4
Thursday, September 30, 1971
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Docking and Finances
Various Kansas student leaders,
including our own David Miller, met
Monday night with Gov. Robert
Docking.
Mixed with the evening's pleasantries was a dialogue of sorts between Docking and his dinner guests, the students.
Mostly, the students told the Governor that each of their respective schools was having money problems. Docking, who is having to field the angry rumblings of many Kansas taxpayers, is no stranger to money problems. He seems to feel that to help higher education now is like asking the fire department to fight a brush fire while the fire station burns to the ground.
Unfortunately, the problem of financing higher education still exists and it has become critical. No
one seems to have an easy solution.
Docking is a man faced with so many open mouths that decisions have become a matter of political expedition.
The state legislature also is intimately involved in money allocations. Sadly, the student leaders did not speak with any legislators. They are particularly hard to find in Topeka this time of year because of the lack of situations to be broached, a new tune will have to be composed because the current number seems to leave them bored and unimpressed.
What the particular winning ditty is, I don't know. If the person who does know would please come for a meeting and return to the business of education.
—Tom Slaughter
Liberation News Service
William Kunstler on Attica
(LNS Ed. Note:
What follows is a short interview with William Kunstler which ranges over a wide range of topics, including Rebecca and Massacre. Kunstler, the movement lawyer for the Chicago 8, Rap Brown and others was part of two dozen lawyers in Washington who prisoners at Atica or who went by themselves to act as a negotiating committee G. Oswald and the prisoner Russell G. Oswald and the prisoners.
What was it like inside of Attica after the liberation?
"I did not arrive at the prison until the 9th, Friday. I spent a total of 20 hours inside the prison during the three times I was allowed in. I was conscious of an enormously well-fitted prison cell, and man freaked out during one of the negotiating sessions. He started to fight with another inmate. They were immediately separated and taken away by other prisoners. Another man had a nervous spell—he was so alarmed that and he also was immediately taken away.
"The security lines were everywhere and extremely well organized—people arm in arm—one facing one face front, alternatively. Sam Melville (a white man convicted of bombing conspiracy in N.Y.C.) was in the security line.
“There was a scare the first night I was there, on Friday. All the lights went out. Non-prisoners like us were put up against the wall behind the negotiating table so we would be out of harm. The prisoners kept telling us in it we should be all alright. We've got it under control.”
Readers Respond
"Our relationships in there were good. we (the negotiators) were not harmed. we (the negotiators) had to be considered. There was great respect for us and people were delighted to have us take the mike and rap with them Lots of people came up and asked us to call their relatives, which
"I had a sense of real organization. There was always someone typing in the stenographic section. The loudspeaker, unlike ones in the outside world, always worked—they didn't have any problems with that. They inmates at the negotiating table were articulate, well-informed, and pressing with their demands. As some straight reporter told me in a book recently, world would call profit. There was also an absence of heavy rhetoric."
What did cellblock D look like?
"The field looked like a sloppy boy scout camp. There were so many things around, so many men living together. There was no running water (the prison officials turned it off) and they had dig trenches to go to the bottom of the hill. We expected it to smell like a real shithouse but it didn't. We could see where the hostages were. There were sheets on the ground, blankets
made into tents, paper scattered all over. I didn't see any rocket launchers."
Did Oswald make the negotiating committee sign something before you went in for the last time, saying that if anything else was so you, the state was not responsible?
"That was just before the last time we went in. A few minutes after we went in he tried to completely undermine us with the prisoners by sending in the letter demanding the immediate release of hostages and negotiations on "neutral territory." The letters were sent and the prisoners understoodly angry at us because they thought we knew about the letter and we were being used as a front for Oswald. The letter was either to get us killed so there would have been an incident (something very favorable to the state—the prisoners killing their own negotiators) or toundermine our credibility so that we couldn't really worry about it, psychologically. Whichever the reason, each one is equally indecent."
