4 Thursday, March 9, 1972 University Daily Kansan Garry Wills KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers. Seven Days' Wages Most students were relieved when the walkout by the maintenance workers was over and the picketers had abandoned their posts. I always felt awkward and a little helpless because of my lack of skill making it probably occurred to most students, as it did to me, that we were being benefitted by the low wages and nominal benefits that workers were receiving, since that helped keep our tuition and taxes down. Nevertheless, the charges levied against this University by the management situation are too serious to be justified by saying such practices save us money. As in most labor-management disputes, the major issue was money. The University pays its maintenance workers wages that make welfare look attractive. The union wanted to discuss the poor safety credits and that only revision for people injured on the job was one free visit to Watkins. There were other complaints which were claimed by the Union to be violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act such as the University's punitive measure of taking an hour's pay for being as little as two minutes overtime. Attended to the faculty, a good number of the professors at this University would be threatened with financial ruin. Union officials have reached some sort of agreement with the administration about the workers' situation. However, in the week the employees returned to work the only significant modifications announced were that worker representation on subcommittee for safety interests increased and front office per cent to 50 per cent and a fairer method of assigning overtime work had been promised. The headline news has been that the University now has an “understanding” of the workers’ situation it remains to be seen whether this understanding will be easier for the workers to pay their bills. Local 1132 is not a strong union. They have trouble getting workers to join it. Anyone who knows what other unions demand and often get when striking would realize how timid their demands were. It almost seemed as if the union had not set its goals any higher than an understanding. Their major grievance was money but they gave no indication of the wage they thought they deserved. Most of the other complaints they presented to the union were based on comments on when the understanding was announced. Much of the organization for the walkout, including that involved with the distribution of information about it, appeared to have happened after it had begun. The tone of some of their handouts was more conciliatory than it needed to be. Although this strike, at least initially, appears to have been ineffective, it has secured for the workers the sympathy of most of the campus. Since the Kansas legislature has passed a law for workers to be given a strike it could be difficult for the union to get the University to the bargaining table in the future. But perhaps a way can be found to transform some sympathy to a willingness to effectively help and actively support the workers in their endeavor to obtain a more equitable working situation. Hopefully, this would give them a little more of the financial aid they need. Their seven days of lost wages would have purchased more than 50 per cent representation on a University subcommittee. Mary Ward Readers Respond Blood Rock; Rifles; Restraint To the Editor: The Red Cross and Pershing Rifles would like to take this opportunity to thank the faculty, staff, students, and volunteers of Kansas for their cooperation in the Red Cross Blood Drive which was held on February 9-11. Students participated in extensive exercise and teamwork; gave us a great deal of help. We would like to add our special thanks to the Stables and to Mr. Ace Johnson for storring that was donated by Mr. Frank McDonald or McDonald Beverage Company. We would also like to thank the Kansan in making the drive a success. The total donations for the drive numbered 517 pints. This is one of the best totals ever for the event, "the thank you" to all concerned. —Jesse A. Lobb E-Co Berets Jerome R. Doak Pershing Rifles ★★ ★★★ Omission To the Editor: The Kansan in its coverage of the March 2 Student Senate meeting omitted some details reported by other publications 1. The committee investigating the allotment of bookstore funds for rebates and support for the Supportive Education Office of the State Department student-controlled committee oversee the SES program. Although the Senate has loudly demanded that the students be given more funds and has condemned anyone who denies this right it voted NOT to set up the committee but to leave the control of the over year of student funds from bookshop fines under current management. 2. When it is asked who currently controls this program a former chairman of the Black Committee will have to statement he has often made for previous publication (and which has not been denied by anyone). a committee of black administrators in KU personnel offices who he claimed owe their jobs to the Black Students Union and other institutions. In other words the BSU controls the SES program. The BSU had the final decision on the staffing of the program and also who is to be recruited. The BSU reserved a number of the jobs for their officers. Needless to say no one dares check to see if the tutors actually perform their duties. One wonders if anyone should be being a member of the BSU. 3. The committee also recommended a maximum of $30,000 a year be paid to SES. The Senate rejected this and so currently the only limitation on the sum being ripped off to pay for the bookstore is the amount of profit the bookstore can get from its customers. 