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Tuesday, May 10, 1977
University Daily Kansan
Focus on Getting out
Opinions on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Kansas or the School of Journalism
Such sweet sorrow
"Getting out!" Two words that have been on the minds of about 3,000 University of Kansas graduates-to-be for quite some time now.
"Getting out": The standard answer when you ask a senior what his primary goal in life is.
"Getting out'": One of the most frightening and one of the most liberating experiences we'll ever realize.
In two weeks, we seniors will have completed 17 years of instruction. Some of us will opt for another three years, or another seven or eight years of education; the rest of us will
be thrown out into the professional world, students never again.
And as quickly as we can strip off our caps and gowns, KU will become a romantic memory. We'll somehow forget the pains and inconveniences of academics; we'll choose to remember only the friendship, the time and the time KU beat Oklahoma in football.
In the waning moments of this semester, the Kansan turns over the editorial page to a few of its graduating seniors so that they may have a final chance to speak as students. Having the last word is the best part of getting out.
Editor's adieu a rambling rote
I hear someone or something put his flat through the glass on the Captain Fantastic pinball machine at the 7th Spirit the first time I got to it, probably deserved it. It was just deadly on the left side and you couldn't help but loose the ball when it came plummeting down from that crippled right top of the machine. A lonely machine and every quarter I fed it made me hate it more.
Now the old Wizard that the Captain Fantastic replaced was one fine machine. It was a bit rough, but it just getting good on it when they hauled it away and brought in the Fantastic—a tiny modern machine with a glowing artist's eyes. The Ellon John on the backboard.
MAYBE THE fact I can't stand Elton John makes me hate the Fantastic even more.
frustured. I guess there is a lot of Freudian symbolism in the bumps and balls and bonus holes and flippers and tilling. It takes them out, then that the reason one finds sexually frustrated people
four years at *Ku* to want to burn you with that. I was not alone in this stream of consciousness a *in Joyce's* last chapter in *Ulysses*, but I thought that would be a bit too much. I decided instead to
According to CBS's "60 Minutes," pinball fanatics are always sexually or socially
Editor's Note
Jim Bates
playing pinball is that all the sexually satisfied people don't have time for pinball. They're too busy doing other things.
Not that everyone who plays pinball is sexually frustrated. Some of my best friends are in good shape in that department and still feed quarters to them. How do you best friend? Ask the bird in front of Strong Hall whether he's all ready for his trip.
Now I have a horrible confession to make: I used to live in a scholarship hall. That's right, a scholarship hall. Battelfield to be exact. I noticed they finally spelled the hall's name right in this year's bookmark, so maybe times are changing, but when I was living in a scholaill little or living good for one's reputation.
AS YOU may have noticed, this is not the usual end-of-master's Notebook. It looks too many lines and a seamless end-of-year column in my
Scholarship hall residents shackled to the myth that they are all studious or twerp. The truth is that quite a few—maybe some—are not studious. Some of my best friends are scholarship hall or ex-
scholarship hall residents and it hasn't affected their minds that adversely at all.
FOR THE first two years or so but Battenfeld was the center of my life at KU. It was where I studied, slept and parted the bed. I drank just before I began praying to the porcelain God.
And although I didn't learn the facts of life in a scholarship hall (Boy Scout Troop 117 taught me those, I believe), I did get the experience of being around a diverse group of people, from those who knew Mexico by heart to those who could tell Kansas from Mexican grass with their eyes closed.
But gradually and relentlessly Battiefen was superceded by the University Dely Kansan. By now, Flint Hall is the center of my life. It is the place where I spend sometimes sleep. And the people on the paper are the people I usually party with.
The Kansan is a selfish beast that will consume a journalism student completely if he gives it half a chance. You work there every weekday evening and to go Press Club at Herbie's every Friday afternoon. There are invariably parties on either
Friday or Saturday night. There is constant gossip involving staffers and their problems, some of it even true.
RIGHT THIS minute, I am ready to run out of this stupid newsroom with its stupid newspaper and run for the imagined comfort of the real whatever. But I know that, given time, I will miss the place and the people in it, and I'm in a sweet memory or two.
