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Wednesday. March 14. 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment Fund Cutbacks Hurt!
A recent announcement that the proposed Nixon budget would mean a reduction of about two million dollars in federal funding to the University next year calls for immense concern. The proposed cutbacks would affect all segments of the University.
One University administrator noted that the funding loss "will have an incalculable effect upon basic research in areas where the University has a national reputation."
But research is not the only area to suffer losses. Students, too, will directly feel the effect of cutbacks in loan programs. Graduate student stipends, traineeships and researchships will sustain heavy cutbacks.
The University has said that the student financial aid picture was "not quite so clear." Although we know the amount of money KU provided and graduate support, the loan program situation still appears confused.
The supplementary Educational Opportunity Grant Program, which has provided good financial support for disadvantaged students, is being eliminated. Supposedly it will be replaced by a new Basic Education Opportunity Grant Program. Some have expressed concern that there is no guarantee that the eliminated funds will be replaced.
Students will be hurt by the elimination of the National Direct Student Loan program. Although schools will be allowed to make new loans from repayments received on these loans from previous years, KU
may have to operate this program at one half the size of previous years.
So many are joyed to see this increased interest in higher education by the federal government. Recognizing the importance of education, is it time to decrease education to individuals who normally might not be able to attend college?
Three cheers for the federal government's drive toward affirmative action! The question arises as to how we will pay for the education of those we are told must be involved in the institution.
It is time that students turn their activities toward something that may be of greater consequence to their future than some of the foreign policy problems students have assessed themselves to in recent years.
Letter writing campaigns to local legislators have had their effect. Let us begin to write our national representatives. A protest rally in front of Strong Hall has received its fair share of press coverage before. There is no reason media coverage should not allow the rally would probably receive the blessings and participation of KU administrators and faculty.
We are constantly told that to gain access to government we must make our concerns heard. Speak out! Be heard! You may not be losing money from loans next year, but your roommate might. And most assuredly your education will be hurt by cutbacks in areas important to improving the quality of our education.
—R. E. Duncan
A Pessimist's Spring
Bv KEVIN SHAFER
Features Editor
me for fun and folly
Contrary to popular belief (and for those of you who cannot remember when the sun shine), spring is here.
'Tis the season to be jolly, 'tis a time for fun and folly.
The atmosphere is jovial. The dishalg of winter seems to dissipate into the smile of freshness. True, maybe, for some, but not true for one Festy Pessimist, that noted
Talking with Pesty is always exciting. The other day, amidst the driving rain and the inadequate forecast for sunshine, Pesty told me just what he could look forward to this week.
Here I bring to you, in part, what has quaintly been entitled "Pesty Pessimist's Expectations for Spring."
SPRING IS:
--frying to smell the first lilac you have seen since September but not being able to see it because you are sneezing too hard from haey fever
—trying to wear that new spring outfit you bought on last fall only to find that the winter's bibernation has produced too many added pounds to let it fit
-attempting to sit out and enjoy the sunshine but discovering that you have soaked up more stagnant rain water with your jeans than you have sunshine
—trying to ask an old flame to go out for a walk only to find that she's married now and has three kids
—wearing sandals for the first time all year only to experience a drastic drop in temperature and a sudden spring shower
—trying to fly a kite but finding out that when the wind blows in Kansas you must use roe instead of string to tame your kite
—decieding to cut class because it's such a nice day only to find out that you forgot you had a midterm that day
—deciding to play a little “pick-up” game of basketball on the neighborhood court only
to find out that the only guys playing are the varsity alumni who won the conference
tournament last year.
—deciding to camp out only to find that the mosquitoes breed in the summer and chickers breed in the spring
--deciding to go hiking only to find that your poison ivy shot wore off two months ago and now all you have to do is think about the plant before you start itching
- looking forward to commencement only to find that the deadline for ordering caps and gowns was yesterday
—planning to go to the first big rock concert of the year only to find out that you have a term paper due, the next day.
