If we lose Larry...
By the narrowest possible margin, the Kansas Board of Regents voted not to fire Chancellor E. Laurence Chalmers Jr. Insead, the Chancellor has been given three months to "clear up the situation in Lawrence." How benevolent.
The Board of Regents would have given God five days to create the world, and fired Him before the work was finished.
Last spring, Dr. Chalmers was responsible for getting the students of the University together in one of the greatest displays of unity in the history of the University.
classes are to be taught, though, in a sense, they have done that, too.
In the manner of sidewalk superintendents and armchair quarterbacks, the Board of Regents refuse to leave the situation in the hands of those who are trained to deal with it. God help us when the illustrious Board decides to start dictating how and what
He has demonstrated a fantastic ability to communicate with the students, and has followed a policy of doing the most good for the greatest number of the University's members. Unfortunately, the students who make up the University, and who have benefited the most from the Chancellor's decisions, lack the political power to make their stance on the matter felt.
When will the Board of Regents learn that good ends cannot be achieved through the means of threat, coercion and out-and-out bullying? When will they learn that mutual respect, understanding and trust are the ingredients necessary to combat the pressures within the University?
Certainly the current state of unrest in Lawrence is not the Chancellor's fault, nor were the disturbances on campus last spring any of his doing. But Dr. Chalmers, more than any other man, was responsible for cooling the unrest of last spring.
Was any member of the Board of Regents on campus during that last week before the convocation? Were any members present to observe the week of meetings, rap sessions and seminars that followed the adoption of those controversial class attendance options?
If they had been, perhaps they would have understood the value of those days made available for discussion and formulation of alternatives to the problems of concern to University students.
The motion to fire the Chancellor must have stemmed from a desire for political gain, for surely the board could not have thought such a measure would bring peace to the KU campus.
If they had taken the time to interject themselves into the University community, maybe they would have felt the tension of the situation. Maybe they would have felt the intense relief and easing of tension that came at the moment those options were adopted.
Rather, it would bring an upswing in unrest. Or has the board bothered to ask the University's opinion
of the Chancellor? They would find student opinion leaning greatly in his favor.
And the students are the greatest concern if the University's course is to remain smooth. The faculty members, for the most part, are far too concerned with their scholarly ideals to take an active part in the affairs of deepening concern to students.
Pacifying the state for political reasons will not bring a state of lackadaisical peace to KU.
The public of the state of Kansas, even if they were aware of the situation at KU, are not present on campus.
Only a man who is aware of the dynamics of the University situation and can relate to the students who contribute to the seething questions asked by the young can hope to control the University. Dr. Chalmers is that man.
Fire the Chancellor? Better to give him a gold medal.
As for the Board of Regents, perhaps they should be given a period of three months to cure the economic ills of the colleges and universities under their jurisdiction. If they can't do it, then out the window they should go.
And to the people of Kansas who supposedly have favored the firing of the Chancellor, you have three months to provide workable solutions to the social problems in your own areas. Until you have provided them, do not expect the youth of your state to be placid. —C. Peterson
In memoriam
BOOKS
VENDETTA, by Charles Durbin.
He is saved because the New York Mafia family which handed him his ticket to Sicily has a new use for him—to smuggle in a shipment of heroin, then collect a big debt on the West Coast.
Coward McCann $5.95 Charles Durbin's Vendetta is a new entry in a growing genre—the Mafia novel. There are flaws in the mirror it holds up to life, but it is a fast moving and very readable thriller.
The latter half of the book is almost pure private eye in the classic Hammett tradition—the ruthless loner against the organization, or at least its subverted Las Vegas branch, with corpses all over the place.
This is the story of a Sicilian American deported for another man's crime. As unpopular with the Sicilian underworld as with the police, he is betrayed, tortured, framed and shipped off to a prison where the local Mafia intends to kill him.
Doubleday $4.95. The plot is the thing in this modern horror story and, if the reader can go along with its twists and implications, he indeed will find a tale of terror.
In a half minute of film, 25 men and women are shown staring appalled at a stunning act of violence. Later one of them discovers that all but four since have died apparently by accident. And each has died in the order of his appearance on the film.
Only at the very end does a more or less inevitable twist return the book to the true Mafia category.
The Parallax View, by Loren Singer.
The author has made the survivors, a group of journalists, particularly odious, which probably reinforces his baleful view of American society. But again, the workings of the plot are the center of interest. It would be unfair to enlarge on why one violent event begat a string of others.
Israel maintains aid program
By PHIL NEWSOM UPI Foreign News Analyst
Despite the pressures of war Israel is maintaining and even expanding its technical aid program to the world's under developed nations.
She has just signed a new two year agreement with the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington under which her experts will extend to South America the sort of rural development projects upon which they have been working for the last four years among Caribbean and Central republics.
Israel has been exporting her know how in the social and economic fields for more than a decade with notable success in both Africa and Asia.
It has won friends for Israel and enabled her to leap frog the hostile Arab wall surrounding her. Many of the under developed states have the same problems the Israelis have had to overcome in their relatively short history as a nation.
Her own small size frees her of the suspicion that greets aid
from such as the United States, the Soviet Union or Red China.
In Africa she has helped to build highways, airports and hotels, train pilots and paratroops, harness solar energy and build a women's civil service.
In Israel African students take seven year medical courses, study for graduate degrees in engineering and agriculture and take training in fields ranging from
police work to broadcasting.
A project started three years ago in the Dominican Republic calls for the rehabilitation of an abandoned port on the southern coast. It is a mushrooming project which began with the settlement of 150 families in a cooperative village. It has developed modern educational and community services and the rehabilitated port will handle expanded agricultural production.
THE SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
The Summer Session Kansan, student newspaper at the University of Kansas, is represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 Street, New York, N.Y., 10022. Mail subscription rates: $6 a semester or $10 a year. Publisher class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas, every Tuesday and Friday for the entire summer. Accommodations, goods, and employment advertised in the Summer Session Kansan are offered to students without regard to color, creed, or national origin.
The opinions expressed in the editorial columns are those of the editorial staff of the newspaper. Guest editorial views are not necessarily the same as the editor's views. Only opinions expressed in the Summer Session Kansan are not necessarily those of the University of Kansas Administration or the Kansas State Board of Regents.
Member Associated Collegiate Press
"What I meant was 'favorable' information."