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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Feb. 14, 1963
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Public Confidence Low
The news manipulation used in the six weeks before the October Cuban crisis has come back to haunt the Kennedy administration.
When Arthur Sylvester first revealed that the news had been manipulated as just another tool in the effort to throw Russia off balance before the Kennedy coup in Cuba, the press bellowed like a wounded bull. But the "gentlemen" of the press are a noisy group anyway, so the administration probably considered the gains in Cuba to be more than ample compensation for a temporarily discontented press.
JUST LIKE anyone else, the newsman loves to fill his beer with tears of righteous indignation once in a while just so everyone will know how unappreciated he is. He may get sympathy for a while, but not long enough to cause much trouble.
But when Secretary of Defense McNamara appeared before the nation on a two-hour television program in an attempt to refute charges that the Cuban arms buildup had reached the critical stage once again, the administration found out just how damaging its earlier news manipulation had been. The sharp drop in public confidence in the statements of the administration, at least where Cuba is concerned, had not been tested.
The television program provided the test that showed just how severe the damage to the "credibility" of such statements had been. The nation watched—but it did not accept McNamara's statements as absolute truth, or even as a necessarily clear representation of the situation as it actually exists. There was no wholesale rejection—this was not necessary to damage the administration. A mere lack of general acceptance was damaging enough.
The public reaction was: Maybe they are telling the truth this time, but then that is what we thought last time. We'll just have to wait and see.
THE NATION apparently has not forgotten the manipulation in the October crisis. People know that they were duped, and want to be sure that the same thing will not happen again in almost the same situation. This virtually killed the effect of the two-hour television show.
This is simply a negative story of the little boy who cried wolf. The administration cried that there was no wolf, and the people believed what they heard. Then they found out that there actually was a wolf. Now the administration again is crying that there is no wolf.
The memory of the public may be short,but it is not that short. Dennis Branstiter
Colorado Daily Columnist Spoofs Sex Mores
By Peter Hartley Colorado Daily Columnist
Tubs have been thumped ceaselessly to variations on the old theme, down through the years. For a while, God was supposed to have decreed the whole business "sinful." In the old days, girls were admonished with the example of the Ruined Woman. Every town kept a good supply of Ruined Women on hand, to admonish girls with Boys mostly ran around trying to ruin as many women as they could.
There are some who never fail to keep their attention fixed on the most important things in life. Recently the most important thing of all has been given quite a bit of attention by those most interested in spiritual values. I of course refer to Premarital Sex, which has been a subject of some interest in this country ever since Priscilla vamped John Alden.
INCONSISTENTLY enough, all boys were supposed to wax indignant if anybody tried to ruin their sisters. Men were supposed to wax even more indignant. As Aldous Huxley has said, you were supposed to try to kill a man who pinched your sister's bottom, because you felt dishonored.
Fewer and fewer people accept God as an easy answer. Therefore, the self-appointed defenders of the public morals and spyers-out of inequity — otherwise known as voyeurs — have had to hunt more and more frantically for weighty sounding arguments to prove that young people should be kept from doing what young people can do
But the Ruined Woman has gone out of fashion, and "our honors have migrated from the fleshy parts of our female relations' anatomy." As for the connection between God and "sin": let me say here, lest someone accuse me of being arbitrary, that no one seems to be able to demonstrate whether or not there is a conscious author of the universe. However, developments in cultural anthropology have made it increasingly difficult to believe that our particular social customs are Sacred Laws that have been foisted on us by an anthropomorphic deity.
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
THEY CONCENTRATE on the girls more than ever, and seem to have settled rather weakly on the contention that premarital intercourse is Not Nice. They also use the Unwed Mother bogy, since being an Unwed Mother is even more Not Nice than having sexual intercourse in the first place. The whole thing is of course based on the unspoken premise that sex itself is Not Nice.
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NEWS DEPARTMENT
Fred Zimmerman ... Managing Editor
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Trudy Meserve and Jackie Stern ... Co-Society Editors
Murrel Bland ... Photograph Editor
or
It
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better (and oftener) than anyone else. (Reasons for this dog-in-the-manger attitude are complex. The principle one, I take it, is envy.)