—looking forward to roaming around the country when you graduate only to realize that if the draft enes into effect, your latter number is 25.
--looking forward to riding your brand new ten-speed bicycle only to find that winter weather has frozen the bike in first gear and that the flat you have had all winter has run out.
—looking forward to riding your motorcycle and not being able to find the key
—deciding to smoke a little pot down by Potter's (which is a dedication memorial, of course) only to find that that sweet young lass you chose to be wired with was Vern Mermidt.
As Pesty continued his list, I couldn't help but expect that his philosophical nature was slyly leading up to some sort of moral. And that it was.
"As that good friend of mine, Johnathan Livingston, once put it," he said, "avoid the rush, fly south for the spring."
PENNINGTON GAP, VA...Jim Fukus is an organic chemist with a masters degree in business administration. He comes from a dying coal village a few miles north of the city and as looking like the north end of a southbound bull. With its ooaths and air of irreparable diapason, the village is at least as money-starved as any of the small communities hanging on in the Appalachian mountains.
Nicholas von Hoffman
Activist Shows OEO Can Work
Jim knows enough about not having money. His father died in a mine accident when Jim was five, and after that, "being raised as I was, our interior decorating took place every six or eight months on the dining room table and around the house, cost 23 cents a yard. But my mom was good to us. She kept me there. She didn't use us away."
Not an ideal growing-up, but in his case it procured a man of a rare mix of energy, business cunning, toughness and a hard desire to see that other children of the mountains might have it it
little easier. Thus, about the time that the government was tooling up OEQ, Jim quit his job with General Motors and moved
To keep the family together and out of an orphanage, they all worked. At 12, Jim was delivering newspapers and boottegging whiskey. Later he work in the same mine where his father died. The owner lent him the money to go to college.
He taught school and supplemented his income by working as a pharmacist and then hooked into the poverty program. He did it in a somewhat unusual way. He worked with a setting up local poverty agencies, Jim started the Lonesome Pine Development Corporation, a private, but non-profit organization which could do a good deal of experimental free wheeling while still being a member of government money Jim could catch hold of.
He turned out to be an ace at that. He'd get into his car at two o'clock in the morning and drive the 500 miles to Washington, where he would have bureaucracy with the steadfast intensity of a Lockheed salesman after a Pentagon contract. He got him too. Millions of dollars were lost from the Labor Department, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Once, he says, they gave him some money for Inventor training, fewer of them around here in Lee County than there are blacks.
In the process, Jim may have succeeded in doing what nobody
"We go from the cradle to the grave, from the terrestrial to the aquatic," said Dr. John Patter and real of one who could have made $50 million selling worthless health insurance policies to welfare
else has ever done: coordinating a large number of Federal programs into a logical and sensible system.
As Jim organized his 23 different projects, the people in the senior citizens centers looked after the toddlers, and the Job Corps students traded and put to work erecting day-care facilities. Going to school was made a prerequisite for holding jobs in Lonesome Pine Development projects and government scholarship money for them. The Mountain Empire Community College. Other funds were found to send young people away to train themselves in medicine with the proviso that they'd work and work here for five years.
"We have one product in Lee County," said Jim, explaining why it's so important to mesh work with schooling. "If we had a market for it we could bottle it and ship it out and we'd be rich.
socialist program" was how Jim Fulks explained it. He is a long backs from Washington hadn't begun to hit him, he believes he could have made the whole enterprise pay for itself in five
The whole place was built and designed by Lonesome Pine people, is doing $1,500-a-week worth of business and is in such demand that an addition is now underway. A hotel comes along. Within a year, Jim expects the restaurant operation to show a profit of $40,000 annually. All of this has been done by local people, with no help from outside consultants, who have worked as well as it has.
