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Thursday, September 27.1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Nixon's Housing Plan
If President Nixon gets his way, the days of subsidized housing projects may be over by 1975. Rather than cramming people into public housing, such as the monstrosity in St. Louis, Pruitt-Igoe, the needy would receive cash payments to obtain housing on the open market. For each section of the country the price of minimum housing would increase and amount, and reward, to the worth of a family's income failed to provide that minimum, the government would make up the difference.
Some critics may say the federal government is trying to abdicate its responsibility to furnish suitable housing for the country's poor. However, that is not true, because the plan is a radical proposal that would put an end to one of the principal devices by which the poor are segregated from the rest of a community.
In most cities of any size a controversy arises periodically concerning the location of a federal housing project for low-income families. The "better" neighborhoods don't want the influx of poor people or other wealthy healthier people will flee to the suburbs when they see the blacks coming, and down will go the city's property tax base.
So it usually turns out that the housing projects are built near or in the midst of existing city slums, and that sometimes they dislocate as many people as they find housing. No one person cannot afford any other housing, they are relegated to the less desirable sections of the city.
The Nixon plan would allow the poor to find housing in any section of the city in which housing at that price range exists. The poor are not necessarily consigned to one area of a city.
It is no doubt true that housing within the price ranges of the poor
people, even with the direct payments, would be unavailable in some urban sections. However, the chances that the poor can integrate themselves with the rest of the city would be much improved.
The program also would remove one of the greatest stigmas attached to federal welfare aid—the housing project. The very fact that a person must live in a low-income housing development constitutes a degradation for him. Under the Nixon plan, it would not be so obvious to everyone that a family was receiving federal housing aid.
If the new housing plan is implemented, there are several pitfalls of which the administration must be aware. The first is that there may not be enough housing in the price bracket to go around. If that happens, the law of supply and demand would force rents higher and housing again would be beyond the realm of the poor family.
Providing tax breaks to contractors for building the relatively inexpensive housing could help ensure that there would be enough housing to meet the demand of those who would now be able to afford it. A further tax benefit for building away from the inner city could enable the poor to leave the ghetto more easily.
The government would have to exert more control over landlords concerning maintenance and upkeep of property or the poor would never benefit. Finally, the government must not underestimate the cost of minimum standard housing. Underestimation would be analogous to the failure of the war on terror, a narrow definition of poverty that did not include the poor. Failure to provide enough money to obtain decent housing would amount to a subsidy of the slumlords.
—Elaine Zimmerman Copy Chief
if it hadn't been for a $25,000 fire 30 years ago, there still might stand a shabby, one-story frame building on the southwest hawkeylaw Boulevard and Sunflower路.
It was one of those temporary buildings that never go away. The University of Kansas still have a number of them, and probably won't go away for quite awhile.
Permanently Temporary Buildings
That building—it was the anatomy building when it burned—survived from era to era in much the same way temporary buildings since have survived. When one temporary use came to an end, another came along.
The anatomy building was of World War I military vintage. It came to KU in 1921 as the University "Commons," a student center that housed a cafeteria. When the university moved out in 1927, the cafeteria moved out and the band and student publications moved in.
THEY STAVED THERE until Dyche Hall was closed for repairs in 1832. Dyche's
closed forcing the anatomy department to move into the building, known for years as the "Shack." (First-year medical students studied then on the Lawrence campus before moving to the KU Medical Center in Kansas City.)
By 1943, there was talk that the anatomy department would move into Lindley Hall when it was completed in the summer. And Chancellor Deane Malott was quoted as saying that black was there only because there was no other place for the anatomy department.
"-GEE IS THIS THE SAME PLACE THAT
WISH TO GIVE AWAY FREE SILVERWARE?"
Did Generation Gap Really Exist?
The Washington Post
By WILLIAM CHAPMAN
WASHINGTON-Little by little, the evidence is coming in on what people really were thinking and doing in the 1980s and the 1990s. The evidence has not to have been as great as we supposed.
There was, for example, the Generation Gap, a marvelous invention that could be called on to explain practically everything it has covered socially, politically, economically.
Gradually, it is becoming clear that the attitudes and behavior of two generations of Americans did not differ nearly as much as we thought. There were significant differences of opinion on such things as whether a bill should be but on most issues like the 1960s the differences were modest, if the more recent measurement of public opinion are accurate.
A NEW BIT OF Generation-Gap intelligence has arrived from two researchers and it tends to narrow that gap even more. He is the associate professor of University of Michigan and Richard G. Niemi of the University of Rochester is unusual. They polled the basic political attitudes in their community, the school of their parents. Last winter they polled most of the same people again.
The result is a record of how opinions and behavior changed for two generations over a period of time when they supposedly were growing dramatically apart. Jennings and Niemi found no such schism. On most issues and fundamental attitudes toward government, the two generations tended to move in favor of some issues over others to speak, but most of these narrowed rather than widened in most instances during the eight years.
The Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor, but asks that letters be typewritten, double-spaced and no more than 24 words. All letters are subject to editing by a copy editor according to space limitations and the editor's judgment, and must be signed. KU students must provide their name, year in school and hometown; faculty name; provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.
