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Thursday, January 19, 1978
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansas editorial staff. Stated columns represent the views of only the writers.
Walker 2; students 0
University of Kansas students were understandably upset last semester to learn that their pockets would be picked for the proposed renovation of Memorial Stadium. The school's athletic director, eventually was pressured into scaling down the more extravagant parts of his plan.
Now it is glaringly apparent that in students' initial preoccupation with hammering out a $1.8 million compromise plan, not all of the right questions about the renovation were asked. More seriously, however, not all of the possible consequences of the renovation were pointed out by those who masterminded it.
Until Dec. 13, Walker apparently was the only person on campus who knew that the renovation would prevent holding the annual Kansas Relays in Memorial Stadium. And strangely enough, why was it never mentioned publicly that the renovation might prevent seniors from holding commencement in the stadium?
WALKER PICKED the first week of finals to launch his bombshell that the relays were to be canceled. The relays' student coordinators and other members of the relays committee were especially surprised; after working on the event since September, they were given no advance warning of the cancellation.
Similarly, Steve Leben, student body president and a member of the University of Kansas Athletic Corporation board, said that to his knowledge no members of the board had been informed of the cancellation before Walker announced it.
The relays were restored only after nine days and several emergency meetings of the relays committee. The restoration, moreover, focused on a makeshift, watered-down version of a traditional University event. Rather than being held in Memorial Stadium, the relays will be flung to the University's new southern campus, the University of Oklahoma. In addition, Haskell, Emporia State University and the Shawnee Mission school district have been pressed into service.
THE HISTORY and traditions of the relays aside, keeping them out of Memorial Stadium also hinders their fringe benefit of attracting high school seniors to the University. Recruitment to the University takes many forms, and getting seniors into Lawrence is a potent one. It seems somewhat ludicrous for Bob Timmons, head track coach, to say that the renovations are important enough to have priority over the use of the stadium—especially in view of the fact that the renovations were conveniently
scheduled around the football schedule, not the track season.
Walker cites two reasons for his original decision to cancel the relays altogether. The first reason, he says, is that construction on the stadium should not be delayed to allow public events. The second justification, according to Walker, is that a delay allows for the stadium contractors is afraid of potential liability if public events are held while construction is in progress.
THE FIRST reason falls of its own dead weight. Memorial Stadium belongs to the entire University community, not just to athletic department officials who can arbitrarily decide that football takes priority over so-called public events. Those events include commencement, which for seniors won't be possible this spring if the construction ultimately is designated more important than their graduation.
The question is more than speculative. It reflects the lack of planning involved in a $1.8 million project. It reflects the appalling lack of knowledge students have about a project for which they must help pay. It reflects the lack of training as the ones on relays and commencement, which are asked to proceed in the dark for months.
The insurance rationale is intriguing. The University, in dealing with its contractors, normally makes an effort to know something about the parties with which it deals. When, specifically, did Walker learn that the contractors are presumably prohibited by the insurers from having the relays in the stadium?
A REMOTE possibility supposedly exists that if weather permits, commencement for seniors still may be possible in Memorial Stadium. Walker, meanwhile, has helpfully noted that current construction may have been slowed down by the recent cold weather. The company says it is working on a project and is looking into finding an alternative site. Even under ideal conditions, the renovations are not expected to be done until September.
Perhaps it might be wise to repeat what Walker had to say on Nov. 1, 1977, in a meeting with the Student Senate Sports Committee and interested students:
"Contrary to what some people think, we really don't have anything to hide in the athletic department and only rarely answer questions about people informed." The biggest problem we have is communication.
0868 We are committed to being a first-class institution."
And the right to know, after all, is what a first-class institution is all about.
I don't know who the first to conceive the idea—Chancellor Archie R. Dykes, his secretary or the boy who brought his lunch up from the basement vending machines. Now, in retrospect, the idea presets what happens at the academic decline at the University of Kansas and enshrining Dykes in the Strong Hall of Fame.
Switch causes library success
I refer, of course, to that dramatic decision to switch the duties of Jim Ranz and Clyde Walker. Walker was named the athletic director. Ranz assumed the job of athletic director.
The switch took place in early 1978, and it must be said at the outset that Walker had an advantage. The Kansas Legislature had voted KU more than $6 million for library improvements. With that, Walker was off.
