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Wednesday, November 17, 1971
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
conorats, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Vern Miller, Top Cop
I had a long and candid talk with Vern Miller recently at his office in Topeka. The substance of most of his comments appeared in Monday's Kansan
I am still trying to decide what I think about the man. I think it's a peculiar sort of love-hate feeling. Any newsman cannot help but like someone who is honest with him, and I know Miller was honest with me. That was a general attitude of honesty and sincerity. So that is what I love.
I hate him for some of the things he does. The most obvious example is his somewhat successful (but in the end, futile) attempt to stop marijuana smoking in the state of Kansas.
Loves and hates. Likes and dislikes. He said in the interview, "My obligation is to enforce the law, as fairly as I can . . . I could care about whether it's good or bad." I admire his consistent approach to the law—I would feel uncomfortable with an attorney general who thought he could play God and decide the merits of our state's laws.
But the question remains, how do you fairly enforce a bad law?
Miller is a strict moralist, a strong believer in good and bad, right and wrong. He says he has nothing against gambling as it interferes to gambling as a "kind of a social ill." So I would criticize Miller for his narrow world view, his
inability to see things in any terms other than black and white.
But his beliefs are firm, and they won't budge for anyone, not even the voters. "If what's right isn't acceptable, what I believe in isn't acceptable, then I don't want to be here," he says. I admire a man with convictions. At this point, though, it seems that his beliefs are very clear. He really been put to the test. He is probably popular enough to win any statewide elective office he wants, including the governorship.
But is Miller qualified to be attorney general? I would have to say yes and no. He is certainly qualified to be the number one law enforcement officer in the state. He is a cop, and he's very frank in admitting it. But he's a good cop, and honest cop.
Being top cop isn't the only duty of the attorney general, however. He must write legal opinions and be competent to prosecute cases. Miller must rely heavily on his assistants for fulfilling his lawyer's duties. He has never practiced law; his law degree was obtained by commuting to the University Law School. So he is just barely lawyer, and in his present position he is supposed to be a lawyer's lawyer.
That is his greatest fault
Pat K. Malone
Letters to the editor should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 360 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation. Letters should be written in a formal tone and must provide their name, year at school and home town; faculty and staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and position.
Letters Policy
Garry Wills
Isla Vista Aftermath —Zombies
SANTA BARBARA, CALIF—This is the college campus that blew up two years ago with the bombing of the Bank of America. The bank returned, rebuilt like a fortress right in the very navel of the freaky living area, Ia Vista. I went in to cash a check, and the teller was a nice person. We stayed on street people. We were holding franks hostage — blow us up, and you'll blow up some of your own?
No. There is no need of hostages.
The place is not only peaceful, but almost somnambulant. The only sound to be heard is the soft click and whir of bike chains churning as students commute to their classes. There is an oddly unpopulated air to the place, as if it were a ghost town, one still alive (in)
There is a literal sense in which it is being de-populated. Fewer pop,people live in Isa Vista, and enrollment in the university is off—partly the result of Gov. Reagan's punitive rhetoric and the Regents' tough line. Tailouts have gone up, and attempts are being made to sell them (e.g., selling off rare book collections in the library), like trying to live by eating your own tail.
the aftermath) but not entirely.
I talked to the editor of the school daily, asked him what is the biggest issue on campus. "The Big Issue is that there are no big issues." I talked to a university chaplain: What is hap- ting me, this is a big year for loneliness."
There was an attempt to hold a rally stirring people up for another peace march in Los Angeles. It was held at a church and a school, crowds and angry rhetoric in the past. Now the loudspeakers droned to a bored scatter of students, who played with the only lively part of the scene, dogs scraps from the lunch sandwiches.
The same listlessness affects other
gatherings. The Rev. Ralph Abernathy was supposed to hold a “rap session” with students one morning from 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. and there at 10:00 a.m.—though only a few die-hairs stayed until 11:30, when he arrived. What fascinated me was the way students drifted in, stayed a half-hour later, or shrugged and drifted out. Some few read, and a few more talked; but a great many came in ones and two, sat and stared, zombie-like, then got up and wondered how to wonder whether some of them could.
