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Monday, September 19, 1977
University Daily Kansas
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unassigned editorial represents the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the written
Police should decide
People in Lawrence are getting tired of waiting for the Lawrence Police Officers Association (LPOA) to approve a proposed 1979 contract between the officers and the city. The association had better act soon if it wants to retain any vestiges of the public support it says it desires.
The city has been at an impasse with LPOA because of the group's contract demands not only for 1979 but also for 1978. LPOA's leadership met with the city recently and worked out a compromise, compromises, however, the empelharmingly spurred by LPOA's rank-and-file membership, which rejected it by more than a three-to-one margin.
In accepting the compromise, LPOA leaders agreed to drop a demand for giving officers 10 per cent salary increases in 1978. They agreed to settle for the 6 per cent raises that all city employees will get next year. Dropping the 10 per cent raise a major concern for the POA's part; the demand that all city employees together for salaries purpose is dubious. Added risks on the job require added compensation, a fact the city still hasn't recognized.
guidelines. The guidelines are especially important because they could prevent a recurrence of the present contract deadlock. Part of the breakdown in negotiations can be traced to the fact that the city already has adopted its 1978 budget and cannot reasonably be expected to redo it solely for LPOA's benefit. The guidelines specify that the city would adhere to an April 15 deadline next year in beginning negotiations with the officers.
tactical unit CITY did offer to compensate for the salary concession. The city promised LPOA a longevity pay plan and skill-incentive pay plan for 1979. It also pledged that it would follow several contract negotiation guidelines for next spring.
beginning negotiations. If those negotiations were to prove unsuccessful, the guidelines provide for setting up a committee composed of two officers and two representatives of the city. The committee would meet directly with city commissioners to discuss the unresolved problems.
LPOA CAN'T negotiate directly with commissioners now because commissioners don't want to meet with the group. It must meet with a go-between from the commissioners, who use Mike Wildgen, assistant city manager, to represent them.
Why doesn't the LPOA membership realize that its leaders and the city have made a conscious effort to mediate what are unquestionably serious differences? Why doesn't LPOA remember that even last month, before it rejected the compromise, numerous telephone calls to city commissioners were almost unanimously opposed to the group's position?
City firemen also have had recent differences with the city. But unlike LPOA Local 1596 of the International Association of Fire Fighters has agreed to a compromise that has many similarities to the one the LPOA won't accept.
David Reavis, association chairman, said last week he thought the officers were against the compromise because it didn't give them any substantial benefits for 1978. If Reavis is right, his group is taking a hard line that can only be described as short-sighted.
LPOA STAGED a three-day work slowdown in August in an attempt to win public backing for its demands. That backing has not materialized. If LPOA continues its intrinsicigue, public opinion surely will stiffen against the group.
Worse yet, people may even become bored with a group that refuses to face reality. LPAO has had work slowdowns two years in a row. If it has one next year, its tactics will be old hat. It will have cried wolf once too often.
otten.
Proponents of the city's position on the regulations say LPOA's leadership misleads or doesn't fully inform its membership. But the leadership's responsible willingness to modify LPOA requests indicates a maturity that unfortunately hasn't gotten through to most police officers in LPOA. Those officers should trust the men they elected to negotiate for them. They should ratify the 1979 contract immediately.
The mud is flying already in the 1978 Kansas gubernatorial race—most of it at Atty. Gen. Curt Schneider. A Wichita television station, KAKE-TV, recently broadcast 4 of her photographs on a dedicated identified source, that showed Schiefer with a young woman at a Joplin, Mo., motel and restaurant.
THE FOUR PICTURES released by KAKE-TV are vague and inconclusive. Schneider said the woman was a family friend interview, in a camagne. He said they had dinner together in the restaurant, but he drove home alone afterwards.
As a result of the dirty rumors and unprovable innuendos about this controversy, Schneider and Friday would not run for governor in 1978. The strongest democratic candidate in the race left it before it even began—after meeting with Democrat heavyweight Norbert Drilling.
Dreiling, who successfully managed former governor Robert Docking's campaigns, had been quietly building Schneider's campaign organization. Not until Frieder's meeting, Dreiling helped with his support. Dreiling did he not want to run the campaign if it would center on Schneider's personal life.
From the pictures, it is impossible to tell whether Schneider's denial of any impropriety is true or false; the fact remains that somebody is smearing Schneider.
The big question is, who?
Unfortunately, nobody who knows is willing to tell. But the most likely person seems to be Vernon Grassie. Crawford County deputy sheriff was admitted he arranged for the pictures to be taken. He said he got an anonymous phone call and the would be at a hotel in Joplin with a woman during the evening of August 2.
GRASSIE SAID he then hired a photographer, gave him in-
Dirt hurts Schneider, voters
Divestiture a conservative idea
By JAMES J. KILPATRICK Washington Star Syndicate
Forgive me, mother, for what I am about to do. I am about to climb in bed with Teddy Kennedy, birch Bay, Biah Bay, 27 Howell Street. How many dreadful people, and the prospect is dismaying. But in seeking to lay some restraints upon the great oil companies, the Senate liberals are right and their conservatives are wrong.