Two years later, the University libraries had reversed their deteriorating condition, enlarged their services, remodeled their facilities and
were rast becoming a powerhouse in the Big Eight Conference and the nation.
John Mitchell
Editorial writer
WHEN ASKED the secret of his success, Walker was modest as usual. "We had a lot of problems when I took this job," he said. "We need time to rebuild. But I'm sure not going to let KU come in last."
Many people agree that Walker's program of actively recruiting top library assistants from across the country with his staff can do more for the tide, KU's new staff of shelvers can run the stacks in an average of nine minutes flat. The circulation desk first teams up with the tide to force women a minute. The book-repair squad—specialists at fixing worm,
broken bindings—gives Kansas the best rebound total in the conference.
The increased programs and services came in part from heightened legislative awareness of the University libraries' problems. But Walker's innovations in library funding including the formalization of the Williams Reading F and, also have bolstered the program, Walker said.
"THE SECRET of fund-raising is to get the alumni interested in the work of the school and to have an independent corporation, practically free from University control and answerable only to itself, and put it to work by granting a scholarship it raises help for our scholarships.
"Those who contribute a large amount get preferred study carrels in a special section called the Erudition Club," Walker said. "They get first access to new volumes and they have their own card catalog."
"We're thinking of building a special glassed-in section for their theses and dissertations, but we haven't decided how to get the money yet," Walker said.
When asked about the possibility of raising incident fees to finance the work, he said, "We're looking into it, but we have our Goal, our goal, though, is to make KU No. 1."
KU libraries haven't yet achieved that goal, but in the AP library rankings they have taken over eighth place, ahead of Notre Dame and Virginia.
THE NEWS is not all good, though. Recently, women have been complaining that the program of women assistants is not funded nearly as well as the men's. The problem has be aggravated by the Student Senate's withdrawal of a subsidy for women assistants, leaving them to their own devices.
In addition, it has been charged that Dean Walker is not disclosing all information on receipts from copy machines and overdue fines. He has also suggested that the matter board and has suggested that the matter is really too complicated to publish.
Otherwise, library progress is booming. Watson Library has expanded across its lawn and now borders directly on Jayhawk Boulevard. Old Green Haldan is a quiet corner of houses in what used to be the law library. The most court room is Walker's office.
THRONGS TURN out every Saturday afternoon to see the University's crack research teams, the Jaybooks, meet with Big Eight schools in term-paper competition. Season library-card sales—another Walker innovation—are high.
The switch has not brought joy to all. Workers in the post-Walker athletic department now complain of neglect and underfunding. The school is in dire need of a new Allen Field House. Storage space for equipment is scant, and the buildings are beginning to deteriorate. Many employees are not competent, and those who are find obstacles in archaic methods and outdated performance at KU is down as a result.
Up to now, there was little that could be done. The University of Kansas Athletic Corporation practically was vaporized when the Library Corporation was formed, and funds are not forthcoming. The university's support group, is largely fundless and powerless. The Kansas Legislature has been unsympathetic.
But because of a recent public-relations campaign, the plight of the athletic department is becoming more widely known. One cause for optimism is the latest proposed budget, which gives the athletic department more than $8 million for the next fiscal year. The governor restored that allocation over the objections of the state budget director and it is a large amount, it is not so much a solution as a beginning. The University can now commence the job of lifting its agitating athletic program to the prominence a major university should have.
Consumer movement becoming self-destructive
By ROSS K. BAKER
N.Y. Times Features
"Willow Swainswere in April
Speaking to the University in April 1966, President Theodore Roosevelt observed that "the men with the muck rake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck."
The eternal truth of the sentiment that reform, unrestrained, is a variety of fanaticism is borne out by the confrontation between Ralph Nader and Joan Chybrok, National Highway Traffic Safety Director, and former director of Congress Watch, a Nader-created lobbying organization.
Contemporary American reformism is in the act of consuming its young. Having succeeded to a remarkable degree in placing people identified with consumerism and public-interest activities in the Carter administration, the former administration tacking and repudiating their erstwhile colleagues for their moderation in the pursuit of reformist objectives.
