KANSAN COMMENT
Disgruntled Faculty: Striking a Balance
Even though Chancellor Chalmers is justifiably proud of the solidarity among students this fall, perhaps he should give some attention to another facet of the university community.
The resolution adopted Tuesday by the College faculty was the first manifestation of a growing dissatisfaction among faculty members.
It expressed concern that the University Senate was not consulted before the alternatives were presented at the May 8 convocation.
What they meant was that the administration and SenEx formulated the plan, the students adopted it, but the faculty was virtually ignored. The college faculty wanted to be assured that they are given their share of participation in making decisions concerning University matters.
However, when one considers the decisions made last May, the administration does have a valid argument.
After President Nixon's announcement of the Cambodia incursion and the Kent State killings a few days later, tension on the KU campus ballooned. Three consecutive nights of demonstrations at Strong Hall and a window-breaking incident at the Military Science building compounded the problem.
The administration had to move fast and decide a policy for the University. Because SenEx is empowered to act for the University Senate in emergency situations, and the April developments constituted such an emergency, that body convened and met more than 13 hours straight. The options adopted at the convocation the next day were a result of that meeting.
There was simply not enough time to canvass every segment of the University.
Furthermore, if the Chancellor had called an emergency meeting of the University Senate, one wonders if enough senators would have
shown up for a quorum. In three regularly scheduled meetings last spring, a quorum was missing all three times—even when closed circuit television was tried between Lawrence and the Medical Center.
If the faculty wants to enhance its demands for a voice in decision-making, the faculty senators should make a concerted effort to attend in force every University Senate meeting. Nonsenator colleagues should encourage the senators to show up.
On the other hand, the administration should make a concerted effort to guarantee a faculty voice in all matters. Chancellor Chalmers has most of the students behind him, but not quite so many of the faculty.
Many of the faculty members felt that they were "sold out" last spring, and that Chalmers was siding with the students and against the faculty.
This was not entirely true, but Chalmers should now make every effort to show the faculty he is sensitive to their problems too.
Those who argue that the faculty is a group of employees who should do what the boss says are woefully misguided. If the faculty wanted to be corporate morons they could kiss KU goodbye and rake in the coin.
Faculty members have ideals and opinions concerning education and University affairs, and their opinions are often surprisingly similar to those of students.
Now is the time for the administration to convince faculty members that they have not been sold out in favor of the students.
By no means should this result in the students' being shoved aside, but a reasonable balance between student and faculty considerations must be created to avoid a serious internal split that Chalmers has said he fears just as much as outside disruption. —Ted Iliff
WASHINGTON WINDOW
Nixon Message to Congress: Partisanship and Prediction
By EUGENE RISHER UPI Writer
WASHINGTON-
Backstairs at the White House:
The lengthy message President Nixon sent to Congress last week asking for action on his domestic programs was more than a partisan political document.
It was that, of course. Quite plainly the President sought to blunt Democratic criticism that his administration had failed to act decisively on pressing domestic problems and to lay groundwork for the fall Republican campaign to win control of Congress.
Otherwise, knowing it will be impossible for the 91st congress to get around to all the measures he put forward in the few remaining weeks of its existence, he could appropriately have indicated some priorities. Indeed, portions of the message read like a Republican handbook of things to remind the voters of in November.
But it also set forth the President's concept of the changing American society and the role of government in it.
"I have sought here to describe the issues of substance and of process which confront us at
this time, setting them in the framework of a general approach to government as we come to the end of one era of social policy and begin the grand adventure of another," the message said.
"... The era upon which we are entered is not so easily defined as it is perceived ... the emergence of a post-industrial society is the dominant social reality of the present moment. Our task is to understand and to respond to these changed circumstances."
Pointing out that in this new era "growth becomes less of a goal and more of an issue," the President added:
"The fundamental task of government in the era now past was to somehow keep abreast of such change growth and respond to it. The task of government in the future will be to anticipate change growth: to prevent it where clearly nothing is to be gained; to prepare for it when on balance the effects are to be desired; and above all to build into the technology an increasing degree of understanding of its impact on human society."
"Our present problems in large degree arise from the failure to anticipate the consequences of our past success. . . .
"Copyright 1970, University Daily Kansan"
RICHARD LOUV
Last summer I wrote a series of columns for the Hutchinson News designed to give one student's impressions of what it meant to be between the age of young and younger in a country beginning to hate its young, a country that expected them to fight a war for which, unlike World War II, they gave neither advice nor consent. Reading back over my impressions I felt a little embarrassed that I could draw morals quite that easily. Yet the same currents, if not so clear, still move in the nation. It was a long time ago that Pete Seeger wrote "Waste Deep in Big Muddy," a very long, tired time.
COLUMN
Some friends and I were sitting on the porch of their house last night, talking and watching Oread. One of the friends, Tucker, was a Vietnam veteran. (He writes about Vietnam to get rid of it. Tucker—rattles his old typewriter nearly every night to lay those memories to rest on the paper, to make them leave him alone.) As a joke he played his guitar and sang "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" In the next room four
ex-students, ex-flower children, were shooting heroin. I left, and walked home under the evil flying clouds that looked like smoke . . .
Please, I beg someone, understand what this war continues to do to us. Our tolerance for violence has increased while our tolerance in all other areas has decreased, and that process can only spread a certain kind of cancer, and in the
end consumes us. The father who will reject his son because of long hair will watch the killings in Vietnam on television with increased boredom. Everybody is against that war, yet it continues, with mounting fury, and we tolerate it in the name of civil order. But the cancer creeps out, first an inch and then a yard, and the civil order which we proposed to save from those madmen like Abbie Hoffman crumbles anyway, from the infectious disease for which we ourselves planted the germ. This society, if it continues its war much longer, will go either to chaos or iron repression, which will mean the end of the American dream, the end of any tolerance at all, and this society will be destroyed even if all the revolutionaries are jailed, even if the Bill of Rights is reversed and martial law enforced. For he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword, and a society that exists because of continuing violence shall die because it has exists because of continuing violence shall die because it has shall turn on those in power like soldiers who have finally discovered the enemy in the trees behind them.
What this country is now doing cannot continue. By law of survival it must end.
I think now of Tucker, writing to beat the band. His old black typewriter singing a jazz song, clicky click it sing it sing like a jazz band. And outside his room the heroin seekers, the midnight peepers, dance to the song in his head.
And outside the house under the flying clouds something approaches in the night, something that Tucker will not be able to get rid of by writing about it. The war has followed him home, and is outside his door; outside our doors. . .
As I walked home last night I felt sure that the cancer could be stopped if the war were ended by Christmas. In this hot afternoon, I'm not so sure. But at least it would be the first, most necessary step. We have to keep repeating it. We've been waist deep in Big Muddy too long now, and it's beginning to rain.
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