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Monday, April 16, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Openness Needed
Chancellor Archie R. Dykes of the University of Tennessee, who was named Friday as the University of Kansas' next chancellor, has a reputation for openness with student. Events surrounding the selection of Dykes and the announcement of the selection indicate that such openness is badly needed in KU's administration.
A tight news lid was clamped on the search process from the start. That may or may not be good, but it was considered necessary. Richard von Ende, acting executive secretary of the legislative and secretary to the Campus Advisor Committee, was designated press spokesman.
Throughout the five-month search process, Von Ende consistently maintained secrecy to the Kansan about activities of the search committee. Meanwhile, other newspaper press directly related to a consistency consistently published stories about the progress of the search.
Such a pattern perhaps was to be expected. Established professional newspapers are better able to develop the contacts that yield productive news leaks. A student publication, whose staff changes each semester can hardly hope to develop such news sources and must expect to be beaten on the kind of stories such sources provide.
Aware of this problem, editors of the Kansan sought assurances as the announcement of the Kansas Board of Regents' selection drew near that the student newspaper would be the first allowed to break the news to the students. The decision was to be made last weekend, and the announcement made during the Kansas Relays, so a special late Friday edition based on advance information was planned.
However, the Board of Regents,
after making its selection Thursday,
decided to announce the name of the
new chancellor a week early. The
news was informed by Von Ende
of the change in plans at 11 p.m.
thursday.
Jess Stewart, chairman of the Board of Regents, was to make the announcement at 11 a.m. Friday in a press conference. Von Ender refused to adopt the policy standard nowhere of providing advance information to be released by newspapers at a press event. Instead, the Kansan was asked to delay its morning press run until after the news conference.
Assuming the rules were to be that no newspaper would know the name of the new chancellor before 11 a.m. Friday, the Kansan expected no favors. That was not the case, it
turned out. Had the Kansan been accorded the same privileges given other newspapers, students could have picked up their Kansans at 11 a.m., as usual to read news vitally important to their futures here. As it was, the Kansan did not reach the hill until three hours later.
The Associated Press broke the story at 9:29 a.m. Friday, an hour and a half before any newspaper was to know Dykes was coming to KU, as Von Ende had assured the Kansan. At 10 a.m., Von Ende selected must have been leaked from The nesseer, even though the wire story attributed its information to "Kansas sources."
Von Ende even then refused to give the Kansan an advance copy of the statement Stewart was to read an hour later. The Kansan had arranged for two reporters to compose stories over the telephone to two editors at the University Press Service, where the stories would be delivered into the newspaper. An hour at one end would have meant an hour at the other end, and the Kansan could have been on the campus by 1 p.m.
Finally, at 10:55 a.m., Max Buckford, executive officer of the Board of Regents, handed a Kansan reporter a copy of the news release and a photograph of Dykes. The Kansan got the copy first, but that was 55 minutes later than it ethically should have gotten it, 12 hours later than it practically could have gotten it.
Once a news embargo is broken, such a delay is petty at the least. But it later became apparent that the embargo imposed on the Kansan was patently false. Kansan reporters waiting for the start of the press conference learned that another newspaper had found out the final selection early enough Thursday to send a reporter to Knoxville by Friday morning to interview Dykes during the announcement at KU.
Von Ende probably had nothing to do with the news leaks. Professional newspapers are to be expected to break embargoes whenever they can. The fact that they so effectively did, however, indicates the lack of in refusing to release advance compensation to Kansas so that students would be among the first to know who their next chancellor was to be.
The Kansan looks forward to establishing good working relations with Chancellor Dykes when he meets her. It hopes his administration will consider the Kansan a responsible medium for informing the studentry.
—The Staff
Guest Editorial
Second Thoughts
Last fall, I like everyone else, was trying to decide for whom to vote for President of the United States. I had a problem because I didn't really trust either of the candidates. Nixon had been hiding too many things and his party was impersonating the Democratic party headquarters, but couldn't really have faith in McGovern he qualified his economic plan with, "Don't worry, Congress won't really let me get away with it."
Wishy-washiness lost out to conservatism and deceit, and I decided to favor Nixon.
Then on election night, when Nixon was declared the winner at 7:50 p.m. and McGoven took only two states and 38 per cent of the vote, he declared that Nixon had won, but I wished McGoven had done a little better.
