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Wednesday, September 4, 1974
University Daily Kansan
OPINION
...THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE
Needs ignored for profits
By JIMKENDELL Contribution Written
Bronwynn is writer
East Lawrenc's member
of its community Aug. 24 that it could ill afford to lose the Kroger store at 9th and New
BY ROY CLEVENGER National Editor
Gerald Ford had me worried.
I welcomed him over his predecessor, but I wasn't sure he could ever really become President—at least not president with a capital 'P'. "I wasn't sure he could ever really be his own man.
himself both willing and able to run the country and chart its future to his own making
Ford's future bright . . .
Ford's break with Richard Nixon is especially startling in two areas. Ford chose as his vice president—against the president of the closest friends in the Republican party—Nelson A. Rockefeller, a relative liberal, an arch political foe of Nixon and Hillary Clinton, considerably in both style and substance with Nixon's own
Many old and poor people in East Lawrence and students on the other side of Massachusetts walk to a grocery store. They walk
"It's going to be awful bad, because of the older people," said Velva Houseworth, a volunteer at Penn House, 1035 Pennsylvania St., the area's self-Help center for poor people.
Closed doors and smoke-filled rooms. Government in a vacuum. Government by oligarchy. Images of the 1920s, of prostitution of public trust. Images that could be alive today at the University of Kansas.
The first twenty days of the Ford Presidency could well have been a time of caution and realization. But when he错了, he has shown
Four of the University's most influential bodies refuse to let the public watch them in action. They bend, circumvent or just plain ignore laws designed to keep official activities above boards and under public scrutiny.
Hampshire streets.
SenEx's decision on the guidelines won't be known tor several weeks. The content of the debate leading to its decision never will be known.
One of the most influential bodies holding secret meetings is SenEx, the executive committee of the University Senate. SenEx met last week to discuss important guidelines to be prepared for the committee forced the University to fire tenured faculty members.
But, just as the discussion got serious, SenEx evicted the public and its representative, the press.
The following is the official consensus viewpoint of the Kansan news staff:
SenEx's decision will have a profound influence on every faculty member and, ultimately, on every student.
SenEx hidden in secrecy
SenEx's avoid reason for secrecy is to give its members the right to discuss matters frankly behind closed doors. But, at the same time, it denies other faculty members and staff the right to express their views as the issues are being considered.
It also denies the majority the right to know how their elected representatives are representing them. On the other hand, it gives SenEx members the dubious right to act childishly.
At a recent SenEx meeting, for example, one distinguished professor repeatedly made racial slurs at the chairman of one of the University's departments. If the entire faculty of the SenEx member's bigotry, they probably wouldn't敢 comment on the posts. Yet, the entire faculty never will know, because the last was made during one of SenEx's semicolled meetings
concept of an ideal vice president. And Ford is moving to bring to an end emotionally charged campaign militarily. Nixon could not accept amnesty for draft evaders and deserters; Ford can't accept the thought of unqualified estranged Americans.
Ford has announced his intention to visit Romania and began this week discussions that will probably lead to a series of meetings with leaders in Europe.
Semiclose meetings are the result of SeEe's half-hearted attempt to comply with the Kansas Open Meetings Law.
Although semicolled meetings are open to the public, reporters cannot directly quote any of the proceedings nor can they comment.
He has begun to sign into law bills that were originally proposed by Nixon and he willingly comments on his opinions of them, although they remind him of remnants of a different world.
Not only does such a ruling enhance the likelihood of irresponsibility by SenEx members, but also it is an illogical, capricious and arbitrary limitation of freedom of the press.
Freedom, justice and the great spirit that founded America can be served only by an honest, open government that's not afraid to have the public looking on its shoulders.
But, if in its legalistic bag of tricks the University finds some loophole to avoid compliance, ExSen still is in violation of the law by virtue of its capricious and arbitrary limitations of freedom of the press. And, if in final allay lance recourse fails, the University should take it upon itself to write an open meetings law of its own.
SenEx clearly is covered by the act, and the closed meetings clearly defeat the act's purposes.
What the law really says is that all meetings for the transaction of business or the conduct of affairs of any state agency or subordinate committee supported at least in part by public funds must be open. Indeed, the law allows closed meetings, but only if no binding actions are taken and only if they aren't used to defeat the purposes of the act.
SenEx's legal excuse for these activities centers on an often-cited ruling by former University Attorney Charles Oldfather. Oldfather once ruled that the Open Meetings Law didn't apply to University committees. And that's like Don Fambrough saying the rule allowing only 11 men on a football field doesn't apply to his team.
A person who walks off the street can attend the meetings, hear all the words first hand and see which members are making the comments. But the person's representative, the reporter, cannot step out of the room and tell the person who said what or even what was said verbatim.
Ford has said he plans to run for a full term as President in 1976, indicating to the American people and the world his intention to be more than a caretaker.
