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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Dec. 1, 1960
A Feeble Budget
In two weeks the University will tiptoe to Topeka to lay a "minimal" budget before the state budget committee, that sharp-eyed watchdog of the public's tax money.
WE WILL GO to Topeka with hat in hand, walking quietly, careful not to disturb the powers that be. The presentation of the budget request will be hesitant and fearful, reminiscent of the mendicant whose pride rebels at beggary, but who must beg to live nonetheless.
When Mr. Nichols said this budget was "minimal," he wasn't kidding. We don't mean in total dollars asked; this sum is more than one million dollars higher than last year's request. It's where the money is going that bothers us. Let's look at the course of events.
The University and the Board of Regents went into a quick huddle over this budget and came up smiling in weak agreement. The University's request was approved in toto by the regents because the University asked for just what the regents told them to, and no more.
THEN THE CAMPUS community is informed that the budget will be a tight one because the University is hoping that the state budget committee will smile benignly upon a request to build a faculty retirement program that will permit our retired teachers to live a little above the line that separates desperation from genteel poverty.
The presentation of the budget can only be made this way because the budget itself is a feeble, apologetic excuse for what it should be — a firm and realistic appraisal of the needs of a rapidly expanding, progressive university.
This is certainly a praiseworthy goal. Our retirement program is, in Mr. Nichols' words, "the least adequate of about any state university in the United States."
The University is asking that the state and the individual professor be permitted to match funds, the professor banking five per cent of his salary every month with the state matching that total. Mr. Nichols said this plan should allow a professor to retire on about half pay, which is roughly the national average.
This is fine. But then we are told that this really isn't costing our fortunate faculty members anything at all, since the five per cent merit raise asked by the University will cover his retirement expenses.
WHAT THIS REALLY MEANS is that there will be no merit raise increase. This removes still another enticement to the young and aggressive faculty members that will maintain the University in the future. Instead, they are given promises of a safe and secure old age; well, almost safe and secure.
We don't think the University has shown courage in preparing the budget request. We feel they have placed expediency above the real needs of the University. This is not entirely the fault of those preparing the budget; the stone wall in Topeka is difficult enough to breach, heaven knows. But must we be so afraid of the terrible-tempered Mr. Bibb, the budget director, and the administration he serves, that we shy away from asking forthrightly for what is needed desperately now? The exodus of top-grade teachers from our campus is testimony to the need and importance of BOTH the merit raise and a decent — we can almost say humane — retirement program.
— Bill Blundell
Concentration stilled the audience as Hans Schwieger stepped to the podium to conduct the Kansas City Philharmonic last night.
Successive moods of pomposity, passion, spontaneous gaiety and humor typified Wagner's Overture to "Die Meistersinger," the first selection. Various themes are heard simultaneously until one is borne out in dramatic triumph over the others.
The second selection, Samuel Barber's "Essay No. 1 for Orchestra, Opus 12," began in deep penetrating melody moving from the strings to the wood winds in sprightly dance rhythms. The climax passes and disintegrates before the end of the piece, which is a return to the introductory phrase. The ending, almost too abrupt, caught the audience off guard and they responded only when Schwieger turned toward the audience.
Maurice Ravel's "Rapsodie Espagnole," the third selection, is a suite in four movements. Dense repetition of heavy phrasing sets the mood for the first movement, night. The somber tone is shattered by the entrance of the Malaguena, a lively dance-song of Spain.
During this movement, Schwierie painted a gay portrait in music as his baton swept the orchestra in syncopated rhythm. The fa-
milliar habanera dance of the third movement is happy and cheerful, then mingles into a confused, almost melancholy depression, which brightens again in the last movement.
Erahms was one of the composers more familiar to the audience. The popular "Symphony in C Minor, No. 1, Opus 68," was the next selection. The symphony moves from slow, sensitive harmony to brisk, impatient, demanding gestures, creating a pulsating theme of movement.
The symphony closes with a triumphant burst of musical energy indicative of the emotional impact which one must feel compelled Brahms to compose the work.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Thunderous applause returned the orchestra for three encores, including a selection from the familiar "Carmen." Schwieger, in his usual firm and polite manner, smiled, saluted the symphony members, and left the stage as the audience began to reach for coats amid the clapping of a few persistent admirers.
Kelly Smith
'SORRY, BROTHER HAMMON, WE JUST DON'T HAVE ROOM
`HOWEWHERE. IF THIS BOY IS AS GOOD AS YOU SAY-"
Short Ones
A friend says he has a hard time identifying himself with either Vox or UP since neither has pledged anything for his living district: Un-organized, Unassociated and Un-concerned.
