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Tuesday, December 2, 1975
University Dally Kansan
Court choice wise
President Ford made a surprisingly good choice when he nominated John Paul Stevens to fill the Supreme Court by retired Justice William O. Douglas.
Ford had an opportunity to change the course of Supreme Court decisions by naming a conservative to the Court to tip the scales in favor of the conservative Nixon appointees. Appointing a conservative could also have brought Ford some votes in 1976. Instead, he became president, and he judge from Chicago, who has been described as a centrist with an open mind.
"Stevens has never been an activist." Philip B. Kurland, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said after Stevens' nomination. "His politics have always been centrist rather than liberal or conservative."
Kurland and other experts have said the appointment of Stevens would balance the Supreme Court. Stevens would fit ideologically, they said, with Justices Byron White, an Earl Warren Court holdover, and Louis Powell, a Nixon appointee. The two justices are regarded as "swing men," sometimes siding with conservatives on the Court, sometimes liberals.
No great change in the philosophy of the Court is seen with the appointment of Stevens, Kurland said that although the activism of the Warren Court definitely wouldn't expand, it wouldn't diminish either.
Ford made the nomination quickly, because he said it was very important to have a full Court ready for some important decisions it must soon hand down. For example, its recent decision outlawing capital punishment will be reviewed in a North Carolina case. Former Lt. William Calley has appealed his My Lai conviction to the Supreme Court. And the Court has been asked to overrule a decision by Justice Harry A. Blackmun that severely restricts reporters covering a Nebraska murder trial. At stake in that case may be a landmark decision concerning the fine line between a free press and a fair trial.
David Olson
Barring unforeseen developments, Stevens should be quickly confirmed by the Senate. And although there is no one who could replace the great liberal leader Andrew Jackson, his addition of John Paul Stevens will balance on the Supreme Court.
David Olson Contributing Writer
Equal time unequal
When Ronald Reagan announced he was a presidential candidate recently, he became not only the target of a toy pistol, but also the target of Section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934, the "equal time" section.
Under Section 315, television stations that show old Ronald Reagan movies will be liable for equal time demands by other Republican presidential candidates. The same liability will occur when stations broadcast the "Death Valley Days" series narrated by Reagan or any other Reagan app-lication. In response, a fide newscast, news interview, news documentary or on-the-spot coverage of a news event will the equal time provision not apply.
The purpose of Section 315 is to prevent unequal treatment of political candidates by partisan broadcasters. What it also does, however, is to remove editorial judgment from the hands of the broadcaster and impose instead a
"pattern of slide rule journalism in the presentation of political candidates on radio and television," according to the Sigma Delta Chi Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi.
The arbitrary, mechanical nature of this section is clearly evident in the present situation. I wonder how many people really think the late-show appearances of Ronald Reagan in his Hollywood days should be considered when determining equal broadcast opportunity for political candidates?
The section may occasionally be helpful in eliminating "slanted journalism" on the airwaves, but it does so at the expense of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, which says that "Congress shall make laws abridging freedom of speech, or of the press." . . . Section 315 runs counter to the spirit of the First Amendment, and Congress should repeal it.
Paula Jolly Contributing Writer
Paula Jolly
Reagan's backstage wait over
Mary McGrory
WASHINGTON-Hours after he had announced he was a presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan was set upon by an assailant carrying a toy pistol. It was a put-down of sorts. His rival, the incumbent, has faced the real thing.
There are those who see in the toy pistol the appropriate symbol for the Reagan candidacy—alarming when brandished, harmless on inspection.
But Gerald Ford is not one of those. He's scared.
Reagan was asked at the National Press Club when he had decided to make the run. He couldn't remember when. If he had been told, he would him, the honest answer, would have been Gerald Ford.
A study of the President's vapor trails since Reagan began to hint that, despite of his own efforts, he might like to settle in Washington, would have suggested to a far less self-reflecting man he had put the president on the leader of the Western World.
The mere idea put the President into throat-clutching fear. He became a me-too candidate. He tore around the country proclaiming his apathy for bureaucrats, his disdain for big business, his big business, his resolve to do right by the oil companies.
His campaign manager, Bo Callaway, a primitive Southern chosen with an eye to discouraging Reagan, promptly put out a contract on Nelson Rockefeller, the man most hated by those who love Reagan.
Reagan is the real architect of
Ford acted like a man being followed. He took to following Reagan. Reagan went to Hampshire one night. Ford showed up the next day. Reagan went to Dallas. Ford was right on his heels. As the day of the Reagan announcement drew near, Ford dashed to Dixie, and barely made the plane to Paris and the economic conference with conservative Republicans to convince that in his heart he is right.
the "aimie stumbler" image that began to dog the President. To shatter it, Ford threw several high-level officials out the window one Sunday morning and was hit by glass class.
Reagan does not look that formidable to the more objective observer. He is 64 years old. He is unversed in foreign policy, a two-term California governor with a mixed record. His appeal to the 40 per cent of voters who have voted to electate he who says will decide the outcome is not exactly paintable.
