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Monday, April 21, 1975
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Searches too slow
It seems that half the University's schools are without leaders. And at the rate some of the search committees seem to be moving, the fall semester may start before many of the vacancies are filled.
Really there are only three deanships, three central administrative positions and three directory vacancies, or soon going
Arthur Katz, former dean of the School of Social Welfare, resigned in July of 1974. The first search committee recommended only one person, who wouldn't give up his other position.
A new committee has been formed and is screening applicants but hasn't made any recommendations.
One position has been vacant since February, and as yet nothing has been done to fill it. That is the directorship of the Supportive Educational Services of the Office of Gary Leanigan affairs, a position Gary Leanigan quit.
Edward Erazmus, director of the Intensive English Center, will resign June 30. Nothing has been done to
replace him, because the administration is waiting to determine whether the center will be made a department.
It is true that the dean of libraries position was filled by James Ranz on April 8. However, the position had been vacant for a long period. David Heron resigned July 1, 1974.
It seems logical to form search committees to find the best possible replacements for vacated positions, but must things move so slowly? The members of the committees do have other obligations, such as teaching, but it seems they could speed up the slow process if they desired.
Or perhaps administrative red tape and the Office of Affirmative Action will delay appointments until effective leadership totally without effective leadership.
I hope not.
Let us all hope that the University's vacancies can be filled in the near future with responsible, capable people.
If this isn't a reasonable hope, for what reason were the search committees formed? —Tom Billam
BY STEPHEN BUSER
BYSTH HEN BCSUI
Contributing Writer
Environment act effective
When former President Nixon signed into law the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, he dubbed the event as the beginning of the 'environmental decade.' With half of the 1970s over, it can be said that his own Nixon's prophecy has been fairly accurate. Our country has made more strides in the past five years to protect our environment and entire history of this nation.
The enactment of NEPA set in motion the passage of numerous measures by Congress to make the quality of life in America a little better. NEPA was followed by the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency to the electorate plus the water pollution, pesticide, noise control and coastal zone management acts of 1972.
NEPA REQUIRES that before projects likely to affect the environment are begun there must be public scrutiny and consideration of the effects of new environmental sequences. Two major provisions of NEPA are: 1) it requires the preparation of a
publication of an environmental impact statement on all major projects of federal agencies and all large state, local and private projects in which there is a public interest. In addition, 2) it created the Council on Environmental Quality to advise the President and Congress on policies, to review environmental impact statements in the pursuit of environmental control.
The environmental impact statement is perhaps the most effective weapon of NEPA. It calls for public exposure of the statement, which often occurs on behalf of pressure on the sponsor of the project because of projected detrimental effects on the environment. The Department of the Interior voluntarily withdrew a proposal to redevelop the property because its impact statement was "deficient for several reasons."
There are five requirements that must be included in each impact statement; $) the positive impact of the project; $) adversity associated with the project; $) a comparison of short-term uses of resources versus long-range productivity and $) any
Ted Kennedy brave politician
If John F. Kennedy were alive today to write another book about courageous senators, he would have to profile his brother Ted.
For on two of the most emotional issues this country faces, Edward M. Kennedy has manifested a level of guts and integrity that puts to shame the vast majority of politicians who represent the people. The issues to which I refer are busing and abortions.
to retain Jim Crow in Little Rock?
I know! I've wrecked breakfast, spilled dinner, for upmums who are now screaming to who are now screaming to Chappaquidick" and choking on every rumor they've ever been told about the Massachusetts Democrat.
But who can deny Kennedy is showing a political courage that is most uncharacteristic of politicians these days?
Kennedy faces a situation over busing where emotions are just as high in the Boston area as they ever were in Little Rock. As we saw recently in the Boston suburb of Quincy, you might wonder why he harassed and harangued Kennedy. For unlike some other
that a woman ought to be able to get an abortion simply because she doesn't want to have a baby. Yet, it was this same senator who last Thursday beat back an attempt by an antibacillary force off federal Medicaid funds for abortions for popole women.
Can you imagine the 'hero' label we would have draped around Arkansas Sen. J. Andrew Ginsburg, the to-be shrugged off for school integration back in those days when Oval Faust was trying
Some 270,000 needy women got abortions last year at a cost
By Carl Rowan
Copyright 1975 Field Enterprises, Inc.
erstwhile "liberals," Kennedy has refused to join the anti-busing madness.
