The University Daily
KANSAN
University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
Friday, November 7, 1980
Vol. 91. No. 55 USPS 659-640
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Dennis Brutus, professor of English at Northwestern University, gestures during a speech last night in the Kansas Union. He called for the divestiture of KU from businesses in South Africa.
Ex-prisoner argues for divestiture
By DIANE SWANSON Staff Reporter
Although pulling University investments out of corporations in South Africa may not greatly affect that country's apartheid government, the University would cease being personally implicated of support, because it former South African prisoner, said last night.
The round of applause that followed was the only sign of approval or disapproval during the process.
ABOUT 150 STUDENTS turned up to hear the Northwestern University English professor despite the cancellation of the Student Senate-sponsored debate between Larry and Gert Grovel, a South African diplomat who was to argue against diventure.
Brutus said that Grover had canceled appearances at other debates and that it was a tactic used to postpone discussion and action on a longer basis, but on a longer doing what they are doing."
The first argument given by anti-divertiture forces, Brutus said, was that administrators entrust their money to trustees to "invest it in the best place for the best profits"
ACCORDING TO BRUTUS, investors argue that they can make an 18 percent profit in their investments in South Africa while the world is anywhere else in the world is only 14 percent.
In refuting this argument, Brutus said the University of Massachusetts sold all of its investments in South Africa, reinvested in the community and was now showing better
He also said that the University of California at Los Angeles had lost $59 million in one year from its investments in South Africa.
returns than what it is receiving from South Africa investments.
He said UCLA lost money because of its policy of always buying and selling stock on a
See BRUTUS page 5
Endowment Association exempt from state laws
By ROSE SIMMONS Staff Reporter
The KU Committee on South Africa had asked the attorney general in July to review the bylaws of the Endowment Association. The committee wanted to know whether the Endowment Association was subject to Kansas statutes that would have given the committee access to the Endowment Association's meetings and financial and business records.
The Kansas University Endowment Association is not required to make public its meetings and records, according to an opinion published on Wednesday by the state attorney general's office.
The committee had no comment yesterday on the opinion of the attorney general.
Assistant Attorney General Bradley J. Smoot said that the office evaluated the status of the Endowment Association in relation to three Kansas statutes—the Kansas Open Meetings Act, the Kansas Public Records Law and a statute relating to public access to financial records of corporations controlled by a state agency.
AFTER STUDYING the bylaws of the Endowment Association and similar cases, the attorney general's office found that the statutes primarily to the Endowment Association, Smoot said.
The opinion stated that the Endowment Association was not substantially controlled by the University of Kansas. KU does not pay the salaries of Endowment Association employees or operational expenses, Smoot said, and does not have a say in its internal affairs.
Smoot said the Endowment Association differed significantly in this area from the University of Kansas Athletic Corporation, which the attorney general's office found was a public agency last semester and subject to the Kansas public information acts.
"The KUAC was found to be substantially controlled by the University," Smooth said. "The University paid KUAC employee salaries and sat on the KUAC board."
Smoot said that neither was true of the relationship between the Endowment and KU.
Because the Endowment Association does not receive funds from KU and is not created by Kansas law or administrative decree, it does not have to comply with the Kansas Open Meetings Act. The opinion said that the Endowment Association did not have the authority to direct the business of the Endowment Association and therefore could not be viewed as a subsidiary of KU.
IN THE OPINION of the attorney general's office, the open records statutes were not intended for private corporations such as the Endowment Association. Legal relationships between KU and the Endowment Association are not treated differently from the Endowment Association a public agency, the opinion stated.
Guaranteed loan rates to increase 2 percent
Endowment Association President Todd Seymour was unavailable for comment.
Student loans will cost more next semester because of higher interest rates, according to the KU financial aid director and an employee of Anchor Savings Association. 900 Ohio St.
Guaranteed Student Loans granted after Dec 31, will carry a 9 percent interest rate, a 2 percent increase over this semester, Katie Studebaker, head of the Guaranteed Student Loan program at Anchor Savings, said yesterday.
Anchor Savings is the only Lawrence bank that makes GLS.
"We're still waiting on guidelines from the federal government to determine what interest rate students will pay if they apply before Jan. 14," Studebaker said, until the spring semester, "Studebaker said.
STUDENTS ALSO ARE paying more interest on National Direct Student Loans. The interest on NDSLs increased from 30 to 4 percent as of Oct. Roger Rogers, KU director of Financial Aid, said.
THE INCREASE in student loan interest rates comes as demand for student loans has dramatically increased, Studebaker said. Another study found that a large number of student loan reneges, she said.
"We have given 1,591 GSLs as of the end of October." she said.
Anchor Savings does not have a limit on the number of GSIs it would make, Studebaker said. The bank has lent $4 million in student loans since it began its program in March.
Studkeader said she had expected loan requests to slow down by November, but they had not.
"It has remained busy all fall," she said.
Studebaker said she had been hired as a part-time employee, but ended up working full time with the company.
"At the beginning of the semester, students could pay their dorm fees or tuition," she said. "They don't have to."
STUDENTS REQUESTING loans during the past month have said they needed the money to pay for college.
Students can pick up a GSL application from Anchor Savings. After the application is filled out, students may turn them in to the KU Financial Aid Office. If the student meets the requirements, the application is approved and sent to Anchor Savings, then sent to a processing center.
