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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1959
Our Worried Governor
A year ago, a survey made by the Michigan Civil Service Commission showed that Kansas civil service employees had the lowest pay rates in the nation. There has been no change during the past year. Civil service employees affected at KU are the buildings and grounds workers and the office personnel.
Recently the state finance council recommended that the civil service pay scale be increased by two grades. The increase would mean a five per cent increase for each grade. This would not affect the base pay, but would allow overdue salary increases to many KU employes.
Even with the proposed increases, Kansas civil service workers still will be paid less money than they were last year, said Ray Nichols, executive secretary of the University. A rearrangement of the civil service pay scale at that time effected mass wage cuts for many state employees.
Gov. George Docking, who has gone on record several times against increasing the wages of state employes, now has challenged the authority of the finance council. Although he is the council's chairman, Docking feels that the council has usurped his power to make certain financial decisions. Obviously, Docking is irked because the
four Republican members of the council outvoted him and the lieutenant governor, both Democrats, on the civil service question. He is now appealing to the attorney general for a ruling concerning the legal power of the finance council.
The council's duties are outlined in the Kansas Statutes, 1957 Supplement. They cover several pages. The governor is challenging the constitutionality of these statutes and will continue to challenge them and any others which may limit the power he feels should be in the gubernatorial arm. As a man who has tied the hands of many state agencies, the governor cannot afford to take even one step from his powerful precipice. He has fought and will fight any authority not directly controlled by himself, especially when it should cross his personal policies.
The finance council's decision in regard to the civil service salary increases is not final. Any suggestions made by the council must be ratified by the state legislature.
It is hard to see why Docking would be so upset by the council's stand. The legislature still stands between the money and the state employees. Or is that what the governor is worried about?
—John Husar
Colorado Warns Against
Creeping Secrecy
More and more, groups of power and responsibility in the University community are finding it convenient to hold sessions behind closed doors.
Creeping secrecy, the occupational disease of any bureaucratic organization, is slowly infesting the bureaucratic bodies of the University.
The disease generally manifests itself not only in closing meetings to the public but also in barring the press, which serves, in a sense, as the "eyes and ears of the public."
The latest groups to climb on the secrecy bandwagon are the Arts and Sciences Faculty (which last year admitted the press to its meetings) and the ASUC Committee on Student Organizations and Social Life (SOSL).
SOSL, for example, has been running a continuous "executive session" throughout the semester, obtensibly to discuss some secret revision of the social code. The press has been admitted only for the routine business portions of the meetings. However, at last Thursday's meeting, SOSL went into executive session merely to pass on a recommendation involving the finances of student organizations.
And secrecy is the policy of too many other University bodies.
The University Club, which last fall opened its
lecture series to the press, has closed the lectures this year.
The University (faculty) Senate, as usual, is conducting its business and formulating policy behind closed doors.
The Administrative Council, the University's legislative body on administrative matters, passes rulings bi-weekly in secret session.
The University's top governing body, the Board of Regents, although required by law to transact its business publicly, carries on as much discussion as possible in secret sessions.
It is not the Daily or the press as a whole which suffers when meetings are held behind closed doors. Only the public loses when the press is excluded, for the press is the public's representative at these meetings. And when the press is excluded and must obtain its information secondhand, chances for inaccuracy and omission are greatly increased.
We hope these groups now holding secret sessions will one day see fit to follow the example of ASUC, the top student governing body, which scrupulously keeps all meetings open to the public and the press.
—Ron Krieger The Colorado Daily
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"I DON'T CARE HOW BAD YOUR PENMANSHIP IS - YOU'LL HAVE TO LEARN TO TAKE YOUR OWN LECTURE NOTES"
As a rule, we never drink. As a habit we do, but as a rule, never!
With John Morrissey
We're coming out with a new book-called "The Social System at KU." The book contains, among other things, most of the evil goings on at private KU parties over the past four years. Sorority girls can mail one dollar to this column to assure that their names won't be mentioned.