My uneasiness was due to the fact that a person who wins a landslide election likes to believe that the votes were for him, not against his opponent. The landslide becomes "a great mandate from the people."
So on election night, I worried lest Nixon interpret the election as a license to do whatever he wanted despite the will of the people.
The events of the past several weeks have shown that my worries were well founded. Nixon has been so coock-sure of himself that he has assumed undue power and has made himself untouchable. Executive privilege supposedly exempts his staff members from testifying before the Congressional investigation of the watergate affair. In deciding not to execute the will of Congress, which is empowered to
make laws, Nixon has assumed the power to legislate impounding funds appropriated by Congress. The administration has hinted that the United States would intervene in Southeast Asia again if the Cambodian situation gets worse. This intervention, like the first one, would circumvent the power of Congress to declare war.
Executive power has been increasing to the detriment of legislative power for a long time, and the 1972 "mandate for Nixon" has aggravated the situation. Congress has gotten into the habit of making laws that merely outline grand broad principles, such as eliminating poverty, cleaning up the environment or aiding education. The laws appropriate the funds to carry out these noble ideals. But executive agencies are relied on to carry out the details. The agencies are the actual policy-makers. No wonder so much power has gone to the executive branch of the government.
The recent usurpations of power by the executive are particularly disturbing because they have aroused so little response from the American public and nothing but vehement talk from Congress. Congressmen have protested undue executive power, but even the Democrats couldn't unite to override two Presidential vetoes
A little more noise from the people and some real legislating, rather than being the authority by Congress, might force Nixon to desend from his high horse.
—Elaine Zimmerman
Trivia Makes the Protocol Game
ANN BLACKMAN Associated Press Writer
ANN BLACKMAN
WASHINGTON—In the protocol game, it's worth knowing that Israel's Goldi Mea smokes Chesterfield cigarettes and that Jordan's King Hussein a midnight snack.
South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu liked a good steak—and it at when he visited President Nixon at a time when many Americans were boycoting meat.
The bits of personal information may seem trivial, but protocol officers say small comforts make a big difference in the way a visiting official feels at the conference table.
Its overseers work in the State Department's Office of Protocol, a suite of offices where the at least three major chaotic than diplomatic.
Such details, and a chart that shows on any given day who in the world outranks whom, are the key to understanding the system of diplomatic etiquette.
Operating on a relatively modest $899,000 budget in fiscal 1973, the 47 staffers' responsibilities range from accrediting students to securing security for their protection to handling arrangements for VIP visits.
Those unfamiliar with the system behind ceremonial hoopia will be embarrassed by embrassing conclusions. King Jong-Il greeted with a 21-cm salute and Goda Merl, the Israeli prime minister. That is protocol, not preference.
King Hussein, as a chief of state, rates 21 guns; Prime Minister Meir, as a head of government, gets 19.
One of the prime rules of protocol—"just good sense," the officers say—is that visiting officials must be on their rank, not must be offended.
When plans were announced for Theu to visit Nixon at San Clemente, he was reportedly told that he would bring with full diplomatic pomp
Eager to dispel any notion that Tisher's welcome would be less than grand, protocol officers in the Cerritos district to be in San Clemente anyway.
Diplomatic observers noted that security would be tighter in the small West Coast enclave and that chances of anti-Vietnam demonstrations would be reduced to meetings were in California.
Vietnamese officials were said to have called the Protocol Office to ask if the visit was being downgraded.
customary at the White House
They said that Thieu would receive the customary Marine Band arrival ceremony and a farewell on the day off without a noticeable hitch.
"We're a buffer against all the things most of us come in contact with every day," he said. "The reason for that is because immense. It's awfully important that along the way everything is done for them to ease the path so that they can sit down at the table table with a clear mind."
One of the main tasks of Smook's office is to see that all official visitors are treated courteously, situated comfortably and properly entertained while they are here.
Sound simple? A typical state visit is planned in meticulous detail.
Marion Smok, acting chief of protocol, is official host to 12,000 members of the diplomatic corps in the United States. His job is to smooth diplomatic feathers when he ruffles and to make certain that the mannerly machinery of protocol runs smoothly.
Draft by draft, the six-day scenario unfolds—usually a VIP spends half a day resting in Washington, arrives, two days in Washington for business and four days traveling to places such as Camden, Camden, Fla. Service Secretary accompanies them everywhere.
