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Wednesday, August 20, 1975
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
The party's over
The boom times of higher education are over. Once there was a time when a college administrator could depend on rising enrollments, and subsequently fatter budgets, as surely as he could on the New York Yankees and social security.
Well, the Yankees are losing and social security is having a rough time making ends meet. Although enrollment at the University of Kansas is still creeping upwards, the Yankees have an enrollment peak in 1978 at 20,216 followed by a decline to 16,621 in 1984.
What this predicted drop means for administrators is more chewing on the economic bullet. The University earns its budget student by student, and departments and schools justify their budget requests to a large extent by their credit-hour production.
BECAUSE THE DECLINE will be a result of dropping birth rates, administrators are having to look for alternatives. Some high school seniors for an answer.
Chancellor Archie Dykes' solution has been to hit the road to sell the University to Kansas. Both he and Del Shankel, executive vice chancellor, realize that now the consumer is king and taxpayers form the biggest consumer union in town.
Consequently, almost every top administrative job is now occupied by someone not only qualified to handle his office, but also qualified to handle the public. A flair for public relations and ability to back in foot for the average Kansan has not gone unnoticed.
PROGRAMS TO REACH the non-traditional student, such as Outreach, expanded extension classes and the University of Midland have received the chancellor's financial and moral support.
Students are also exercising their purchasing power, as classes are now designed for almost every eccentricity. There's sound economic reasoning behind such tailored scheduling, for the department that generates the most credit hours will also
generate the most support when budget decisions are made.
The result has been a mixed blessing for both students and the state. With the University's resources stretched almost to their limits and teachers occasionally over-eager to please, what were once educational standards have become educational mockeries.
THE GRDE POINT average has skyrocketed from a 2.45 in 1965 to 2.93 in 1972, an indication not that medico students no longer exist but that professors to office and护理 have been only lupus service in requirements.
Meanwhile, out on the road,
Dykes and Shankel hustle for
dollars from the legislature and
acceptance from the people.
The government's assistance is
consumption isn't an easy task, but
they apparently are doing it well.
The legislature has been kind to higher education the last two years, granting two 10 per cent faculty pay raises as well as almost all funding requests from the Kansas Board of Regents.
POPULAR SUPPORT and alumni contributions are also increasing, as evidenced by the fact that the museum now under construction.
But the future may not be as rosy. The legislature could easily balk at a proposed third 10 per cent faculty pay raise and alumni might not always be able to afford such generosity.
Perhaps it's true that "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers," to quote Wordsworth. Perhaps the state and University should quit playing the numbers game and concentrate on immanence and the kindness of body counts. Perhaps we should also hope for world peace in our time and file mignon in every oven.
TIMES ARE TOUGH, and economic realities must be faced by everyone. As long as public universities depend on high enrollments for their budgets, high-income students might niche at KU—if the sales pitch remains a sell job to Kansas and not a snow job for students.
—Debble Gump
By DENNIS ELLSWORTH
The Kanse has returned to Mount Oread for another semester, and although it has been a long time since the new editor, it will continue as the primary source of news, features and editorial comment on the more than 20,000 members of the University community.
Kansan roles, goals set
This semester's publication schedule begins with a glamorous 80-page special issue which is designed to acquaint students with the University and the Lawrence community.
THIS ISN'T TO SAY the Kansan should think it has license to make mistakes. The Kansan doesn't make people within the University, from the most naive freshman to the chancellor, will know this semester's Kansan doesn't use a chip on its shoulder.
Packed within the issue's seven sections are stories about the government, campus personalities, arts and recreation programs and the enrollment selections for the new school year.
MORE WILL BE said later about the back-to-school issue, but the value of the Kansan will be less than it is. Students are reported on a daily basis, against more stringent deadlines. The Kansan always has responded to the challenges posed by the school, probably not always at its best.
This semester's Kansan, like others before it, will strive to be a leader in events and issues of interest to the University community. To believe that this goal always matters, the officer is to brand oneself as a tool.
Probably nowhere on this newspaper's pages will the reader find totally objective documents in part from the use of inexperienced student writers, a defense also can be found in newspaperapers are sold. No paper ever is completely objective.
Objectivity, or the lack of it, stems from a reporter's perspective, experience in dealing with issues, and ability to relate all sides of an issue.
Should any Kansan news story, feature or editorial cause a reader to feel a need to exert control, the editor should write to the Kansan. Only signed letters will be printed, however, because it will be the paper's policy for all comments to be attributed.