We heard something about the negotiating team being shown the bodies of the people who prison officials described as the "throat cutter murders."
"This was right after the invasion—about two or three in the afternoon. This got almost no publicity. Boby García (State Senator from the Bronx), Arthur Eve, Herman Van Dyk, and the Director of Corrections Walter Dunbar and were shown four men—one white and three black, lying on their stomachs, fully clothed Those were the ones pointed out as seen through the window. A black guy-Frank Lott—who was lying with a football under him to prop his head up. He was pointed out as the one who had emasculated one of the hostages-Michael Smith. He was naked and lying face up (Lott was naked and lying face up). His manifesto which was sent to Oswald in July).
"The things they said were major untruths—the sill throats, the emasculation—which would have been terrible because they would have undermined the credibility of the prisoners. But we knew that wasn't true." She added: "We had been on Sunday and night there was 38. That was exactly right—there had been 39, one he had gone out with a heart attack."
"Dunbar said that he had been told this by Commissioner Oswald—an official report and that there were films of all this. Then Dunbar told them that two of the guards were killed before the assault, which of course was untrue.
Ed. note: Liberation News Service is a New York-based collective of radical journalists which publishes news packets twice a week. A resource for the Media Project for their LNRS packet.)
Billy Jack; Hope; Gay Lib...
Billy Jack
To the Editor:
After reading your review, I am curious as to your credentials as a movie erite. It has seldom an inanimate string of words masquerading as an insane string of words. Review (as in movie review) implies some coherent examination of the issue. I noted no such exclamation among my remarks.
As to your comments on the quality of the activity, while it may be true that "kinder words are better than adult words," certainly can be a lack of positive comment puzzles you are obviously not used to. You would be because your fantasies are positively rabid. I would like to know why you do not present with a critical review, or of this partially digested drive!
—Kiehl Rathbun Lawrence senior
When you are not indulging in flights of fantasy, say you Billy Jack is a poet. You can't be all before "Is it your considered opinion that there are no works of art that are such as these works, why isn't Billy Jack one of them? It would be critical and told us a movie critic and told us.
revealing study of America's conflicting culture designed to make one think, not of the hero and the villain existing in our country today.
★★
To the Editor.
"Billy Jack" may have a "blonde face" for frame for what the movie is about—which is human and personal relations in the good old days.
The villains may be over villainous and the heroes and heroes too idealistic. But this is one of the most movie I have seen in a long time.
Miss Schmidt must be overly concerned with her brain, as she seems to have missed the truth of the movie. Anyone with a human brain should see "Billy Jack," and most will be somewhat moved by it.
Sue Ellen Vest 909 Indiana
"Billy Jack" is not a "story"
filmed to entertain—it is a
Readers of the Kansan? If you have a brain in your head, think twice before reading any more Kansan movie reviews. If you must read them, don't pay any attention to what they say. Unless you're the campus idiot, you won't be able to understand them.
★ ★ ★
To the Editor:
THE IS E NO doubt that 'billy Jack' has its flaws. Some parts are corry and some parts are nice. But the bad guys are very good and the bad guys are very bad. But it sails over these flaws to become an exciting man.
The particular review I have in
the book "Billy Jack" this
weekish. This review will
look cool in a high school
paper, but it doesn't belong anywhere
It is one of the few movies that
is a true story, and it is the
audience's audience, was not merely
an uninteresting observer, I cared
about what happened to the
Contrary to what the Kanas review said, Tom Laughlin does a very good job as Billy Jack. If we never completely understand him, it's because we aren't familiar with the qualities of Billy Jack make him more interesting than the more "average" people in the movie.
Sure, it'd been done before. Many many times. But that doesn't make it bad. The character in "Dracula" was not a novel, and that was a toppon film.
A word should be said about the directing and photography: it may not be up to the quality of some other movies, but probably was "Billy" made was probably on a very low budget, it isn't bad.