"The Principals," as the Protocol Office dubs the VIP and his wife, are invited to include 12 guests in their official party for wining and dining at taxpayers' expense. If more than 12 are present, the visitors brought 58—the Visitors must pick up the extra tabs.
Dietary restrictions are often a problem. Protocol Office staffers research which foods a visitor cannot eat, for physical or religious reasons or personal dislike.
Mosels and Jews are not served shell fish or pork, and Mosels don't drink alcoholic beverages, "at least not of those who have then Mosel VIP and the President exchange toasts, the President raises a glass of champagne and the guest raises a glass of water.
Saudi Arabia's King Faisal solved official food worries by bringing with him his own cook, butter and taster.
sikil ribbon unrolling with an
esikalic hitch." She winked,
adding, "We hope the hitch isn'
visible to the guests."
The official state dinner is, by White House social secretary Lucy Winchester's description "a
Winchester works from reams of names submitted by the State Department, congressmen, embassys officials, "persons who were interested in" particular interest to the visitor," and the President himself.
Winchester must avoid side-by-side seating of diplomats whose countries are at odds.
She must also be sure dinner partners speak a common language, a particular problem many Arabian wives who speak English will have to overcome. She will not seat two women together—"such a drag"—and at every dinner, she has orders to sit attractive women next to him. Heavenly Henry Kissinger. The orders come from him, Winchester says.
Anecdotes about protocol abound, including this one, familiar to Latin American newsmen in Washington:
When a coup ousted
Nicaragua's president in 1947, the State Department announced relations were suspended. This appeared to mean that Ambassador Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa would lose the seniority that made him dean of the diplomatic corps.
So Sevilla Hassan sent flowers to President Harry S. Truman's wife who was in the hospital. Truman acknowledged the flowers with a letter addressed, "Dear Mr. Ambassador."
When, shortly thereafter, the United States resumed relations with Nicaragua, Sevilla Sacasa sought to resume his position as dean of the diplomatic corps. The U.S. military reportedly took the position that Sevilla Sacasa lost his seniority during the break in relations.
Not so, Sevilla Sacasa said. In effect, he told the State Department, "Truman regarded me as an acapaguan ambassador when you said I was not and I shall abide by his judgment, not yours."
Liddy's Stubborn Silence Threatens Investigation
WASHINGTON - The truth abouth the Watergate scandal, it now appears, may be locked in the watermouth mouth of G. Lordy Giddon Lilly.
As evidence that he won't talk
Both E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, the other Watergate ringleaders, have now implicated former Attorney General John Mitchell, White House counsel John Dean and
Jack Anderson
Justice Department sources tell us Liddy once held his hand over a burning candle until the flame seared through the flesh of his hand and burned the nerve endings. He merely wanted to prove to a couple of girls in Detroit, say our sources, how tough he was.
and the spying-sabatage operation. Hunt and McCord have recited elaborate details, which they swear Liddy gave them about his meetings with Mitchell, Dean and Magruder. But it will take Liddy's testimony to make the case stick.
"The Cowboy," as his friend call him, isn't talking. He took an additional sentence for contempt before a first grand jury. And justice Department sources are convinced that a man who would hold his hand over a candle flame will be long as necessary in a jail cell.
former presidential aide Jeb Magruder in the Watergate break-in and bugging. The three have denied any advance knowledge of the illegal activity. Only the tight-lipped Liddy can give direct testimony. He was liaison between the high-ups
Wrong Answer to Right Problem
WASHINGTON—What can be done about the teaching of reading in America's public schools? Senator J. Glen Beall, R-Md., is groping to find an answer to the question, and an answer
James J. Kilpatrick
Speaking the other day in the Senate, Beall painted the
his immediate approach, in my own view, is wrong, he is on the right track.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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Publicized at the University of Kansas during the academic year except for special periods. Mail subscriptions rates $ 40. Second charge paid on behalf of a payable post at Law school. Accredations, goods, services and students without regard to color, race or national origin are not necessarily those pressed are not necessarily those Board of Regents.
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dismaying picture. An estimated seven million children in elementary and secondary schools are having serious diffi- cultures, a disproportionate percent of the 700,000 students who annually drop out of school are classified as poor readers. These dropouts join an estimated 18.5 million adults already known as functional illiterates. In large numbers, they are not per cent of the children are reading below their grade levels.
