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University Daily Kansan
Friday. Dec. 9, 1960
A Stacked Deck?
KU officials were flabbergasted at the Big Eight decision yesterday that declared Bert Coan ineligible on the strength of a 5-3 vote, according to usually well-informed sources. A. C. (Dutch) Lonborg, director of athletics, said earlier this week that no action could be taken against KU unless a 6-2 vote was reached. Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe and Laurence C. Woodruff, dean of students and faculty representative to the Big Eight, later echoed the same opinion.
The Big Eight rules only refer to vote margins twice. A 6-2 vote is required to effect legislation. A two-thirds majority is required to discipline a member school. No vote percentage required to declare ineligibility is mentioned, an almost unbelievable oversight.
THE VOTE WHICH finally declared Coan ineligible was grounded in a section of the rules which says simply that any matter not discussed specifically in the rules is subject to decision of the faculty representatives meeting in regular session.
The Daily Kansan talked to more than half of the different faculty representatives at the conference meeting. Dean Earl Snead of Oklahoma said that the 6-2 vote in the Coan case did not apply. Prof. Warren Thompson of Oklahoma State said that a simple majority had been decided upon.
Obviously, Kansas didn't know that the other faculty representatives had decided on a simple majority. It is evident that Kansas went into this special meeting at a great disadvantage.
WE SUSPECT many of the schools went to the meeting with their minds made up. This leads to the paramount question:
Who is telling the truth and who is not?
Are we to believe Jack Mitchell, Bert Coan, the Senate Faculty Committee on Ineligibility, Bud Adams, the NCAA, or the Big Eight Committee?
We believe that Coan is innocent of any wrongdoing, and that the University broke no rules in accepting him.
WE FEEL that the Big Eight, which professes to be above investigating misbehavior, has been guilty of at least a gross error in judgment, and probably worse than that. It ignored statements by all the parties involved and cocked an eager ear to the malicious rumors propagated by those who had an axe to grind.
Before the Nebraska game, officials there challenged Coan's eligibility. They were given statements by Coan, Mitchell and Adams, statements which clearly explained Coan's transfer to KU and which indicated that the University had broken no recruiting rules. Then the KU Faculty Senate Committee investigated the charges and cleared Coan. These were routine and proper measures.
Before the Colorado game, KU asked for an eligibility ruling from all Big Eight members. They had been appraised of the statements made by the parties involved, but they failed to take us up on the offer. Instead, they waited until the end of the season to rule on the same evidence that was in their possession weeks before. Coupled with the odd contradictions apparent in the members' statements about the voting, this laying in ambush seems to us to be below the standards of ethics that we should like to think the Big Eight adheres to.
We think the deck was stacked.
the Editors
Hodge Explains Position Edition
My letter (UDK, Nov. 29) concerning the electoral college was directed specifically to an editorial which appeared in the UDK (Nov. 16). Taking the letter out of this context distorts somewhat its meaning. Hence in reply to Bill Myers (letter of Dec. 5) I wish to state more precisely my position.
One should not feet that the electoral college should be abolished because he feels that our
voting public is now well informed. This would entail two errors: that the voting public is well informed, and the electoral college prevents the people from making a poor choice. This last error—of which I was in part guilty—was adequately explained by Mr. Myers. I did not, however, maintain that the college was a good check, but that, instead, it should be revised with the purpose of making it a good check.
That the two-party system alone
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
THAT'S MR. HAYWICK—HE'S IN CHARGE OF FRESHMAN ORIENTATION.
is a sufficient check is obviously not the case. The majority of the newspapers in the United States and the three largest selling weekly news magazines are Republican orientated. The Democrats have maintained their power mostly through the labor unions and also because of the traditions of the South. Hence the working balance between the parties is controlled to a large extent by a few special interests—and the decisions made in any particular election depend not on the people thinking as individuals, but on the people insofar as they are controlled by one power group or another. This is an over-simplification, but in general true.