U.S. waste bothers world
The U.S. government released last week a survey of 258 industries that showed a total of 63 important nonenergy materials, ranging from aluminum to milk to ink, either in bulk or in material shortage is what worldwide inflation is all about.
—Steven Lewis Contributing Writer
We really don't have a choice. America will limit nonessential production or our environment will limit production for us.
Ours is an economy of waste. The Hindu in India put their sacred cows to more efficient use than we put our automobiles. We are using the world's resources as if there were no other people in the world and no future generations.
For China and the underdeveloped countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America to catch up with the U.S. standard of living, the drain on world resources would be unquidred
To preserve our environment and have a stable economy, the American way of life must be significantly reshaped. Contrived demand for nonessential goods, such as the annual automobile, will have to go.
World population control doesn't seem any nearer than before the conference. The American attitude at the conference didn't help matters much either.
Population control alone won't ease the world's ecological and economic problems. In terms of damage to the planet, the present population of the United States is equivalent to about 8 billion persons in underdeveloped countries.
Our ecosystem is limited and can't withstand a worldwide American standard of living. Unless we intend to keep the poor nations poor, we are going to have to forego many of our precious material riches.
According to president Clark Brubaker, the East Lawrence Improvement Association wrote a letter July 8 to a Kroger vice president in St. Louis, asking the store to stay open. Brubaker hasn't received an answer vet.
Imagine that you live in a ghetto and a multimillionaire drives up to your tenement in his 1975 Cadillac to persuade you not to have more children because they would be a disastrous drain on world resources.
The Third World nations gave us good advice last week. We would be wise to begin planning to implement their advice.
co-op closed about a week before the Kroger store. It could keep prices low enough but I'm not doing enough business.
The Albanian delegation charged that the United States and Russia were attempting to "blackmail" the underdeveloped nations with the population issue. Albania said that the resources of the world were inexhaustible and that countries shouldn't attempt to slow down their population growths.
But whether the East Lawrence Kroger store closed because it wasn't making any money or because Kroger could make more money on 23rd Street, the old store is gone.
As a result of these suspicions, the population conference ended with its major achievement being only a broad plan explicitly or implicitly condoning contraception, abortion and sterilization. All countries present, only the Netherlands rejected the "plan."
The United States did something quite similar last week at the first United Nations World Population Conference in Bucharest, Romania.
He has even begun to reshape the White House in his own image, making plans to tear out Lydon Johnson's dog kennels by replacing them with a bubblet-topped swimming pool.
Many Third World and Socialist countries rejected a U.S. call to limit population growth and demanded instead that the wealthy countries limit their consumption.
The only alternative many people now have is the A&P store at 1040 Massachusetts St. Despite the rumors circulating in the community, the store owns it and opens another store at 238th St. and Oudshul Road, said Bob Nottingham, the manager.
The minority community in Lawrence was hit relatively hard by the closing, too. About 25 per cent of East Lawrence is only 8 per cent of the rest of Lawrence is non-white.
A large number of the people on welfare in Lawrence live in East Lawrence, said John Derrick, director of the regional office of the Kansas Department of Social Services.
the day before the store closed, for example, an elderly Indian woman pulled her rusty knife to shop there for the last time.
The 1970 census showed 22 percent of the people in East Lawrence who lived east of Massachusetts Street and north of Lawrence over 65. Only 6 per cent of rest of Lawrence was over 65.
has openly vowed his disgust for "modified limited hang-out" and searching for scenarios that would "play in Peoria."
In fact—in his background and his beliefs—Ford could well be from Peporia.
"It's my opinion that quite a number of people in that area do not drive," Derrick said.
Penn House at one time ran a food co-op, which stocked mostly canned goods, but the
For Ford, residency at the White House is not a culmination but a platform from which he can work—and his first few steps have been strong ones.
Partly because of the circumstances under which Ford assumed the Presidency, but more because of his inexperience, Mr. Bush has shown toward his job, the Congress and the American people will be more tolerant of his errors and more mindful of his actions as only as President but also as Jerry Ford, common American.
In the grim contest between need and profit, profit won, as it must in a capitalist economy
Perhaps most important is the attitude Gerald Ford has brought to the Presidency, an attitude so different from his own atmosphere in Washington that he changed "drastically, beyond belief," according to Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, a very savvy Republican. Ford expresses at every turn his enjoyment with President Obama, awed and thrilled at the power and attention he commands. He promises continued contacts with the American people, and one gets the feeling that Ford won't as Nixon did—lose the confidence that other than the most powerful politician in the world.
Ford has shown himself to be concerned with the problems and hopes of the country and
She will have a hard time pulling her wagon all the way to 23rd Street to join Kroger in its new store, as the big orange banner on the front of the store suggested.
Profit will continue to dominate our lives until we take back our stomachs, our minds, our stores, our work, our culture, our communities and ultimately our country.