Ah yes, wallowing in sweet memories. That is what commencement and senior columns are supposed to be all about. Regrets at not having done things differently. Depression at leaving old friends and dependable friends. Anxiety at a better way of the life beyond. It is so tempting to get mawkish and sappy about the whole thing and, in some ways, it is the thing to do.
There will be a few moments before May 23 is past that I will make mishawk to a disgusting extent. Then I will snap out of it and study and drink like mad for a while. Then I will go out into the world, for what that's worth, and work and grow old and die.
Sometimes I get mawkish about that, too.
And best of all, it's over
Eighteen years, 382 Hytone spiral notebooks and 1,257 Bidib ink medium point pens in all began, I am leaving school.
Four years, five bank loans and one football game since I first arrived, I am leaving the University of Kansas.
AND THE BEST part of all,
after 22 years, 24 tornadoes and
seven moments worth
remembering. I am leaving
This is good-by to all that.
more books, no more of Teacher's cross-eyed looks.
Life as I have known it is coming to an end. No longer a student, no longer a Jayhawk, no longer the Great American Desert.
This is good by now, but not to have a student any more. No more exams (except for the popquizes of Life), no more having to debate what to study in school." Walters said. "No more pencils, no
for an ashray. I will yearn for the lazy days of college when I could sleep until 3 in the afternoon and take a map at 5.
I WILL miss the ready
Stewart Brann
Editorial Editor
two months? What will it be like to have a regular income—to spend on things other than food, books and crossword looks?
What will it be like to someday laugh at the silly ambitions of college students? In certain ways, though, I'm going to miss life as a student. I miss shall the spur-of-the-moment parties where the host didn't mind your using his dog
wisdom of my instructors. I will miss my very good friends.
It's going to be tough to leave KU and Lawrence, where people somehow think they're a cut above the rest, where leisure malls and indoor shopping malls are passe.
I want to go someplace where
I want to things more important
than basketball and
Greek Week. I want to walk into
a grocery store someplace where there is no Jayhawk poster. I want to go someplace where there isn't a 3rd Street. No kidding, though, I may never have seen the miss Lawrence's culture and heritage—they're something to be proud of.
I WILL MISS the splendid hamburgers at Vista Drive-in. And I will miss the hills and woods that spice the local landscape. Sometimes they gave me goosebumps.
It's going to be tough to leave Kansas, where the summers are unbearable and the liquor laws are incredible.
I want to flee the pervasive odors of cattle feed and burning alfalfa, to escape Republicans and Methodists and Rocky Mountain oysters who climb mountain —we all know what they are.)
It's Saturday, Sept. 16, 1997.
"I remember my freshman English teacher. He was the strangest person, well, one of the strangest persons I ever encountered in awaherence. In he statement on the social and economic deficiencies of contemporary American society."
'77 grad returns, sees all not changed at KU
what we had known as the Jawhawk Cafe, but the goods and services it offered to KU students were much more since our days and nights there.
"I WISH I had the money I spent in the 'Hawk. I probably could have bought a couple of books." My money I dropped in the ones
I WANT to eat fresh shrimp for once.
THE GIRLS past and we returned to earth, contemplating rational thoughts walk to Memorial Stadium.
"KU never lost to K-State in football while I was in college," she said. "The statement might cause the boys from K-State to foolishly raise their bets. In my four years, I scored a combined score of 101.41."
"Here come the GSP-Corbian girls," one of my friends said, and I thought they would have hollered something at them instead of just watching them. "They sure didn't make me think that when I was a freshman."
Our attention then focused on a large group of students, ap- pared to the small group at their grills out of the Orear Bars and their Grill. The Orear replaced
we were told, then planted grass and shrubs on it.
"THE STATE legislators loved it. Every time KU's budget was being considered, Archie would host a garden party where they were in their coffee. KU always got its entire budget request."
Brant Anderson
Editorial Writer
We walked past the new Kansas Union building, which a militant group had tried to dismantle by blowing it into orbit in 1989. The new structure was a picture of the future, 20 stories high and overlooking the Spencer Art Museum, finished when I finished college.
