4.
Wednesday, October 27, 1971
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
To the Senate
Tonight you will again consider the issue of Kansan funding. I will not advise you how to vote, but I will advise you that it will most care in reaching your decision
A principle that must remain paramount in your minds is the necessary separation of the press from governmental bodies. Each and every one of you must realize that a newspaper is no longer an easy way to an arm of the government is weakened in its ability to serve its readers.
The fact that the Kansan receives funds from the Student Senate must be considered a hairline crack in the paper's foundation—its credibility. You must decide what effect your work will have on that crack.
With this in mind, examine the motivation behind your vote. If you feel then that your vote will strengthen the Kansan's position as a free publication, unencumbered by dangerous alliances that could
weaken the newspaper's stature and credibility, then you have acted in a responsible manner.
But if there is the slightest possibility that your vote has been motivated out of some past unhappiness with Kansan coverage, Kansan editorial policy, or any other facet of the newspaper's platform, that you are denying the University community its right to a free press.
Above all, please realize that I am not exaggerating the importance of what you do tonight. The principle of press freedom, although it may seem insignificant in a case involving a college newspaper, is what you are charged to uphold in this situation.
Make absolutely sure that when you vote tonight, you sincerely believe that you are strengthening your press will serve your constituents.
—Mike Moffet
Kansan Language
"Don't waste words" is one of journalism's first rules.
Wasting words means not only using more than are necessary, but also more syllables than are necessary.
For example, a good journalist doesn't say: "Approximately 50 people were in attendance at the meeting, which was held in Flint Hall Tuesday night at 8 o'clock." He says: "About 50 people were at the meeting at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Flint Hall."
So why am I telling you this, you ask. In recent weeks, the Kansan has been criticized for not serving the students. One of the points our critics make is that Kansan writers taught English to high school graduates. This, they say, proves that the Kansan is not geared for KU students.
The point I make in reply is a simple one: What's so bad about simple writing? Why use big words and long sentences when small words and short sentences will suffice?
There is a lot to be said for simple writing, and not just in journalism. Writing which doesn't waste words, syllables or punctuation marks is writing that is immediately understandable.
And that's what journalism is all about. We want you to be able to read our stories and editorials and understand them the first time around. We don't want to waste your time. And that's why Kansan stories are written plainly to make sure everyone can understand them easily. This is a newspaper, not a term paper.
I might add that both Time and Newsweek magazines have been rated at the 10th grade in reading comprehension level. Surely, they are not beneath our reading dignity. Effective communication is fast communication. And fast communication requires a simple, concise and consistent style. And that's what we try to do.
—Pat K. Malone
Garry Wills
Chaplains And A Bit Of Hypocrisy
A figure in public life asked me a startling question, startling in several ways—for one thing, because I had not asked it of myself.
we wanted to know why the prison chaplain (or chapalms) at Attica did not publicly take a stand on the prisoners' conditions—not only during and after the invasion, but before it. (After all, one of the rebellion's claims was of religious discrimination). This struck me because it is the first thing that I need to do when I have to prisonenors—yet very few people (myself among them) actually do expect a chaplain to take such a moral stand.
This is not only true of prison chaplains, but of those who serve in the armed services, colleges, hospitals and other institutions. It is supposed to be moral teachers and
guides, to be trained for this, to have a recognized role growing out of their ethical expertise.
Yet the last man we expect to protest against injustice in an institution is that institution's chaplain. Too often they assume they are servants of the institution, rather than ministers to those men in it.
Chaplainics as a whole are more instruments of assuagement. They try to oil the works with prayer, make things run smoother. Their function is life-adjustment, and what they adjust to is the institution's needs. A judge recently wrote me how, in the army, he had to work at a conference had to be interrupted for lunch while the rabbit went to the officer's club, where the judge-to-be could not go. There, in vivid symbol, is the triumph of the mind over
ministerial concern
The Senate and House have chaplains, to bless what they do. Some unions have chaplains, who do not criticize the unions' ways of excluding blacks. Clubs and philanthropic groups are often pressured to be more intimate with moral concerns and the norms of ethical accountability. But just let one of these men try to say the institution they serve has gone astray! They will demand that those in the prison press be when too many inmates started attending Phil Berkerris's Mass in one of the prisons that held him, he was denied the right to say Mass for his fellow prisoners. Chaplains seem to in the same way set of rules as the prison bosses, anxious to please, not criticizing them; they lose their "privileges."
Rev. William Sloane Coffey, Vale's chaplain, was praised and petted so long as he only led the opening ceremonies of school chapel, or intoned the "invocation" at commencement, the bishop to tried involve in students more than 150 students in war, alumni had stepped out of his place—almost if as the ivy, stuck on the wall to be pretty, had pried itself loose and walked off.
The apathy expressed in our chapel system is not confined to the institutions they serve, or are meant to thought—though these cover much of our lives. What is most social. What is most dismaying is the way the subservience of these men, meant to have moral authority themselves, to any other kind of power or influence, things up in no matter what things), to aid and ease but never scrutinize, to be ornamental, remote and uncomplaining. They are allowed to remain silent, and if they remain slaves. And if even our prophets are slaves, what must the rest of us be?
Copyright, 1971 Universal Press Syndicate
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Jackson Tests Political Waters
JACKSONVILLE, FLA.—Senator Henry M. Jackson of Washington, a presidential candidate, has allotted the help all time, has been wandering around Florida lately, testing the political waters from Tampa on the west coast to New York. He is finding the waters warm.
The prospect now, subject to one uneasy reservation, is that Jackson will win handily in the state's Democratic primary next week. If his victory comes, courses lie in the sharkskin fin of George Corley Wallace, swimming omnipotently just off the coast. No one doubts that the Alabama governor could chew up the soft ball for Jackson's conservative support.
