University Daily Kansan, October 1, 1982
Page 3
AAUP involvement helps, director says
By DEBORAH BAER Staff Reporter
New university professors have not come into the field at the best time, the regional director of the American University. University Professors said last night.
John Slosar, director of the central regional office of AAUP in St. Louis, said that because of attempts to reduce funding for universities at both the national and state level, professors should get involved in faculty senates and the AAUP, a national group with lobbying headquarters in Washington.
Declining enrollments threaten professors because they mean fewer appropriations and professors should try to keep university administrators from "over-reacting" to decreases, he said.
Slosar, speaking to about 15 members and prospective members of the KU branch of the AAUP after a dinner at the Kansas Union, said the AAUP
offered the structure needed to fight Congress and state legislatures.
The national AALP is fighting attempts by the Reagan administration to make massive cuts in federal aid to education and to dissolve the Department of Education. Some of that fighting has been successful, Sloan said.
"WE EXCEEDED our wildest expectations in fighting federal cuts," he said. Inflation probably hurt universities more than cuts did, he said.
AAUP has one full-time lobbyist and several staff members in Washington, Slosar said. The national office handles about 5,000 grievances from faculty members a year, 1,000 of which become formal actions, he said.
The organization also is pushing to keep the mandatory retirement age for university professors at 70. (KU's mandatory retirement age is 65.) As a result, the age restriction to be introduced in Congress next year. He said removing
the age limit actually would be damaging to faculty.
"It's most unlikely that institutions will be willing to grant a lifetime of tenure," he said.
Allowing faculty members to remain indefinitely could prompt administrators to give competency tests to try to remove older professors they think are too old to teach or whom they simply do not want to keep on the payroll, he said.
And it could keep young academics from being hired by universities, he
THE AAUPPalso is fighting for equality for women. Soslaar said.
Although women pay the same premiums that men pay into their pension plans, they receive smaller payments. Women are because they will live longer, he said.
Research is another area of concern to the AAUP, he said. Legislation passed by Reagan that allows the government to classify research that is federally funded has harmed research, Slosar said.
For example, more than 100 cryptologists who had been planning to present papers at a recent convention were told less than a week before the conference, that they could not present their papers, he said. The papers had been classified.
HE SAID that the present effects of the cuts were not the only problem he and his colleagues were worried about.
Richard Cole, president of KU's AAUP chapter, said the recent budget squeeze at KU was the biggest concern of local AAUP members.
They are also concerned about the University's attempt to remain financially flexible in anticipation of future cuts.
"I believe in prudence. I don't believe in going into debt, but we should use our resources for what they are for," Cole said.
"I think that the view that one ought to take is that the problem will be solved."
Cole said the AAUP was an effective lobbist.
Teachers' strikes affect 300,000 students
By United Press International
A judge jailed dozens of defiant New Jersey teachers and aides in a school building yesterday and threatened to take the district if they did not return to work.
The bizarre labor confrontation highlighted teachers' walkouts in New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois students were affected. almost 300,000 students were affected.
The Teaneck, N.J., strike included 576 teachers, secretaries and aides who have been picking since Sept. 17 in a demand for more pay. About 5,000 students were being taught by substitutes.
Superior Court Judge Sherwin Lester, who Wednesday locked up 35 striking teachers in county jail trailers for three hours, yesterday ordered 84
teachers and aides to spend the day in Washington Irving School.
As the strikers filed into the school, several hundred supporters and parents lined the streets waving Ameri- ckens, applauding and cheering them on.
"Schools are not jails. Schools are not jails." they chanted
DESPITE THE DETENTIONS and accumulating fines, *Teaneck Teachers Association Treasurer Stan Synder* said morale was very high.
"People are angered. We're outraged that professional people can be jailed for a strike situation like this that basically we feel was caused by a lack of good faith negotiations on the part of the board." he said.
Judge Lester said an additional 75 strikers must report to the school for detention today if the walkout did not end. He said fines for teachers would
increase Monday from $100 a day to
$150.
"I will not allow this court to be used too long on this day-to-day basis. I am going to bring it to a head," Lester warned.
The judge scheduled arguments Monday on whether to order suspensions.
OFFICIALS SAID both sides were still about 3 percent apart in resolving a salary dispute. The school board is offering a 16.5 percent increase over two years and the union is demanding 19 percent.
School board attorney Malachy Kenny said he was sure the board would not accept the teachers' dismissal "because that would mean the destruction of the Teaneck school system."
In other wakouts in the East and the Midwest, striking teachers in four small Michigan school districts voted to
return to their 4,000-student classrooms yesterday.
But the nation's biggest strike dragged on in Detroit, keeping about 200,000 students out of classes for the 14 days. No talks were scheduled while a fact-finder sifted through demands on both sides.
Negotiators in the Chicago suburb of Bremen talked until dawn yesterday but failed to end a strike by teachers. The school board said it would file suit requesting a court-ordered injunction that the teachers back to the classroom.
MEANWHILE, new talks were scheduled for Sunday. About 5,800 students were idled by the strife; in its ninth day.
Talks between striking teachers and officials in the Chicago suburb of Bremen broke off early yesterday, and the teachers have said that has kept 1,800 students out of class.