In time, Kansan reporters will improve their writing skills and increase the status of a reporter's perspective remain even for professionals.
Recognizing our limits, the staff of the Kansan is willing to do its best to be好 to give the University community what it wants and needs. We encourage items and story ideas not only are welcome, but also encouraged. Anticipated changes in the handling of short news items hopefully will allow organizations access to the news pages of our paper.
IN SHORT, the Kansan exists as a laboratory for journalism students and a service for the University. Advertising and subscription fees are collected from the newspaper's operations.
The transition from summer to fail staffs now is complete, but mention must surely be made here of the work done by the summer staff on this special issue.
WARD HARKAVY, summer editor, and his associate, Peter
Porteous produced the bulk of the back-to-school paper, including the sections on arts and recreation, city and campus. He was also assisted by campus editors Kenn Looden and Glenn Meyer.
DON PIERCE, summer photographer, took many of the pictures for the special issue, and was planning began in mid-June.
The fall staff produced the other sections of the issue, including two sports sections that were the work of Yael Abuhakhain, editor and associate, Allen Quenkernbush.
ABOUHALKAH, Overland Park junior, was an intern for the Salina Journal this summer and has worked 1/2 years for the Lawrence Daily JournalWorld. He previously was a reporter and copy editor for the Kansan.
QUAKENBUSH, Beloit senior, intermed with the Minnesotaapolis (Kan.) Messenger this summer and has worked for The Journal. For one year. He also has reported for the Kansas.
DEBBIE GUMP, Oskaloosa senior, assembled the issue's editorial page, and will be in
charge of the fall Kansan's editorial staff in her role as associate editor of the paper.
Gump, who will assume the duties of the editor in his absence, was a photography and reporting intern for the Wichita Eagle and Beacon this summer and has been named a Sears congressional intern for next year. The Congressman, he will spend the term working in Washington, D.C.
Gump also is president of the KU chapter of the Society of Professional journalist, Sigma Delta Chi, and previously has worked on the Kansas as a photography editor, copy assistant, scrapbook editor, assistant campus editor and reporter.
Other fall staff members include Carl Young, Lewis senior; Evie Kapport, Lawrence graduate student; and David Crenshaw, Overland Park senior.
YOUNG, who will be campus editor for the fall, also was a reporting intern with the Eagle and Beacon this summer. He began his role as editor last spring and reported for the paper last year.
RAPPORT received an un-
dergared degree in theater education from KU in 1970 and will lead the newspaper's Friday entertainment page production as entertainment editor; he is assistant editor of kansas state newspaper that has worked for the Kansas as a copy editor and reporter.
CRENSHIAM, a former Eagle and Beacon intern, will be the fall Kansan's photography editor. His experience also includes part-time work for the University Relations and on-semester for the Jayhawker, the KU yearbook.
FINALLY, THE IS HERE the EDITOR. An Osawatonie senier, I entered the School of Journalism two years ago and since have worked as a reporter, copy editor and assistant campus editor. Last semester, our summer was spent as a reporting intern for the Parsons Sun.
The Kansan now will quit blowing its own horn. For the remainder of the semester, the fall staff will strive to do its best to serve the University community. With your encouragement and criticism, the job will be done better.
The joy of free speech
Contributing Writer
By WARD HARKAVY
Betty Ford's recent comments concerning affairs past, present and potential, indulged in by her children, are only part of a trend among people in the public eye.
Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel divorced his wife last year to marry a divorce; and the couple fitted smoking marijuana (outside U.S. territorial waters); and, as a result, people like Garner Ted Armstrong be having compulsion fits.
Why all the hubbub?
These people, although they are in the public eye, have a right to their opinions. And they express those opinions in public.
Mrs. Ford's offense was slight. She recently said she
wouldn't be surprised if her daughter Susan told personal accounts of amorous activities to her.
She also said that her kids probably had smoked marijuana and had if she were up to up if she probably would have tried it.
Commercial television provides a good example of
But blandness is not a bad option; it can be the expression of the attitude that no matter what is going on in the world, you want to be there.
blandness in action. TV bigwigs are careful not to offend anybody. In so doing, they actually offend everybody, whether or not those offended realize it.
The point of this anti-TY diatribe is that commercial television promotes a system of values that tells us to forsake the controversial and continue on our merry mundane way.
