KANSAN COMMENT
Curfew night
In the long, black hours of curfew night, the Daily Kansan staff was holed up in the news-room of Flint Hall, its only connection with the events of the embattled city a crackling set of voices over the police radio. Tension rose early in the 11 hours of the curfew when patrol cars and the dispatcher traded instructions about fires, sniping incidents, bomb threats and rock throwings. But as Tuesday became Wednesday, the reports slacked in number and intensity.
The three long beeps before a transmission (warning that it concerned an emergency) came less frequently, as staff members turned away from the radio to other work. By 3 a.m. today, the city was relatively quiet.
Two staff members and I decided to take an automobile ride around Lawrence to view the results of the night's malice-mixed-with-frolic. Traveling down the 13th street hill, we met one campus security auto, the occupants of which glanced quickly at the yellow curfew pass attached to the windshield but decided not to ask us our business.
Continuing on to Massachusetts Street and the downtown area, we drove past the Salvation Army snack truck, around which police and National Guardsmen stood sipping coffee and eating doughnuts. One police auto left out of the truck's area, followed us several blocks, then turned off.
Crossing the Kaw River bridge, we met another police car with its red and white roof lights flashing, but with its siren muffled in mimicry of the drowsy night itself.
Into North Lawrence, over the chuckholed roads we drove, finally arriving at the flaming ruins of an abandoned school house at 7th and Lincoln Streets. No fire trucks surrounded it, no police cars were parked alongside the ancient structure whose half standing stone walls were silhouetted by the orange light of the flames.
A charred post leaned against the doorway, the steps below which had already collapsed. Through arched windows above the door, the inner walls were visible, undulating in brilliance while the fire rose and dropped as thousands of candles in a great cathedral flicker on the walls
Leaving, we wondered why the fire was allowed to burn untended; it was slowly creeping out from the building to the law adjacent.
On the way back to the campus we saw the moon floating in a haze over the glittering campus behind a grove of poplars and the bridge
arching over the roiled waters of the Kaw. We heard a lonely diesel locomotive horn, the sound of the river cascading over the dam, and the quiet of all the rest.
Passing unlighted gingerbread homes along 6th Street, the neon lit franchise operations and the hundreds of mercury vapor lamps in parallel rows, we arrived at the intersection of 6th and Iowa Streets, where a highway patrolman flashed his light for us to stop. He stoically and undramatically approached the car, beaming the flashlight in our eyes to examine us closely. With a glum "okay," he allowed us to proceed.
Turning down 19th Street, we came to Veteran's park, the staging ground for Tuesday morning's dispute at Lawrence High School. Only birds twittering in the hours before dawn gave evidence of life in what had been the setting of the controversy that sparked the curfew itself.
At South Junior High School, rows of Army trucks waited to carry home the National Guardsmen whose use that night had been minimal. One guardsman looked suspiciously at our car as we drove past and came forward hesitatingly as another placed his hand on the weapon strapped to his hip. We did not stop.
Circling back around campus, we headed up Oread Avenue, where the first of the night's rumblings had occurred. Beer cans and paper cups lay alongside a drawer and a set of bed-springs in the street. Neither police cars nor foot patrolmen were in sight.
The night ended in peace after a plethora of rumors-of-war at its beginning. And the majority of those rumors, dire as they sounded on the radio, were of little importance.
KU's violence scare may be ready to die after a brief life spawned by the Union fire. Little organized activity beyond some firecracker festivals at residence halls,was apparent Tuesday night, and the placid early morning hours today went unbroken.
Whether the curfew will be invoked again tonight depends on today's activities at Lawrence High School.
Hopefully, the present storm of violence and fear is dying. It it is, then there is no more need to restrict activity in the city. Lawrence's first curfew last night in several years can be its last. The fewer such actions that spring from threats of almost non-existent danger the better for the city's sanity and its stability.
—Monroe Dodd
From other campuses
Baby seal slaughter
from The SPARTAN DAILY San Jose State College
Television critic Cleveland Amory rarely says anything worth listening to, but he was right when he appeared on the Dick Cavett Show awhile back and discussed the cruel slaughtering of young, helpless baby seals.
Amory traveled to Canada to see for himself what was happening. He related these experiences on the show, bringing a film which depicted the senseless killing.
Amory's film showed the hunter approaching the seal and its mother, who puts up a useless struggle to save her baby. Eventually the mother gives up and wanders away, leaving the young seal to its fate. This fate is one of the cruelest I've ever seen.