The picture, of course, is not new. One of the first stories I covered as a cub reporter, more than 30 years ago, had to do with the teaching of reading in Richmond's public schools. That particular story goes on: In January of this year, Richmond's School Superintendent Thomas C. Little laid down an ultimatum: Every professional in the Richmond school district contributed this year to the teaching of reading, or he will suffer on his evaluation.
"We cannot afford," Little said in his bulletin, "to have unemployable children coming out of school." He printed instructions, who cannot read and understand the terms of a credit purchase, instructions on how to buy a package of food, or the advertising claims from a newspaper.
Beaill made the same point in his address to the Senate. Only 5 per cent of the nation's labor force are laboring in "unskilled" capacities, where functional skills are the terms of job performance. Throughout the rest of the economy, the ability to read is essential.
Yet millions of children plainly are not learning to read. They are emerging from the school system, or dropping out of it, with a handicap close to a partial loss and/or bearing. They cannot penetrate the paper—and because they cannot read—the well—they cannot comprehend written instructions and they cannot grasp the written exposition of difficult ideas. A third of our high graduate students and Bill Buckley's columns, and we cannot comprehend mine. How will we conservatives redirect misguided mine? But I digress.
Beall's idea—and alas, it is a poor idea—is to write into a law more categorical grant-in-aid. He would authorize $176 million over a three-year period for grants to children of high numbers or high concentrations of children who are not reading at the appropriate level."
With deference to the Maryland senator, this is the very sort of strait-jacket from which President Nixon is trying to free our programs of federal aid. And then we move back to the localities for purposes of education, and to let them spend the money on reading—or whatever—according to local needs. The President's thought, in this context, is that 40 minutes a day could be too much or not too much, and Congress know? In this view, the President is plainly right.
These school systems could qualify for grants if they promised to provide certain
Yet Beall is right too. Reada-
difficulties, for whatever reason,
are especially serious among
black children, but it is a
missatement to name the black
children as readers.
 Their name is Legion, for they
are many. And they must be
helped.
things, for example, "the teaching of reading by a reading specialist for all children in the first and second grades for a year," and 24 minutes in duration. A reading specialist, under Beall's proposal, would be "an individual who has a Master's Degree, with a major or specialty in reading, from an accredited institution of higher learning, successfully completed three years of teaching experience."
(C) 1973 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
White House aides, meanwhile, are spreading the story that Liddy is mentally unbalanced and that he promoted the whole Watergate adventure himself. This kind of talk could backfire and bring Liddy out of his jail cell with an angry rebuttal.
We have carefully investigated the possibility, however, that Liddy may have recruited the "Mission impossible" team and Waterside breakin- strictly on his own to satisfy his romantic bencht.
Others who know Liddy describe him as mentally sharp, if slightly eccentric. He had a reputation, they say, for telling the truth. If he ever did talk and denied that others were involved, you could believe that, and if he impleated others, you could have been wrong. The lawyer Tunes quoted Liddy's former law partner as saving.
We established that he had a fascination for guns; that he distributed to various girls huge pictures of himself beside a police car, gun and flashlight at the ready; that he threatened to kill him if he ever terrified the youngsters in his neighborhood by leaping out at them "like Batman" from a garage roof.
My associate Jack Clorberly talked to parents and children in Liddy's neighborhood. They said he sent his own children to bed when the neighbors agitated when they neighbor made noise around his house.
After this incident, a delegation of parents called on him to complain about his abuse of the neighborhood children. They noted that his guns were prominently displayed on the dining room table throughout their visit.
her berated them, chased them and, on one occasion, entered the room from place on the garage roof. Another time, he lay in wait for some loudly talking teen-agers, and slipped one of them around.
Liddy's father, Syllvester Liddy, a respected New York writer, had never been about his son's mental instability as "nauseating" and denounced the protraction of the younger Liddy as fakty, self-promoting adventures.
We have also established that money was delivered by higher-ups to pay the legal and living expenses of those after they were caught at gunpoint in Democratic Party headquarters. This suggests that he high-ups, whoever they are, will be more likely toibility or the Watergate crimes.
Meanwhile, Liddy is keeping a mouth shut in jail, where, characteristically, he got into an altercation with another inmate over a hairbrush and wound up with a cut ear and a bruised nose.
Copyright, 1973.
by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
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