That Kennedy would show guts on this racial issue is not nearly as surprising or imminent. And he has taken on abortions.
Here is a Catholic senator from a most Catholic state who is personally opposed to the idea
of about $40 million in Medicaid funds. This offends the moral sensibilities of Sen. Dewey Bartlett (R-Oka.) and Sen. James Buckley, the conservative Republican from New York. They sought to attach a $2.5 billion bill that Kennedy was managing which would provide nurse training, family
planning, health centers, migrant health and similar programs over the next three years.
The Bartlett-Buckley amendment would have given the baby the posture where the affluent (who can afford babies) get abortions while the poor (who can neither afford babies) are forced to have them.
Kennedy took the laudable stand that no action as serious as that ought to be passed by the Senate without hearings and as a mere amendment to another measure.
Furthermore, Kennedy argued, the Bartlett-Buckley amendment was so vague that it could not be used to prohibit. Would it forbid using Medicaid funds for intrauterine devices (IDUs)? Would it mean that federal funds could not be used to prohibit a woman who was a rape victim?
And Kennedy clearly is still wrestling with his conscience over this question: if federal funds are used to help women get pregnant, and for "well-baby" clinics, isn't it an
unequal application of the laws to say federal funds may not be used for abortions?
Political cowardice would have led Kennedy to knuckle under to the Barrett-Buckley forces and let them move the easy way to force their views of morality on the rest of the nation, but Kennedy told them, in effect, that if they wanted to vote for him, they had ruling on abortions, they would have to go the route of thorough hearings, and possibly a constitutional amendment.
Friends say Kennedy is disturbed by this tendency of Americans to rush to change the Constitution every time the Supreme Court rules in an "unpopular" way on an issue like school prayer or basing or abortions.
This country would be in infinitely better shape if, over the last decade, we had had to accept that the men who had the guns to push aside the raving mob as well as their own personal preference and look at highly emotional issues in society, it is good for an entire society.
Public school violence sickening
Bv JAMES J. KILPATRICK
A Senate subcommittee last week released a sickening report—on other adjective will suffice—on violence and vandalism in our public schools. But the subcommittee offered few thoughts on why these conditions exist, and it had nothing at all to say on how these conditions might best be relieved.
Admittedly, this was a preliminary report—further hearings will be conducted. But it is clear that the conclusion that "violence and vandalism has reached a level of crisis," it is not unreasonable to ask that at least preliminary remedies be recommended. The commission headed by Birch Bayh of Indiana, has been studying the
problem for four years. How long, O Senator, how long?
The evidence compiled by the subcommittee, drawn from 750 school districts around the country, was sent to stomach. In a single school year, some 70,000 teachers were seriously injured in attacks by students affiliated with the Protection of Teachers to issue a booklet to its women members, suggesting how they may defend themselves against rape. One suggestion: Seize a pen and gouge out his eyes.
In one district after another, school officials report murder, violent assault, gang warfare, extortion and arson. In Birmingham in 2014, officials carried guns for self-defense that the school
The schools of Los Angeles report one "gun incident" every other day; in 1971-72, warfare among the city's estimated 150 firearms was one of the largest Los Angeles gangs is called the Crips: "The name is a short form of Cripples which in turn is derived from crippling. The term also means maiming or crippling their victims. The Crips also have two auxiliary units—the Crippets, composed of girl members, and the Junior Crips, not elementary school children."
superintendent had to issue
licenses. In Houston, the cost of
school security officers
required $30,000 in 1972 to
$389,000 in 1980.
school criminals. In Winston Salem, three third-grade pupils were charged with extorting nearly $1,000 from a couple of classmates. Two of the boys were nine years old, the third 11.
From one end of the country to the other, the subcommittee's findings form an appalling pattern: terrified teachers, imperiled principals, hostile pupils. The cost in human misery cannot be reckoned. The school is placed on the educational losses that occur when teaching yields to disorder.