"It takes about six weeks for a student to receive a GSL." Studubaker said.
Women's commission attempts to shed radical feminist image
Jeff Weinberg, KU assistant director of Financial Aid, said a student must be making reasonable academic progress toward a degree to be eligible for a GSL.
By REBECCA CHANEY Staff Reporter
Executive board members of the commission said that the group was often considered antimale, radically feminist and pro-abortion and that this image was alienating other women.
The RU Commission on the Status of Women is making it hard to shake a radical feminist image, and the RU Commission on the Status of Women is making it hard to shake a radical feminist image.
Despite announcements in the Kansan and in newsletters, only 12 women showed up at the Council Room of the Union last night to discuss the mission could better meet the needs of KU women.
The commission was intended as a support
for the college on campus, not just
[perpetuates] members said.
is," said Harriet Blanton, Lawrence graduate student, who attended her first meeting last night.
Images of women marching, crowning sheep at the Miss America pageant, hexing IBM, sitting in at Playboy and doing other things to attune themselves to the tone for moderate feminine groups to shake, she said.
ADRIENNE CHRISTIANSON, president of
MindTree, also helped to emphasize that it was more gradual growth.
"Nobody knows what the commission really
"These things are an anathema to Americanism, and so people don't see the meaty aspects of the women's movement, such as setting up child care centers." Christiansen said.
Christiansan said the commission sponsored workshops on far more than just feminist, academic or religious topics.
See WOMEN page 5
Weather
It will be sunny and hot today with a record-breaking high of 83 degrees, according to the KU Weather Service. Winds will be out of the west at 18-20
It will be fair and cooler tonight with a low of 48 and light northwestery breezes.
Tomorrow will be most sunny with a high of 73 and tomorrow night will be much cooler.
The extended outlook calls for mild temperatures with highs in the 70s and lowes in the 40s.
be partly cloudy with a low of 4. No precipitation is expected for the weekend.
Harry A. Puckett, reputed to be a millionaire, enjoys dinner on his back porch. He is surrounded by recycled clothes, tools and odds and ends that he has collected over the years. The 91-year-old Puckett lives at 1109 Delaware St.
Lawrence landlord refuses to display wealth
By ROSE SIMMONS
Staff Reporter
Blood from a small cut ran down Harry A. Puckett's vein-strung arm, matting clumps of his grey hair and dripping on an over-sized wrench in his hand.
Puckett, a reputed Lawrence millionaire, wrangled with a customer's rusted drain pipe for three minutes before breaking the silence that hung over his backyard.
"I'm not rich," he said. "I've worked and saved a little money, but I'm not rich."
Some Lawrence residents think otherwise.
"He's well known in town." said Raymond Williams, 1032 New York St., and "everybody knows that he's rich." Williams' sister lives in a house owned by Puckett.
Donna Harris, an employee in the Douglass
Company, owns more than 38 pieces of property in Lawrences.
"Don't let his old clothes fool you." Harris said. "He's really a wealthy man."
IT IRRITATES THE 91-year-old Puckett that people call him wealthy.
He braced the pipe with his foot, leaned his shoulder body against the wrench and pushed hut.
"I just think that it makes people feel important when they can say that they know someone who is well-fixed," he said as he flung the unyielding pipe to the ground.
"My house has been broken into eight times by people looking for my money," he said.
Puckett lives in a house he built at 1109
and has been heated, no heating, no
electricity and no running water.
Puckett's son Walter, an employee of Stokley-
son, said he had said he was sure how much money his father has.
"He probably has a couple of thousand but he hasn't the bank to tell me I'm not sure about the money," she adds, "the own a lot of things."
Whatever amount of money Puckett may have in the bank, he spends few of the dollars on himself. Walter said Puckett was always concerned about spending money. He said his parents split up after frequent arguments over money when he was four and his sister was one.
"He never spent money on himself," the 61 year old said.
Arnold Elliott, 110th Pennsylvania St., a former employee of Puckett, said Puckett was "tight."
"He later told me that he kicked us out because he wanted to make some money," Walter said. "I was shocked."
HE FREQUENTLY TAKES to the streets on a
But Puckett said he didn't "need to spend much money on things that I can get free."
one-speed bike to collect reusable discards. The front and back porches and floors of his two-story frame house are piled with old clothing. Stacks of lumber, sheet metal and spare metal parts lie in his yard between patches of knee-high grass.
"I've got to take this back to my customer's house," he said.
Puckett grunted as he dropped the pipe from the mouth of the wrench.
He pulled on a wool shirt-jacket and placed an old Steton on his head, lifting it low to shade his
Most residents are familiar with the stooped old man in slightly soiled clothing. They look upon him as an eccentric Horatio Alger who prefers clinging to an impoverished past.
But Puckett's impoverished past is still vivid in his memory.
"It was very poor as a boy," he said one night
it "was on his back porch porch apples for his dinner."
He grew up on a farm in Lone Star during the early 1900s, he said.
"Life on the farm was rough," he said. "I was in poor health until about eight or ninety years."
About that time, his father started going blind.
About that time, his father started going blind
"Before he could teach me how to use a mule
About that third, his father said he going mind.
"Before he could teach me how to use a mule
Cant teach me how to use a mine
See PUCKETT page 5