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Thursday, September 4, 1975
University Dally Kansan
Government control
For a system that can't even take care of its own, the federal government has become frighteningly aggressive in its attempt to regulate, tabulate and adjudicate every function of higher education.
As Chancellor Archie Dykes pointed out in his concession address last week, there are now almost 400 federal programs, 50 executive agencies and several congressional committees dedicated to the proposition that more is better. The regular programs, more programs, more standards, more supervision.
What this boils down to is actually less—less freedom, less creativity, less initiative and less energy spent on people who do not consider essential to any university.
Many of KU's past administrative nightmares, such as last year's brohaha over Follow Through's accounting methods, could have been avoided had federal controls been less restrictive.
Rown Through's sin sternened from an unfortunate secretary with employees to pay and kosher way of doing it. So, using grant money legitimately owned by the program but in a fund off-limits for salary payments, she bent the law of the grant to carry out its spirit. Hands the grant tapped, simply because someone saw her pedency in a forest of red tape. In making the University accountable, government has also made it inefficient and absurdly bureaucratic.
Similar pious cries of protest were heard when associate vice chancellors were appointed to the office of academic affairs. Then as now, weeks of precious time were spent on paperwork were lost so that affirmative action guidelines might be followed.
Time better spent enriching that office with highly qualified men was used to satisfy regulations that twist the meaning of equal opportunity—an equal chance for advancement, not compensatory advantages because of race, sex, religion, physical impediments, birthlace, ad nauseum.
Certainly minimum guidelines are needed to give universities and colleges firm ground from which to work. When a school becomes lax in its primary function of education, however, and is unable to maintain adequate ground for women and a variety of minorities, those guidelines become eunheimics for meddling.
The federal leach on higher education is not limited to accounting procedures and affirmative action guidelines. The chancellor listed several other areas of governmental bird-dogging—occupational safety and health standards, wage and salary controls, minimum wage and fair labor laws, grant stipulations, unemployment insurance, etc.
Whatever benefits the University may accrue from these regulations—and there may be many—are more than offset by the resulting skyrocketing tuition rates, strained operating and financial resources, poorer priorities and rising frustration of University personnel, both staff and student.
Unrest at major schools throughout the country is growing rapidly. Unless the money changers on Capitol Hill realize the folly of their ways, rebellion at federal encroachment may soon erupt in a hard-fought battle for educational autonomy, a battle which will have no victor.
Debbie Gump Associate Editor
And then the phone rang
It was just a petty thing
We met over a speech communications class four years ago, and we've been the best of communicators ever since.
You know how a good friend can be. He'll stay up all night drinking with you, then join you in driving 1,500 miles the next
And you don't hesitate to take a 30-hour trip on a Greyhound to
Dennis Ellsworth
distance phone calls trying to find you when a letter won't do.
Libertarians strive for ideology
James J. Kilpatrick
was spent lamenting his try for KU's law school. He had applied as soon as his test scores had come back. That was months ago, and time and again the students for entering class; never had his name been mentioned.
The Libertarians would do away with paper money and get back to gold. They would kill off the Federal Reserve, drastically reduce taxes and abolish all laws having to do with child labor, minimum wages and compulsory meals. We need government subsidies to business, labor, education, agriculture, science, broadcasting, the arts, or any other
see that the preacher for his wedding is paid. Friends are important; sometimes they are all that will do.
rights laws would be repealed.
No restaurateur would be compelled to serve a customer against his will.
special interests." They would abilish Selective Service and grant total amnesty to draft dodgers and deserters. Did I mention the Postal Service? Out it goes, root, branch and companyate mail companies compete in a free and open market.
WASHINGTON - Imagine, if you will, a national political convention. If you have covered these gaudy shivarees, or watched them on the tube, your mind's eye may summon a vision of bands, balloons and flowers. You can view vocations, of speeches no one heeds, and platforms no one reads.
He called two weeks ago.
After two years away, he had
returned to Lawrence to get a
masters degree in business.
For dinner Friday
night? I would have come,
dinner or not.
would have to go to school. The public schools, indeed, would be abolished. Those who wanted to create private schools could do their own thing. The Liberarians want private ownership of schools. They want dead set against gun control. Some of their spokesmen would abolish tax-supported police departments, fire departments, health departments and highway departments. In their power they would make love, carry concealed weapons, take any medicines and manage their property as they dern'd well pleased. Civil
Obviously, there is something here for Gloria Steinem, Lester Maddox, Ramsey Clark, the Right to Work Committee and the National Rifle Association. They say that politics makes 'strange bedfellows, but only the Libertarians would get out of
Now he was on a waiting list. Five days ago he was 18 out; now five places kept from a seat in Green Hall. He had fallen short, for sure. Who could expect five cancellations during the holidays? In which, which anyway, had closed an hour ago?
Crazy? You bet. The country is not about to go back to toll roads, private schools and the posse connatism. But when one considers the excesses, outrages and absurdities currently imposed upon the people in the name of civil disobedience, contemplate Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians and ask, "Who's loony now?" (19) Washington Star Syndicate Inc.
the UN, out of NATO, out of the World Bank. Their platform committee, in its reverence for pure property rights, solemnly proposed that most of the taxes be given back to the Indians.
The evening was mellow, and we talked mostly of big things—like how it was to be married when I met him. He skirted his desire to go to law school; "I didn't really expect to make it." And later: "Maybe I will retake the test and win,"—it could not hurt, could it?
He was a caged tiger, a wolf in winter, but he one had seen a lot of cages and winters. The petty things were forgotten—like deciding one's own life. No, he'll forget about law school. The schools had passed him by; he had been a wife, had to be, what with a wife and Saint Bernard to feed, a home to furnish.