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Nebraska beats O.U., Kansas beats K-State, and K-State skunks Nebraska. If consistency were a virtue, the Big Eight would be the biggest vice den in the land.
. . .
Here are some campus customs which appear a bit ridiculous; Social probation, convocations, the LMOC contest, and three telephone lines for 60 girls in the sorority houses.
The telephone situation became so bad in one of the sororities that some of the girls and phones installed in their rooms. Ah, sweet popularity.
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Birth control is supposed to become one of the major issues in the forthcoming presidential nominations. We wondered when they'd make a public issue out of it.
By Stuart Levine Instructor in English
Easily the best professional concert of the year thus far: the Vegh String Quartet in Swarthout Hall last Monday. A large audience heard three difficult and enigmatic works read with clarity, verve and feeling.
THIS IS A QUARTET with character. It does not sound like any other quartet, and Sandor Vegh, the first violinist, seems to be responsible for its special manner. He plays a nervous fiddle; his vast self hulks over the little instrument, the perspiration flows, he at times misses fire in one way or another, and even overplays, but the result is energetic, lucid, and intelligent.
Messrs. Zoldy, Janzer and Szabo alternately catch their leader's spirit or provide contrast to it with their solid and workmanlike playing. Where Mr. Vegh's sound is tense, Mr. Zoldy's is bland, almost creamy, although not without strong character of its own. One can always distinguish the first violin line from the second.
FOR ALL THE TALK about "jolly, content, not-too-bright old Poppa," I am becoming more and more convinced that Haydn is the most mysterious of composers. What a strange work is his G Minor Quartet, Opus 20, Number 3! Asymmetrical motifs, disappearing climaxes, unexpected bursts of energy—and Vegh's players are the men for the job. I wanted to hear it again, right away.
Next came the Quartet, Opus 11 of Samuel Barber, the one from which the familiar and lovely Adagio for Strings was taken. Barber is a craftsman, and a master at building tremendous tension. His movements wind up tighter and tighter, then the spring bursts and the section moves inevitably, and sometimes tranquilly, to a close. The Quartet made the tensions immense; one could almost feel the audience gasp when they broke.
AFTER INTERMISSION came Schubert's G Major Quartet, Opus 161, Number 15. I took out my Budapest String Quartet recording of this (Columbia SL-194) the next day to compare. I found the Budapest more precise—though nothing could be more precise than the Vegh's handling of the rapid bow work of the first movement—but no more moving. Melody falls over melody in this work; Schubert has far too much material, and the piece holds together only through some strange sort of emotional continuity. The performers were able to sustain the mood, the audience left happy, and even your reviewer found his flu much abated.
By Arnold H. Weiss
Assistant Professor of Romance Languages
THE WOUNDS OF HUNGER by Luis Spota, translated by Barnaby Conrad, Signet Books. 35 cents.
"The most powerful bullfighting novel I have ever read," says Barnaby Conrad, who is translator and editor (whatever that means) of this novel, and who ought to know a good one when he sees it. Powerful. That means mucho four-letter words. And hermano does this one ever have them. Mr. Spota is what might be called the Mickey Spillane of the fiesta brava. His little number should do fine on the waiting room and drugstore lending library circuit; the French translator showed he was well aware of this when he new-baptized it C'est l'heure, matador. I'll go him one better, though, and suggest two brave new titles. How about "The Case of the Pregnant Bullfighter?" (lady bullfighter, that is—though I'm sorry I found out before she lost her baby in the bullring) Or maybe Fairyland Revisited? Well, you get the idea. And you can't say you weren't warned.
"St. Joseph's and Oak Grove cemeteries will be closed November 15 for the winter. Residents of the area should take due notice and govern themselves accordingly."—The Red Lake Falls, Minn., Gazete.
Have I a lover who is noble and free? I would be he nobler than to love me. Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "The Sphinx"
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700
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Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave., New York N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays. University holidays, and examination periods. Entered as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
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