Desegregation of public schools is the clearest example. In 1965, a majority of both the students and their parents favored the federal government's efforts to increase access to public schools and command a majority in neither group. But more important for the Generation-Gap
letters policy
theory, the survey found that by 1973 the percentage in both groups favoring federal integration efforts was practically the same.
IN OTHER WORDS, over the eight-year period, both the parents and their children were arrested for involvement in federal enforcement and a significant age gap had disappeared. Americans are still divided on this emotional issue, but they are now aware that this sample, divided by a generational line.
Similar things happened to the generations on some of the most fundamental questions of political behavior. They were asked a set of questions in 1965 that was later included in their trusted the federal government. Both groups became less trustful as the years
That is the exception, not the rule. In most instances, the young gradually changed over the eight-year period to become, politically speaking, much more like their ancestors; it is one more sign that the great Generation Gap, if it ever existed, had a short life.
of the past decade has been that people tend not to identify themselves with either political party. The new study indicates this is predominantly caused by the disaffection more inclined to say, "I am a Democrat" or "I am a Republican" than his children. This held true for both 1965 and for 1973. The young may be becoming more like their parents when it comes to certain issues, but they won't join the party as the older folks did.
passed, a phenomenon familiar in other studies. They both came to think of the government as representing special interests. More in each group came to believe that the government was run by crooked people.
All of these questions measuring public cynicism registered an increasing similarity of views by parents and children. Young people usually are much less cynical than their parents (despite the literature about alienated youth). But in these surreptitious parents they steadily became more cynical and by 1973 had caught up with their parents.
THERE IS ONE MAJOR exception to the pattern and it tells us something about what is happening in two-party politics these days. One of the most fundamental changes
Readers
Respond
/ Student Involvement
To the Editor:
I write with regards to a very important facet of student government at the University of Kansas. The common misconception on the part of the student is that governance is captured within the Student Senate and its offsheets. But a large number of governing bodies are too often overlooked, as well as underemphasized; specifically, those to which I refer are the university president, faculty members, schools and departments of the University.
Article 3.4.2 of the University Senate Rules and Regulations states: "Each school and department shall make provision for the inclusion of a number of students as voting members on all policymaking committees and at all full school or departmental meetings. The number of students on each such committee shall be no less than 20 per cent of the number of students to serve in such selection of students to serve as representatives on these bodies will take place in the next few weeks.
1) Approximately 50 per cent of all policy-making boards at KU have made no provisions for 20 per cent representation. This is especially true on the departmental level. A recent mailing by the members of this committee to these bodies asking for their cooperation in providing for 20 per cent representation revealed overwhelming, in that no responses have been made to this committee. . . three weeks later.
The Student Senate Committee on Student Rights, Privileges and Responsibilities is currently investigating adherence to Article 3.4.2. Our findings thus far reveal:
In view of these findings, as well as the notion that policy decisions on the academic level affect FERRY student at the center of KKM, we have students to inquire immediately within their
Most patrons of Watson Library complain to the student workers of the library rather than make their grievances and problems known to those in the front office who are directly responsible for library services at the library. If you know that will get the runaround, which they will, but that is part of life. They know they will be told that federal funds have been cut from the library buquets all across the country and that the state budget has been reduced. "I write your congressman. He's one in the yellow pages under 'Covers.'"
respective schools and departments as to what provisions exist, and to seek these positions. The student who serves on such boards will, as a result, be on the "inside." He will learn from his experience in his field of study, and, thus, enhances his course study and that of his constituents.
Rick McLaughlin Dallas Junior
I more than sympathize with the patron. I write my congressman. I discuss the problems with fellow workers, students and friends, then contemplate Plan "C."
In the three years I have worked at Watson—I only got the job because my brother worked there—I have seen cracked books and I have not been repaired, a leaky roof that is hundreds of books, a heating system that keeps 2-west at 86 degrees (there are no windows on that floor), and yellows the pages of books and makes them crisp as though they were a cooling system that only seems to work well in cold rooms are there books but no cubicles to study in.
Cracked Walls
To the Editor:
At the present time, the priority on this campus seems to be in the athletic department. Now, I'm not one to knock a healthy player out of the team, but the athletic department helps bring in the dough so I can go off into a corner and contemplate Sir Kenneth Clark's words on civilization as a whole. Yet, I must also keep my fingers in my mouth, and grow intellectually, without the barmacle of pretention yet intolerant of the hindrance of timidity. And if, as Vicato Hago said, a library is an act of faith, then I, fearing no more wit than a Christian's, must defend
Aside from the structural deficiencies of
Watson (why not tear out some of the walls in Wescoe and make it the new library?) there is the problem of lack of funds to buy new books and to replace old, worn ones, of curtailing or cutting various services in many departments.
Anthanett Mendoza Lawrence Senior
But a fire ended the building's history on March 3, 1943. Students from the Naval Training Station in Fowler Hall rushed to the scene of the blaze shortly after 7 p.m., with a hose, but the threads on the hose fitted at the threads on the hydrant near the Shack.