Perhaps it was an apologetic notice of some sort.
The phone then rang. It doesn't happen often in a new apartment in an unfamiliar town. He excused himself and answered it; maybe his wife of eight months would get the job or maybe a part-time job with him had come through.
Only another short moment
Not so with the National Libertarian Party. Roughly 330 Libertarians gathered at the Statler Hilton last week to for a meeting of the Liberals, none of the above. No flags, no pledge of allegiance, no national anthem, no girl Scouts, not a single 10-minute appeal for divine guidance from a carousel, no Baptist. The Libertarians proclaim themselves "the party of principle," and a first principle is: "No More Baloney." They that want to take the party can do so on their own time. The convention hard work to do.
God, he hoped so. His books and tuition had been costly, but the money couldn't be retrieved now. The payments had been made today; classes would begin Monday.
The call, however, wasn't about a job for either himself or his wife. The distraught voice had a familiar ring, like that of the woman who had called with the law school rejections.
The woman said she wished she didn't need to call now, because she already had worked an hour overtime and it was too early. She brought unexpected tidings; the impossible wasn't so impossible. A place opened for him in the law school—would he be ready? It was immediate; there were others waiting. Could he do it now, what with the entire enrollment process facing him again, his business school, his business school, his career already seemingly decided on?
In the Libertarian catechism, coercion is the mortal sin, freedom the cardinal virtue. "We oppose all forms of government censorship, including pornography laws . . . Regulation of broadcasting, including the fairness doctrine equal time provisions can not support legislation to repeal the Federal Communications Act ..."
There was a moment's hesitation, then affirmation. Hell, yes, he would take it. Yes, he would meet at her home in 15. Yes, he would provide registration information. Yes, he understood that his books would have to be bought before the next day and he had reading assignments that were to be completed for Monday. Yes, he missed, but maybe he could get by without it.
UNDER A LIBERTARIAN regime, no person would have to talk to the census taker. No one
He stood nodding to the phone. He feigned com- molition, and there was rightly. He was stunned, and rightly so. He had made it.
THESE LIBERTARIANS are something. They are ultra-a-long, ultra-alert, but never in between. The liberal, the Prohibitionists, as pure as vegetarians, and as earnest as the ladies' sodality. Politically speaking, they are plainly impractical. Ideology is this in bicentennial time, they are true-blue revolutionaries crying up with freedom and down with government. They owe them that says: Taxation is theft.
Don't call them conservatives. Don't call them liberals. The Libertarians are so far to the right that the Tea Party seems a rosebud pink. They are so far to the left that Hubert Humphrey looks like Genghis Khan. Their party platform rings with the crazy consistent clarity of Alice in Wonderland. They are cracked-bell anarchists and be heard to be heard.
Readers Respond
To the Editor:
I would especially like to thank Joan Wyrick of the School of Fine Arts for all her help, as well as a fine young boy by me, with whom Joan Wyrick listed to my tale of woe and mapped my entire schedule. Upon my arrival at some table in Allen Field House, I met Mike Williams. Mike, a graduate student in information, immediately offered to see me through. After circling the perimeter twice, pulling cards and setting time on the clock, I got the cashier table. His parting remark was, "If you need anymore help, my fraternity brother is at the next table." I congratulate the members of my class and had an excellent judgment to choose Mike Williams.
Your enthusiasm.
All my fears were made groundless by you, the students of KU. Everywhere I went, from a hall that started with an "N," to strong, to Hoch, to Wescose, to Prof. Van Schmuck, and to Allen Field House, I had visited all places of courtesy and kindness—even to the degree of personal escorts to some of the rooms.
My daughter, Tracy, because of a modeling assignment in Chicago, phoned me and asked if I would please enroll for her at KU. With much anxiety, I made the trip to Lawrence.
Lost parent becomes grateful one
Mrs. Edward C. Searles II Leavenworth
cheerleading and just plain good manners are certainly a reflection of your background and reflect upon the great work that you've done to me. Keep up the good work. I admire and respect you.
Food recourse To the Editor:
Well, people, how do you like your dorm food? The convenient cafeteria schedule that forces you to plan your daily meals is the cauldron! The pulpified carrots, library-paste potatoes and the unmentionable Sunday surprise casseroles? The dentis-ball-stuffing punch, cream of mushroom no? Are you prone to standing in line, grumbling curses between your teeth? You do make faces as you reach for your daily ration of Jello-! Do you have a special letter home and write nasty things in your journals?
How about doing something about it? There is undoubtedly a food committee in your dorm. It would not be amiss for you to find out who the people in the committee are, to talk to them, to get them involved in grumbling support, or even to join them—which might involve a few of you sufferers easing yourselves off your complacnt
bottoms and attending hall government meetings.
Are you trying to be a vegetarian and losing the battle? Set up an appointment! Request a special diet—but be sure to get any promises IN WRITING. Does dorm food
You can also try solidarity—draft a letter to Mrs. Ekdahl or Mr. Wilson in 205 McColum; they're pretty much in charge of the whole kaboodle. A set of 15 signatures at the bottom of the cover makes a good impression, letter makes a good impression, and might start rolling
make you repeatedly sick?
Have a health service doctor
give you treatment to take action against em. Find out what your legal recourses are- petitions, class actions.
Cause trouble. Cause more trouble.
Remember, the more you push for, the more you get. And if you are merely content to sit there on those bottoms, chewing and gripping, then you deserve no better.
Linda Levitan
Haverhill, Mass., Graduate
Student
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