Jum isn't giving up, but his five-year plan is destroyed. If the cutbacks continue, this area will relax into the torpor of the past. That may seem to be an act of generosity, but the rid of OEO, an operation which was as ill-thought-out and sloppy as its enemies claim. Yet it been here for seven years, many people have come to depend on it, and some, like Jim Fulks, have used the old-style fruitful ways. To replace it with nothing but the old-life social work of the 1930s is a cruel谑.
That product is ignorance."
All the profits are plowed back into enterprises, which by their very nature can't make money.
At the same time, Jim was always looking for ways to make the community self-sufficient. A few industries were hired, in part because of their company. Perhaps more impressive was the creation of the Tri-County Housing Corporation, which trains workers, engages them with new profit. Then there is Lonesome Pine Canneries, which also is in the black, and most recently, The Old Mill Restaurant near the Cumberland Gap where Daniel Burst深入 into the West.
Readers Respond
ambiguty was intended, I'm sorry for even bringing the matter up.
"I really wanted to be the first in the country to get off the government payroll," he said. The other day he had to give up his two day-care centers; two others which Lonesome Pine had built won't operate for lack of care and there are no centers that centers had to be closed also and there will be more layoffs in the next several weeks.
"We're trying to run a capitalist company to support a
Pronouns, Smoke
While I do not feel especially qualified to justify the ways of AI's to God, or indeed the rules of grammar to my own students, I do wonder about Prof. Quinns' question. Why does he mean it to refer “graduate teachers” or “to fulfil faculty instructors”? If the
Assistant Instructor in English
Paul Stephen Lim
Prof. Dennis B. Quinn's letter (March 9) on the story by Linda Chaput and Ann McFerren on the Pearson program ( March 7 ) concludes with a quote: "A's are involved in the Pearson program, and I know that many graduate teachers are excellent—indeed sometimes superior to full-time faculty instructors. I am sure, however, that they improve with age, and further education."
Who Are They:
To the Editor:
Smoky Hoch To the Editor
In an effort to bring this to the attention of those who may alleviate the situation, I am writing your paper.
Smoky Hoch
The performance of Rock Chalk, two Saturdays ago, was made less enjoyable for some of us by those in the audience who smoked in their seats during the concert. But that it was unduly warm inside made the smoke more unapetizing.
To the Editor:
Sights are posted inside Hoch Auditorium, and I wonder if these might be enforced.
(C)
Washington Post Feature Syndicate
Rose Marie Hildebrand 1515 Stratford Rd.
Actress 'Hits the Road' For NLF in Viet Jungle
BvLYNN C. NEWLAND
Associated Press Writer
But Dung's path by-passed the bright lights of the theatre and the jungles of South Vietnam and Cambodia, where she performed before North Vietnamese and soldier soldiers and isolated villagers.
SAIGON—Ngoc Dung left home at the age of 18, for basking family and friends to pursue an acting career.
For five years, Dung was an actress in a 14-member National Liberation Front entertainment group that played the role performed only when the war permitted. Then the Communist ideology turned stale and she and her husband defected to the government side. They now
Dung, a Vietnamese born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, turned to communism when she was 18 and unsettled and easy to influence."
"I was influenced by my friends, by books and by newspapers," she explained softly. "I thought communism was a good idea at the time," she said. "I was in school and we talked about it a lot . . . the war . . . the Americans."
"There were a lot of Vietnamese Communists in Phnom Penh then. There was an active result—especially young people."
Dung joined the local National Liberation Front along with her 18-year-old brother. They spent a week in Dung describing Communist ideology and the war in Indochina. In retrospect, Dung described the clandestine meetings with local Communist organization in locating process for new recruits.
"It was also decided then that I would be assigned to an entertainment trouse," she said.
At the end of the week, Dung was given a bus ticket and told to go to Tay Ninh Province in neighboring South Vietnam. His brother got another assignment. She never saw him again.
When she arrived in the province, northwest of Saigon, Dung said the bus driver told her where to get off, adding that she
Griff and the Unicorn
would be met by a man.
