University of Kansas - Jayhawker Yearbook (Lawrence, KS)

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5(5 THE JAYHAWKER The chancellor ' s reception A Play by Play Account of the Chancellor ' s Yearly Party for the Students and Faculty by BETTE WASSON WELL, the annual Chancellor ' s Recep- tion has gone down on the pages of K. U. history. A fine reception it was too. That is, as fine as receptions go ; but you know receptions they are none too good at their best! But nevertheless, I believe that all the students who braved the mob to meet our dear chancellor (or to keep peace with the actives who said they had to or else) will agree with me that a good time was had by all, even if you didn ' t do anything but shake hands and stomp time to music. Most of the new students who usually think of receptions as quite formal and sedate affairs probably received a shock when they found the front door locked. The ones who weren ' t too easily dis- couraged (and from the looks of the ' crowd there were quite a few) prowled around and found that they were to use the side entrance. For the benefit of the timid souls there was a welcoming committee. It was here that you met the first line. I see now why they had you stand in all of those lines for registration and enrollment it was just to break you in gently for the Chancellor ' s Reception. Well, we can take it I hope. After hours and hours of talking about the weather to your date, and staring at the back of the person in front of you, you finally arrived at your destination, the aforementioned desti- nation being a long table where a few obliging men and women endeavored to make out name tags for the people who desired to be recepted. I wonder what they ' d do if many people had names like Pfuetze or Stoltenberg. Well, you guess, ' cause my feet are still tired. All this writing of names business took place in the cafeteria, and from there you wandered up into the lounge that is if you were lucky enough to squeeze in. Here everyone was milling around like a bunch of walking place cards. I don ' t know if I was overcome by the heat or just what, but I just stood still and looked around, not really knowing what to do. I must have looked pretty dazed because pretty soon one of the helpful Jay Janes tripped over to me and asked me if I was looking for the end of the line. I told her that I thought I was. Well, she said, I think you ' ll find it behind that gentleman in the gray suit. Gentle- THE DANCE FOLLOWING THE RECEPTION man. Ye Gods, I never knew that there were so many gray suits in the state of Kansas. I finally gave up looking for the end of the line and concluded that the room was just one long line full of twists and turns. Upon a little investigation this proved to be true. I thought that I would wander around until the line got a little shorter, but every way I turned I seemed to be cutting through the line. And talk about dirty looks ! Everyone seemed to think I was trying to chisel a place in line. I was nearly at my wits end when I finally spied a deserted divan. I took my life in my hands and tore madly over to it, regardless of looks, lines or any- thing else. From the divan I had a pretty good view of all that was going on. It was quite a surprise to find that the boys outnumbered the girls about three to one. You know boys don ' t usually go in for these functions. I guess they were just tuning up for the open houses. Well, if tuning was all they needed, they sure got their A ' s sounded on this deal. From my haven of rest I could also watch the receiving line. You know I ' ll bet that receiving was hard on the pro- fessors, because, they didn ' t have the registration and enrollment lines to lim- ber them up. However, they seemed to get along O. K. and most of the men even looked pretty comfortable in their tuxs. From the length of time some of the students spent talking to some of the profs I judged that apple polishing had started already well, there is no time like the present. About that time I started looking around for the end of the line again. You know, I actually don ' t think that the line was one inch shorter. I began to wonder if some of the stags were going through the line twice from force of habit. Just then I heard faint strains of music. Aha, I thought, I ' ll show them, I ' ll fix their wagons I ' ll amble upstairs and enjoy a few dances before the crowd sets in. But was I ever wrong? Just ask me. Well the answer is yes with a capital Y. The crowd downstairs wasn ' t any smaller, and yet the crowd in the ballroom was larger than the one I had just left. I ' m sure I can ' t figure it out, and I shan ' t try, I ' ll leave such problems to Ripley. Crowd or no crowd, the dance was plenty O. K. It was a lot of fun seeing people you hadn ' t seen since last year, and meeting people that you never dreamed you would meet. Somehow at a thing like (Continued on page 74)

