KANSAN COMMENT
Lawrence High: The Striking Point
Recent violence at Lawrence High School, has pushed black-white relations, in the community and the school, to a seeming watershed.
The situation at the high school has deteriorated to the point that, if the plummeting of black-white relations is not checked and some semblance of rationality is not achieved in the next precious few days, a pandora's box of repression, violence and ultimately tragedy will be kicked ajar by the imperception and over-reaction of a few.
If the past serves as a model, problems and mistakes at the high school are a microcosm of the disposition of the community as a whole.
The high school is the racial barometer of the city.
In any conflict situation, the contesting parties usually submit to some form of mediation by an unconcerned third party, an ambudsman. Paramount in this third party's function is a positive settlement of the dispute.
At Lawrence High School, the ombudsman is also the judge and jury. The accused has the right to appeal, to an appellate body—a member of the school staff. Yet the well-meaning actions of even the most impartial school-appointed mediator can not help but be prejudiced by statements from a school board and principal who are crying for understanding and promising at the same time, "there will be many suspensions and separations from the school environment" unless several students change their behavior.
Problems at the high school can only be magnified and intensified by admonitions of a "get-tough" policy in dealing with dissidents.
The students of Lawrence High deserve the formation of constructive ideas, not promises of further repression.
Administrators must promote and be receptive to concessions, not rule them out as impossible or unworkable.
The people of Lawrence, black and white, must give their support to any reasonable proposal to end the hostilities. They must not fuel the fire of irrationality for which their children are kindling, or see their whole city embroiled in the tragic quagmire of Watts, Detroit, Newark, Omaha. . .
The problem at Lawrence High is clearly racial. There is no easy solution to this kind of problem, nor is the fault any man's or group's. The fault is ours, all of ours.
The problems at Lawrence High School are the problems of the greater community and the future of the community demands that these problems be handled more adroitly than they have in the painful past.
—Tom Slaughter
Fund Slashing May Raise Alums' Eyebrows
By BOB WOMACK
The KU Athletic Department, under siege already from the Student Senate Finance and Auditing Committee, now faces a new assault in the form of a resolution offered to the Student Senate by three of its members.
This year marks the first time students have been given such a significant voice in determining how student fees (a $12 per semester assessment against each full time student) are to be allocated.
This new exercise in student self-determination has already resulted in a freeze of fee allocations at last year's levels and a current investigation by Board of Regents members of the Senate Committee's budget suggestions.
It is regrettable that the Finance and Auditing Committee chose to make the athletic department the target of its fund shifting and reallocation, for KU's athletic program is probably the closest, dearest, and most visible link that many alumni have to their alma mater.
It seems more than a little unwise to recommend a $48,400 cut in athletic department appropriations when much of the department's funds have already been pledged for projects such as the new synthetic turf in Memorial Stadium with the approval of the KU Athletic Board, the chancellor, and the regents.
Such misdirected attempts to assert independence in the name of more relevant activities, can only backfire, as they already have, through the freeze imposed by the regents.
The allocation recommended by the Senate committee was estimated through a rather dubious theory that fee money should go to the athletic department only from those students who buy season football and basketball tickets. Most students are aware that both football and basketball games are attended by a vast number of those who do not purchase student tickets, but who benefit from lower student ticket prices made available by the athletic department.
operations of the athletic department. This is desirable because half of each student's activity fee currently goes to KU's athletic program.
Questions should be answered about the financial
But a resolution recently introduced in the Student Senate could easily negate any hope for more student involvement in the athletic program at KU.
This resolution:
- IN EFFECT tells the department that coaches should not have control over their teams, by requesting the de
partment to follow a judiciary panel's order to reinstate Sam Goldberg, who was suspended from the track team for disciplinary reasons.
- THREATENS to withhold all student fee money from the athletic department unless the department makes public an accounting of its use of fee money by it during the past five years.
The resolution's one worthy feature is a request for more student representation on the athletic board.
The athletic department, with its substantial private support and control, is an unfortunate target for those seeking to increase student control in the administration of the university. Through actions such as the recently introduced resolution, the Senators are raising the hackles of sports-minded alums who can point with some legitimacy to what can be seen as excellent backing for the idea that student control should be reduced and even negated at every level of the university structure.
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So Now You Know
If the 50 United States were on a rigid plane floating freely in space, the weight of its people would balance the country at a point $6\frac{1}{2}$ miles northwest of Centralia, Ill., according to census figures. Since 1790, the center of population gravity has moved west from a point 23 miles east of Baltimore, Md.
Griff & the Unicorn
$ \textcircled{2} $David Sokoloff 1970
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