KANSAN COMMENT
Smoldering ashes
They stood around the Kansas Union Monday night—the students, the townspeople, the faculty, the administration. Chuckling and glum, cynical and despondent, not-caring and blaming, they stood in the pall of smoke to watch the golden red flames sear the cool night air. They applauded the fireman who scaled the snorkel and directed an impotent stream of water on the Union's inflamed roof. They worried as firemen near the roof's edge silhouetted against the fire, chopped away at shingles, unmindful of the imminent danger.
From the crowd in front, two persons talking: "You might say that students have passed the stage of . . ."
Another: "They could cut down the draft a little bit, you know. ."
And the flashing red and green lights, the fire hoses snaking in a front door, the cupola becoming a jet of flame, imprinted a scene in all the viewers' minds that would not soon be erased.
How did it happen and why did it happen, everyone wondered. Most of all, who made it happen?
No doubt there were a few there Monqay night who had the perpetrators already selected, indicted, convicted and punished.
More of them probably had a reasonable idea who had set the fire that destroyed much of what had been a KU tradition since 1927.
And all had a right to indulge in some righteous indignation, not only over the destruction of a KU landmark, but more importantly over the seeming end to a peaceful resolution of issues at KU.
It might have been hoped that the administration's calm in the face of previous disruptive events—a calm that magnificently defied normal human emotions—could have prevented disasters like Monday night's. Perhaps the Union fire was the work of persons outside the University community, in which case the administration's most valiant efforts would have been to no avail anyway.
But one way or another, from inside or outside the University community, the Union burned and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage was caused.
The quick result is a sense of fear, of reaction on the part of many. A deplorable crime was committed Monday night, but hours after the event is not the time to make hasty judgments about who holds the responsibility for it. There is a potential for witchhunting on this campus and off, and the groups on the prowl need not be large to have an ugly effect.
Now is the true test of the University's ability to stand firmly for all human and legal rights, those of the accused (if ever any are) and those of the accusers.
The former are more in jeopardy now than the latter; pressure from higher echelons in the state structure, pressure from angry students and pressure from worried non-University people may attempt to force the administration into a stand it would normally detest.
The ashes of the Union building will cool.
Now man's tempers must cool, too.
Off the wire
—Monroe Dodd
By United Press International
DALLAS—G. C. Walters, of G. C. Walters & Associates which is handling the auction sale of the Texas School Book Depository from which it was confirmed the late President Kennedy was shot:
"We're not trying to sell the assassination, we are simply liquidating properties."
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SAIGON—A U.S. Army spokesman commenting on the American bombing of a Communist mortar position inside Cambodia:
"The U.S. Command has previously stated that if fired upon from enemy positions outside the Republic of South Vietnam, U.S. forces are authorized to return the fire."
SPACE CENTER, Houston — Apollo 13 skipper James A. Lovell, commenting on the planned re-entry into the earth's atmosphere;
"It's going a lot better than we ever expected."
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★★
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WASHINGTON—Ralph Ginzburg, publisher of Evergreen, criticizing House Republican Leader Gerald R. Ford's statements concerning a move to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas:
"It was a national disgrace and I hope it will be met with the contempt it deserves."
'Come on out, Fulbright! I know you're in there!'
hearing voices—
Such a program may not necessarily lead to a degree. What after all does an A.B. represent? Is it not a statement by the faculty of an institution that in their collective judgment the holder has been exposed to a liberal education? Mr. Miller used the expression, "Involuntary (required) education . . . "I believe the truth is that very few on the faculty are much interested in making anyone take any course which he thinks undesirable. If I were asked, however, if I believe that a person who for example has no exposure to a foreign language possesses the rudiments of a liberal education, I would answer, no. And in a very real sense the faculty is expressing its opinion in such matters when it grants degrees.
To the editor:
What is such an opinion worth? Perhaps not anything to a specific individual who believes that only he is qualified to plot his personal educational career. The degree is in fact important only to agencies outside the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. It then becomes the job of the individual to convince employers, professional schools, parents, etc., that his concept of a liberal education is more nearly valid than that of the faculty. He need not convince the faculty since we are already willing to let him pursue his concept. If more students had such faith in their own judgment, the consequences could be far reaching. What would be the result if, for example, $90\%$ of those leaving college after four years did not have a degree? At the very least it would force those agencies who mindlessly require a degree as a kind of union card for admittance to decide what they really expected and needed as a background for their particular function. That would be a truly revolutionary change in industry!
Like many who are talking or writing about requirements, William Miller in Tuesday's Kansas confuses education with degree requirements. The truth is that there are literally no academic requirements in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences which one need fulfill in order to pursue his concept of an education at the University of Kansas. Any student is free to design any curriculum, to pursue any combination of courses which seems educationally valid to him, and this fact is not generally appreciated by the student body at large. Indeed, one is able, through the LAS courses, to design in conjunction with two or three other students and a faculty member a course on any subject which has academic merit (a fact that gives KU all the advantages of the so-called "Free University" plus the added bonus of college credit). In the final analysis then the student himself may, if he wishes, be the sole judge of what is relevant, what constitutes a liberal education, what is necessary for his own development as an individual.
Many students who talk about degree requirements are not being completely consistent. On the one hand, the individual wishes to have the total responsibility without faculty involvement to plot his education as he sees fit (a freedom which he already has), and on the other hand he then at the end wants the faculty to involve itself and to agree with him (by granting a degree) that his uniquely personal concept of a liberal education coincides with theirs. All of us, of course, would like to have our cake and eat it too. It may be argued that some universities of stature have changed some or all the requirements. But this is no more than saying that degrees from different institutions mean different things, that different goals have been present from the start, that different objectives have been fulfilled. Such differences have always been present: All of us recognize that a degree from KU means something quite distinct from a degree granted from Emporia State or the University of Minnesota. The prospective college student owes it to himself to choose if possible an educational institution whose stated goals and philosophy most nearly agree with his own.
The student of course must be prepared to face the eventuality that in some instances the agency would decide that it had more faith in the collective opinion of the faculty than in the individual opinion of the student. Would it really be surprising if some chose to believe that a professional opinion as to what constitutes a liberal education is more likely to be near the truth than a novice opinion?
One could debate endlessly the merits of particular degree requirements and I anticipate that the faculty will take a long hard look at its definition of a liberal education next year. But it must be emphasized that no student is forced to accept the faculty's opinion. No student is forced to take any course. And specifically to Mr. Miller I would add the following. The fact that particular courses do not meet pre-stated goals does not necessarily invalidate the goals but may in fact say something about the courses themselves. From personal experience I can attest that there are delightful ways to learn Spanish
J. Eugene Fox Professor, and Associate Dean
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