The electoral college should not be abandoned, simply because as long as there is a check, there is a fair possibility that this check will be adequately revised. But if there were to be no check, the possibility of employing an adequate check would be practically zero. As yet the electoral college has only once (1888) elected a president without a plurality. From any standpoint, it would be no good for the present to abolish the electoral college. But abolishing it would hinder the development of an adequate check in the future.
John L. Hodge Kansas City senior
Dailu Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association. Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Firm, East E5 St. New York 22, N.Y. News office, national. Mail subscription rates; $3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the university year except Saturday and Sundays, University holidays as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1896, at Lawrence, Kan., post office under act of March 3, 1879.
EATON KU DAILY FANSAN 1960
"Of course you earned it — now give it back."
By Calder M. Pickett
Acting Dean, School of Journalism
"ANDREW JOHNSON: PRESIDENT ON TRIAL," by Milton Lomask. Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, $6.
It was one of the dramatic moments in history, that day in 1868 when the senators whom Milton Lomask calls the "Seven Tall Men" stood up and let their names be counted as being against the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. It was the culmination of three years of Radical efforts to impose their will on Johnson, and subordinate the executive branch to the legislature.
Lomask tells this story in an excellent new biography of Andrew Johnson. The story has at times the superficial touches of a Jim Bishop telling about "The Day Lincoln Was Shot," and it leans too heavily on other works (such as John Kennedy's story of Edmund G. Ross in "Profiles in Courage"). But generally it is a work of scholarship, and it has pace and excitement.
THE EARLY YEARS OF JOHNSON'S LIFE RECEIVE LITTLE treatment here. Lomask is chiefly concerned with Johnson the President. He begins by describing that Good Friday on which Booth assassinated Lincoln. Then he describes the trial of the conspirators, the controversy over Mary Surratt, and Radical attempts to implicate Andrew Johnson.
This was one of the blackest eras of the Republican Party. There were conservative Republicans, but generally speaking the party was dominated temporarily by Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, Ben Butler and Ben Wade, Zack Chandler and Kansas' Pomeroy.
These were the wreckers. It would take a convincing revisionist to overturn this sordid episode. Summer later recanted, and it is evident that Stevens was essentially a fanatical idealist. But the others were as viciously opportunistic as they and their like had been when they ran the Committee on the Conduct of the War and promoted the destinies of Pope, Burnside and Hooker.
- JOHNSON, CERTAINLY, WAS NOT THE MOST COOPERATIVE of presidents, nor was he an apt politician. He proceeded as bullheadedly as did Wilson in a later era, fighting for a program but failing to compromise, where necessary, with the opposition.
But history seems to contend by now that Johnson was right. His program for the South was that of Lincoln, and it was the antithesis of Ben Butler's "Waving the Bloody Shirt" approach.
Lomask describes in detail the steps leading up to impeachment, and we see the Radicals in action. Here is Stanton, stubbornly bent on a program that would bring the South back into the Union on its knees, holding to an office that Johnson wanted him out of. Here is Grant, yielding to the Radicals, deserting Johnson and cocking an eye on the White House. Here is Gideon Welles, confiding his doubts and fears to his diary, remaining the most loyal member of the Johnson cabinet.
Even at this late date, one can read of this tragic episode with shock and bitterness. The Radicals were bent on destroying a man and assuming power. They did this through conspiracy, subterfuge and downright blackmail. It is not pretty to read today about the pressures applied on Senator Ross of Kansas by the senior senator, Pomeroy, or the telegram sent to Ross from Leavenworth:
"KANSAS HAS HEARD THE EVIDENCE AND DEMANDS the conviction of the President. D. R. Anthony and 1,000 others."
The impeachment episode brought contempt and obloquy to several men who voted against conviction. The Republicans, of course, would have no part of Johnson, and his own party, the Democrats (he had been more or less of a coalition candidate in 1864), gave the nomination to Horatio Seymour in 1868.
But Johnson returned to Washington as a senator from Tennessee, and he was cheered when he entered the Senate chamber. Impeachment made him a martyr, and today he stands in a middle position in reckonings of the men who have occupied the White House.