Would it have mattered if they had heard Abernaby? Would they have known whether they did? Is this what it should be to class attend? (and, if so, the Regents have missed a great economy moved—herd kids to school, and don't simply them with teachers, just have them "do their hour" and shuffle on).
stations, to be run as co-ops, after business was scared away from Isla Vista. Those stations have been going broke, as cars clear off the streets—some attendants make nickle-and-dime profits from bike repair.
There are few occasions for gathering in big groups. The bike symbolizes this one-by-one way of life; they do not even gather in the small company of a car's front and back seats. Students took over some gas
The kids are still dressed in funky clothes, and talk (when they talk at all) in counter-culture clothes, and distract the society of their elders. But they don't wear anything else. They paddle about, with strange affectless faces, weighed down by large chains dropped over their necks or backed to their waists. These are for manicuring the bikes to buildings, lamp-strings, anything else reasonably immovable.
You come upon large huddles of these bikes, left outside the class room (dogs in), nodding their handle-bar heads to encourage them. The ankles tethered below—it seems the only remnant of a community here. But soon their owners will come out of class, peel bikes by one from the floor and ride (not midday) off in all directions.
Convright.1971
Readers Respond
Universal Press Syndicate
The War; Fees; Book Bilk..
Recruiting
Your interview (Coach Foster) in the November 10 issue of the University Daily Kansan makes this HAWK FAN sick.
You are quoted as saying that the KU philosophy of "keeping the core of the team from Kansas" is the policy because "they are aware of the rivalries. When a Kansas boy plays against K-State or Missouri, he plays harder than he is from Kentucky. He plays just as important for the Super players... This in my opinion is absurd. A good football player (no matter where he is from) wants to play hard and this is just as important as an out-of-state player as they are to a Kansas Boy. Furthermore, so what if the Hawks beat their opponent in Missouri? That is only two games and two games does not a season make. You must not forget the other nine games; they are just as many games as Hawks plan to go to a big bowl game.
Do not recruit Kansas football players  recruit  football players  recruit  football no matter where they are from Finally, maybe if K.U. changes some recruiting policies, Hawk goes on the end of the year trips to Florida.
George Hurst,
Freshman, Cincinnati
Bookstore
To the Editor:
taught in writing
it is said that in writing an
article about the *Union Bookstore*. Steve Sherman has been able to do no more than write articles on nationalizations for high prices that the bookstore itself puts out. The clear fact is that either the bookstore manages, or which it will not admit (are there two sets of books?) , or it is so poorly managed that students are spending a lot of dollars more than they should. To begin with, the bookstore has evidently given Mr. Sherman an 20 percent mark on books. On the example, it simply is not true that this or any bookstore gets only a 20 per cent mark on books. 20 per cent marks given by publishers on texts; the amount of markup is therefore 25 per cent. Even so, that may not be appropriate for a retail business, but the
penation should come in volume, for in fact the bookstore holds an absolute monopoly on text sales but that is not the fact that only "texts" (and that category does not by any means include all books used in publishing) are marked up; all other books, including virtually everything in the Oread Book Shop and a great number of others, are sold at the rather substantial markup of 68 and two-thirds per cent (or twice the discount) in the bookstore.
Then there is the matter of rent paid to the Union itself. A couple may buy a landed property personally that the bookstore pays no rent; it is thus subsidized by the Union at large in the industry, which helps to explain why food and other union prices have so much lower than change of policy in that regard, that means that there is an extra hundred grand available and more to spend.
Perhaps someday the Kansan will become interested in investigative reporting. If it ever does, the Union Bookstore should have a staff member meantime, you should do your readers the service of not printing the wholly unsubstantiated apologetics of the bookstore as objective news.
But let's presume that the bookstore does pay rent, and that even though it is apparently not about its markups, it can barely struggle along and maintain a 5 per cent rebate rate. If that is the case, then the management of the bookstore at Best it is incompetent, and it could be worse (indeed, there are recurrent rumors that a recent company has rebailed on most of its items, and none at all on the rest? When I lived in Boston a few years ago, the tax-paying Co op掌握 many cash purchases and 8 per cent on credit purchases, the latter being available to students instead of students at the bookstore at which I traded brooken at a flat 20 per cent across the board discount, even though it sold texts and had expenses. The bookstore at a nonprofit bookstore in Washington, D.C., gives 20 per cent discounts on all books listing over $2.95. The list could go on and the KU student pays and pays.
