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University Daily Kansan, April 16, 1981
Opinion
Med Center needs to stop racism, anti-free speech
It's been unusually quiet at the University of Kansas Medical Center during the past
Just a week ago, the Kansas published a story that black employees in the Med Center Facilities Operations department allegedly were being harassed and
denied their rights by their white supervisors and their story detailed three months before complaint is filed.
Reaction has been slow in floating from Kansas City, Kan., to Lawrence.
Both Lawrence campus and Med Center officials have said nothing about the story. Considering the volatile nature of the discrimination problem, officials perhaps are waiting for the arrival of Chancellor-to-be Gene Budig.
The only noticeable reaction to the discrimination story at the Med Center was the hanging of several unauthorized, hand-poster labels labeled "Nigger job application."
The applications, hanging in Wahl Hall—where Facilities Operations administrative offices are—asked questions like "Do you live on the ramparts?" and "What kind of car do you own?"
The bogus application speaks for itself. Yet it's time for the University to speak for itself.
The Kansan story, besides proving that black employees were filing discrimination complaints, answered "why" discrimination investigations, and the "why" are now clear.
For starters, there are no programs at the Med Center to train minivolants. Most of the time, minorities haven't ever been given an opportunity in the Facilities Operations department.
Of the top-level Facilities Operations of
the facility, none are black. There also are no
black facilities on campus.
But the discrimination problem goes beyond mere employment statistics. The problem, more than anything else, is one of gender bias. If everyone can come from only one place—the top.
Not only must we eliminate discriminatory attitudes, but we also must dissolve dangerous anti-free press attitudes.
During the semester, Med Center officials have made an aggressive attempt to regulate the drug administration.
In a Jan. 28 memo, Charles Hartman, vice chancellor for clinical affairs, told Med Center personnel, "Whenever the press is at the Med Center, they must be cleared through the office of the vice chancellor for clinical affairs and University relations. Any violations should be reported to Dr. Hartman."
Such abuses can only come back to haunt the Center, not to mention the rest of the University.
A supervisor at the Med Center recently was threatened with his job for talking to a Kansan reporter. Other employees who talked to the Kansan also feared for their
One top Med Center official went so far as to insist that he be able to read Med Center stories before they were published in the Kansan. The request was denied.
Another Facilities Operations official made an unauthorized attempt to read some Kansan stories concerning Facilities Operations—before the stories went to print.
Much of the Med Center's discrimination problem can be traced to a lack of free speech and a serious lack of communication. Memos, notices and announcements all have gone in the same direction—nowhere.
During the past few months, Med officials have contended that the Med Center is a vital part of the University. At the same time, they have also contended to manipulate the free speech rights of others.
The Med Center's problems can't be solved with a meaningless memo or an attempt to stifle the press. Last week's discrimination story in the Kansan certainly proved that
A university is a place where ideas are exchanged, not where administrators regulate the free speech of others. Living a university only perpetuates the Med Center problem.
Yet a more open atmosphere and a change in attitudes can work to solve the problems. Perhaps officials can start by showing all employees a little dignity and a little employee.
It's been awfully quiet at the Med Center lately; someone must be up to something. Let's hope it's productive.
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Living in the Rational World
In case the posters, the special edition of the University Daily Kansan and the pink, green, blue, white and yellow banners on campus are missing, this weekend is the 68th annual Kansas Relays.
Relavs need to 'build on tradition'
For 56 years the University of Kansas has hosted a Midwest track "carnival" complete with athletes of fame and those on the road to fame.
Those names could plaster the walls of a track hall of fame—Glenn Cunningham, Wes Santee, Jim Ryan and Al Oerter of Kansas; Bobby Whiden of Texas, and Mike Bolt of Eastern New Mexico are just a few of the greats who ran, jumped, or threw in the Relays of the past.
The meet was the dream child of a former KU track and football star who went to the University of Pennsylvania, saw the gala track meets sponsored by the university and wanted the same fame to come to his alma mater. So that man, John Outland, worked with Forrest C. "Phog" Allen, the KU athletic director, and in 1923 the first Kansas Relays drew almost 60 schools from across the nation and more than 5,000 spectators.
Since then, the Relays have had both good times and bad. The good times were the years of Glenn Cunningham, when the crowds reached more than 10,000 in 1939 and in 1972 when Jim Ryun drew 32,000 to Memorial Stadium, including 2,000 who came merely to see him run.
The good times were when the University sponsored pep rallies where Alien, Outland and the chancellor, Ernest Lindley, called out to KU students to support the track team, the University and the state by attending the Relays. Students at the university campus and do their "duty" to the University by staying in town during Easter vacation to attend the event.
But the bad times have been, most consistently, the weather. The Relays have been notorious for the almost guaranteed bad weather the event brings to the state. Allen used to insure the Relays for $5,000 against rain, but when they did so in 2014, nobody would take the risk and the rain came without费。
There were bad years during World War II and the Relays were lost. In 1946 the competition was resumed after the turmoil that had rocked the world subsided.
CYNTHIA
CURRIE
But the turmoil of the Relays was far from being over. The problem, however, was not the nature of the network. It was the technology.
Recently, the Relays has been hit hard by economic pressures. To organize, publicize and support a full-fledged prestigious track meet, money—lots of money is needed, and KU has not been able to put up the funds. This year the Relays was budgeted $29,000; the Drake Relays, a similar large track meet in Iowa, was budgeted for more than $80,000.