"I was never afraid when I was there," she recalled. "It was well guarded, and I was convinced by the cadres that the cause was right and because of that there was nothing to fear."
Training, Dung added, lasted 15 days. It consisted of working around the camp, attending workshops and learning how to be self-sufficient.
"We walked for three nights, all night long," she said. "We'd start walking when the sun went down and would stop in the park on a sunny day. Sometimes we'd walk on the road, other times in the jungle or on small paths. We used to sleep during the day."
Dung left C-6 at dusk in the company of two men who served as guides.
When Dung arrived at the camp in Tay Nin Province where she had been assigned, the man who greeted her was Nguyen Hoon, an actor who latter was to become her husband.
"Recruits came there from Cambodia and South Vietnam. When I was there, there were about 40 of us and three or four men who served as instructors," she said.
Also in the camp at that time was Lau Hui Huo, a well known author who wrote South Vietnam's national anthem. Phuc now is the Provisional Revolutionary Government's minister of
Dung said the entertainment troupe consisted of about 140 people who lived in the same neighborhood and camped camps for security reasons.
The jungle camp that served as Dung's drama school was known as C-6.
By Sokoloff
"It was nighttime. I just started walking and after I had met me, "he said, "meet me," she said, "He led me off the road into the jungle. Finally, we got to an area with makehift buildings and some
Each entertainment group had dancers, musicians, propaganda teams, actors and actresses. The entertainers had no daily chores. Security was provided by Vietnamese cook care of laundry and meals.
"It was not difficult living in the jungle. They took good care of us, especially the women," Dung said. "But it was boring. When we started learning, we had to attend physical classes. None of us liked that."
"Single people were separated,
"but married couples were allowed to live together. There were a lot of children around."
"We didn't have a regular
The actors performed two types of plays: those laceed with propaganda and built on current themes such as "great victories over the American imposition" or "traditional Vietnamese theatre, heavily moralistic and highly popular with the people.
"Mostly, we performed at night and often on short notice," Dung said. "Everywhere we went, we were escorted by soldiers. In the city, they were sent to Cong But after 1970, they mostly were North Vietnamese.
schedule. Sometimes we'd perform for three nights in a row, then maybe other times we'd perform only once a month," she said.
Dung's troupe traveled throughout the provinces northwest of Saigon, bringing laughter to soldiers and villagers from Loc Nchi to Cu Chi, only 20 miles from Saigon.
"It wasn't safe anymore in south Vietnam. We had to go back." she said.
Soon after American and South Vietnamese troops crossed into Cambodia in April 1970, Dung Hoa took control of the province for Kratie, Cambodia.
"At first, I liked what I was doing. I believed in doing it," he said. "I was lotioned. I was young and I liked to act. In the early years, the applause was almost automatic and enthusiastic. But after 1970, there was a shift."
a year later, Dung and Nguyen loan were married in a simple ceremony in the jungle near Kratie.
"Actually, there was not much of a ceremony," Dung said. "We just had to get authorization from the party."
"Something wasn't right."
Nguen said, "We knew that eventually we'd have to leave that, that we'd have to leave."
Dung and her husband said they had been thinking independently of leaving the Viet Cong for more than a year. When they married they talked about it and did some more thinking.
Nguyen mentioned two main reasons.
"One is sentimental," he said. "We missed our families and we knew that we wouldn't have a family life for ourselves.
"The second reason is that we became disenchanted with Communist ideology. I used to take classes all day, my art artist."
On Feb. 8, Nguyen and Dung left their camp on the pretext of setting up a performance in a village. They never returned.
Eight days and 120 miles later, by bicycle and foot, they turned themselves over to South Vietnamese national police at a small outpost in the Mekong Delta province of Chau Doc.
Dung and her husband now live in a Saigon government camp where, they say, "Our future is with us, but somehow we will make it."
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN An All-American college newspaper
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