THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
The University of Kansas—Lawrence, Kansas
80th Year, No. 56
Monday, Dec. 8, 1969
Photo by Fred Chan
'Messiah' rings out in Hoch
KU's combined choruses and orchestra presented Handel's "Messiah" Sunday afternoon in Hoch Auditorium. Conducted by James A. Ralston, choral music teaching associate, the production's solo roles were sung by Suzanne Juvenat, Columbus, Neb., senior, Terry Susan Knowles, Bloomfield Hills, Ill., senior, James Asbury, Overland Park senior, and William Krusemark, Atchison junior.
Frizzell doubtful of validity of fees
By STEPHEN C, HAYNES Assistant News Editor
TOPEKA - Fees charged by state colleges and universities may be unconstitutional, state Attorney General Kent Frizzell said Sunday.
Frizzell, speaking to the Kansas College Republican Federation Resolutions Convention in Topeka, said the Kansas Constitution, which calls for free public education, might bar the state Board of Regents from levying fees.
The charges could be challenged in the courts, he said, and he indicated he felt the courts might rule against the fees.
Charges for tuition are banned
UDK News Roundup
By United Press International
East-West talks begin
MOSCOW—The Soviet Union and West Germany today opened talks on a nonaggression paet, making a new phase in East-West relations.
West German diplomatic sources said the negotiations were the most important between the two nations since the late Chancellor Konrad Adenauer came to Moscow in 1955 to open diplomatic relations with the Kremlin.
SALT talks continue
HELSINKI—The U.S. delegation asked that today's strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) session be cancelled so it could have more time to receive guidance from Washington. The Soviets readily agreed.
American spokesmen said Gerard C. Smith, the chief U.S. negotiator, required information still en route from Washington.
Acquittal ruling likely
CHICAGO—U.S. District Court Judge Julius J. Hoffman was expected to deny a defense motion for a directed acquittal today in the trial of the "Chicago Seven." The defense then was to begin presenting its case—"the true story of Chicago."
The prosecution completed its case Friday in the trial of seven men charged with conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Defense attorney William Kunstler asked for a directed acquittal and Hoffman said he would rule on it today.
Outsiders may seek facts
WASHINGTON—John Stennis, chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee, wants President Nixon to appoint an independent nonmilitary commission to investigate the alleged American massacre of South Vietnamese civilians at My Lai.
--ing investigation of unsolicited credit card mailings.
Nixon's threat gets legislature moving
WASHINGTON (UPI)—Whip cracking congressional leaders Sunday served up a workload for the House and Senate this week that equalled the combined legislative business of any four weeks in the past year.
Lured by the sound of Christmas bells and jolted by President Nixon's threat to call them back during the holiday week if they didn't clear all appropriations, lawmakers were ready to put out an extra legislative effort.
Not only were they prepared to meet from Monday through Saturday, but a subcommittee headed by Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., logged in an almost unheard of Sunday session to start off the week.
The Proxmire panel, an arm of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, heard Washington area witnesses in its continuing investigation of unsolicited credit card mailings.
After 11 months marked by frequent recesses, momentary bursts of activity and countless unproductive weeks, Congress assigned itself the Herculean task of cleaning up a mountain of unattended legislation by Dec. 23.
The mind - boggling House schedule for this week included consideration of the defense and foreign aid appropriations, measures to extend the voting rights law and antipoverty programs and a bill that would boost Social Security benefits by 15 per cent as of Jan. 1, 1970. Earlier in the session, one, perhaps two, of these bills would have occupied the House in its usual Tuesday-through-Thursday span of serious work.
The Senate, meanwhile, is set to complete action on tax reform
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by state law, but the Regents have in the past avoided this prohibition by charging "incidental fees," which have been generally accepted as being within both the law and the constitution.
It is these incidental fees that Frizzell referred to.
Chancellor E. Laurence Chalmers Jr. told the University Daily Kansan that a court action challenging the right of the University to collect fees could materially affect the operation of the University.
Chalmers said, however, that he agreed in principle with the idea of free college education, although he felt such a system might be impractical.
"The universality of public education is a necessary principal," he said, "and I think this concept must prevail."
The University receives $6 million each year in fees out of a total budget of almost $40 million.
The policy of the Regents and the state legislature is that fees should provide 25 per cent of the budget of each state college or university.
Because the amount collected in fees has fallen below this level in recent years, the Regents announced last month that fees would be raised from the current level of $120 for Kansas residents and $350 for out-of-state students to $180 and $475 respectively.
Faced with the loss of 25 per cent of their operating budgets, the state schools would be hard pressed to meet basic expenses.
Frizzell indicated that if fees (Continued to page 12)
Weather
Considerable cloudiness and continued cold today with occasional snow forenoon ending afternoon.
Blacks in society discussed
Change called for
Three nationally prominent black speakers opened the Midwest Regional Conference of the Black Student Union Friday night.
Haywood Henry, biochemistry lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, H. Rap Brown, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)), and Playtell Benjamin, lecturer and historian at the University of Massachusetts, addressed a group of more than 1,000 persons in Hoch Auditorium.
All three speakers spoke on the
problems of blacks in American society.
Henry said that "the nature and purpose of American society must be changed. We are declaring that there will be no peace and no tranquility in a society where people are oppressed because of the color of their skin."
"The clear reality is that black people are powerless . . . As a minority we aren't in a position where we can tell a majority they can never exercise power, but we can tell the majority they can't continue to exercise power in the way they've been exercising it," he said.
Henry said that the two-party system was bankrupt because both parties were "fundamentally racist to the core." He added that blacks had to create independent black political mechanisms because "the existent system exists to the distinct advantage of some and to the distinct disadvantage of the blacks."
Higher education in the form of a Black Studies program "is useful in that it provides the basis for building such institutions or political mechanisms." Henry said. However, he noted that "education today does not teach
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