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Thursday, February 21, 1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
"No More Watergates"
One of the side effects of the Watergate scandal and its manifold appendages may be a concerted effort on the part of politicians and citizens to reform the federal government.
The cry of "No More Watergates" may be as vehemently sounded as the cry of "No More Vietnams" or "No More Koreans. A number of proposals have already been made to elevate the conditions that supposedly led to the Watergate scandals.
Sen. Lowell Weicker, R-Conn., has said that the Senate Watergate Committee may propose that presidential advisers be subject to Senate confirmation. Another proposal is to limit the presidency to one six-year term in office. A plan for reauthorization would have presidential campaigns paid for with public funds.
These proposals are rather limited in the sense that they would fit into the existing framework of the government. Some observers have suggested more sweeping reforms, however. It has been pointed out that under the British system of parliamentary democracy, a discredited prime minister can be positioned more easily as a trusted president can be under the American system. Thus, one proposal for safeguarding against further Watergate is that the president be removed from office on a vote of no confidence by the Congress.
Obviously, such a plan would have implications far beyond making it easier to change presidents. A switch toward a more democratic system would profound effects on our political system, almost from top to bottom. Our political parties would have to be drastically reformed, and
greater party loyalty would be required to maintain a president in office against purely political attempts to oust him.
All of these problems notwithstanding, there is perhaps a more basic fallacy in the reform proposals. These proposals concentrate almost exclusively on the system. Americans seem to enjoy reforming systems. It is as if we believed that by reforming the system we can magically transform all of nature.
What we need to remember is that a system, any system, is only as good as the people who work within that system. None of the proposed reforms would make government scandals impossible. No matter what new rules or procedures are invented, someone will find a way to bend those rules to his advantage or even break the rules outright and then cover his trail with a tortuous jungle of legalisms and obfuscation. Nothing, perhaps, is more ingenious than the devious side of the human spirit.
Granted, some of the proposals may make the kind of excesses that occurred in the Watergate scandal more difficult, but they may also make other kinds of corruption more likely. So should be subjected to the closest scrutiny to make sure that no adverse side effects will result.
If any truly effective and sweeping reform is to come out of the Watergate scandal, it would be to put rest the my-voicedoesn't count myth. The interest and involvement of the people in the political processes would deter improper conduct and would expedite the correction of improprieties when they do occur. Essentially, it is time we stoppee placing our faith in systems instead of in people.
John Bender
Lawrence Joins Encounter Scene
By JEROME LLOYD
Kansas Staff Reporter
Exploring Life
Jerry Nolly and Nancy Hoffman are the most impressive encounter group leaders in Lawrence. Both are Esalen-trained. Nelly, who is completing a dissertation on meditation, has taught introductory psychology and a course in altered states of consciousness at the University of Kansas. She has led encounter groups in Wisconsin.
Nolly and Hofmann try to elucidate meaningful material in the presence of heightened feeling. it is hoped that the notion of uncharted territory and emerge with a valid
At the University of Kansas, there is only a sprinkling of offerings in encounter. James Stachowiak is currently teaching a course called toward a psychology of personal growth and fulfillment, which includes a laboratory in encounter. The human relations department features some rather flavorless courses in encounter.
Encounter groups have become popular across the country. They are an outgrowth of the church's contact, unbassed exploration and spiritualism, echo a recent past of political confrontation, excruciatingly loud rock festivals and armed barriers of the academy at its tide.
Ideally, you will let down your defenses and cross your darkest psychic terrain—the darker the better –prodred and supported by the insights and the inflexibility honest about what you can do to help your job to add what you can to the “energy level” and the “truth level” of the group.
In encounter groups, man, stripped of the sham that is perhaps not essential to him, is the only medium. Encounter groups probably have staggering implications for men in its more conventional forms can be so optionally pinched and cruelly formalized.
As you channel your point of view into the present moment and leave behind your timid good manners or your defensive posturing, you may find yourself examining yourself and others with increased sensitivity. After a few sessions, perhaps you will develop the hearing ability to drop barriers in favor of increased awareness.
You join a circle of people for growth—even for entertainment—rather than for therapy. You express how you feel right now, both toward yourself and toward the members. Escape into detailed biography or abstraction is almost always discouraged.
log for future reference, increased strength and verified honesty and courage. These qualities are difficult to acquire without experience. Personality change and growth are desired. Leading an encounter group requires continual sensitivity and tact under pressure.
necessary danger through programs of carefully selected exercises. These encourage a sense of trust in one's own body and reinforce the self in its relationship to others. Afterwards, most people feel more clear-headed and more benignly disposed.
the encounter groups, which are held in their home, frequently last an entire week.
"The social scale seems to explode when one watches other group members limp or rush through their own emotional forests."
talented in the sense that they successfully direct and elucidate a flow of feeling. Tact? There is always the possibility that a group member will come face to face with himself and shatter. It is this danger that the detectors of encounter groups so often utilize.