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OCTOBER, 1935 55 Wide open house A representative of the male element discusses the perennial social plague I [ N the past few weeks many of the K. U. sororities have held open houses for the purpose o f introducing their new pledges and many of their actives to the Hill ' s men- folk. To those who were fortunate enough to stay home and study instead of attending these merry-go-rounds a few words of enlighten- ment are in order. At the average sorority house the gates open at 9:00 and the early comers flock down a long receiving line shaking hands with housemothers, club presidents, and blushing, gushing neophytes. Then after the boys have been thus far snared the fun starts. Red Blackburn, Wayne Wright, Louie Kuhn, or one of the other top- notch Hill bands, play good music which is too bad because nobody dances. The boys that are in the first line trenches choose partners and advance toward the open space. Standing with a girl thus wedged in most of us look for help and find men like Frank Warren, Bud Ranney, or someone else and, alas, find them in our same predicament. Soon someone cuts in as a matter of course and we scamper to a corner to sympathize with our friends. After this goes on for too long a time the party is over and the boys tell the house-mothers what an enjoyable evening it was. Now you see why anyone is smart to stay home and study on open house night. Why this custom continues to exist among the other sane traditions of the University of Kansas is a mystery. So many better plans for introducing the girls could be substituted for the present method. For example, why not let the Women ' s Pan- Hellenic rent the auditorium for the eve- ning and allot fifteen minutes to each sorority. The boys could sit on the ground floor and see everything. Then in alpha- betical order, the Alpha Chis first and so on, the sororities could take the stage and have each new girl come forward and present a short bit of entertainment. For instance, can ' t you picture Dorothy Fry saying, And now boys Tib Car- ruth will recite The Vil- lage Blacksmith ' . Or perhaps Frances Bruce would introduce: Mary K. Frith will now play ' The Old Grey Mare ' for you on the piano. Cer- tainly the boys would learn who the girls are this way and everyone would have a good time. The new girls never seem to remember the names of the boys they meet anyway so why should they be for- mally introduced. Admission might even be charged and the receipts used to bribe off housemothers when the actives get in late. Another plan is not to do away with open houses, but to have them literally. The girls could advertise their open house and then on the chosen night all of them leave town for the evening. When the boys arrived they would find the sorority house deserted and cheese, cold meats, and other delicacies in abundance. The evening could be spent playing cards or singing songs and a good time would be had by all. Certainly this would build up the sorority in the eyes of the get-around boys. Still these plans will I T go for naught. A K 5 v campus such as ours, crowded with Joe Col- leges and Esquire copy- cats cannot get along without these feminine mad-houses. Some of the gluttons for this sort of frivolity ' even go so far as to have hour dances for girls in their fraternity houses. This practice certainly calls to mind those dashing, romantic, hey-hey college movies. That ' s probably where the boys goth the idea which is bad enough. At any rate there are enough of this type of college men in circulation to make the sorority open house a permanent menace. In the year 1940 the P. S. G. L. has already made plans to hold forums on open house night to draw the crowds away and make these plagues die a lingering death. Such topics as The Love Life of the Paramaecium will be used to lure the easy marks to the forums. Picket lines will be formed around the sorority houses and the P. S. G. L. will station very glib takers in the paths of any sorority-minded young men. Such will be the sorry fate of the open house if all reasonable by LLOYD MORGAN j ( means fail. Even if the i institution of the open house were done com- 7 pletely away with, ninty- s five per cent of the mas- y culine faction could manage very easily with no substituting plan. The other five per cent probably would suffer the ill effects of a definite personal loss. Everyone knows this five per cent there is no need to steal the Sour Owl ' s stuff and print their names. They like to see their names in print anyway. Those of you who have never been to an open house should by all means attend one next year to satisfy your curi- osity. Remember everyone is invited the more crowded it is, the better the girls like it. Yet when your first open house is over you will unconsciously associate it with packed street cars or circus crowds and your natural curiosity ' will be forever abated. No ordinary stay- at-home individual could enjoy an excur- sion into a sorority house at such a time. When you have attended your first open house you will undoubtedly fall into line with the anti ' s unless you are one of the unfortunate five per cent pray it isn ' t so. Next fall there will probably bs no change in the system. Nothing that had been proposed will be done and the open houses will draw the same large crowds they always have. So bear up, men, and let your pledges next year fall into the same abyss of long receiving lines, blaring bands and sardine-packed dance floors. Some day, and the time is not far off, the open house in its present form will cease to exist and nearly every- one but the girls will be happy. Let us all look forward with eager jf pleasure to the passing of this I J?T old and pointless institution A -S so little can be said in favor r ' i P en houses and so much C against their very underlying principles.