This system of values tells us to eschew the informative and practical denominator of existence. It tells us to stifle our imagination and let our minds be imbued by temporary and mindless rot.
What does Betty Ford have to do with this argument? She, and others in the public eye, are expected to conform.
have many of the same problems as do the rest of us. Why not have such people share thoughts with the rest of us?
Betty Ford's comments, if they truly reflect her thoughts (and there is no reason to doubt that), serve as a fine example of what a parent's relationship with his children should be.
If indeed there is a trend among public figures toward openness, we should encourage it. The mental health of our nation may profit from it. It is important that we come up with new solutions, based on new outlooks, to old problems.
People in public life and service are not angels. They
I sometimes think Betty might make a better leader than Gerald. No matter how bad the Nikon regime was, I never entertained the same thoughts about Pat and Dick.
Mary McGrory
Nixon's waiting in wings
Mary McGregory, whose columns will appear regularly in the Kansan, has been a syndicated columnist with the Washington Star Syndicate, an author of liberal writer, she says she has very few opinions, only strong impressions. Among her awards are the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing and journalism.
WASHINGTON—When Harry Truman finished his term in 1922 and went home to India, he asked what he was going to do.
It is not so with Richard Nixon, who departed Washington in disgrace slightly more than a year ago. His luggage is still strolled across the national landscape. His needs and concerns—for a larger audience—are of tapes for a future "role" in politics—still preoccupy a number of people.
"I'm going to put the suitcase in the attic," he replied with his usual succinctness.
He no longer occupies center stage in the consciousness of the nation, but he is still prowling around backstage.
THE SPECIAL prosecutor's office is busy preparing a final report on Watergate. Debate was heard in the House Judiciary Committee as to whether this last word should be taken into account, and respect to the possible criminal activities of Richard M. Nixon during his tenure as President of the U.S."
The special prosecutor, Henry Rushy, says no. Certain mysteries will remain invalidate—the 18%-minute gap on the tape of June 18, the first extended post-break-in consequence, unless, of course, the former president tells us all about it in his forthcoming memoirs, which is not expected.
THE FORMER SPECIAL prosecutor, Leon M. Jaworski,
during whose tenure the former president was named an "unindicted co-conspirator," has his given it a opinion that after the criminal content is combed out, Richard Nixon's tapes and documents should be examined to ask how you can ask yourself what the country would do with this spoken evidence of corruption in the White House to realize the good sense of his suggestion. The tapes reflect as much on the nation which overwhelmingly opposes the Nixon himself. Better he should have them out there. Better
Muffed, murky anniversary reports issue from San Clemente in the heat that indicated that they had not audited office. He still blames the press and his political rivals for their downfall. Error is acknowledged—mostly on the work of other people; wrongdoing is not.
HE TOLD A VISITOR, according to Time magazine, that had he been in office and hadn't "m" problem" Watergate, he saved South Vietnam. It is not, of course, a reflection on Gerald Ford, his pardoner, simply a detached appreciation of his own remarkable quality of habitability" in foreign affairs.
The flow of lugubrious tosh about the "pity-of-it-all" dispatches from the Western White House has finally ceased; his car or two in a driveway that was once choked with 20; the handful of people slouching through the $10 million office complex that once bore him is now presidential staff in history.
THE NETWORKS and the book-publishers are treating Mr. Bastow as a historical figure, not the first president to resign from office. Vast figures are flung about as he writes that the for the film rights to his life
story. He is being paid a total of $2.5 million in advance royalties for his memoirs.
Ah, that love to wake up in the same as surely be Nixon without Watergate as "the Vantage Point" is Lyndon Johnson without Vietnam and the New Hampshire primary. Johnson's memoirs, a compendium of his legislative triumphs, ended on the remainder shelf. It will be three years before Americans will be willing to pay $12.50 or more to read that Richardixon is innocent.
The writer and the television personality the nation can watch are all resurgent public man that sets Republicans' teeth on edge.
Richard Nixon is the great comma in American political history. After every seemingly irretrievable disaster, some hand, trembling with relief, reaches out to put a period. Richard Nixon has added a little tail and comes back.
This time, however, the "phoenix-too-frequent" may be at last grounded for good. If he is sufficiently well to address the rally or the banquet, he may be counted well enough to appear on the witness stand to hear the statements of tribals which are the residue of those incredible years, which began with his charges that Jerry Voorhis was a Communist tool and aren't over yet.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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Editor
Debbie Gump
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