The group leaders try to eliminate un-
end. During this period, groups members end out and eat at home. Theoretically, everything is allowed except punches and broken furniture must be paid for. What usually ends up taking place is seldom very orgiastic. Jerry Nolly finds the balance between impulsiveness and constructive behavior in his groups "just about right."
About 15 years ago, highly structured encounter groups were developed in the National Training Laboratories in Maine. Shortly thereafter, groups of a more exploratory nature were established at Esalen, in Big Sur, Calif. Somewhat later, the group leaders were dismayed by the bad weather that LSD was having upon many people. Among other things, they wanted to create a site way to get high.
Not surprisingly, a certain exposev liberalism is bult into the encounter-group leader who is not anti-intellectual in the most broadening and democratizing sense of the word, or one who is incapable of a common generosity is probably a contradiction in terms. Without a strong focus of energy an encounter group simply collapses.
Encourage curiosity seem most promising. They liberate curiosity in a way that is revolutionary. One can actually attend them and develop an ability to explore real environments when one watches other group members rush through their own emotional forests.
Selling of the Pentagon '74
THIS COUNTRY WILL PUT A MAN IN JAIL
FOR SOMETHING HES WRITTEN
That is how the parts of Schlesinger's plan fit together.
WASHINGTON- Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger, with an awesome array of military power at his command, was a key figure in the best new weapon in defending a record peaceetime Pentagon budget before Congress. "Where there is no vision," Schlesinger said before the Senate and Office of Services committees, "the people perish."
BY MICHAEL GETLER The Washington Post
That ancient message, he claims, is still relevant to understanding why the United States must not shrink from high defense budgets and global responsibilities even during Vietnam and in the so-called era of defense. And in its words, Schlesinger has been skillfully spinning a web of explanations for almost everything the Pentagon wants to do;
—Because the Soviet Union continues to invest heavily in new nuclear-tipped missiles, the United States must be prepared to "match" those developments as so not to lose the strategic edge or even be perceived by others as having lost it.
In laying that out, he sets forth his view.
"In recent years, we have begun to
—Because both of these factors—the pledge to keep racing the Russians if necessary and the flexibility to respond in kind to any type of nuclear attack—make nuclear war even less likely than it was before. We are on the arena for combat would be with conventional forces. Thus, we have to strengthen and maintain those forces.
--Because previous strategies of massive retaliation to deter a nuclear attack leave the United States only with a "suicide or surrender" choice, the United States must now have a strategy to respond in kind to lethal an all-out attack. In other words, the United States has the ability to strike back in a limited and against certain military targets in the hope that an automatic escalation to mutual "city bashing" can be avoided.
lose the vision about the role of the United States in the world. There has been a trend . perhaps understandable . to self-flagellation and carving.
"But the burden for the maintenance of free societies around the world can only be borne by the United States. We must accept that," he says, "There is no alternative. If the United States drops the torch, there is no one else that can pick it up."
In Schlesinger, the Pentagon has its most articulate warrior-philosopher-spokesman
While that seems like a good idea, the larger question is whether the United States
In contrast to the parade of civilian and military officials who come before committees to read formal, drowsy statements, Schlesinger's informal and more scholarly dissertations have been described as impressive—and possibly disarming—even by critics on the mostly friendly Armed Services committees.
Aside from Schlesinger's performance, this is an election year for Congress. An economic downturn and still higher unemployment crisis and talk of impaction are attracting most attention. All of these factors, some lawmakers believe, will tend to reduce Congressional scruiting this year of the worst possible important defense budget in a decade.
The budget contains the seeds for a major new round of nuclear weapons developments as "budgets" against lack of Soviet forces in Afghanistan. This, but in the past, weapons planners have usually found new rationales for development and production as original reasons faded.
The budget also reflects complex and far-reaching shifts in war-fighting strategy that have been made against certain hardware projects. Schlesinger, for example, has said that by "beating fat into swords" the Army will be able to kill divisions without increasing manpower.
The critics agree, and some have been arguing lately with increased enthusiasm for the United States to press the Soviets for some mutual reductions in land-based missiles to remove what critics view as the major cause of uncertainty and suspicion between two superpowers armed to the teeth.
Critics have always argued that still more accurate missiles would enable hawks in the Kremilin—despite U.S. disclaimers—to argue that the United States is attempting to develop a first-strike force able to knock out enemy aircraft, however, are working on the same improvements, and this creates temptations for either superpower to launch its missiles first rather than lose them. Because missile firing submarines are virtually vulnerable to attack, neither superpower effectively achieve a true first-strike force.
Schlesinger argues that adding this capability to respond in a "limited" way deters nuclear warfare at any level and helps keep the irrational or accidental attack from getting out of hand. Others argue that talking is limited "nuclear warfare requires deference and increases the acceptance that some form of limited atomic war is possible."