Jackson himself clearly recognizes the threat. In a fighting speech Tuesday morning to Florida's AFL-CIO convention, he begged the delegates not to "throw away your vote."
For the record, the 400 union delegates whipped and hollered, but part of the applause was in so much humour grits. Later in the season, Oklahoma's Sen. Fred Harris, too. Southern hospital, like you, gets thrown down. Never underestimate the action on the convention that "I speak as
Jackson spent most of Monday on the Tampa side. The day was a bomb. His fledgling campaign is suffering from the same ineptitudes that afflict most campaigns at the start—too much time waited in profiles driving engagements before too few voters. He frittered away three hours in a long run to Florida Presbyterian College, where 83 students, long-haired, barefoot and indifferent, gave him the same interest they might have had to win. The 98-year-old Jackson, speaking earnestly of a Soviet missile threat, strikes them as the ultimate, absolute cube.
one of you," he was speaking truth. He has a valid claim on labor support.
It was good stuff, but Jackson was tired. He was striking damp matches. Nothing much ignited. Good advance work would have papered the hall with Jackson placards, and turned out six pretty well staged quadratic drama critics, covering the quadrennial circus, should be patient. The show is just now getting on the road.
His chief problem is one of voter recognition. He is still "Henry Who?" to most of Florida, and he lacks Fred Harris's intuitive gift for getting his picture in the papers. But he's plucking away, and he had the courage to ask him what his beautiful blonde wife. At a head table bulking with labor leaders, she comes on like Snow
Jackson has great assets in the South. He is a fighter, and this is fightin' country. And despite George Wallace on one flank and resurgent Republicans on the other, it is still Democratic country. When Jackson bears down on "party unity in the nation," he faces a "traffication," he waves old flags. When he evokes his own poor boyhood, as the hard-working son of Norwegian immigrants, he strikes a responsive chord. The South has been poor, too.
White with the seven dwarfs. She has a First-Lady look, and who knows? Florida loves strong men and beautiful women. If it weren't for the offshore shark (who has a beautiful lady of his own), the Jackson entry would look unbeatable here.
Letters Policy
(C) 1971 The Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Letters to the editor would include, for example, downsizing and shuffling too exceed 500 words. All letters to the editor's judgment, substantiate, name, year in school and college, staff must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.
In Cornerstone Natural
"Another bowl, honest, sir? That-
a nice twist!" said Oliver.
Public Housing Failures Loom
KEN HARTNETT
BOSTON (AP)—Castle Square, a bright housing promise for the poor only four years ago, today is a fortress of despair. Worn beyond its years and financially frayed, it houses demoralized tenants fearful of crime and disorder in management. The experience. Square, and hundreds of others like it across the country, is shaking the belief of government housing officials that they had found an alternative to discredit housing: That trust, lured by interest and interest subsidies, could build and operate durable, decent
Associated Press Writer
Instead the result has been a booming program that is well on its way to producing new slums in the inner cities. Now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Nixon administration officials are looking for ways to salvage the program, which will cost the government $172 million this year, and it's expected to be worth another $1 billion in subsidies over 40 years.
low-rent, housing in rundown inner cities.
What's wrong at Castle Square is what's wrong with the ghetto portion of the government's multibillion-dollar subsidy program to build or rehabilitate apartments. Among its problems
are substantial and inept in construction, tenants with crippling bills and drugs soaring maintenance and repair costs. Castle Square is a serpentine maze of brick and concrete buildings housing 600 apartment units. The ashride a four-block urbanrenewal area in the decaying South End of Boston, a neighborhood of decrepit rowhouses, crumbling crime, murcets and alcoholism.
The project's mixture of elderly retirees and young families is 30 per cent black, 30 per cent white, 15 per cent Oriental, and 10 per cent Spanish-
By Sokoloff
Tenant-management hostilities and swarms of children have left their mark. So have vandals and burgers. Outdoor lights are broken. Jimmy marks are evident on many doors.
American. Many of the tenants are on welfare, some on drugs.
Griff and the Unicorn
First-floor windows are barred against break-ins. The glass-enclosed starwells are riddled
"Copyright 1971, Davd Sokoloff."
"We're expected to build something to last for 40 years without the ingredients to make that possible."
with cracks and holes. Graffiti decorate sidewalks and walls.
"People would move if they could," said tenant Alma McKinnon.
Many of the original and most desirable tenants have moved out. Those who have stayed are deeply disillusioned.
To the residents, the cause of most of the problems is management—in this case the Druker Co. of Boston, a nationally known real estate developer.
Druker, so the tenant complaint goes, is reluctant to fix the water leaks,补扎 the plumbing, replace the broken lights eradicate the rats and verniz, clean the grounds, and sweep away the skidrow drunks who hang ground.
Druker has tried to raise rents $24 a month, to $116 for a one-bedroom apartment and $160 for four bedrooms, plus electricity. But the Boston Rent Board blocked $6 of this increase, in part because of complaints about maintenance.
Management, by contrast, blames—and has sued—the building contractor for shoddy construction; condemns the failure of contractors for what it calls skinfant ceilings on construction costs and for insufficient allowances for management costs; fails the police for inadequate patrols and permits; loses tenants for loveriness.
"We're expected to build something to last for 40 years without the ingredients to make that possible," said Ronald M. Drucker, director of development for the company. He claims the success of his own pocket bank to finance "in excess of $100,000" in repairs.
1
"It's very easy for tenants to complain," he said. "But I have never seen a mother reprimand her child for throwing paper on the ground. There's only so much maintenance we can do."