The seals in question are only a few months old, completely at the mercy of their mothers for survival. They can't swim, and if they happen to fall into the water, their mother dives in and pushes them out.
While lying completely helpless, the seal is clubbed to death by the hunters, who then cut into the seal and removed the fur and lining.
This is done, Amory pointed out, even though the same product may be gained by synthetic means. It has been worse, however. There was a time when the seals were skinned alive, left to die a tortuous death. Public officials now accompany the hunters to assure the seals are killed prior to the skinning.
This is not enough. An end must be put to these miserable activities. One hope, Amory pointed out, lies with the young hunters. If they can be convinced to give up this practice the seals may be saved. One hunter told Amory he would kill no more. This came as a result of the pitiful look one of the baby seals gave him while being clubbed.
Another approach would be to boycott all products which contain seal fur. This, too, however, is hard to do because the fur appears in so many products, many of which can't be discovered by the average buyer.
BY SOKO10FF
Griff & the Unicorn
David Sokoloff 1970
hearing voices—
To the editor:
In the past week, every possible courtesy and assistance has been extended to the members of Kappa Sigma Fraternity. In speaking for the guys as house president, I want to express our gratitude to the members of the fraternity and sorority systems who have so generously helped us. We are even more indebted to the Office of Dean of Men, to those people who aided us at Templin Hall and to Sigma Nu and Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternities, where a large number of Kappa Sigs now reside.
The amount of time and effort people have devoted to helping us is really unbelievable. I can only say that, when we are settled, we hope to demonstrate our appreciation and, until then, we can only say a very sincere "thank you."
David Steen
Wichita junior and
President, Kappa S
President, Kappa Sigma Fraternity
* *
To the editor:
The vast majority of Americans seem concerned about three men whose lives were threatened 250,000 miles from earth but seem to disregard the millions of Americans whose lives are constantly threatened within a couple miles of their own home.
This last week the lives of three astronauts were imperiled for nearly four days, when, apparently, a short circuit caused the oxygen tank to rupture. Both the morning and evening Kansas City papers devoted about 40 per cent of their front page space to this story. After the command module carrying the spacemen splashed down in the Pacific Friday, President Nixon proclaimed Sunday a national day of prayer and thanksgiving for the astronauts' safe return.
Certainly, I was relieved to learn that the astronauts were recovering from their near-tragic flight on board the USS Iwo Jima. I was glad that newspapers covered this story so thoroughly so that Americans could keep informed of the developments in the flight. I suppose that Nixon's proclamation for last Sunday suited the occasion.
But it seems tragically paradoxical that Americans have always been concerned about the fate of the few astronauts who have flown into outer space during our Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions but have rarely been concerned about the great numbers of Americans who have died because of hunger, disease, rat bites. It seems rather inhuman that Americans carefully listen to the astronauts' voice-transmissions over the radio but ignore the pleas for help by the underprivileged.
While Nixon's proclamation for last Sunday might be fitting, a national day of concern for America's poor people seems as fitting and more constructive. On this day churches might contribute their entire offerings to responsible organizations that help the poor. I would certainly admit that Americans ought to be concerned about the poor more than one out of every 365 days. But at the present time, we don't even care about them for one day.
Dick Hvale
La Grange, Ill. senior
★ ★ ★
To the editor:
Yesterday, while rambling across campus, I spied a large orange three dimensional form resembling a Rube Goldberg machine. I viewed this with delight, although surprised that our lords, masters and moral protectors—Buildings and Grounds—had let anything that subversive (in their limited intellectual opinion) exist. After all, the students might derive pleasure from this, and therefore it must be a subversive plot.
After checking, I found that a Sculpture conference is in the making. Many of these three dimensional forms are going to pop up. "Great"'! I thought. "Maybe now the students would be free of the narrow artistic bounds to which B&G's tastes would confine them.
I learned of another instance where B&G saved everyone on campus from subversive influences. A "fire hazard" was discovered in the studio of an art instructor. It seems that paint was left uncovered. A lecture on what constituted proper forms of art was given by a B&G man. It is hoped that this instructor learned his lesson and will in the future consult these arbiters of artistic taste.
However, I soon learned that these were to disappear at the end of the conference. In fact, the orange form was almost torn down by those who really control the campus because the instructor put it up before the appointed hour.
It would be great to have a People's Park, an opportunity to see fine three dimensional sculpture on campus—but this might lead to all sorts of dangerous ideas. It might be a dangerous seed that would lead to asking more questions. And everyone knows what asking questions leads to!
Jim Brothers Eureka graduate student
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