It is Schlesinger's plans in the nuclear field, however, that are perhaps most important and deserve the "national debate" that he has called for. Hovering for years over the issue of introducing a limited nuclear war fighting capability has been the question of what could conceivably be so difficult to accomplish, to prompt them to launch a limited nuclear attack against the United States and risk being destroyed in return.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
After the initial effects subsided, I was reminded of the bothersome realization (hardly unique) that such states of mind are much a part of our "game plan" political culture. Consider the recent decision by the Board of Regents to allow $180,000 in student funds to be spent on a new basketball floor.
We are told that athletics profit the University and apparently we are very attentive. But can the new basketball floor enhance the University in any meaningful sense? Those with a vested interest in athletics argue that it does will, and we
We have faculty positions being cut (and not necessarily in departments where enrollments are dropping), a library that stays open on weekends because of a grant from the chancellor's office, an inadequate student-faculty ratio that gives an impersonal and detached flavor to university curricula, and fronted with the fact that many of our coaches are being paid considerably more than many of our faculty.
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A few months ago, while the White House claimed widespread support for the President, I attempted to telephone my disapproval by placing a person-to-person call to the President. The White House responded by calling me the purpose of my call and upon hearing my wish to express disapproval, he responded, "Who do you think you are, calling the White House? Must be some kind of nut. Do you think you can cast Castro in Cuba or Khruschechin in Russia?" The state of mind depended on whether I had more success in calling Castro or even Khruschech since he's dead.
needs 14 divisions rather than 13. If not, shouldn't the "fat" simply be removed from the Army and the budget? Schlesinger has offered similar "bargains" to the other question; is it existing force levels are correct, why not just remove the fat altogether?
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To the Editor:
Basketball Floor a Top Priority?
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Griff and the Unicorn
Michael D. Smith
listen. Meanwhile, faculty leave the library closes earlier and earlier, and a sense of detachment creeps in. And where in hell are we? Where are our priorities?
Michael D. Smith New Orleans graduate student
Fans Conduct Booed
To the Editor:
As a concerned fan, I was pleased to see the notice in the Kansas a few weeks ago concerning good sportsmanship signed by a former Kansan and by the next three home games were con-
suserably better in the realm of sport-
smanship.
But Monday night was worse than ever. I must admit it was the worst refered game of the year. It is said when there are three or four referees on a play away from the play has to call the infraction. But this is definitely no reason to shower the referees with ice as they leave the court.
I think we need to work a little harder on controlling our tempers. Next home game we need to show K.S.U, not only who has the best basketball team, but also the best fans, and hopeably, we won't have such poor refereeing.
Martin Hubbard Waterville freshman
Even Ivy League Faces Student Finance Crisis
By ERIC WENTWORTH The Washington Post
Washington—Even those well-endowed Ivy League colleges have boosted their own scholarship outouts as about as far as they can and must increasingly steer students into federally insured loans to keep pace with ever-rising tuition rates.
This was the message of a report on student finances released Thursday by Dartmouth, Harvard and seven other well-known private institutions. Their student and squeeze reflected problems at universities reflect the country, most of them in far worse financial shape.
the report, "Paying for College," is funded by the Alfred P. Slogan Foundation, said the group. It also benefits of their undergraduates' access to federally insured private loans. The schools can be lenders themselves or make arrangements with banks or other lending institutions.
Because of federal insurance, interest subsidies to many young borrowers while they're studying and other benefits, the government's loan program over a wholly private scheme such as Yale's deferred tuition program. Under The Yale approach, graduates reimburse their school in future years by providing a small percentage of their incomes.
The Sloan study called for several reforms in the federal program, however, including more flexibility in student work requirements and analysis" to identify which students qualify for interest
subsidies and the size of the loans they should receive. Bills to drop the "needs analysis," which has been blamed for keeping many middle-income students from getting adequate aid this year, already are needing in Congress.
The report said undergraduate loan demand on the nine campuses was approaching an annual $10 million and could double within the next decade.
From 1962 to 1972, the nine colleges tripled their own scholarship spending from $6.2 million to $18.6 million a year. The average individual scholarship rose $2 per cent to $1,763 from $970 and a growing percentage of students required aid.
The report said outside scholarship resources, including federal and state grants and National Merit Scholarship Corp. stipends, had risen for the nine colleges to $2.9 million by 1971-72 but were down to 15 per cent of the schools' own outlaws.
The new federal "basic opportunity grant" program, the report added, would increase scholarship resources if funded—but only for low-income students.
Meanwhile, the study warned, infiltration cost pressures, including the current energy crisis, will perpetuate high costs with increases probable every year.
The nine schools cooperating in the Sloan study were Dartmouth, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon, Amherst, Mount Boulder Holyke, Wellesley and Wesleyan.