Tim Miller,
Lawrence, Graduate Student
Tim Miller
Senate Purge
To the Editor:
In reference to Tom Slaughter's editorial of November 1, I wish to take issue with Slaughter's suggestion of a senatorial purge. Agreed, a number of our Student Senate strategists have, in part or in whole, done so. We see them. However, the question then becomes one of who to blame for these actions. Directly as an agent of our students themselves seems to me a copout. As we elect our representatives, we easily enforced the censured waifs of the Student Senate have done just that—the they have perfectly followed the model of phlegmatic, short-sighted, and timerserving. Let us lay the blame where it belongs—on the seemingly uncaring student senators.
Phil Miller Parsons, Junior
War Spiral
To the Editor:
The war is winding down.
2 Lt. Monroe Elmon Dodd III KU Class of '71
Fee Flap
To the Editor:
I wish to congratulate the formulators of the activity fee referendum on producing a masterpiece of statistical ambiguity. The Chancellor, the Finance Minister, the Senate hierarchy, and the UDK reporting staff have all offered conflicting evaluations of the results, but I would like to point out a few salient details which seem to have been misinterpreted in the unpublished individuals named above.
Since no consensus has been reached regarding the meaning of the options which were presented to voters, perhaps we might profit from examining the option which received the fewest votes, the option to fund Student Senate (or to reopen) a debate at least as clear as any other
which has been drawn): the Student Senate enjoys almost total lack of support from the student body.
Previous writers in this paper have suggested a referendum the question of Student Senate consideration in light of the recent actions of the Finance and Auditing Committee. Expected to revise or reform the method of voting, students should take it upon themselves to hit the student pocketbook for an additional six dollars a year. This may be the best of my memory, offered as a choice on the referendum ballot. Once again the student senate political club has shown its unrespectful side by not unrespectively. There is very little that the DS does which couldn't be done better by the faculty, the administration, or the Union organization. The only question is whether or not the Student Senate would have the guts to put its overfitted sense of responsibility on the line in a referendum.
James E. Beckman,
Graduate
Concordia
Admittance
To the Editor:
The refusal to re-admit a student, intimidation at the Intensive English Center, discrimination in juxtaposition and pathological behavior are not novel to America. They are sanity to this society. They fulfill a function of a society that is implicitly and implicitly insensitive. He has sadistically murdered his autochthonous population admit fanfare, and still willfully and willfully inflict his mark on persecute the man of color. Thus, in such a society, equality as made explicit in its own creed contains elements of amusement and ambiguity. A decided anemia.
This would not be the end—the admittance of the Iranian student to the Engineering School. But it would witness a veritable curtain of hypocrisy, thus behind this façade, they would perpetrate the horrific discrimination known to man. How long would this continue?
For how long would man continue disdainfully to slander man?
Kwadwo Oppong-Akosah Ghana, Junior
To the Editor:
More Fees
By Sokoloff
Being an eternal optimist, I voted in the poll on the student tenure debate. The Senate might listen to "the people" whose will they always insist they represent. Once again students vote to increase their disregard for student desires as the poll reported them. The college would vote to increase the fee. If anything, the poll clearly showed that there is much desire to decrease it.
The options were, of course,
ridiculous. No combination of
options represented what I
wanted in the way of an activity.
I thought it would be better
failed to vote in confusion over
the options and because of the
lack of a desirable choice. I
suggest a new referendum with
questions which can give some
measure of weight. They
refer to the following:
A. I feel that student fees supporting intercollegiate athletics should be (ended-continued-increased).
B. I feel that student fees supporting student organizations should be (ended-continued- increased).
C. I feel that student fees support the Concert Course, University Theater, and the UDK at the end-continued decreased.
D. I feel that student fees supporting the Student Senate should be (ended)continued-increased).
This would allow students to take their own options, with a point of view on the student opinion on each choice separately, not mixed in with other options.
Of course, the Senate would not agree to such a referendum, but some suggestion comes from a non-senator, and second, because the foolish actions of the Senate in 1847 would prevent option D would be voted "ended."
Griff and the Unicorn
David B. Pittaway,
Overland Park, Senior
"Copyright 1971, David Sokoloff."
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