Seen at a Lawrence caucus Tuesday — someone in a “Barack Chalk Jayhawk†shirt. The subgroup of Obama supporters came together via Facebook, naturally. And the candidate knows about them. “So, you’re the Barack Chalk Jayhawks,†Obama said when he encountered the youthful group last summer at a Kansas City, Mo., event. (No word, though, on whether he knows anything about the University of Kansas’ “Rock Chalk Chant,†which Teddy Roosevelt is said to have called the greatest college chant he’d ever heard.)
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Barack knew enough about Kansas to pronounce it El Dor-RAY-Do. I’ll bet he knows about “Rock Chalk Jayhawk, KU.”
It’s such a unique, 19th Century chant. A tradition that echoes both the state motto and the absurd (at the time) aspiration that KU had when they chose their school colors: (Harvard) Crimson and (Yale) Blue.
I want one of those shirts, might make some good sleep wear. :D
MH,
It wasn’t totally absurd. KU’s Ivy League alum founders created a very respected university, the third best public university west of the Mississippi, after the Universities of California (which had only one campus, at Berkeley) andWisconsin, as of 1900. KU’s early professors were underpaid, but they did amazing work.
After WWII, KU chancellors Deane Malott and Frank Murphy were nationally renowned university administrators. Unfortunately, their pleas to the Kansas legislature to fund modernization to bring new science research to KU fell on deaf ears. They were looking to the future. The legislature had a hick attitude of, “This is the best economy we’ve ever had here, if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.”
Today, KU has been left in the dust by several individual University of California campuses that didn’t even exist in the 19th century, the Universities of Illinois,Washington, Colorado, Minnesota, TX, Arizona and Iowa, as well as TX A&M. Washington University in St. Louis, a world-class science research university, was a theological seminary when KU was a university.
The Universities of Utah and New Mexico now have larger federally-funded research budgets in science and engineering than KU. Actually, Colorado’s second-ranked university, Colorado State, has a larger federally-funded research budget than KU, and CSU doesn’t even have a med school.
Fify years ago, KU’s chancellor Franklin Murphy had a KU B.A.(’20, when KU was a first-tier American university) and a University of Pennsylvania (Ivy League) M.D. Today KU’s chancellor Robert Hemenway has a University of Omaha (municipal university, ranked third after NU and Creighton, a peer to the Universities of Wichita and Kansas City) B.A., and a Kent State University (originally the Kent State Normal School) 3-year “mini Ph.D.” for Ohio community college English instructors.
There was potential here. There just wasn’t enough to permanently sustain a dream of academic excellence in a surrounding society that decided that mediocrity’s “price was right” for this state.
Correction: should be SECOND-best west of the Mississippi. Madison, Wisconsin is EAST of the Mississippi.
So MPS, might that indicate that Kansas’ aversion to science has been around a veeeeeery long time?
kfg, I’ll take that a step further; the Kansas aversion to supporting education has been around for a long time, science being just a subset.
Part of the problem, as I see it, was the strong populist political tradition in Kansas which thought that it was better to have a number of colleges and universities of relatively equal achievement which the children of residents could attend (hence, the “open admissions” policy which existed until recently) rather than a “flagship” school with a number of schools that might perhaps be held in lower regard within the academic community, the flagship school being one, naturally, that not every Kansas student might be admitted to and succeed in.
For whatever it is worth, I think, in looking around the country at various public university systems, the right choice is to have a “flagship” school with so-called lesser schools (see, e.g., North Carolina; Wisconsin; Missouri).
… in the light of recent events, there is no consequence of turning a blind eye to what senator Obama has to say on the events depicted in this campaign. Although no freedom can be justified …
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I have a really cool Obama KU shirt.
If anyone wants one I’ll tell you how to get them. It has a pic of Obama and says Rock Chalk Barack.
e-mail me if you’re interested: stillshopping@everestkc.net
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[...] WE Blog » The Wichita Eagle Editorial Department Blog wrote an interesting post today on For those who like KU and ObamaHere’s a quick excerptFor those who like KU and Obama Posted6:00 a.m. Seen at a Lawrence caucus Tuesday — someone in a “Barack Chalk Jayhawk” shirt. The subgroup of Obama supporters came together via Facebook, naturally. And the candidate knows about them. “So, you’re the Barack Chalk Jayhawks,” Obama said when he encountered the youthful group last summer at a Kansas City, Mo., event. (No word, though, on whether he knows anything about the University of Kansas’ “Rock Chalk Chant,” which Teddy Roosevelt is said to [...]
hick name…
…
Barack Obama gives freedom speech…
… in the light of recent events, there is no consequence of turning a blind eye to what senator Obama has to say on the events depicted in this campaign. Although no freedom can be justified ……