If that be heresy, make the most of it. The issue came to a head on Sept. 8, when Kennedy offered an amendment to a pending resolution. "I would like to make it unlawful for any major petroleum producer "to acquire any interest in or control over any coal asset or uranium asset after the date of this amendment would not have required horizontal divestiture as such—that is, it would not have compelled the major companies to sell off the coal and any uranium-owned one—but it was a second cousin to such divestiture. I'm for it.
AS IT TURNED out, Kennedy's amendment was voted down, 62,30. on a motion to table. Every professed liberal was lined up behind the amendment, and every certified conservative was lined up against it. Tower of Texas had the purple compton fitted; he accused Kennedy of speaking "the language of expropriation which should raise bickles with those American who believe in the free enterprise system." Thurmond of South Carolina, a true-blue conservative, called Kennedy's proposal "radical. Opponents argued that the giant companies have the capital and the expertise to produce the coal and uranium the nation needs.
THAT POINT, in my view,
assuredly has been reached in
the matter of the great oil companies and competing energy sources. In warning against the concentration of economic power in this vital area, Kennedy, Bayah. Bayah sound conservative doctrine. They were the ones crying for greater competition. They made sense to me.
As George Mason urged 200 years ago, let us recur to fundamental principles. A fundamental principle of conservatism is to fear concentrations of great power, and to seek ways to restrain them. That is one of the things our current government had been taught, and until this debate 10 days ago I had truly supposed, that conservatives distrusted too much bigness wherever it exists—big government, big labor, big media, big bureaucracy. The conservative principle holds that bigness is not necessarily badness, but at some point a rebuttable principle arises.
In recent years the petroleum giants have moved horizontally into the acquisition of coal and uranium. Gulf Oil acquired Pittsburgh Midway Coal Company. Continental Oil in 1966 took over Consolidation Coal, then the company acquired the Petroleum to Petroleum acquired Island Creek, which was number three. Standard Oil of Ohio acquired it. Meanwhile, Kerr-McGee moved heavily into uranium.
Fourteen of the top 20 owners of coal reserves today are oil companies. Nearly half of total coal reserves now are owned by the petroleum giants. The petroleum giants research and develop in areas as coal gasification and oil shale production.
LOOKING AHEAD, the prospect is not for giant oil companies, as such, but for energy conglomerates—for super-corporations effectively controlling every form of energy production, transportation and marketing. Colorado's Floyd Haskell made his point sarcastically. It is absurd, he said. He insisted that businesses make nice profits from oil and gas is going to promote competitive fuels in order to drive those profits down. "To believe other's fault, it's so equivalent to believing the tooth fair."
To the argument that only the giant oil companies can provide the capital to meet goals for coal and uranium, let me make this request in the marketplace have to trust the marketplace. Have to trust a demand for competing fuels, the capital will appear to supply the energy that competition is a good thing, let us put that conviction to work. If we are wary of excessive concentrations of power in this disturbing concentration, before it grows still larger.
All this has nothing to do with vertical divestiture, which involves breaking up the great oil companies internally. No convincing case has been made to support such total disruption of highly competitive industry. But enough is enough. And horizontally speaking, the concentration is quite enough as it is.
structions, and later passed the photographs on to a third person—who Grassie refuses to identify. This intermediary, Grassie says, passed the pictures on to KAKE-TV.
Grassie denied he was working for anyone else.
Ross McIlvain
Editorial Writer
But why are Schneider's personal habits any of Grissie's business? Joplin is outside the state of Kansas, let along Grissie's jurisdiction. And since when do county attorneys
Grassie apparently intended political sabotage. The explanation he gave is that he and Schneider clashed over plans to establish organized gambling in Crawford County with Schneider's blessing. The two men were the first to controversy later admitted he made up the story of Schneider's approval.
investigate allegations of possible adultery from anonymous phone calls?
Grassie *may have been working for him, as he said, or potential of one of Schneider's potential races in the governor's race.*
wanted to get some documented evidence against him.
A less obvious possibility is that some gun-ho supporter of one of Schneider's gubernatorial rivals may have done it without his candidate's support or knowledge.
sible for this slimy political tactic is important, but even more important is the fact that the state of the state was subverted.
GRASSIE SAID the investigation of that affair did not turn up anything against Schneider, and this time he
Schneider had the best shot at the Democratic nomination and a good chance of becoming governor. But Governor Cuomo was the foulest of political dirty tricks—a sex scandal with evidence to nebulous but his behavior has always probably destroyed his political career.
The citizens of Kansas will not be able to make the choice for themselves. Somebody out there does not trust Democracy.
But even if Grassie was not collaborating with anyone else, whoever made the anonymous phone call tipping him off wanted to blackmail Schneider out of the governor's race.
Finding out who is respon-
Discrimination plan misunderstood
to the Board.
14 editorial entitled "Sex choice irrelevant" seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the Affirmative Action Board's latest recommendations. The board's recommendations clearly distinguishes equal opportunity from affirmative action. Equal opportunity provision is the Affirmative Action Policy, protects against discrimination because of nonerrant criteria such as race, sex, religion or disability.
