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Wednesday, September 14, 1977
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansas editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the writers.
Sex choice irrelevant
When Chancellor Archie Dykes soon reviews the University's new affirmative action plan, he is expected to remove the phrase that prohibits discrimination because of a person's "sexual preference." Already, a new campus affirmative action grievance procedure has been implemented, but not before the "sexual preference" discrimination prohibition was removed from it.
The ommission perhaps has avoided involving the campus community in a gay rights struggle such as the one last spring between gays and Anita Bryant in Miami or even the smaller one between gays and Baptist ministers and city commissioners this summer in Wichita.
Gay Services director Ted Van Lanningham has said he was disappointed that gays were not included in the new grievance procedure, but campus gays apparently are convinced—and rightfully so—that their complaints can be handled by the Office of the University umbushman and will not oppose the new affirmative action plan.
SUCH MODERATION, in this instance, is laudable.
The day when governments or other public institutions, such as universities, could impose narrow moral standards through laws, regulations and policies has long gone. Our society does have a larger ethic to heed, popularized recently in the catch-phrase "human rights," and to discriminate because of sexual preference—an
irrelevant distinction—is wrongful) denial of civil rights.
However—precisely because sexual preference is an irrelevant distinction when it comes to hiring practices, student rights and campus organizations—it has no place in an affirmative action plan to require the University to actively seek gays. If the University were required to actively seek those who preferred the same sex, could it not also be required to actively seek those who prefer other orientations of sexual activity or not so? One would surely hope that a person's sexual preference should have no bearing, helpful or harmful, on his ability as an employee or his rights as a student.
PLUS, THE INCLUSION of "sexual preference" would unnecessarily complicate the entire action plan at a time when the entire concept may need revision after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Bakke reverse discrimination case this fall.
reverse discretion.
Campus gays have been discriminately shunned before—former Chancellor Lawrence Chalmers vetoed their allocation of student fees—and the campus community should be aware of their vulnerability as discrimination victims. Similarly, gays should actively defend their civil rights and must also accept the job of seeing that solutions to future proven discrimination be responsible and reasonable.
responsible to University and gays should seek together are equal opportunities for all and the exclusion of "sexual preference" questions from all University policy.
Anyone who has been hit up by friends or even strangers for loans with promises of "I'll pay you back next week," or "Just ten bucks unsecured" sympathize with what Uncle Sam is doing to students who do not pay back their government-insured loans.
Starting in December, the U.S. Office of Education will turn over delinquent student loans to private collection agencies. Loans totaled about $600 million million in the hope that they will do better at collecting than the government.
WITH SO MANY defaults, it is easy to see why generous Uncle Sam suddenly has turned into a hand-rubbing, eye-gleaming Shiplock. Until now, he has been helping co-workers to help release billions of dollars in student loans, many of which have turned sour. Now, Sam has his hand out and fingers in his mouth. His manner seems somewhat less amodulating, so be it.
To the student who has graduated from college or a trade school and not repaid his loan, the prospect of a claim against him has undertores of a spurned loan shark. Visions of harassing telephone
According to government statistics, 390,000 people, one-sixth of the students who have financed their educations with the help of the Guranteed Student Loan Program, have failed to pay for them. They Since the program began nine years ago, more than $4.6 billion has been lent to students through the program.
Brownie points a necessary evil
Uncle Sam gets tough on loans
Chasing after the golden calef of worldly success begins even before we leave academia. No matter how much you learn or more specifically defined.
Schools at all levels have developed an extensive system of social brownie points to reward students and allocate rewards among them.
Students with socio-political savvy learn early what activism means, and start on their transcripts to be used when they want certain rewards—such as scholarships, selective schools or programs.
The system is a lot like the Boy Scoots—a person fulfills certain requirements to earn credentials that matches merit badges to earn rank
ANOTHER SOURCE of brownie points is organized
The most obvious example is grades. A student's grades in particular classes, his grade point average, accumulated credit hours, course load per semester and maximum grade points will be similarly considered by admission and scholarship committees.
Ross McIlvain
Editorial Writer
sports. Participation and lettering, and all-league, all-state, and all-American awards are all counted in an ascending
Student politics is another prime area. Being a class officer or a student senator is often a prerequisite for All-Scholarship Hall Council, Interfraternity Council, Association of University Residence Halls, or Panhellenic Association. You look good on a transcript.
WORK ON THE school
newspaper, yearbook, or radio station earns jobs oriented brownie points if a student plans to go into journalism, and general brownie points if he does not.
Participation in school bands, choruses, and combos also add points.