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OCTOBER, 1935 57 The college student looks at war An Unprejudiced Article on One of the Great- est Problems That Youth Will Inevitably Face by WILLIAM UTERMOHLEN AT THIS TIME, as at a time little over twenty years ago, there is an imminent prospect of another European war, with its probable effect of involv- ing the whole world during its course, and the cause of peace is at the most critical crisis it has known since that time. Any such a war will inevitably affect the United States, perhaps only in an economic way, perhaps to an extent far surpassing that of the last one. As leaders of the nation in the near future, college students should feel an especial interest and responsibility in these affairs, and to stimulate that attitude is the pur- pose of this article. I think that it will be taken for granted to say that we as a whole are quite strongly for peace. The expe- rience of the United States in the World War should have taught us that trouble is all that war brings, even to the vic- torious side. The present-day war debt situation, with foreign nations unable to pay their debts to us because they are spending the money for armaments, is only one small example of this fact. The subject of the cost of war, in lives, money, and lowering of cultural standards, is almost a trite one; and yet wars continue to wreck the lives of men and of coun- tries. The latest and best authority for col- lege student sentiment towards war and war problems is the recent poll, con- ducted by the Literary Digest. Sum- marizing its results briefly, this poll showed: That sixty-eight per cent of all students voting believed that the United States could stay out of another war; eighty-four per cent said that they would fight for their country if she were in- vaded and eighteen per cent if she were the invader ; thirty-seven per cent believed in a navy and air force second to none as a way of staying out of war; ninety-one per cent advocated government control of manufacture and distribution of muni- tions and armaments and eighty-two per cent believed in government conscription of all resources of capital and labor in time of war; while the vote on whether the United States should enter the League of Nations was practically even, for and against. The University of Kansas vote showed her students were somewhat more for the cause of peace than the nation as a whole, and much more in favor of entry into the League. Thus, so far as it was indicative, the poll showed a general pacifistic trend of thought. Why, then, does this situation exist, in which we want peace and have war in its place? It is because no one can agree with anyone else on how peace should be attained; energy necessary to further the cause of peace is expended in futile argument. The result is talk and inac- tivity and more war. The United States and Great Britain hold the key positions in the world peace situation today, and of these, the United States is the more important. Many students believe that if the United States would enter the League, with a policy of aggressive action, she could preserve world peace. But how far should she go in this policy? Should she be willing to go to war for the sake of a cause as she professedly did in the last war? Or should she preserve an attitude of absolute neutrality and aloofness from foreign affairs, as some think? Or should she follow a middle course of economic sanctions, through the use of embargoes and stopping of sources of credit? Or should she have a responsibility at all for what goes on in the world outside of her boundaries? And, granted that there is an ideal solution to the problem, how should the people be brought to feel that it is the right way? The writer thinks that the United states should enter the League, with ex- emptions from the military sanctions clause now in the League Covenant. In the world of today, we cannot continue to live in the isolated state advocated by Washington and still thundered out by standpatters. He thinks that military sanc- tions are worse than useless as a meth- od of ensuring peace, and that the logical and best course for the United States to follow in case of a foreign war would be one of strict economic sanctions. The neutrality resolution recently passed by Congress provides for an embargo on munitions only in case of war ; an effective economic sanctions program would place an embargo on all supplies, and credit as well, to all warring nations. Comments on the poll quoted above have disclosed several interesting fea- tures of it not apparent on the surface. One is that a vote for peace or a declara- tion of intention not to bear arms, when voted in a quiet peace-time, and what the individual who cast that vote will do in case war is declared, and the myriad influences of the clergy, the administra- tion, and the militarists are brought to bear on him through the press and the radio, are two separate and probably op- posite things. This brings up the ques- tion of the actual nature of the interest that most college students have in peace; and the sad fact is evident that in most cases it is an entirely passive one. It can- not be too strongly said that this passive attitude is the greatest block to the tri- umph of peace. Until people will become actively interested in it, peace will re- main only a theoretical thing. Some assail those who declare they will not support their country in case she declares war as being unpatriotic and dis- loyal. But what is real patriotism? Is it blind obedience to an undemocratic mili- tary authority, or is it trying to serve your country for her best interests ? Is one who goes to war for his country in this era of civilization loyal to her best interests? These are the questions that the youth of today must answer. In conclusion, I think that the bring- ing-about of a peace sentiment that will endure in the United States cannot be accomplished over night; that such a result will be accomplished only by pa- tient years of education over several gen- erations, and that there will be many bitter disputes before men agree on peace. And yet I also think that war is not in- evitable as many others think; and hope that the common sense and ideals of the better and truer American people will establish the peace-cause as a permanent monument of their culture and civiliza- tion, and that ultimately the whole world will join with her in this movement.