few seconds to come to life again, and his legs
UNIVERSITY
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904,
triweekly 1908, daily. Jan. 16, 1912.
moved. He kissed the cross greedily; he made haste to kiss, as though in haste not to forget to provide himself with something in case of need; but I doubt whether he had any religious feeling at the time.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
"And so it was till he was laid on the plank. . . . It's strange that people rarely faint at these last moments. On the contrary, the brain is extraordinarily lively and must be working at a tremendous rate — at a tremendous rate, like a machine at full speed. I fancy that there is a continual throbbing of ideas of all sorts, always unfinished and perhaps absurd too, quite irrelevant ideas: 'That man is looking at me. He has a wart on his forehead. One of the executioner's buttons is rusty.' ... and yet all the while one knows and remembers everything. There is one point which can never be forgotten, and one can't faint, and everything moves and turns about it, about that point.
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"And only think that it must be like that up to the last quarter of a second, when his head lies on the block and he waits and . . . knows, and suddenly hears above him the clang of the iron! He must hear that! If I were lying there, I should listen on purpose and hear. It may last only the tenth part of a second, but one would be sure to hear it. And only fancy, it's still disputed whether, when the head is cut off, it knows for a second after that it has been cut off! What an idea! And what if it knows it for five seconds!
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
"Paint the scaffold so that only the last step can be distinctly seen in the foreground and the criminal having just stepped on it; his head, his face as white as paper; the priest holding up the cross, the man greedily putting forward his blue lips and looking — and aware of everything. The cross and the head — that's the picture. The priest's face and the executioner's, his two attendants and a few heads and eyes below might be painted in the background, in half light, as the setting. . . . That's the picture!"
Sound and Fury
Witness Criticizes Death Penalty
The controversy over abolishment of the death penalty in Kansas rages on, and I wonder if the proponents of capital punishment know whereof they speak.
Some equate a man's life with the cost of his upkeep and say that executing him will save money for the state. How can such a person be expected to give a reliable opinion if he is so obsessed with the almighty dollar?
OTHER RATIONALISTS who support the death penalty claim it is a deterrent to capital crimes—rape, kidnap, murder, etc. Yes sir, it is certainly a deterrent for a person to read about a hanging in the newspaper. One is immediately filled with a fear of the avenging wrath of society.
If an execution is supposed to act as a deterrent, why not hold it publicly? We may turn to the French for this answer. Not too long ago, condemned men were guillotined publicly. But these public executions were halted because of the festive atmosphere among the observers.
I wonder if supporters of the death penalty have ever seen a man's life callously taken from him, other than in the movies? If they had, I am certain they would not be so quick to defend this legal torture. Contrary to what these people might want to believe, death is not necessarily instantaneous.
I HAVE SEEN over a score of people die, of illness, old age, traffic injuries, and one person died while I was giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Yet none of these deaths cut me so deeply as when I saw a group of men intentionally break the neck of another as atonement for his crimes.
It took less than 10 seconds from the chaplain to the springing of the trap door, but in that time an eternity of terror passed over that man's face. Following the "drop," as executioners call the tripping of the trap, this "hardened criminal" was suspended by his neck for $9\frac{1}{2}$ minutes before the attending physician pronounced him dead.
During that $9\frac{1}{2}$ minutes, the doctor searched for a heartbeat three times, and three times he found signs of life. Was this instantaneous death? Theories will not convince me that this man was not alive at the end of that rope. I know what reflex action is, but how much of that man's convulsive movements was reflex and how much responsive?
THIS MAN'S CRIME is irrelevant. It has been almost two years since he died. It has been almost eight years since he was placed on death row at the U. S. Disciplinary Barracks, Ft. Leavenworth. No less than three times during his six-year wait, this man came within 24 hours of his execution. How many times did he die?
Those favoring capital punishment may continue to prate about cutting expenses, "an eye for an eye," and the "sob sisters of society," but they will not gain my ear. I doubt very much if they would honestly maintain this view as they walked through a darkened prison yard on a cold night following an execution.
Patrick M. Prosser Lawrence junior
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"WELL, TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT FRATERNITY LIFE, SON — WHEN IS YOUR 'PLEDGE TRAINING OVER?'