Someone commented that Archie Dykes, who was chancellor when we were in school, had outlawed traffic on KU's main street and turned it over to the buildings and grounds department. B & G quickly covered the concrete with dirt,
I continued talking, but it seemed that my cohorts were more interested in a large group of women walking south on Ohio than they were about my praise for Nolan Cromwell.
Just as I handed my ticket to the attendant, a familiar roar filled the air. It wasn't the crowd, cheering for its Fighting Jayhawks. It was Old Faithful, yes, KU's infamous whistle. Unlike most of us, it had withstood the test of time.
"NOLAN HAD to be the best running quarterback in college ball." I was, spewing forth the ball and then pushing Coors I was drinking. "I'll never forget the day he dove into the end zone to put KU ahead of Oklahoma in 1975. He would keep to him scoring from scoring."
As Memorial Stadium came into view, its 100,000 seats already nearly full, I remembranced. "My team wasn't allowed to play football with men. It seemed silly now, but at the time I guess it made sense. I realized that a lot had changed, but not that much had changed."
20 years since I was graduated from the University of Kansas. The opening kickoff of the KU-KState football game is still an hour away, and several other alums and I are standing at the door in the stands placing bets on the game and talking over the good 'oil days.
that used to be there.
Remember the time. . . ."
Ah, Kansas! I hate you and
I am, and I miss you too. You
unemployment rate, and your
lack of pretention. And
especially, I will miss your
help me helped me to reach this point.
It's been pretty swell, all in all. I wonder what comes next.
It was getting close to game time and we could hear the manatee's whimmy as their walk from the Campanule to the stadium. We started up 14th Street Jayhawk Boulevard, where we might have a park along a street.
College worth the experience
This year, about 3,000 students will be graduating from KU. Those who payed in the first semester approximately $10,000 in their four years as an undergraduate. And this $10,000 is supposed to be the down payment on properly completed success out in the real world.
A psychology major will go on to be a world-famous psychologist, just as a journeyman in the field; another Woodward or Bernstein. Those who have elected to go to college are lucky, because they have an insured career for their lives. Right? Wrong.
AN ACQUAINTANCE of mine who graduated summa cum laude from some fancy women's school out East is now pushing cocktails in a Kansas City bar.
Another of my intelligent friends (University of
Michigan, '76) is slowly starving to death in New York City.
My cousin the journalism major is working in a bank. And plenty of other expensively
much less. And not that many people were going to college. An engineering major could have been in law or lawyers were snapped up by
ONCE, A college education was the middle American's dream. Ging to the state board, he didn't have better job than Paper-the-auto-mechanic or Mama-the-factory-worker. "My son the college graduate," they could say. "My brother graduated." She married a doctor.
educated friends of mine are waiting to get into graduate, law or medical school because they just can't find a job.
But back them, if one could pay the tuition, one payed much
Diane Wolkow
Editorial Writer
firms as fast as they came off the assembly line. And a doctor of philosophy was considered a veritable genius.
NOW, OUT of all the psychology majors across the country, perhaps 7 per cent will be hired as reporters, radio or a psychology-related field. Same with the communications majors—a mere 14 per cent will be hired as reporters, radio or a psychology-related people or public relations people.
BUT WORSE yet, those graduates of professional schools who were lucky enough to find jobs in their chosen field had the right problems and were inadequate. Their complaints were that students in professional schools learned a great deal of useless material but they knew many other things that they needed to know for their jobs.
The fields that people go to college to study are glutted.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the biggest demands in the 1970s are for stenographers, secretaries, retail trade salesmen, building managers, and are hardly jobs that a well-educated college graduate would want to apply for.
So is college really worth it? It's a big expense and involves much emotional trauma.
Many students never crack it. They drop out after one horrible week. Others survive, but they physical and emotional wrecks.
The last remnant reminisces
The Kansas Union burns down; Chancellor E. Laurence Chalmer's office complex is invaded by students protesting the Vietnam war; KU is virtually shut down by violent demonstrations — demonstrate that start with bottles, bricks, and rockets; headgearups, but swiftly move to tear gas and bullets—two KU students killed either by police or snipers.