GRAPPLING WITH A REAGANOMICS ROUSTABOUT
The dictionary tells us that a routabout is "a member of the working crew of a circus responsible for erection and diamanting of tents, care of the grounds, and handling of animals and equipment." I decided that this definition was too narrow last Saturday upon being told by an adversary, who has both a fine record and a soft job in a family-owned business, that my failure in the capitalist system—I'm unemployed—has been simply my conscious choice. It's only fair to add to that my adversary, a devotee of golf, professional athletics on both the amateur and professional levels, Reaganomics and the Downtown Plan, is but one of many whose creative capacity has increased severalfold since President Reagan's inauguration.
While walking back and forth between an imaginary tee from which he launched several drives and a radio broadcasting the K.U. game, he tried to persuade me that all that glitters is gold. I staggered from ringpost to ringpost under his barrage of supply-side cliches. Whenever I mentioned President Reagan's recession, he would level me with a baffle glare and return to his tee or radio. However, it was the care with which he handled the supply-side theoretical tent and its beaming, optimistic occupants (George Bush, James Watt, Malcolm Baldridge, Morris Kay etc.) which revealed him as a Reaganomics Roustabat.
Like virtually all supply-siders, my adversary has always supported President Resegan's attempts to reduce governmental assistance to the elderly, unfortunate, dependent, and unemployed. Yet he and his fellow dogmatists have had no such qualms about our local government using public funds since, according to a recent report by the City of $60' s...to revitalize the Downtown area. Since then the City has invested over $10 million in Downtown public improvements, including new parking, infrastructure and beautification features."
Last January Lawrence adopted a Comprehensive Downtown plan which "calls for major retail expansion, including at least two new department stores and additional office and entertainment areas" and calls for the enhancement of existing retail rather than clearance."
Would the Founding Fathers have considered the formulation and enactment of this Plan a governmental function? Not according to Thomas Jefferson, who defined "a wise and frugal government" as one "which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and industry and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."
Although most of us support the Downtown Plan because we wish to preserve the quality of life found in Lawrence, all should understand that this Plan uses public funds to protect a group of privately-owned businesses. It seems to me, a marginal person watching reactively from the periphery, that this homegrown heresy, i.e. the Downtown Plan, deserves broader application. When our gubernatorial candidates talk about bringing new manufacturing and high technology industry into the state or various local figures wax enthusiastic about an industrial park, they ignore what is already an overriding truth: the vital work in this country—that is the work without which we cannot remain free—is in the public sector. As taxpayers we support public schools that often bring homes that often fail to care; a judicial system that, when convicted, can punish; and an undermanned law enforcement apparatus that often falls to apprehend. Even as our government ignores these responsibilities in the public sector, it continues to penalize some of the productive (farmers, nurses) while rewarding some of the destructive (tobacco growers, industrial polluters).
Robert Burns, an AP Business Writer, says:
While the Reagan Administration is hailing the arrival of an economic revival . . . Dunn and Bradstreet Corporation, which monitors the financial health of U.S. companies, this week was the second worst this year for business failures.
The Employment Act of 1946 commits our government to pursuing full employment, yet the policies of the Reagan Administration have brought us the highest unemployment and business failure since the Great Depression. Although our governmental political leadership has not failed in providing binned failure of the private sector to provide full employment and the government to fulfill its declared responsibilities in the public sector has relegated to the sidelines many a potential worker. As a result millions of people suffer while Reaganomica Roustabouts and other reactionaries, i.e. those who support "former especially amended or repressive political or social" conditions, policies or governments so strong that even the Reaganau put it this way: "Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse." William Dorns
Regents schools experience overall decline in enrollment
2702 W. 24th St. Terrace
By STEVE CUSICK Staff Reporter
Staff Reporter
Jerry Tomanek, president of Fort Hays State, said his university's enrollment had declined by 94 students. The FTE was down 216.
The overall 20th-day enrollment figure for the seven Kansas Board of Regents schools dipped this fall, officials from the universities said.
Although there was an overall drop in the figure, there were gains for some of the Regents schools, officials said.
TOTAL ENROLLMENT for the schools dropped 375 from 78,573 last fall to 78,106 this fall
The schools recording increases were Wichita State and Pittsburg State universities and the Kansas Technical Institute in Salina.
A portion of the universities' state appropriations is based on the FTE, which is calculated by dividing the total number of credit hours students are taking by the average full-time course loads for students.
The University of Kansas both won and lost. KU registered a jump in the number of students enrolled and a drop in the FTE figure, news released this week by Gil Dyk, dean of educational services.
Officials from the universities that suffered enrollment declines said the lower figures were a result of students graduating and a shaggy economy.
The enrollment at K-State was down 485 from last year to 19,497 this fall, said Don Foster, the registrar. The FTE was down 319.
It recorded an enrollment gain of two students and an FTE gain of 5, said Dick Carr, assistant director of public affairs and information.
Of those schools with increasing enrollments, Pittsburg State showed the slightest growth.
Fewer students graduating from high school was not the only reason for the enrollment drop, he said.
Emproria State's enrollment was down 4 percent from last year, said Paul Kincaid, director of information technology at the university, who dropped 4 percent.
Wichita State had an enrollment increase of 232 students and an FTE increase of 265. The Kansas Technical Institute increased its enrollment from 652 students last fall to 628 students this fall.
K-STATE'S off-campus enrollment declined because of cutbacks in the university's off-campus education program, he said.
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