4. The senate refused to have a roll call vote on these two matters. Thus each senator did not represent the Senate he represented where he stood. 5. Finally on another matter an effort to put a referendum question on the ballot concerning the use of the student activity room was defeated when a quorum call revealed that not enough senators were left to conduct business. So again the policy of giving students the right to a voice in the use of the library was followed. One wonders why these facts were ignored by the Kansan. Could it be that the threat to cut off support to the Kansan last fall while unsuccessful on the surface of the earth? The truth is that stopping the Kansan from revealing embarrassing facts about the Senate? Mike Moffet's exhortation rings forth: All Americans who believe in the Constitution should speak out against the anti-busing amendments currently in Congress. And those who support it are likely to feel just not Americans who believe in the Constitution, that's all. ★★ Which leaves Sam Ervin-to take an example—where? The candidate was Carolina is regarded by his colleagues as the most able and charismatic of all his scholars among them. Surely if any American believes in the candidate's potential scholar among them. Anyway, the point of all this is that one can oppose busing and still believe in the Constitution, in the Constitution, in words notwithstanding. Perhaps in future Moffet will show more restraint (not to mention rationality) in what he implies citizens with whom he disagrees. precisely what busing does. ) Exhortation Jim Gugleta Wichita Junior Yet not long ago, Ervin was heard to suggest that some kind of constitutional amendment, might be necessary to end the current system. Ervin considers constitutionally unacceptable. (His reasoning is this: The current interpretation requires a subject of school integration is that students cannot be assigned to classes because of their race—which is To the Editor: Chalk To the Editor: After reading Stuart Celand's review of the 1972 Rock Chalk issue of the UDK, I was disgusted by the view your critical took of the performance. Your writer seems to me to have missed the entire book and was surprised that ARL-AGD script was superior to the others in the show, but that is not adequate reason to cross off tasteless only because the other houses in the show don't happen to have a talent like Eric Bikkele. Revue is cut out to be a proving ground for future professionals. Revue describes as 'tasteless' Celand describes as 'tasteless'纪特"remembers months of hard work by amateurs and not to mention Chalk Revue is not destined to be the "showcase for creativity" which Mr. Celand presumes; and it is not appropriate for amateur students working for a good cause, namely the KUY- Bob Swift Ft. Lee, Virginia Junior An Absurd Foreign Policy The two questions about Nixon's attitude toward India is: Why? How could we be so stupid? Our policy there must us join the losing side without even the luxury of losing on a matter of principle. Our actions are neither honorable nor advantageous. So: Why? The answer lies in Mr. Nixon's Wilsonian attempts at an idealistic view of the world, something that involved Wilton himself in troublesome contradictions where China was involved. The two poles of Wilsonianism were self-determination and internationalism. The two are often at a distance, with the one involved in, "the family of nations," it is often necessary to avoid "medding in the internal affairs" of that country, even when this means de facto support for another denies its people self-determination. It was this conflict that made Wilson support an autocratic government in China while trying to impose self-determination in Mexico. He felt that the Open Door Policy had to be preserved, if China was not going to withdraw from the world community. And, as usually happens, conflict gave extraneous interests their opportunity - America's economic power of the "principled" maintenance of an Open Door to trade with the East. A similar confluence-yet-continual of ideals and ambitions is at work in our moralizing against India. While we fight a war thousands of miles from our borders, supposedly to create an Islamic State, we Vietnamese self-determination, actually to sustain our national interest in anti-Communism, we smugly condemn India for intervening in a situation that girdes her borders, one that involves not only "self-self" but also "self-human" millions of people, and one that inflicts daily hardships on both East Pakistanis and the Indians themselves. The Indians are in a much sounder moral position than we have been with Vietnam—or, for that matter, with Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Yet administration spokesmen criticize Mrs. Gandhi for "agression" and supported the militant regime of Mexico in its determination" norm must yield, here, to the internationalism goal of improved US-China relations. Not only is Pakistan backed by China—Pakistan was the original link between the two countries—it was a national institution. Kissinger disappeared for his brief first visit to Peking. So it is our (Left-approved) overture to China, in