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THE ISSUE in the Nader-
Claybrook clash—he said that she should resign—was the alleged willingness of Claybrook to go along with the administration's decision not to give the department protection in automobiles until 1981. The implications of Nader's criticism went well beyond the air-bag issue to a general arrangement of the army administrator for caving into the automobile industry.
What is revealed by this dispute is the emerging truth that Nadierism is not an expression of politics but a denial of it. It is very simple-minded to believe that an administration official, even one formerly identified with a public-interest labor group, had the same inflexible dedication to reformist goals inside the government as she had as a laborist.
American pluralism finds its expression inside the National Highway Safety Administration no less forcefully than in the department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration no less forcefully than in the schlechtelle of Claybrook's department. There also are the automobile industry, the auto workers and a host of others whose opinions cannot be disregarded. The administrator has a thick set of organized interest groups of which Nader's group is but one. To have satisfied his demands to the exclusion of all the others would have reduced Claybrook's effectiveness and probably precluded the installation of bags any time in this century.
NADER AND THE Grand Lamas of Public Rectitude, such as John Gardner of Common Cause, continue to walk with the-wisp of separating politics from government.
Their obsession with the so-called "sunshine laws" has opened committee legislation-
drafting sessions in Congress not to the general public but to the lobbyists. This has resulted in the mark-ups being transformed into hollow and forbidden spaces, political dealing and horse trading into the cloakroom. The reformers' success in imposing a ceiling on the outside income of members of Congress has gone far toward making the vote on legislation for individuals with inherited wealth.
Nader himself is all but unassailable. Unelected, self-righteous and self-appointed to the role of guardian of the public morals, his influence has assumed ridiculous proportions.
Nader himself is all but unassailable. Unelected, self-righteous and self-appointed to the role of guardian of the mortals, his influence has assured ridiculous proportions.
I recall that in a strategy session during Sen. Birch Bayh's unsuccessful quest for the 1976 presidential nomination, a well-regarded staff assistant from the office of another liberal senator suggested himself from the rest of the Democratic pack by announcing that as president, he would clear all Cabinet appointments with Ralph Nader. The Bayh strategists sensibly rejected this suggestion. But the very fact that it was made by an experienced adviser suggests that an adviser suggests the extent to which Nader is vested with magical properties.
THE STORM SIGNALS on
Nader's relationships with the Carter administration were flying even before Inauguration Day. After having pronounced his candidacy, he acquiesced to presidential candidate on consumer issues in recent decades, Nader turned on him in December before a group of 300 students took part in an interest groups who were meeting in Washington.
Nader assailed Carter's appointees as "conservatives with high integrity," who would "follow the wrong policies straight" to Commerce, the department's appointees to the Department of Commerce were described by Nader as "completely mainline" and those
nominated to the Department of Defense as "traditional inhouse advocates for certain interests."
It is not likely that Carter's appointees will get any respite from the hectoring of disaffected reformers, even those offended by his rhetoric allies. With no tolerance for the give-and-take of politics, the reformist radicals who equate compromise with capitulation are more likely to criticize it. It usually be directed at the wrong people.
THE CRITICISM will be carried on in the tradition of the notorious Common Cause questionnair submission to all presidential hopefuls. The common Cause would have been likely to find acceptable were forced to divert time and energy that they could ill afford to respond to a survey of such daunting numbers. The public staff would have been required to answer it adequately.
The conservative candidates, who cared least about Common Cause's approval, could only have benefited from the liberals' being forced to answer budgetary questions in detail. Saddling a candidate with specific budget commitments is a challenge for a campaign a campaign can suffer, yet this is what the questionnaire demanded as the price for a Common Cause imprimatur.
TO ARGUE that Naderism is running amuck in American politics is not to suggest that the Carter administration or any unit of government, ought to be immune from criticism when it backs off from promises or misleads those who have reposeed its policies. Are respondents is that the agendas of Common Cause and Public Citizen are not the only ones worthy of veneration and that it is one of the functions of American government to
The petulant rampages of the "just" that are occurring now are superb examples of what Roscoe Conkling meant when
reconcilie competing demands. The medium by which this is accomplished is politics. To equate political compromise with apostasy is the very soul of moral absolutism.
ne said, "When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel, he was unconscious of the then undeveloped capabilities of the word 'reform.'"
Ross K. Baker is a professor of political science at Rutgers University.
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