Organizations like the Boy Scouts, Girl Scoots, 4-H and Campfire Girls are all examples of the brownie point principle at work in earlier years.
And, of course, there is always religion. Church youth organizations are almost always smiled upon. And nothing convinces people that a student is a fine upstanding young lad like having served as altar boy or a Sunday school teacher.
Scholarships, research grants and fellowships, jobs, and admission to prestigious schools or programs—the social sciences—that accumulate are themselves translatable into future brownie points.
WHAT ALL THESE activities have in common is that they are lumped together to measure a
But they are all used to measure students in many important situations simply by asking them other better available criteria.
student, both quantitatively and qualitatively. They may be very meaningful or mean absolutely nothing about a student's character, abilities or accomplishments.
A student's attitude towards them all depends on his goals. If he is seeking knowledge and wisdom above all else, these values will probably have to be their own reward. If a student does not want what scholarships, admissions, administrative fees or to offer, he does not have to worry about their criteria for judgment.
A student should neither scorn these activities as automatically worthless nor accept their worth without question.
But if a student wants these rewards—jobs, scholarships, and admission—a certain amount of engineering is necessary, because no one can measure knowledge or wisdom.
couaging holders of delinquent loans to pay what they owe before their debts are turned over to collection agencies.
According to Leo Kornell, deputy commissioner for student loans at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, students should be aware that defaulting on their loans could affect their abilities to borrow money in the future.
"They could be jeopardizing their future credit ratings and could have trouble later getting mortgages, credit cards or car
cies will try to set up a schedule in which delinquent debtors can repay their loans.
loans," he said. "There is an attitude on many campuses that this is government money, it'a a big one. You can get out of paying it back."
In a time when economists are asking why government can not be run as efficiently as a big business, the default program seems to be a sound business practice. If nothing else, a collection agency about an unpaid bill will serve as a raake undewarning to students just entering "The real world."
calls, persistent mailings and finally the confrontation with the brass-knuckled hit man come to mind.
The government is stepping into the collection program somewhat reluctantly and is en-
The contracts which the government will begin signing in December, however, will prohibit the collectors from strong-arming dollars into paying off their loans. The collection agen-
Dave Johnson Editorial Writer
removed, the new default program might still raise objections as another government spending program. No additional federal money will be used to collect taxes from collection agencies will receive a percentage of the money they collect.
Criminals get new names
- Nine-year-old Sandy Chandler journeys to the White House from Texas and demands
By FRED GRAHAM
N.H. Times Features
in the final Nixon-Frost interview, which was broadcast last week, the former president made no apology for the events that culminated in his resignation. he did, however, tell David Frost that Watergate might not have happened and that it had not been distracted by the behavior of his wife, Martha, in the spring of 1972.
N. 175
They are unpricked freely access the court—the government's hidden witnesses, men and women who have testified against the Mafia and for their protection have been given new identities by the Justice Department.
Richard Nixon finally has offered the American people an explanation for Watergate.
Yet most of the Americans who encounter them do not even know that the United States is one of the world's greatest government agency to create false identities for persons who have testified for the state. Thus, they do not suspect that they may have seen one of the 2.0 billion products of one of the most unusual government agencies on earth.
But the hidden witnesses are there, hiding in plain sight:
THE WATERGATE
break-in might never have
happened if John had been
running the show. But John
had to worry about Martha
you understand.
There was a time, before Watergate, when Martha Mitchell was the bello of the game. Her humor, her laugh and her irreprecisable manner made her a standout in a Washington where the men were three-piece suits and their hats. Martha brought a bit of Southern charm to a capital
Martha Mitchell drank a little, Nixon explained, and Mitchell was so preoccupied with her problems that she overly managed of his campaign responsibilities to Jeb Magruder, Bob Haldeman, John Erlichman and some of the other members of the campaign wasn't quite as assasin as Mitchell's was.
Most Americans do not know that their country has the only known hiddenwitness program in the world, nor do they suspect they may become victims of one of the many hardened criminals who use new, government-given identities to commit new crimes or to run up huge debts and slip away.
Nixon says Martha made John do it
to see President Jimmy Carter about her imprisoned mother. The child is splashed across the nation's television screens for her spank, but nobody is told that she and her mother were in prison over a year underrated. Justice Department aliases and that both complain they were mistreated by government officials.
- Florida police, investigating
Lynn Kirkman
Editorial Writer
where paranoia was becoming the order of the day.