SO BY THE TIME the Lawrence Fire Department arrived, the building was engulfed by flames whipped by a strong gust of wind and burned to the KU until the Kansas Union fire in 1970.
But the possibility that the same fate may await Oread Hall, a temporary building of the next generation, is great enough that Chancellor Emeritus Raymond Nichols punctures the air with vewement jabs when he arranges the building as a "fire hazard."
Oread Hall, the dingy, H-shaped building west of Memorial Stadium, has been scheduled periodically to be razed since it was moved here from Parsons in 1946.
Irvin Youngbeg, executive secretary of the Endowment Association, was housing director then. He says the building, a barracks during World War II, was intended for use as a residence hall for five years.
INSTEAD, IT SERVED as a residence
hall into the 1960s and now houses faculty hall. Nichols says he hopes the building will be razed as soon as Wesco Hall, which will contain offices for faculty, is complete.
But, says Donald E. Metzler, professor of civil engineering and chairman of the University's space committee, "It's all in limbo right now."
That's because more temporary needs for space will arise soon after Wescoe is complete. Oread Hall is being considered as a temporary location for some of the visual arts until a visual arts building can be constructed.
And there's no telling what use will appear after that.
Some of those will be moved when Wesco and the new Watkins Health Center provide space for the offices the annexe house, Nichols says, but they probably won't leave the campus. They more likely will be "staging areas" for visual arts.
So, barring another fire, Youngberg might be right about this university.
THE SAME GOES for the more modern temporary buildings scattered across the campus, such as the Fraser annexes, Green annex and Watkins Hospital annex.
Reports Understating Repression in Chile
By RICHARD GOTT The Manchester Guardian
the most permanent thing on the campus is a temporary building." he says.
SANTIAGO—The situation in Chile appears to be far more serious than the communiques of the military junta have allowed the world to believe.
It is evident that the junta physically controls the country, but it is clear that this control is maintained with a degree of repression uncommon in Latin America.
In the first few hours after our arrival, I was able to talk to witnesses who had seen things which left them still quivering with rage, anger and shock. Shock is perhaps the most difficult test of mind of supporters and sympathizers of the deposed popular unity government.
The frontiers of the country were opened Wednesday for the first time since the coup eight days ago overthrew the government of President Salvador Allende. A charter calling all residents allies from all over the world, who had been waiting in Buenos Aires, were admitted.
One foreign girl who taught in the southern town of Temecula got off the bus Wednesday in Santiago with a hair-raising story. Hundreds of people had been arrested, she said, accused of nothing more than cooperation with the Allende government, and arrested by the army were read over the raid. No. 30 of the Temecula local government, she said, stated that "for every innocent dead, ten detainees will be killed."
IT SEEMS THAT few people were prepared for the ferocity of the countryside.
In Santiago things have been bad enough—an apparent massacre at the Technical University, bodies in the Mapocho River, the destruction of the village of Tinti from outlying districts in the south suggest that there the repression may be worse.
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SUPPORTERS OF THE previous government had their heads shaved, she reported and this applied not only to young people but to persons 50 or 60 years old.
JI so Ri To
T I I
This part of the country has become a stronghold of the fascist "fatherland and freedom" organization whose leader, Pablo Rodriguez, returned to Chile clandestinely two days before the coup and held a press conference in Tenco. Military sources said that the president, while the new government would pursue left-wing extremists with the utmost vigor, it was no longer necessary to pursue fatherland and freedom since this group had announced its intention to disband, its aims apparently having been achieved.
--by Sokoloff
... all arms must be handed in to the authorities by Sunday. Those found possessing them after that date will be shot.
IN TEMUKO, as elsewhere, the urban middle class is unable to restrain its delight at what has been happening.
"We'd prefer this than to have the travails in," is one example of the views that have been expressed.
I have not been able to verify all the stories I have been told about what has been happening in Santiago during the past week, but the general picture is of continuing clashes between the inhabitants of the city and the police in their search for arms.
In the port of Valparaiso, the resistance seems to have been stronger and there is
There is a long list of people connected with the Allende government who have been asked to give themselves up and they are also asked to give with the death penalty if they do not do so.
LATIN AMERICAN embassies sympathetic to Allende, principally those of Mexico, Peru and Argentina, have filled up with refugees, and it is difficult for additional ones to get in. Some European embassies have been taking in people believed to be threatened. One young boy, who was shot by the national stadium where thousands of prisoners, many of them foreign, are being held, and some are reportedly being shot,
There is every sign of the situation getting worse. The new regime has announced that all arms must be handed in to the troops on their way home, and that possessing them after that date will be shot,
GENERAL PEDRO EWING, the new secretary general of the government, told reporters Wednesday morning that the governor had ordered troops for arms until they have all been found.
Assistance to the junta is close at hand. Wednesday morning headlines in the right-wing daily El Mercurio announced that the president of the United States million dollars from the Interamerican Development Bank. The president of the bank, which is dominated by the United States, said that "political changes in a country do not alter our long-term" intentions."
Griff and the Unicorn