University of Kansas - Jayhawker Yearbook (Lawrence, KS)

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I M B E It

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KI: M; i ii DAM I 1C K OICICIS 6 f- J T. fl - 1

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I N THE BEGINNING THIS ISSUE marks the nineteenth year that the Jayhawker has appeared in the form of a magazine-yearbook. As such, it holds a unique position among American university yearbooks. Most institutions of higher learning publish a single issue yearbook, and no major university other than Kansas publishes more than two issues yearly. So we of the Jayhawker staff believe that the students of KU have in their yearbook something very distinctive. The advantages of a multi-issue yearbook are many. Coverage of student events reaches the student soon after they occur. The rundown on the football squad is available before the season is over instead of appearing during the confusion of spring finals or the heat of summer. Few are the men ' s houses which do not wear thin the pages of the fall issue poring over the pictures of freshmen women and sorority pledge classes in the never-ending search for dates. And it has been said that the same thing happens in the women ' s dorms and sororities. Several years ago the students of Kansas University reaffirmed their desire for the magazine style by decisively defeating in an all-school election a measure designed to reinstitute the single issue book. But if KU students were so satisfied with their multi-issue yearbook, why don ' t other universities adopt this style? The ansv er is that many have tried but for one reason or another returned to conventional style. In many schools the student staff simply was not equal to the task of producing more than one issue a year. Certainly anyone with any experience in journalism knows the work and sweat necessary to meet the many deadlines necessary for a publication the size of a yearbook. Producing four issues a year simply means quadrupling the number of those deadlines. The failure of a regularly enrolled student staff to meet those many deadlines has ruined many schools ' attempts at a magazine-yearbook. Other schools with strict faculty control of publications have found that the university advisors concerned have simply been unwill- ing to expend the energy and accept the responsibility for the additional labor required. In other universities, the staff and advisors have been technically capable of getting the issues out on time but have not been able to keep the magazine style because of student apathy. Their issues have either been too much like a magazine or too much like the conventional yearbook. Here is the basic prob- lem of multi-issue yearbook production. From the broad editorial standpoint the difficulty is one of evaluating and choosing the best points of both the magazine and the conventional yearbook. From many students comes the request for a light, entertaining volume with cartoons, stories, and risque jokes in short, a collegiate New Yorker. Meanwhile, many graduating seniors and faculty members are breath- ing down the staff ' s neck with demands for a regular yearbook split neatly in four parts appearing at equi-distant times during the year. To adopt either plan completely would be to undermine the basic philosophy of the Jayhawker and to lead it down the path of failure along which all other attempts at magazine yearbooks have traveled. So the problem is maintaining the delicate balance between frivolity and ponderosity. With this in mind we of the Jayhawker staff shall endeavor to report accurately the activities of the university during the school year, to clearly portray the beliefs, the personality, and the actions of the present day student, and to reflect those factors in the world situation which vitally affect him. We will do these things in as entertaining a manner as possible without making the Jayhawker over into a leather-bound humor magazine. This, then, is the first issue of the 1952-53 Jayhawker magazine-yearbook; three more will appear during the year. We are, of course, open to any and all suggestions which will make the Jayhawker a more accurate, interesting, and entertaining record of your year at KU. THE EDITOR