4
Friday, April 28, 1972
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Students Trace Genesis Of McGovern Activism
By JIM KENDELL
Kansan Staff Write
April 8 McGovern for President
won all of Douglas County's 21
delegates to the state and third
congressional district
Lynn Knox, St. Louis, Mo.
treshman, is campus coordinator
Though she is the youngest of the
four, she is been seriously
involved in this project.
Four leaders of McGovern for President talked recently about their personal political history, including the campaign, campaign and future plans.
Serve New York, Junior,
union, was assistant campus
coordinator of the group. This
was the first time he had served as a political campaign
John Poley, Wichita senator,
was chairman of the delegate
selection committee. He also
wished that campaign was his
first political campaign also.
Dan Conyers, Lawrence senator,
the Democratic
National Convention.
To McGown. He is the third
chairman of Young
Democrats.
Knox's first recollection of anything political was in 1890 when a teacher of hers talked to herself as rather conservative.
By December 1967 her opposition to Vita Willett was to work for the presidential candidate of former Senator Eugene McCarthy. Knox
After McCarthy lost in 1988, he became a public figure. He became her words, girlfriend and adorer of the local SDP president" at Washington, D.C., where she lived.
As SDS escalated their tactics of confrontation, she and her boyfriend came close to violating them. Though they thought, though, they out SDS, she said.
Two years ago her boyfriend Two years ago her boyfriend in his draft card and is running time. Knox was very upset by this and fell away from her radical policies.
She got back into high school and community political and social action. She was involved in trying to reform student council, organizing for the moratoriums for the arts and tutoring Black students
Last semester at KU she got involved with women's groups.
"Somehow I had to do something to. I不知道, know pushforward for my sisters, with very important thing," she said.
Part of her urge to politics comes from her frustration with social action projects.
one same time she felt an urge to get involved in presidential politics. The choice was between McGovern and Chisolm. McGovern seemed his campaign, so she joined his campaign.
"Things that affected my effectiveness were made by the city council or OEO or something else," she said. "I seemed the root of the problem
Fefr first became involved in politics in 1968 around the war issue and campaign of Sen. Robert Kennedy. His Robert Kennedy mince because there was little for a 16-year-old to do in Kansas, he said.
Recalling Robert Kennedy's assassination, he said, "I was rather at the time mentally preparing for when the assassination came."
The assassination, Fehr said.
made him more cynical toward changing conditions and embedded the ideals Kennedy stood for in his mind. He was not a fan of the militarism with which McCarthy and supported Humphrey without enthusiasm.
Fehr went to antiquar
heaven, but he said,
not ever believing them. "I'
always been a little leary of
demonstrations, even they
do."
Poley is a political science major who remembers being sent to college and debates in 1960. Taking his cue from his Republican parents, he has become a strong supporter of the party.
Though he'd always been pro-labor and pro-integration, he said. "It was the war that really came off to the Republican party."
Polyer worked against the war in 1969, helping with letter writing campaigns organized by Student Mobe. By the time Cambodia came in 1970, he said, they were to go anywhere to stop the war.
Conyers' first political involvement was waged against the war presidential campaign. He did some campaigning, but not
"We were all caught up in a blend of ideality and didn't easily know anything about politics." Conyers said.
In 1969 he decided to get involved in party politics and find out how it worked.
That year he was the parliamentarian for KU Young Democrat and then the democrat president of the club. he became active in the county Young Democrats organization democrats in the third district.
This year he is treasurer of KU (young Democrats and chairman f the third district Young democrats, again.
In 1970 he worked on Jack Coursey's campaign for congressional representative, like Glover's campaign for Democratic and Tom Moore's campaign for Kansas representative.
"I really have no political position," she said, not dressed off about the way things are. "By getting into the conys, Conyers thinks he's having an effect."
The local McGovern for President organization began in January, though both Fehr and Koch had been elected by McGovern people before then.
Knox contacted the national McGovern office in November and then tried to find out how delegates would be elected. She and a friend tried without success because the Democratic rules in Kansas
In December Fehr attended a McGovern meeting in Kansas City and me McGovern, but we was still no organization locally.
Over Christmas break Knox worked in McGovern's St. Louis office. After returning to organization in Lawrence. The organizational meeting of McGovern for President was held in St. Louis and returned from Christmas break.
About 60 people attended that meeting. Knox was chosen coordinator Foley volunteered to chair the elected and Foley volunteered to chair the delegate selection committee and was elected to the
The delegate selection process will expand the base of the group. One of their major tasks was to make people aware of the local problems.
The delegate selection committee added to its card file by setting up tables in the Kansas Union and the residence halls.