In this age of the "New Era" at KU and the "New Frontier" for the nation, I can't wait to jump into the battle. And I will, in just as soon as I get caught up in all my classes.
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One recent medical survey showed that there are 30 per cent more men than women in mental institutions. But the women get the credit for putting them there.
Retail merchants are already trotting out the Christmas decorations and ordering merchandise for the big season rush, which should begin sometime before Thanksgiving. If the Main Street boys don't stop rushing St. Nick, they're apt to find lumps of coal in their cash registers on Christmas morning.
Daily 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 750, telephone
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press, Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 30 St., New York 22, 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.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Bill Blundell
John Peterson and Bill Blundell Co-Editorial Editors
Mark Dull ... Business Manager
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
From the Magazine Rack
Intercollegiate Athletics
Part I
To right-thinking men everywhere, college football is and has been from its inception a beastly sport. Its players are snake-hipped and ox-headed; its coaches have the guile of foxes and the hides of elephants; its supporters roar like the lion and bray like the ass. Yet the beast survives. Over almost every college campus its banner flies: head in helmet, heart on a chalk-striped field, hand outstretched.
The alchemy which unites pigskin and egghead is as mysterious as the reasons why some college presidents become positive boobies when they contemplate the glories of their athletic programs. Every year, college professors damn big-time athletics. Every two or three years, a committee meets to investigate. Every decade, writers summarize athletics' sorry record. Seldom has so thoroughly discredited an activity maintained such vigorous life and in such high-principled company.
What is new, if anything, about this old sordid story is that college athletics today have won full acceptance as legitimate university activities, and with acceptance, tacit approval of practices which even a backward school, much less a major university, might have frowned upon twenty-five years ago. College athletics thrive today chiefly because of corrupt practices which have been incorporated into codes of legitimate conduct.
Today, these simpler impulses of the past have been largely replaced by the philosophy of mercenary idealism: the outstretched hand and the question, "How much?" An army of recruiters sells the full free ride like pardoners peddling indulgences. An eternity of losing seasons yawns for the coach who fails to exact his tithes. "At Iowa State," said the young coach who was leaving for Texas A. & M., "I had very little money to develop my athletic dreams. There was little money in the budget, little money for recruiting athletes and not much in the way of facilities to attract the athletes we could contact. There is no comparison between our facilities now at College Station and at Iowa State. For example, we have seven new cars assigned to the athletic department, and I can't wait to get home to see our new athletic dormitory. We have spaces for 92 student-athletes in this new building and the entire building is air-conditioned and we have wall-to-wall carpeting."
Recruiting is at the center of the corruption which marks bigtime college sports. In 1929, the Carnegie investigation called subsidizing and recruiting "the most disgraceful phase" of intercollegiate athletics. Today, recruiting flourishes, sanctioned by a code which is not so much a guide to conduct as a measure of earning power. Under the NCAA regulations, when financial aid to an athlete "exceeds commonly accepted educational expenses (tuition and fees, room and board, books, and not to exceed $15 per month for laundry) . . . it shall be considered to be 'pay' for participation." The principles regulating recruiting activities are equally delicate. Coaches cannot offer more financial inducement than the free ride; each college gets to pay for the prospect's visit to the campus one time "and one time only"; the prospect cannot bring along relatives or girl friends except at his own expense; entertainments are restricted to two days and two nights and must not be "excessive." It is as if banks condoned embezzlement as long as the embezzlers followed the regulations set forth by the National Board of Peculation.
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For the athletic mess, the universities have themselves to blame. The NCAA, though top-heavy in its administration with coaches and athletic directors, is a college and university body. As long ago as 1922, it adopted a resolution urging "absolute faculty control" of athletics. And though faculty members of football universities know how far from "absolute" even absolute faculty control is, they probably have more control than they ever exercised. The reasons they haven't exercised it are not hard to find
In the first place, American colleges and universities have never been much concerned with the intellectual life. The colleges and universities that do honor the intellectual life are those like Reed. Antioch, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, which do not maintain big-time athletics, or those, like the Ivy League schools, which have achieved in recent years a measure of de-emphasis. It is well to remember that the level of intellectual life in the Ivy League schools when football grew to power was probably not much higher than it is in the state universities today.
(Excerpted from an article, "Head, Heart and Hand Outstretched: Intercollegiate Athletics," by Kenneth Eble, appearing in the Fall edition of the Columbia University Forum.)