KANSAN COMMENT
NRA and bombs
In the past few years the National Rifle Association (NRA) has fought diligently to preserve our right to bear arms. Whenever the cry went out to pass strict laws governing the sale, transportation and use of firearms, the NRA has muffled that cry. The time has come again for the NRA to fight for those rights. Now the federal government is seeking to deprive citizens of their explosives.
Because of the recent bombings throughout the country, President Nixon has asked Congress for strict laws governing the sale, transportation and use of explosives. The NRA need alter their gun control arguments only slightly to fight explosive control.
For example:
The Constitution guarantees each and every citizen the right to bear arms. It is a basic right necessary for the preservation of home and country. Explosives are arms. If the federal government establishes controls over explosives, it will be only the first step toward dictatorship.
History bears this argument out. Hitler issued laws controlling arms in Germany. Without explosives, his opponents had to sit and
watch as he established his brutal tyranny and plunged the whole world into disaster.
If federal controls are placed on explosives, those controls will harm only the good, peace-loving citizens of our country. There will be no decline in the crime rate, as many predict. On the contrary, the crime rate will rise sharply. Criminals will run rampant knowing that their victims do not have protective explosives. What man can sleep soundly knowing that he lacks an explosive booby trap to surprise a lurking criminal?
Bumper stickers—"Register criminals, not explosives"—should be distributed to alert the public to the grave dangers it faces if the federal government is allowed to overstep its bounds.
Explosive control laws will be a great hindrance to those hobbyists who might wish to add a few items to their intriguing collections of TNT, nitroglycerin and hand grenades.
Most important, explosives in the home of every loyal American will fight communism. The Communists will think twice before trying to sweep into our country if every household has a munitions dump.
—Mike Rieke
There is a cigarette for the two of you
hearing voices—
To the editor:
After three years in the School of Fine Arts, it has become apparent to me that mandatory attendance must be ranked somewhere below force on the academic stupidity scale. For reasons unknown to me, many instructors feel that 40 hours of class are equal to 40 hours of knowledge and experience.
Indeed, there is experience—that of being confined to drab, overcrowded rooms where imminent distraction becomes one's excuse for not working.
The incentive to work passes into the blahs and students pass the time opening windows, condemning the instructor and taking breaks. The main motivating force for working in class is not a creative, liberal environment, but only that it is more convenient to use class time rather than free time.
Whatever the reason for the department's policy and the instructor's compliance on the issue of attendance, there is a valid
criticism of their method-academic purpose. When the credits are stamped on the grade sheets, they should be the product of effective work and effort, not time spent with classmates conferring about the number of holes and scratches on a desk.
To think that a classroom experience is the ultimate experience is ridiculous. Ideally it should be; but there are few ideal humans in the world and none of them are here. If courses were taught properly and the method was valid, this would be enough incentive for high attendance. In most cases classes are improperly taught and the method is invalid; so the department has no alternative but to require attendance regardless of academic value.
As explained to me by the dean, this is and always has been the policy. I suppose this is supposed to justify the policy, but the policy has been antiquated by progressive students in a stagnant situation. Instructors can play all the
tricks for a good show of heads, but passing a course because of regular attendance says nothing of performance.
Then there is the way the curriculum is slicked up in order to put all the required courses under a few instructors. Whereas progression in one's major is obtained by a series of continuing courses in one's major, this should not apply to professors. If a required course is taught by someone who is prejudiced against or unappreciative of one's style, one's only alternative is to not enroll and wait out that instructor's tenure before graduating. The choice of instructors is exceptionally limited but exceptionally important.
I suggest that if the goal of this department is to continue an orderly educational process, it should concern itself more with progressive education and less with the surviving order.
Gary M. Glandening Salina junior
Down mit der fascist pigs und up mit der new order.!
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