Martha Mitchell was a lady who wasn't afraid to speak her mind. She wasn't above telephoning a newspaper editor in the wee hours of the morning to tell him just where she stood on an issue she wanted to press, and the Nixon人都 allowed her to carry on. After all, she was angry with the effect, saying the things they wanted to say but couldn't.
THE CBS television program, "60 Minutes," visited
the Mitchells at home during those days. While Martha fluttered and digged, apposed and demurred, John Mitchell was at her side. Thin-lipped and dour, he permit himself a grasp on the platter on about life in Washington and the "inside" works of government as she saw it.
but Martha wasn't happy in Washington. She made no
secret of wanting John to leave the government and return to his private law practice in New York City. She just wasn't comfortable around all those three-piece suits and the pressureers were beaten before she could know how much Martha knew about the Watergate burglary, the covert operations and the inside works of the Committee to Re-elect the President.
"Put it over in Fiction."
We do know that Martha,
being Marta, can't keep her
mouth shut. And a wagging
tongue didn’t fit in with the
stonewalling menace at 100 Pennsylvania Ave.
MONA MARTHA was facing problems she hadn't imagined or prepared to face. She was one of coherent stories of being drugged and locked in her apartment. She and her husband separated, Mitchell the director of their young daughter.
So it's easy to see why John Mitchell might not have had his mind on basic tactic-based haptic preconvention days.
However, it's impossible to believe that Richard Nixon thinks that the American people will allow him to say that the whole affair was Martha's fault.
Marina Mitchell is in prison John Mitchell is in Alabama. Richard Nixon is at San Clemente.
But Martha Mitchell, who told us something of what was going on, is dead of bone cancer, died alone and in cancer funds.
And now Nixon attempts to blame her for the whole sorry mess that he and those other fine chaps got themselves into. It's just one more dirty trick.
Somewhere in the universe Martha Mitchell is probably laughing.
the disappearance of three wealthy Miami-area persons, search in vain for their prime suspect, a man named Michael Burnett. They are not told that "Burnett" is one of the Justice Department's hidden witnesses.
- People glance without curiosity at a Greyhound bus driver in Arizona, a used car salesman in San Francisco, a college student in San Diego, a prostitute in Texas, or someone suspect that these, and many others, are alumn of the alias program.
- Shareholders in London are bulked of hundreds of thousands of dollars by an American-born securities dealer. They do not learn until later that he is a convicted felon. When the prisoned four times and was given an alias by the Justice Department.
The reason so few Americans are aware of the department's unusual witness-protection program is that they cannot express without explanation and without debate by former Atty. Gen. John Mitchell, who concealed it in the large-scale Crime Control Act of 1970.
The purpose was to encourage frightened witnesses to testify, and government officials say many important convictions were made because of it. Most witnesses have remained antonymous and safe; only seven are known to have been murdered, and in some cases act for which a witness seems to have been responsible.
But because the idea of involving the government in such systematic duplicity was never publicly debated, problems were overlooked that are only now beginning to surface.
Most relocated witnesses are hardened criminals who have used plea bargaining to obtain their freedom and new identities. They have testified against their participation in crime and their government identities to commit new crimes, to defraud unsuspecting persons or to run up huge debts and slip away.
THE JUSTICE Department,
stung by a series of complaints
and lawsuits by victims of hidden
witnesses, has downgraded the
quality of its documentation
and cover. The action has
brought a hall of complaints
and lawsuits by relocated witnesses,
who chose to remain in "new lives" are so transparent that they are denied a fair chance at jobs, credit and a decent life.
A tangle of unanticipated problems has emerged.
Children have been swallowed up into the alias program when one of their divorced parents was swiftly relocated, leaving the other parent with no way to find the children.
Witnesses have been hidden by the Justice Department only to have the Internal Revenue Service track them down for taxes owed under former identities.
Relocated witnesses have tended to flock to the sun; they are said to be bumping into each other in such places as San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.
THE NIXON administration may have done the country a disservice when it created this program to give workers an "impetuous" it may be that, on balance, it is simply not a good idea for the government to be in the business of issuing good names to thousands of crimi-
In any event, it is said that the Carter administration intends to undertake zero-based review of selected government programs—reviews that would curb the government's existence. The government's alias program might well be a good place to start.
Fred Graham, a CBS News correspondent, is author of "The Allas Program."
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Publicized at the University of Kansas daily August 4th, 2016 at 9:30 a.m. June and July at except Saturday, Sunday and ballet on Saturday and Sunday. Subscriptions by mail are $10 each or $25 each. Subscriptions by mail are $10 each or $25 each. A year outside the county will cost $200 each. The activity student fee is $50.
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Jerry Selb
Business Manager Judy Lohr