One-and-a-half years ago, the Affirmative Action Board recommended sexual preference be added to the equal opportunity section of the plan. Persons from discrimination because of their sexual preference. This kind of protection is distinct from the plan's affirmative action provisions that deal recruiting to people covered by status or executive order.
To the Editor:
Thus, the Affirmative Action Board's recommendation would accomplish just what the Kansas editorial of Sept. 14 sought in a bill that policy disallowing discrimination or "wrongful denial of civil rights." The assumption that a policy prohibiting discrimination requires recruitment basics of the law is not out of line by even a cursory reading of any drafts of the plan.
In other words, the University does not actively recruit persons because of sexual preference, but it will protect them against discrimination because of their sexual preference
plant
Reacting to a title, "Afirmative Action Plan," rather than to the content of specific policies contained therein may
Letters Policy
The Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typed and include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include the university's class and name town, or staff position. Letters should not exceed 500 words in length. The Kansan reserves the right to edit letters for publication.
unless corrected, work to deny equal opportunity to one segment of our community. We do not expect to read the proposals carefully.
Deb Teeter
Deb Reeter
Affirmative Action
Board Chairman
(and five board members)
Opinion wrong on gay rights To the Editor:
It is highly regrettable the University Daily Kansan must climb on a limb and trumpet against an issue for which it does not know the tune. We refer to the issue of the personal preference of the principal offended action guideline revisions and the misinformed editorial "Sex choice irrelevant."
To our understanding, the new plan would incorporate sexual preference in all of those provisions which deal with discrimination and consider sexual preference to be "nonessential" or irrelevant criterion in University policy. (Other nonessentials are such factors as being a child.) The plan does not incorporate sexual preference in provisions that require affirmative action as contrasted to nondiscrimination. We suggest the hiring of homosexuals to be encouraged or forced—as the editorial flatly and informedly states. We suggest the Kanzen contact procedures in the Office of Affirmative Action for further insight into this issue.
SEVERAL persons have mentioned objections to this new plan, stating that gay men and women are against within the University and, therefore, the sexual preference clause is unnecessary. If, in the case of a deferred release from the affirmative action committee's recommendations, then this will be a blatant and official license to disinstate from the Chancellor's office.
Furthermore, we would like tc ask the Kansan what gives it the right to speak for the campus gay male community? (We presume it speaks only for male gays since it ignores the female community's sense of "responsibility" and "hair rights.") It states that "campus gays are apparently convinced" and "will not oppose the plan.
Did the Kansan survey camp pusys on this issue? Or is the entire staff of the Kansan in a
KANSAN Letters
Wayne Cushman
Belle Plaine, sophomore
(and six others)
position to speak from this sexual preference? Even if it is, this rash generalization is unwarranted.
rually, if in the future the Kansan is to take a stand on crucial human rights issues such as this, we advise it to look into the facts more carefully before breaking out in total ignorance.
Faults, merits in IHP story
To the Editor:
In response to the article, "Debate airs IHP faults, merits," on Sept. 14, I would step to Steven Stingley that he too, has faults and merits. His merit is that of giving nearly equal coverage of the speakers at the debate.
Your faults are: that of including coverage of a third speaker (Vern Barnet) in the article whose name is used on the ticket; you implied that he participated in the question-answer session with questions proposed in an orderly way; Dennis Quinn, director of the Integrated Humanities Program and professor of English, in his response to Barnet's report on more allegations of a group in Kansas City.
The third speaker, Barnet,
never really posed a pertinent
question. The attempted harangue was both
times out of the order as
established by the chairman.
There is much attention in
article?
Quinn did not refuse to answer allegations by appealing to academic freedom, but rather to defending himself, dignify the allegations of Barnet's by giving answers. Nor did Quinn resent defending his own life; he entered the discussion, didn't he? Perhaps he resents
N
oefending the program against mere allegations but not questions.
Let me suggest that, listening is the better part; and that you, Stingley, should listen to Clo, and your mother, Barnet, should listen to the Muse's mother, Mennosyne (Memory), and remember your mother's instructions as to the necessary qualities of a gentleman.
Baxter Vieux Lawrence senior
Campus radio disappointing To the Editor:
1. consider myself a mildly enthused supporter of college-sponsored programs and projects. The most important thing that place on campus are usually of high quality. Of course there are certain University-funded projects that are, in my opinion, not really worth funding and the Lawrence community entertaining programming.
The student radio station, KJHK, fervently publicized as the "Sound Alternative," has succeeded in producing the most boring radio programs in the Lawrence area. It would be interesting to know where KJHK gets the monotonous robots to perform service and management, weather and long lists of plays. Such monotonic and mundane voicing is horrendous.
Why not let these student announcers develop some type of distinguishable personality? Let the listener identify with the personality on the air. Ask them to listen to KJHK enjoyable. Let the listeners know what concerts are playing.
Initiate movie reviews of motion pictures that are in the Lawrence area. Give us some radio that is pertinent to campfire stories and need to hear them think underground FM is the only pure radio there. Is the listener know who you are.
The way it is now, KJHK is the boring alternative.
Frank T. Whitman Overland Park
Editor
Jerry Selb