They called every faculty member in the phone book. They called New Democratic Coalition members; they contacted leaders and campaign workers in the dover and Moore campaigns.
In the end this produced the names of 250 supporters in the first county district, 150 in the second and 450 in the third.
Congers had been active in KU Student Vote early in the semester. When things slackened, he started to drop into the McGovern office in the city and do add jobs for the group.
Students for McGovais also organized a drive to take 15 KU students to Wisconsin and Illinois in break to work for McGovais.
Feh worked in the Madison office of McGovorn for President during that week; first telephone, and then answering telephones.
"If that was the best organized campaign ever, I'd hate to see the worst ever. That was a mess," Knox said.
The trip motivated those who went to Wisconsin, he said.
To prepare for the local conventions in Douglas County, Missouri, supporters reminding them of the conventions and selected their delegates at mock conventions before the actual conventions.
At the mock conventions the group also showed their supporters how the convention would be conducted to prevent contagion.
When April 8 came the cemetery was full. There were record turmats up at the local conventions: 21 in district one, 102 in district two and 415 in district three.
Besides winning all 21 delegate slots, the McGovern supporters passed resolutions against the war, for gag lib., against laws prohibiting the sale and use of naphtha and for liquor by the drunk.
McGovern delegates won a majority in the third district. This gives them the right to select the candidate from the congratulations from this district.
Conyers and Betty Charlton.
Lawrence graduate, student,
and professor of foreign
national convention from
Douglas County, since they are
committed to the arts.
Conyers said the McGoverson organization is trying now to persuade uncommitted delegates to vote for him and making deals in other cases.
Conyers pointed out that with McGovern's stands on women's issues and farm issues there has been an increasing fundraising uncommitted delegates.
His stands on these issues are more progressive and coherent than those of Humphrey and Muskie, he said.
Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation, according to space limitations and the editor's judgment. Students must provide their own contact information faculty and staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.
James J.
Kilpatrick
Strangling National Interest
which the Senator from Arkansas is embarked. He is proposing to slash the budget of the United States information Agency by more than 20 per cent; in the process, he is proposing to reduce the Voice of America to a whisper.
WASHINGTON—If the United States Government were run in the fashion of a major university, it would be necessary to list among the catalogued courses a whole Department of J. William Fulbright. Here the persistent student could begin with Introduction to Fulbright, advance through Organic Fulbright, and afterward study at AFTER extended scholarship studies a dedicated scholar might understand one of Washington's most puzzling men.
Surely it would seem inconceivable that such a man, geared to global thinking and trained in the importance of ideas, would set about deliberately to publicize his views on American publicize the American idea. Sad to say, that is precisely the course on
The chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee was 67 years old this month. A omelette Rhodus scholar, lawyer, and university president, he has served in Congress for almost 30 years—two years in the White House and three years as a knowledge expert in foreign policy, he is widely respected in other fields also.
Three reasons are advanced to explain the Senator's inexplicable assault.
It is said that Fulbright gazes in distaste upon Frank Shakespeare, the USIA director, and finds him personally obnoxious. Fair enough. Shakespeare takes a hard line on his criticism of soft, not exactly soft, is perhaps more flexible. But directors come and director go, and the damage that would be done by the proposed budget reduction is far more important than a personal conflict. In the long haul, Fulbright sees Shakespeare mutters. This program does.
More to the immediate point, it is said the Senator is reacting with personal pique to the recent incident in which a USIA filmmaker appeared in a televised interview with Conservative Senator James Buckley of New York.
the filmmaker, Bruce Herschensohn, tactlessly described Fulbright as "naive and stupid." He then resigned, and Shakespeare did not help matters—though he apologized—by giving Herschensohn the USIA's highest award. A flasco. But, again, Fulbright called him a genius; the named calls too many times before—to give a personal indignity provoke so grave a retaliation.
A more plausible explanation lies in the refusal of the USIA, acting on White House instructions, to make publicly available to the Foreign Relations Committee a so-called "country paper" on papers confidential in home memoranda, spelling out our propaganda plans, country by country. As such, they are covered by the doctrine of executive privilege. Their publication could cause a distortion in the USIA is the sticking point, why it could be eased by rational compromise.
But we are at this sorry pass: The Foreign Relations Committee, at Fulbright's behest, has voted 9-4 to cut USA's authorization for Fiscal 73
from a requested $200.2 million to $155
million. The recommendation could be
overridden, of course, by floor action,
or deliver the award, diever carries
respectable weight.