His intellectual qualities, as displayed, do not seem to dwarf those of Gerald Ford, and his military affairs is monumentally sketcht.
It is a rare candidate who would admit to not having read the morning papers, and in the process reveal he hadn't seen yesterday's either. Reagan explained he was too busy to care. Edgar Hoover's illegal Americans in his fellow-Americans.
He knows little about New York City beyond thinking its
tax-paying citizens should not be victimized by their foulish political leaders. He hasn't studied the situation.
He was asked about the Pentagon budget, a subject near his heart, but again, the details had eluded him. He hinted at $30 billion might be insufficient, but he didn't know in what regard, because he hadn't had the access.
He doesn't even know a great deal about Gerald Ford, and if he doesn't tell us, he recalled the 11th commandment, that coy California invention which says California has all of ill of another Republic."
He seemed entirely recorced to the reality that "one always has to face the fact that you are not known because of classification."
But just before he went on, Reagan had had fresh evidence that the seriousness with which he is regarded at the White House is contagious. Sen. Charles Percy, a moderate Illinois Republican, has written him a letter warning Reagan
that he would oppose him on the issues because, by Percy's lights, he is not a "mainstream" member of his party.
This could have been the act of a Ford loyalist, or it could have been that of an opportunist who is waiting to jump in if Reagan should make good his unspoken threat of critically wounding Ford in the first two primaries.
But it is a little hard to make Reagan a "kooks" candidate or even a Republican George Wallace when he and the President are so united on the issues that matter to the right. Except on dentente, there isn't a dime's worth of difference.
The crucial difference is that the right-wing believes Ronald Reagan when he says he will dismantle the federal bureaucracy and cut down rolls and move against busing.
to conservatives, Ronald Reagan is the real thing. And that's why Gerald Ford is remembered as "The Man Who Loved America." (c) 1975 Washington Star Syndicate Inc.
Readers Respond / Subsidy cut joins other targets
To the Editor:
As a purchaser of student season tickets for both football and basketball, the controversy and subsidy is of interest to me.
The figures attributed to Ed Rolfs in the Kansan don't add up. Before I make up my mind on the ticket subsidy, I would like to have some questions answered:
1) How much of my student activity fee is paid to KUAC?
2) If KUAC doesn't get the subsidy, will student activity fees be lowered by a comparable amount?
3) If KUAC doesn't get the subsidy, will student activity fees remain at the same level with a resulting increase in funding for other organizations?
I am willing to accept dropping the ticket subsidy if my activity fees would be lower than the amount. I'll use the decrease in my fees to help pay for my ticket. If student ticket prices increase to the point that I can't afford them to the games, I'm on the hill.
I can not accept dropping the ticket subsidy if my activity fees stays at the current level. The ticket subsidy directly benefits students. I have read the long lists of organizations seeking funds from activity fees. Some of these organizations provide a real service to the campus and may represent personal interest groups which involve and benefit only a few students. I would rather see my activity fee spent to subsidize the student ticket price than spend to give a special interest group a free ride.
in student ticket prices will make up for the subsidy loss.
KUAC has a $2.5 million budget. A portion of that budget comes from student ticket sales. A large enough increase
or the subsidy loss. Ed Rolfs argues against the subsidy because the Senate doesn't control how the money is spent. What difference does it make whether the money is spent or investment expense? KU fields very competitive teams on a budget that is small when compared to other major universities that would love to have our level of success.
We need to know the impact of the Senate decision. After the facts are known, we need a referendum. Let the student body decide the ticket subsidy controversy.
The ticket subsidy represents less than six per cent of the UAUC budget and he resigned Ed. Rolhoff member of the KUAC executive board. Until he can point to some specific areas of waste, I am willing to believe KUAC is a good job of allocating its funds.
Bob Schmisseur Plains graduate student
Kansan blasted
Several weeks ago the Iranian Students Association submitted a letter to the Kansan discussing the political and economic conditions in Iran. Oren discussed these with us on the grounds that it wasn't signed by an individual, but by a group; that it dealt with conditions in Iran from a "political slant"; and, because it dealt with conditions of Iranian students, that it was therefore "self-serving."
To the Editor:
name of our organization, and yet DID run an unsigned letter against the February First Movement (FFM) in the Nov. 10 election. The Kansan that given the degree of repression in Iran, Iranian students here aren't eager to put their names to use when they are used against them when they return to their homeland.
The Kansan editor stated to us that "it is a Kansan policy to only run letters that bear the Kansan flag." In this light, it is curious that the Kansan refused to run our letter, which was signed in the
And yet the Kanan is willing to overlook this life and death fact, while at the same time it is holding the FFM against the FFM. Instead of checking with the ISA to see if we, too, would like to run our own election, he asked on request, "the Kanan should we had violated" "policy." Apparently the Kanan has one, two or many policies—some related to opinions it supports, others relating to opinions it opposes.
Apparently there is more to "freedom of the press" than meets the eye. The press is free to publish and to operate at the free disposal of its editors and other powers-that-be. The Kansan is free to pick and select.
