KANSAN COMMENT
Nixon's Visit: Political Baby
Today in Manhattan the President of the United States spoke to students on one of the few college campuses that has been honored with his austere presence.
The audience he faced was predominantly conservative, as were the audiences at South Dakota's General Beadle State College and the Air Force Academy. The faces in Manhattan were scrubbed a little cleaner than those in Berkeley, Madison or even Kent, Ohio. It was a homogeneous audience, the kind presidents like to address.
The various Kansas politicos, who in this election year hunger for any campaign boost, all claimed some hand in finally securing that political Kewpie doll for their constituents.
The glitter and pomp of the moments surrounding the event might have upstaged the fact that Nixon's appearance itself was a product of politics, the beast that has devoured truth and spat out intimations of popularity and tenths of percentage points in the Gallup Poll. The fact that should not be forgotten or overshadowed by the campaign rhetoric, was that that man, the President, did not come to Manhattan—or Kansas for that matter—on his own volition. He came as a monarch might, dropping favors to those in the court who particularly pleased him, and granting a superficial tete-a-tete to deserving jesters.
The first reports from the Washington advance men hinted that Nixon would speak of Campus unrest in those few minutes actually spent in Manhattan.
Campus Unrest.
Several sociologists and behavioral scientists have concluded that the major factor contributing to that amorphous term that the President chose to speak about was the disposition of the conflict in Southeast Asia. Some would rather believe that the rebellion of youth today was only an affectation of a generation of well-fed malcontents that would create an issue even if the Vietnam war suddenly vanished. That simplistic view has only perpetuated the final rectification of the problem that presidents, politicians, and college presidents call Campus Unrest.
The politicians who voted (to the man) against the End-the-War amendment now have brought the good people of Kansas a president to speak of Campus Unrest. The rational mind boggles at such obscene examples of political pandering.
The fault lay not only with the moods and actions of the president, because he was playing his chosen role in the Mad Hatter rampage that most call national politics, but also with the actions of the elected officials who in good conscience had to represent their constituents. The Solons of Kansas, shrouded in their imperception, imported the President to speak on Campus Unrest and keep one hand free to stoke the fire of discontent that has blown across the country like a whirlwind.
If nothing else, Nixon's visit will have added to the prestige of Kansas and Kansas State University, but the ludicrousness of the situation has cast a rainy-day pall over whatever plaudits were gained from the presidential sortie.
Tom Slaughter
LETTERS
No Blacks on Faculty?
To the editor:
I sat enjoying the good vibes and interesting music Monday morning, waiting for the convocation to begin, anxious to hear what the controversial chancellor would have to say. Then the band was playing the processional and the senior faculty walked in, down the center aisle, and began to fill their reserved seats up front. I observed them, studying faces, trying to detect moods. The procession continued, and I became aware that I hadn't seen one black man yet. The music played on, the faculty marched on, and filed on into the empty rows. Still not one black faculty member. Finally the administration came up the aisle, and took its place on the dais, the only black man there being the vice-president of the student body.
The point is, why were there no black faculty members there? Are there even any black faculty at the University of Kansas?
I would suggest to Dr. Chalmers that if the University is to go forward, as he said, it should go forward first in the area of race relations. KU should have several dozens of black faculty members, in addition to faculty representatives of other minority groups.
Conall D. O'Leary Lawrence Graduate student
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KU and Moore Co. Strike
By BOB WOMACK
There is a continual dispute over the question of whether a university should become an active political agent, choosing a faction or candidate to support and then committing its resources to achieving success for its chosen faction or candidate.
With the passage of a resolution by the Student Senate supporting a strike in Overland Park, the name of KU has been tied to the support of one side in a labor dispute.
The strike at C. M. Moore Plastics, has become a new cause for many on the campus, including the student body president.
THE RESOLUTION:
- EXPRESSES support for the strike.
- ENCOURAGES students to picket and take action against the company.
- OFFERS all available resources and facilities to help the striking employees.
So the "resources and facilities" of KU have been offered to one side in this dispute. This comes in spite of the fact that most students probably know little about the strike.
There is of course, a strong case to be made for the use of
the university's resources and facilities in the furtherance of programs of social action. And this is being done, through the work and research of individuals, and the use of university facilities for such programs as Headstart.
But when the Student Senate offers support, through a resolution in the name of KU, to one faction in a labor dispute, it forces the chancellor to reassure the public that the university itself is not taking sides and that the actions of those supporting the strike "cannot be considered in any sense an official university action."
The resolution not only places the chancellor in an awkward position but threatens to destroy one of the most valuable attributes of an institution of learning—its objectivity.
At the time of last year's Vietnam war moratoriums, Chalmers warned that a university could not and should not take political stands as an institution—in that case a stand for or against the war.
The recently passed resolution denies the legitimacy of that reasoning.
In his testimony before the President's Commission on Campus Disorders, Sidney Hook, a professor of philosophy
at New York University, said,
"The history of American higher education is a history of change. Violence has never played an appreciable role in that history. It need not play a role today if it is recognized that the primary function of higher education is the quest for knowledge, wisdom and vision, not the conquest of political power; that the university is not responsible for the existence of wars, poverty and other evils; and that the solution of these and allied problems lies in the hands of the democratic citizenry and not of a privileged elite."
If the Student Senate wishes to commit the resources of the university to wage and working condition disputes, why should it not begin on campus with the low wages of the Buildings and Grounds employes and the graduate teaching assistants?
Political involvement means potential political control by those that the university would choose not to support. Regardless of the seeming validity of the plastic workers' complaint, to commit the name and resources of KU to their cause is to set a dangerous precedent for a university that must remain objective in order to remain free.
SOKOLOFF
"Copyright 1970, University Daily Kansan"