THE OPENING scene, in which a group of men is chasing a herd of wild horses, and the scene where Billy takes on a bunch of rednecks, are both very exciting. But the real question is how lousy the Kansan review was, but I won't see. "See Billy Jack" and find out for yourself.
—Bion Beebe McPherson, senior
Bion Beebe
Bob Hope
To the Editor:
We stand agape at the recent "slaughter" of Bob Hope's pending engagement here on the Kansan page in the Kansan of Sept. 27.
It seems that the definition of homecoming has slipped from the writer's mind. To refresh his memory, the American Heritage library defines homecoming as "an annual event for visiting alumni."
If the Alumni Association wants Bob Hope for "their" entertainment and art museum, from a few self-acknowledged critics to question the 'relevance' of this upcoming film, we should enjoy the "gifying" sounds of love and Tina Tanner, we think provide a refreshing change.
As to the "cultural mind" of the Alumni Association, Bob Hope has presented a very real invitation to our American culture.
Bob Hope is coming to entertain, not to exopestitute his political views. He has been named the first man who has been recognized by American statesmen as well as foreign, for his accomplishments. He has won numerous awards from monarchs, governments, organizations and also fellow citizens. They range from a St. Christopher's Hospital nurse to Lt. Colonel in the Congressional Gold Medal voted unanimously by Congress in 1963.
We always thought the University was open for all levels of creativity, but maybe from a distance it doesn't reach to the left of the Norman Mailer should be engaged to once again return "relevance" to the university.
Jan Busch, Leawood senior Robin Groom, Arlington, Va., junior
Jane Sappington. Atchison senior
★ ★ ★
Gay Lib
To the Editor:
If Chancellor Chalmers ignores the third Student Senate recommendation to recognize the student he is a hypocrite. When Tom Slaughter interviewed the Chancellor, Chalmers expressed his support of students' involvement in the university decision making processes. How can he respect students to the point of involving them in the university decision making processes and then completely overseeing decisions?
On the one hand the Chancellor says that it is important that the university processes so that the rate of change may be measured. On the other hand he opposed again and again the recognition of the gay liberation front; to the liberalism of the sexist nature of our society.
In view of the Chancellor's past vetoes of the recognition of the Lawrence Gay Liberation Front we feel that his statements constitute student involvement constitute nothing but fragrant nihility.
John S. Stillwell
New Castle, Inc.
For the Lawrence
Gay Liberation Front
KANU
To the Editor:
May I answer some of the arguments expressed in a letter addressed to me by Redlin of KANU? Mr. Redlin's remarks were directed against a letter of mine in which I wrote that I had broadcast more popular music on KANU than hitherto (see the announcement in the UDK of September 3rd).
In his letter Mr. Redlin fulminates against all those 'ignorant', the "narrow-minded" people who have no taste for anything but classical music and not the music they love only the music which they like. Needless to say he includes me in this class.
But if Mr. Redlin will reread my letter of September 20th he will find that the expression "in it" is incorrect in it. The purpose of my letter was to thank businessmen for the amount of popular music they broadcasts, that kind of music KANU should have heard which I did not address myself.
It is quite clear, however, that n. Mr. Redin's own mind the decision to increase the amount of classical music played on ANU was equivalent to a decision to decrease the amount of classical music played. Lovers in classical music in the awaerness, take careful note!
I repeat my initial question: Why broadcast still more popular music on KAKE than inhers? It doesn't have to be, perhaps, that KAKU is under pressure from some audience to some the number of its listeners?
If Mr. Redlin is commercializing KANU in order to gain a popular following and thereby prove that the station has won, he will subsidize, members of the KU community have a right to know about this. If on the other hand, Mr. Redlin's music was taken by him alone, or by his staff, this fact is also one of the KU community should be aware. I call upon Mr. Redlin to use us a full account of this matter.
—W. K. Percival Associate Professor Of Linguistics
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