I guess you had to have been there, at KU during the violence of the late 80s and early 90s. And you see, I seem catatonic now, by comparison.
prominent at the University; they are now offended by the label "chick" or "Like" becomes the most often used conjunction, replacing "uh." "Far out" "right on" and "that's cool"
THE IADE the salutaries of the post-adolescent period, that time of life where one acquires not only knowledge, but also new skills, attitudes and ideas. A 1969 study entitled "The Impact of College" states that those persons who attended colleges experienced declining academic pride and prejudice, together with decreasingly conservative attitudes toward public issues and growing sensitivity to aesthetic experiences.
VERN MILLER, Kansas attorney general, basks in the national limelight as he leaps out of the trunk of a police car, which he uses to drug busts. The busts be more effective as the "telephone
will find a job upon graduation, are a vital part of the American experience.
tree”—county courthouse
employees get the word and call
four persons each, who call four
persons each, and so on—becomes more effective,
warning the ever-increasing
Chicken, 28 cents a pound;
hamburger, 69 cents a pound; a six-pack of Old Milwaukee Beer for 86 cents; gasoline hits a high of 35 cents a gallon. Nobody notices.
The study also found that during four years of higher education, the student became more independent, self-confident and readier to express impulses.
numbers of marijuana, hashish and LSD users of rumored busts. Rumors are frequent.
Bill Sniffen
Editorial Writer
WOMEN BECOME
come to dominate the vocabulary of the select.
Those select few are spotted ever more frequently, identified by long hair, patched jeans, peace symbols and beads. They know each other; the shackets of Gailight Tavern (now the green shacks of the Continuing Education center; and the Rock
Still others of that era have knit themselves tightly into groups who can be seen at the Biersturbe or the 7th Spirit now. The similarities are apparent; the differences not so apparent.
HARD DRUG use is up: a
Chalk (now the Catfish Bar and Grill, extensively rebuilt).
IT WAS a time for violence; a time for protest against anyone in power; a time for dropping out of school. Many of us did.
Lawrence is a different place.
I guess you had to have been there.
And then, almost as quickly as it began, it itched. Nixon resigned. U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq. The cause was zone.
never, unere isn't much left.
Not much to get excited about anymore; putting your first through a crummy pinch balloon. You can probably anybody want to get. And you need a few drinks to get up the nerve to do that.
We got jobs--anywhere we could find them. Some of us stayed out of school awhile; some re-entered quickly. Chairmen left; Dykes arrived years ago. It seems longer.
So is the use of alcohol. That 25-cent draw now costs 50 cents, and the glass is smaller. Mixed drinks, once the sourcce the generation, have become the more intense -and easy-way to get high.
And for the few who have retained the scars of the '69-72 period, there isn't much left.
AND THOSE who become instilled with high ideals and hopes during their freshman year leave the ivory tower only to face criticism as worthless as a high school diploma was 19 years ago.
What then? Americans still flock to campuses in ever-increasing proportions. University is, in the opinion of America, the most logical step after high school graduation.
S
gram of cocaine has nearly tripled in price; herein, when available, is in heavy demand. Marijuana doubled; use of hallucinogens is down; downer and speed use is drastically
But it's far more than that. Although colleges and universities, no longer can assure a student that he or she
THESE ACQUired characteristics, as much as any specific amount of knowledge a student has to represent the tributes that make him or her more successful in an endeavor, not just in the field of science.
College, for all those hated all-nighters, finals and flunk-out courses, is an enjoyable and worthwhile experience. Experience plays a role in play out dreams before encountering life as it really is.
Or perhaps it's the place to learn knowledge, characteristics and precations that will sustain oneself later in life, when all the homemade factory, office and store has closed. Saying, "Is that all there is?"
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Purdue is the university of Kansas daily Augusta, Missouri. The university does not pay any extra fee except Saturday and Sunday. Holiday meals and July 4假期的 Saturday and Sunday will be made by mail as a宴会 or $15 a year in Decimal. Students are also required to yearlate the county. Student subscriptions are free.
Editor Jim Bates
Business Manager Janice Clements