The Relays have been besieged by lack of support from spectators. The number of people attending the Relays in recent years has increased, and the number of members of the event wary of the future of the Relays.
To make that future less uncertain, the Relays cut down the number of events, brought in Kipsiuba Kisikel of Kenya to compete and added another team. The event will increase the pageantry and fanfare of the event.
The Student Relays Committee yearly evaluates the Relays and last year reported several positive aspects, including the parade. The relay committee also the appearance of the field crowded with people.
But the Relays are not out of hot water yet. The fact that for the first time in seven years the crowd at Memorial Stadium increased is a good sign, but it is only a beginning.
Somehow, the improvements must continue and the tradition of the Relays must go on. If track teams need the money to come to Lawrence, individual or company sponsorships should be found to keep the teams coming. If more tickets need to be sold, perhaps a bigger publicity push is needed, with advertising for the Relays becoming more intense and the event played up by more than posters to the general public.
And those blue and red posters carry a message that nits at the heart of the Kansas
Building on Tradition.
The Relays is a tradition at the University; it is an event that has survived countless thrones of students, faculty and athletes. Spanning more than five decades, the tradition of the Relays is strong in the state, a state that has supported and nurtured some of the best in American track.
Building on the tradition of 56 years may mean a few changes in events, in the programming, or adding a little fanfare, and for the sake of tradition, chance is a good thing.
The Relays need the support of the students, the university and the state to continue. The Relays are an important role for the editorial writer once again supports the Relays and the tradition begun years ago.
Some things never change.
Plan could make CIA scope monstrous
By KENNETH C. BASS III
RESTON, Va. —Ironically, the proposed increased role for the Central Intelligence Agency in domestic clandestine activities through infiltration, surveillance and searches, conflicts with the recommendations of the (Rockefeller) Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, on which Ronald Reagan, a private citizen, served.
New York Times Special Features
The proposal is contained in recommendations for sweeping changes in regulations governing intelligence activities that intelligence agency policies prohibit the CIA leadership and others are reviewing.
If adopted, the proposal would represent the first time a president had specifically authorized extensive domestic spying by the CIA. Issues of authorization raised, and the proposal also presents a critical issue for the administration in defining the CIA's role and thereby setting a tone for the intelligence process. In fact, the proposal might further indicate the information of the process rather than its invasiveness.
When the CIA was established, a central concern was avoiding creation of an agency to spy on Americans. In 1975, in its first recommendation, the Rockefeller Commission urged that the CIA avoid engaging in "collection efforts within the United States directed at securing foreign intelligence from unknowing American citizens."
Collection of information about foreign powers is essential to wise foreign policy. At times, the government must gather the information it needs in a difference which agency collects it, and how.
It also recommended a prohibition on infiltration of domestic groups unless a group posed a threat to the agency that law-enforcement authorities could not meet. Other
President Ford accepted these recommendations in Executive Order 11906; President Carter preserved the thrust of them in Order 12036. The proposal being considered would conflict with each commission recommendation and rescind the key provisions of both orders.
recommendations were to prohibit CIA physical surveillance of persons other than agency employees and a flat ban on "unconserved physical sequestres" in America.
Some see the ghosts of CHAOs, COINTELPRO and other Watergate-Viacom abuses in the proposal—indeed, perhaps recurrences are not precluded. But the real threat to the integrity of our institutions—and to the integrity of the CIA and the intelligence process—lies elsewhere.
The CIA's mission is not to investigate dissident groups, and there is behind the proposal probably no conscious intention to authorize such investigations. The CIA undoubtedly intends to improve its ability to gather foreign intelligence. We may hear an argument that the proposed effort does not necessary collection on the proper collection of intelligence. There is some truth behind such an argument—some changes are needed—but this proposed solution far exceeds actual needs.
Situations could arise where it would be in the national interest for a deal between an American business and a foreign organization to fall apart, but should the CIA cause that failure? Washington needed American bank's cooperation in the hostage crisis, but if a similar
A great deal of information about foreign powers is publicly available in the United States. Much private information is provided discreetly to the CIA by individuals acting for the best reasons. Some data in America not readily available may be vital to informed decision-making. But that possibility does not justify the CIA's placing agents in American organizations that have data the CIA believes is not otherwise available.
situation arose, should we resort to clandestine
bombing, or then execute orders or
voluntary cooperation?
These questions are not flights of fancy. Each reflects an authority that would be granted to the CIA under the suggested new executive order. Each reflects a major change in the CIA's approach to international affairs, new powers could lead to the acquisition of additional information, but at what cost?
Would these powers produce better National Intelligence Estimates, or would they lead inevitably to a new CHAOS directed not at antigovernment disdositions but at mainstream organizations? Would the additional data be worth the potential cost to the self-esteem of intelligence professionals and reactive solutions to real or perceived problems? These are some questions the administration must ask and answer as it considers the proposal.
It is easy to focus on recent regulations as the cause of CIA problems—easier than to grapple with the continuing absence of sufficient human resources to cope with the inundation of raw intelligence. The easy road may be attractive to those who want to improve the intelligence process; however, it may produce diversions from the CIA's important role overseas and make it harder to manage the complex management attention and weaken, rather than heal, an agency that has already suffered unfairly because of past errors, many not of its own making.
Let us hope the proposal is only a passing wave and spent its force with little permanent effect.
(Kenneth C. Bass III, a lawyer, headed the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review from its creation in 1979 until recently. He helped draft the executive order regulating intelligence activities that President Carter signed in 1978.)