The Voice of America now carries 35 broadcast hours a week, in 35 languages beamed around the world. The Fulbright slash would cut this program to 464 hours in 11 languages. We would be competing at the level of Portugal and Albania. More than 3,500 students in Portugal and Albania them with irreplaceable language skills, would have to be fired. The VOA, in short, would be stranded.
Such folly must be avoided. The USIA, under Shakespeare, has not engaged in empire building; it has 600 fewer employees than it had four years ago. By comparison with Russia, China, and the Arab Republic, the United States is waging a modest program of information and education. But they need our continuing national interest around the world; and Fulbright, who is genuinely a man of the world, must see the need to keep it strong.
Copyright, 1972, Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Readers Respond
Bureaucratic Bungling, Pot ...
Why Wescoe?
It is common knowledge that in any bureaucratic structure there is and will continue to be a great difference in the mismanaged manpower. However common this concession is, it is still possible for anyone outside the bureaucracy
To the Editor:
On April 24, the K.U.
Computation Center printed up a
histogram for the administration
of the fall semester and used
for the fall semester, 1972.
to see the deleterious effects of this poorly run structure. It has an obstructive blunt and costly blunder on the part of the Board of Regents and the K.U.
Letters Policy
We were appalled at the results. More than half of the classrooms had computers, a possible fifty-hour week and yet the University has the gall to construct a new building. We are not ready to use it for its use. Furthermore this building will be used to train ophthalmologists who do not need a building of
"Just whose screwball idea was it to hold the convention?"
in San Diego in the first place?
their own in the first place. The University says it doesn't have money to hire new professors to upgrade the caliber of teaching at its schools and to squander on new buildings. We wonder if the administration and the Board of Regents would have the nerve to publish the actual statistics on class usage and building in light of these statistics.
By Sokoloff
—Rick Head,
Topeka senior
—Ted Spradley,
Lawrence senior
we always lot nowadays about a plant called wild hemp. My sources tell me that wild hemp makes us stand out, and that some people have been known to take the dried leaves of the wild hemp, roll them in a cylinder of paper and burn them, in the highest the smoke and it allegedly gives them a lift. This wild hemp is classed as a noxious weed. Now wild hemp does well only on very cool days, but never overnerv the countryside.
Make a Rope
To the Editor:
For longer than anyone alive today can remember, people from the past have used tobacco plant in a cylinder of paper, lithed it and then inhaled the smoke. This, I am told, gives me vision. The smoke has been listed as a noxious plant. It also does well only on very fertile ground and never overrun the countryside.
The list goes on and on. The Hospitals are full of people who have misused the product of the bobtail (bob-tail type Scotch), and barley (beer), yet none of these have been classed as noxious plants. The product of each is supposed to be used for medicinal depends on who is being lifted. Misusing the product of the harmless wild wilt is just as stupid as misusing these other stumps; stupidity is hardly criminal.
With my family, I live on 40 acres near Tonganoxie. I raise most of our own food and experiment with salvaging wild animals. We make our own maple syrup, for example, from wild boxelder
Griff and the Unicorn
"Copyright 1972, David Sokoloff."
Campus Gardener, Tonganoxie
trees. Next I might decide to make my own rope. I am told that wild hemp makes very good rope.
Abbman, Karr.
We wish to take this means to express our profound shock and revulsion against the continuance of war in India and war in India-China and to urge our fellow faculty members and students at the University of Kansas to use appropriate means to prepare for a speedy bring the war to a speedy end.
The recent North Vietnamese offensive provides no excuse for the Administration's brutal and aggressive war in Vietnam is essentially a civil war, the only parties that can properly be labeled aggressors and interventionists are the ones in the war—i.e., our own forces.
To the Editor:
No More War
We, like many Americans and Asians, are deeply distressed by the war. Despite the air-war. Despite talk of disengagement and withdrawal, ever greater numbers of ships have been sent to Southeast Asia, and more death and destruction visited upon the Vietnam War and other Indo-Pacific conflicts.
Associate Professor
Oriental Lang. & Lit.
How Instructor
Instructor
Oriental Lang. & Lit.
—C. Leban
Acting Chairman
Oriental Leng. & Lit.
—Paul F. McCarthy
Lecturer
Oriental Leng. & Lit.
Jr. Speaker
Associate Professor
Oriental Leng. & Lit.
—andrew Tusbaki
Assistant Professor
Oriental Leng. & Lit.
—Masaya Tsukamoto
Teaching Assistant
Oriental Leng. & Lit.
Associate Professor
Oriental Leng. & Lit.
J.O.L. Whalen
Instructor
Eastern Civilizations
—C. C. Huang
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