Lately there seems to be a great deal of concern about the morals of the college student in particular. The loudest recent clamor on the subject was raised by Sarah Gibson Blanding, president of Vassar. She apparently has figured out that the old Unwed Mother jive just won't do any more, since these days only the careless need worry. This of course left her stuck for reasons. The Notice argument is too unsophisticated for Vassar girls. She couldn't be so gauche as to drag God back into the fray — not directly, anyhow.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Dennis Branstiter Editorial Editor
Terry Murphy Assistant Editorial Editor
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Jack Cannon, Business Manager; Jim Stevens, Assist. Business Mgr.; Mike Carson, Advertising Moan; Joanne Zabornik, Circulation Mgr.; Brooks Harrison, Classified Mgr.; Bob Brooks, National Adv. Mgr.; Charles Hayward, Promotion Mgr.; Bill Finley, Merchandising Mgr.
Instead, she invoked those mystical "highest standards" which are expected of Vassar girls, which is really a twist on the Not Nice argument disguised so as to seem on a higher plane. Since everyone's highest standards differ from everyone else's, President Blanding naturally asserted that her own highest standards are higher than other people's highest standards, and any girl who didn't like them could just pack her kit and leave.
MARGARET MEAD has recently shed fresh light on the problem. She claims that nowadays people think that premarital sex is all right as long as it ends in marriage. Johnny and Mary, like the obedient cusses they are, respond a la Pavlov to this social green light at every opportunity. This is not so bad, says Miss Mead, but apparently the young pups usually
decide that they want to get married. Both their parents are unalterably opposed, so — you guessed it, Mary suddenly gets pregnant, and the smiling couple are of course rapidly married.
Naturally Johnny has to keep on going to college, because his mommy and daddy want him to be a Success. So, they foot the bill. Mary has to go too, because all up-to-date girls have to be college graduates these days, so her folks kick in some more loot.
Margaret Mead calls Johnny and Mary irresponsible. I agree that colleges seem to be crawling with newlyweds, and I would say that they are pretty shrewd cookies to swing a free ride that way, except I smell a rat. I just can't believe that young guys of 18, 19, and 20 are all that anxious to get married. The whole thing is a female plot to kill off that raa avis, the Gay Young Bachelor. At considerable risk, I will now expose that plot.
MARY, OF COURSE, wants to get hitched. After all, a husband is quite a status symbol to a teenage girl.
Johnny wants something else. Being an astute stripling he knows that the way to get it is to propose marriage. He figures that they can be careful, and he might even marry her after a few years Mary's not a bad kid. He feels safe, knowing that neither of their respective parents would approve of marriage at present, and he congratulates himself.
Act II — they are alone. He trembles. She beckons. He approaches. She is young, she is lovely, she is irresistible, and voila! precautions are cast to the winds.
V
It doesn't take many such performances before it's necessary to tell their folks the good news. They go to her place first, she tripping winsomely, he with leaden feet and leaden heart.
But it's too late. They go in. She runs off to find her folks. He stands there, sweating. Her old man's an old walrus. Johnny imagines the old grouch growling: "Young man! What is this that my daughter tells me?"
"Darling!" she calls him.
Fool! he curses himself.
Editor:
Letters to the Editor
Last fall James H. Meredith was excluded from admission to Ole Miss. As any thinking KU student should by now be aware, KU too has its forms of discrimination. One of the most recent to come to light is the discrimination of the College Intermediary Board.
Discrimination?
This group, which has designated itself to further the cultural and intellectual life of this great university, has organized the College Bowl, supposedly for this purpose. That the Board is not accomplishing this purpose is shown by the fact that it is discriminating against a large group of KU students.
THE BOARD HAS ruled that an independent student who has previously lived in an organized house may participate in the College Bowl only if he agrees to participate on a team from a house where he previously lived. The student in such a situation is discriminated against while students living in
organized houses are not. Why should one be considered inferior merely because he no longer lives in an organized house, or because he is an independent?
What if the student does not want to participate on the team of a house where he previously lived? What if the house for some reason does not want him on its team? In this case the student is not allowed to participate in the College Bowl. This is discrimination!
Perhaps the function and purpose of the College Bowl should be criticized. From the observations of many participants in last year's College Bowl, it appears the College Bowl was less an opportunity to advance culture and intellectuality at KU, than to afford an opportunity of trivial importance, and may be compared to those asked on a television quiz show.
Is it too facetious to ask that the Civil Rights Council investigate the College Intermediary Board?
Steve Long
Prairie Village senior