... McGovern's dim
By GERALD EWING Contributing Writer
In the 1972 presidential election, Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., lost by the worst margin in history. Include in this loss was his home state, a rare political occurrence.
And unless something drastic happens, he will lose the state again, this time in the race for his Senate seat.
Standing in his way is a young, impish fellow named Kenneth Thornsess (1967-1973). Thornsess was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. But now he is the leader of a political property in the state.
Thorsness figures that if Richard Nixon took the state with 57 per cent of the vote in 1972, he can do the same in 1974.
And after six years as a POW,
Thornsess would like nothing better than to spend the next six years in the Senate chambers in
To the Editor:
Readers respond
Facts ignored
Acting Dean of Libraries
Librarians at the University of Kansas have earned and been awarded ture since 1958. I can see no basis for the assumption that tenured librarians would receive anything but the same education. I should be tenured teaching faculty should the situation allude to occur.
The statement Dean Glinka refers to was made in the Aug. 28 SenEx meeting by SenEx member Joel Gold and accurately reported by the Kansan.
One statement in the Aug. 29 article on financial exigency is inaccurate and needs correction. A comment that exigency for the entire University "would force the University to fire every student before a single tenured professor could be terminated."
As a researcher and research administrator I see only one supportable statement in Mark Mitchell's editorial of Aug. 27, "Federal Grant is Easy Money, but it is the universities and universities of our nation are craving money for basic essentials."
John L. Glinka
To the Editor:
He has taken $300,000 left over from the 1972 election and another $100,000 from supporter funds to stuff it all into advertising.
Editor
The KU Office of Research Administration will gladly supply Mitchell with information that (1) explicitly outlines strict federal, state and University guidelines for
from his previous adversaries,
Nixon. That being, grass politics won't win but the big bucks will.
If McGovern loses in November, there will be no one to blame but himself. It seems he has taken a lesson in politics
Washington.
He won handily in the June 4 Republican primary and now it's one-on-one. Conservative vs. liberal. War hero vs. anti-warhero. Cleancto Leo vs. lef wimp symphor George.
William J. Bell
Editor power
He also has taken the course that if you stay out of the way, your opponent will defeat him with the Engleton affair in 1972.
regulation and control of grant funds, (2) illustrates the importance of federal grant funds for diverse programs at KU, including the computer, and (3) documents the drastic decline in Federal support of research in recent years.
To the Editor:
I rather enjoyed Eric Meyer's little bit of Kansan family history in his piece in the Aug. 27 Kansan, except for the bit of proclamation he made early in the article.
Come on, Eric, I can understand the power you may feel from the position you now hold. But the statement of your intention of "cramming my personal opinion down your throats every day," was dangerous and more probably stupid (not to mention a rather boring prospect).
Your position as editor does not give you carte blanche to play with the Kansan as if it was your own.
Garth Fromme
Hoxie Junior
It is distressing that he might wash the dishes. Wash the dishes. His strong liberal voice and watchdog approach are needing to balance the
He is appearing infrequently in the state and remaining in Washington most of the time to sit on the board of Jackson and President Gerald Ford.
But what is even more distressing is that he has abandoned the style of politics andocratic nomination in the first round.
Although he didn't win in '72, he did show people that there was an alternative to the big boss, big money of politics.
So far this semester, the general drift of the articles and editorials appearing has been one of endless bitchiness, and when one carries the trend to an extreme, then one has nothing left to gripe about except oneself.
He showed that hard work less money and a grass roots organization could win the nomination despite the disapproval of the important political bosses.
Now, Thornsness is on the offensive while McGovern remains in Washington letting
the advertising do the job. Thornsness has taken definite stands on many issues while the president of Congress speak for him.
Thorsness is violently opposed to amnesty, rationing that every person born in the United States has a tacit agreement to serve his country in the armed forces.
He also favors huge defense spending to stop the red menace and an isolatist foreign policy to hide from it. But as in Mr. McGovern's 4 election, McGovern seems to be misread the issues.
In 72, the issues should have been busing and abortion, not being used as a dead issue. Now, the should be agriculture and the economy and not the national anarchy and defense spending.
National issues aren't really that important to the people of South Dakota. Ways to help the farmer and rancher beat inflation are what the people want to hear.
Like most midwestern states, the people of South Dakota were the most established liberalMcGovern appears to be. The only things they want their state to do about are agricultural issues.
And the agriculture issues got McGovern elected to his first term in the Senate.
Thorness doesn't understand the agriculture issues that well and hasn't spoken about them. But neither has McGovern. But neither has McGovern.
The McGovern forces even admit that over 40 per cent of the voters will support Thornton. "You can't do anything about it."
Unless McGovern starts speaking out on the right issues and campaigning as he did in 1972, a 42-year-old cane toting ex-POW will replace him in Washington.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
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Editor
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