the name of internationalism, which led us to the (Right-approved) support of Khan, in violation of the principle of self-determination for East Pakistanis. Moralism in foreign policy is always rather comic. Hedging and trimming is one thing; hedging and trimming on the part of a fundamentalist Preacher is quite another—and that is the kind of flexibility1 to which we have come to agree with.2 The legal time, Legitimate maneuver in its creation becomes more shiftiness in us, creating self-deception at home and cynical distrust abroad. This was bad enough when we took high moral ground for opposing a "repressive" regime like Cuba's, while dealing with the governments of Spain and Greece. There was simple-minded officials who were determined it was merely anti-Communist. But Nixon has now followed the logic of our policy out to one of Wilson's poles, by encouraging internationalism with China; and this has caused inevitable stress at the other pole, so that we deny the ability of self-government in East Pakistan. Were we put in so absurd a posture with regard to the Pakistan war? Because we are pursuing what is now traditional foreign policy for this country—and that policy is itself absurd. Copyright, 1972 Universal Press Syndicate James J. Kilpatrick Recent Opinion Raises Questions RICHMOND, VA—A reckon opinion by District Judge Robert R. Merhige, laying down sweeping new requirements for the desegregation of public schools that will occupy judges, lawyers, public officials and ordinary citizens for months to come. One group of questions deals with the powers of local government; another deals with the powers of a power-hunrvy judge. this is an extraordinary opinion. This is with various appendices, runs on it or 325 words it runs on the other verbosity, it is no doctrinaire verbosity, her doctrinaire racism that commands attention. It is rather the breathtaking ambition of this court, literally on its own motion, to rewrite the Constitution and to reorder the lives of thousands of persons. This particular case, one in an interminable series of school cases in Virginia, arose from Meritage's order two years ago demanded the busing of some 13,500 pupils in order to obtain a place in the local school. That order applied to the City of Richmond only; it left the two surrounding counties untouched; and it left the city fretting with impatience. In July of 1970, in a bizarre distortion of his judicial role, Merge himself wrote a letter to Merge suggesting that "consolidation" be explored. The point of his letter—it had no other point—was delicately to hint that merger would have occurred appropriate at law. The plaintiffs, no dummies, promptly sought the relief the judge had suggested. On Monday, Merge insisted the presumption of the case The City of Richmond, Henrico County, and Chesterfield County are three separate jurisdictions of local government, having their own school district governing bodies. The arrangement reflects a tradition of strong local government, embedded in the State Constitution, recorded in the earliest history of the Commonwealth. Under Merge's decree, so far as schools are concerned, all this goes by the boards. It is his will that an entirely new school be established, separate separate, a district of 752 square miles and 108,000 pupils. Within this district, an estimated 78,000 children must be bused in an effort to achieve a racial mix to the judge's liking: 20 to 40 per cent black students in a school anywhere with black pupils in a majority. The court deliberately discards every consideration but one: the natural boundaries with "the most natural bounded neighborhoods." The proximity of children to schools has no meaning for him. It does not matter that natural attendance plans might be more convenient than the transportation cost, might facilitate the operation of more extra-curricular school activities, and might make more students earn certain benefits which some eduators attach to the walk-in school." Merrige's order was that the defendants must take "affirmative action to maximize integration." The judge holds that "meaningful integration is not only essential to equality of treatment, but it is required by the Constitution of the United States." This "requirement," in Mergei's view, is to be found in the Fourteenth Amendment, provided that amendment is in the manner in which it was intended to be interpreted." One is minded to ask, "intended by whom?" Manifestly neither the framers nor the ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended that amendment to be so interpreted. The same Congress that ratified the Fourteenth Amendment provided for segregated schools in the District of Columbia. The patent intention was not to require integration, maximized or meaningful or otherwise, but to prevent discrimination and the implications of Hermitage's draconian opinion go far beyond the Richmond area. Taken with other recent egalitarian pronouncements in California and Texas, the decree suggests a judicial activism that makes a travesty of a written Constitution and reduces "government" by more than the government" mere words blown away by the wind. Copyright, 1972. Washington Star Syndicate, Inc. THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN America's Pacemaking college newspaper NEWS STAFF News Adviser ... Del Brinkman BUSINESS STAFF Business Advtser ... Mel Adama Griff and the Unicorn By Sokoloff "Copyright 1972, David Sokoloff.