The Kansan editor also stated to us that “... the Kansan does not run letters that seek to advance political causes, as this one appears to attempt.” If that one concludes that either the Kansan is a very peculiar notion of what constitutes a “political cause,” or what he really means to say was that the Kansan doesn't run letters that seek to advance certain, partisan political causes, and that the Shockley issue is in fact a political issue? Or the issue of Zionism? Then on what grounds does the Kansan consent to publish certain quite politically slanted letters, while on the other side does the Kansan deny our “freedom” to express our political beliefs?
choose what it will and will not print, free to censure certain political beliefs, while giving others full coverage. But the Kansan has fully demonstrated in our case that freedom of the press doesn't include the freedom of the people to express Iranian Students Association University of Kansas
Editor's note: The original letter was delivered by a person who refused to identify himself. The name of an ISA adviser was given, but the adviser said he had been asked not to group had approved the letter. The letter was then sent to a known ISA member, along with a note explaining why it wasn't printed. Fear of political pressure was reason for why ISA members didn't want to be identified.
All letters submitted for publication in the Kansan must carry identification, even when it is agreed names will be withheld. Names of letter or document written on when the editors believe that the writer might be subject to harm should their names be printed (that was the decision in the letter that follows). Letters accompanied by only the name of an organization will be printed when it can be shown that the author of the group and have been approved for publication by its members.
FFM not alone
Why is everyone pointing a finger at the February First Movement? I am totally against Shockley's appearance on the KU campus and it isn't because I want to be handed to me on the street. I did my own soul searching. As a black employee and a student
To the Editor:
BOY, LEARN YOUR PLACE!
Why do they think I should bow my head
here at the University, I see Shockley as another tool to keep blacks in "the place." BOY. LEARN YOUR LIFE.
When I know I'm their equal instead?
Why should the men say to me,
"What right do you have to
think you are Free?"
When I use my own mind,
And then tell them they stun,
They seem to Look at my face,
and want to say "Boy, you
bend better learn your place!"
They do not like what I find. Because when for myself I think.
had better learn your place:
This poem expresses well my feelings and I'm sure other black students, faculty and staff have also felt the same on the Shockley issue.
To tell me that I have to sit back and listen to someone who says I am genetically inferior is as painful a blow as literally slapping my person, and that blow stings. And to tell me that the chin will some day bear you off for life, or to prove his intelligence if such a theory is adopted drives a knife deep into my guts.
Blacks have enough problems as it is getting equal education in this country and better job opportunities when they have pieces of the intelligence. If Shockley's seeds of "genetic inferiority in blacks" were allowed to settle and grow as Freud's theory of woman being sexually inferior to man was allowed to stay, blacks' chances of ever advancing in this already oppressing society would be smothered out. We would have another myth of inferiority that was not always along with the many myths that are now there and were created to "keep us in our place."
I know there are other blacks who aren't members of the February First Movement and who share my feelings, and it would be unfair to put the blame on them alone.
Name withheld on request
Encore, encore
It is certainly pleasant to read a review of one's efforts as complimentary as that which appeared in the Nov. 17 Kansan, evaluating the recent performance of the Collegium Musicum; Having had the opportunity to display his or her performance myself, I wish to add two points. First, I am very sorry that Mr. Louden, who listed all the readers, left out the name of Donna Barnes. Donna was the only undergraduate among the students at the Middle and Middle English. Not only did she read well—to be willing to appear took a great deal of courage.
Second, as a faculty member,
I am greatly impressed with the
professional quality of David
Corrigan. Mr. Ellender is an assistant
instructor. I note with pleasure
not only his skill as a musician
but also his easy manner of
using all with these talented
people.
Beverly M. Boyd Professor of English
To the Editor:
Zionism rapped
I followed with speca,
comfort and interest the views
expressed by David Radd of
Idaho Falls, Idaho, in your issue
dated Nov. 20, 1975, regarding
anti-Zionism. As an Arab who
works on the Jewish cause,
who respects the faith of others,
I feel that the views expressed
by David Radd should be voiced
loudly in this country, whose
news media and press are mostly dominated by Zionist's ideas and views. The recent emphasis on Zionism with racism proved to the American people and to the international community that those who raise a Zion as an asset have been deemed their evil intentions to conquer the land of others and establish a state based on religion, no longer have a place among us from international scenes.
God's earth is vast and there is room everywhere for worshipers of God and not for warmakers. There exists no promised land for people who claim to be chosen by God and want to disperse, disrupt and displace, take land by force, displace original land inhabitants into refugee camps, drain taxpayers'
pockets and finally under a human rights concept call upon people only of their belief to control and inhabit the land of others.
It is now obvious that religious movements aimed at establishing religious states can no longer survive or help the survival of any state based on religion. Finally God is inseparable from us and we believe and we can worship him where we are. Mecca, Jerusalem and the Vatican are pious places for those who desire to perform their oligarchy once in their life. Such places are not residences but they should not intend to spend the rest of the day at the expense of extirpating so many innocent lives!
Abdelhay Ben-Omran
Derna, Libya, graduate student
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
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