4
Monday, September 9,1974
University Dally Kansan
OPINION
Athletic group slights students
A special committee was appointed in early July by Chancellor Archie R. Dykes to study the University of Kansas Athletic Corporation (KUAC). The deadline for the completion of the country's report is only three weeks away, but the committee has not yet had its first meeting.
It's lamentable that this study has been allowed to lay dormant for so long. The com-
pany is scheduled Oct. 1 to accomplish several complex tasks and make some difficult and important decisions.
Charles Oldfather, University attorney and chairman of the committee, said last week he hoped the committee would meet this week. He said he didn't think the two-month delay in the committee's work would affect the conclusions it would reach.
The most important job the committee faces is to define the role of the athletic corporation in the University community. That role is disturbingly unclear now; the KUAC is not only outside the University government, but it is also outside the authority within the University administration.
Some KUAC board members say the corporation is also outside the control of its own board, as most of the decision-making power has drifted over the years to the athletic director. The committee is studied under the committee's charge to review the corporation's operating procedures.
The appointment of the committee was requested in a Student Senate petition to Dykes last spring. The Senate was justifiably concerned about the dramatic increase in the price of student season football and basketball tickets proposed by Athletic Director Clyde Walker.
One factor that hasn't previously been made public about the board's approval of the price increase is that the decision wouldn't have come
about without the support of the alumni representatives on the KUAC board.
These alumni, some of whom seem to give almost unquestioning support to every whim of KUAC administrators, have little reason to be bothered. They don't pay the prices because they don't have, to pay them.
This argument could apply to other KUAC decisions that might be to the detriment of on-campus interests of students and faculty but of off-campus interests. The main interest of interests of alumni and other athletic supporters.
The special committee is to make recommendations on changes in the composition of the athletic board. They certainly should consider reducing alumni representation. The athletic program exists primarily to provide entertainment and a source of pride for students and faculty, and they should be the ultimate deciders of what the program is to be.
The committee is also to make a recommendation on opening athletic board meetings to the public. Except in rare instances, there is absolutely no reason that those meetings should be closed as they now are. People can hardly be expected to readily accept decisions that affect them unless they can know how decisions are reached.
Oldfather said he thought the committee would work quickly. Surely this doesn't indicate that he thinks their decisions will be easy or that the committee members have already made up their plans and will act before them. Perhaps it means that he doesn't think the committee will accomplish anything at all.
The committee must recommend some dramatic changes in the way things are run in the athletic corporation. Students won't continue to work as much important support to a program that remotely ignores them.
Richard Paxson Contributing Writer
Okay-I'll let you have the ball. We've got enough money for another one
this year anyway.
Tickets are price of independence
Bv TOM BILLAM
Reporter
Student season tickets for KU football games cost $15, up from $9.50 last year. Basketball games have risen from $12 to $13.
overdue. Athletic fans have long received super-heap prices at the expense of other students in sports and interest in sports, must nav a
All across town athletic fans are crying in their beer, lamenting the outrageous, inflationary increases. Some sources expect the increases to scare prospective buyers away.
The ticket price increases are
large percentage of their activity fee to the Athletic Corporation.
now ticket buyers have depended on the rest of the students to pay their way to the games.
Paying your own way is the basis of independence. Until
"But the increases are inflationary," cry the erudite sports fans.
Value paid for value received is the tenet of the American economic system.
A recent article in the Kansas reported that student season ticket prices for Kansas State football and $15 for basketball
Calvin Coolidge once said, "Inflation is repudiation." Repudiation is failing to own up to your debts.
KU student season ticket prices are still among the lowest in the Big Eight.
Do you feel the bite? It is the price of independence.
Canoers take to Kaw for weekend race
Perhaps we should be grateful that students receive even the discounts available now.
Duke Frye, Kansas City,
Kan., sophomore, and
Steve Catbey, Lawrence
senior, urge their team,
the Rogues, onward.
At 10:30 Saturday morning, the second shift of canoers left the first checkpoint at St. George, eight miles beyond the starting point.
Kansan Photos by DAVE PETERSON
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Most of the people had been waiting for more than an hour when the first canoe was sighted. The people moved in and out of positions along the upper bank or stood ankle-deep before piercing down the river for some identity of the leader.
The leader was from Kansas State University. The canoe pulled in amid cheers from a small group of K-State students
Most of the crews finished tired and wet, many sunburned, showing the effects of the two day, 100-mile trip. The race was begun in Manhattan Saturday morning and finished for the night at a camping area near St. Mary's. The race started again near St. Mary's, continuing, and many of the 23 canoes still on the river at dusk.
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Director of Sales
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Broadway Showman
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Meanwhile, the rest of the crowd, made up mostly of children and a few parents, continued to gaze up the river. The wait turned out to be worth it for KU and five people of five canoes were from KU.
The second place canoe team, the Rogues, was 39 minutes behind the leader, and were
who dumped the winning crew into the river fully clothed.
Even though both of the first KU finishers were inelegible to receive a trophy because they weren't from a KU residence hall, both were enthusiastic about their finish.
followed two minutes later by the third place team, the SOB's also from KU.
"The Stables" owner, Ace Johnson, promised a keg to the first KU team to finish, and we are planning to drink that
tonight," George Treu, a member of the Rogues, said.
Bonfires and booze take the edge off a hard day of paddling. These KU crew members, as well as the rest of the canoeists, spent the night on a sandbar south of St. Marvs.
A K-State crew member cools off in the Kaw at the half-way point.
Terr guard second to Fa