Los Angeles is not alone in having trouble with grade-
annually. Los Angeles pays $2 million, Chicago, $3 million. Salt Lake City reports a $400,000 price, enough to run two elementary schools for one year. New York City pays $3.5 million. Ohio pays $6 million. schools. A conservative guess, for the country as a whole: $500 million a year, equivalent to the amount spent on textbooks.
Costs in dollars can be roughly computed. The District of Columbia spends $622,000 a year to replace broken windows. Memphis puts its school vandalism bill at $1 million
A PART OF THE "why," in the subcommittee's view, lies in racial tensions made worse by racial-balance busing. Drugs figure importantly in the dismal picture. Two sociologists put the blame on "problems existing in schools that are rather than to conditions or failures within the school system itself."
My own guess, from some years of contemplating public education, is that one of the root causes is that the universal requirement of compulsory school attendance. If compulsory school laws were repealed, or amended to admit children only to age twelve, the schools would be relieved of many responsibilities for the learning process for everyone else. Then, if child labor laws were revised so these lots could be put to honest work, as in Europe, still more good might be accomplished.
Despite the competition that the energy crisis may be giving NEPA, the Council on Environmental Quality was optimistic in its 1974 annual report. The Council stated:
THIS IS MILLENNIAL vaporizing. The trade unions and do-gooders to whom Senator Kirkup had come of his colleagues also—never would agree to such modest reforms. In the end, the subcommittee will recommend $10 million grants to be spent on tough cops and unbreakable glass. If we are not to rear an urban generation of educational Crips we will have to do better than that.
potential irreversible commitment of resources. The Army Corps of Engineers in 1973 dropped 24 projects, modified 44 and significantly modified 197 because of failures to adequately comply with impact statement requirements.
greatest obstacle of environmental control legislation is the energy crisis, which requires construction of power plants and other facilities to help ease the power shortage.
Resources Defense Council and the Center for Law in Public Interest.
NEPA PROVIDES A broad base for citizens to challenge administrative decisions of federal agencies on projects likely to affect the environment. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973 that a citizen may have standing" to bring action against an agency in an environment question affecting the public as a whole. To assist the public in its role for environmental control, non-profit specialized nonprofit law organizations have emerged, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural
"NEPA is alive and well. It has passed through a period of transition, during which agencies have become aware of the act's widespread nature and the basic structure of the environmental impact statement has been firmly established . . . NEPA promises to become a major landmark in the development and administration of federal government programs."
The most publicized action of NEPA was the delay of the Alaska pipeline. Before Congress voted to approve the pipeline, there were exceptions though it had not meet all requirements of NEPA, environmental activists spearheaded a study that led to changes in pipeline design and detailed routing to meet safety standards and thawing, possible earthquakes and topography.
Twenty-one states have copied the federal government in adopting principles of the environmental impact laws. In 15 more states are considering similar action either by legislative action or by administrative orders. The
'Perfect master ideal for School of Religion
BvSTEVENLEWIS
"Mr. Ji, you're just the guy I wanted to speak to."
Contributing Writer
"Good people shine from afar, like the peaks of the Himalayas. I am the Guru Maharaj Ji."
"Mahatma Taylor, there is an
The Kansas School of Religion may soon be incorporated with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The School of Religion is being encouraged, however, to broaden its curriculum to include more non-western religions.
Accordingly, Lymn Taylor, dean of the School of Religion, took to the telephone last week in search of qualified non-Western teachers. It wasn't easy. He found one. It's tune in as Dean Taylor makes contact with Lacknow, India.
"Hello there! This is Lynn Taylor of the University of Kansas School of Religion. Who am I talking to?"
old saying? They accuse him who sits silent; they accuse him who speaks much; they accuse him who says little. There is no one in the world who doesn't get to know you. How should you want to accuse me of you?
"You misunderstand, Mr. Ji.
I didn't call to accuse you of anything. I called because I heard your mama dumped you as perfect master. I thought you might be needing a job."
"He who sees how action may be rest and rest action is wisest among his kind; he has the skill he also gets plenty of rest."
"But Mr. J, at least hear me out. "I want IJ, to join our religion faclity. All you have to just as you have been doing."
"Mahatma Taylor, to learn whether work saves, one must rightly observe on these three: Doing, not doing and undoing. By the way, how much does it pay?"
"We can start you off as an
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"No, Mr. Ji. That's $11,000 a year."
"Is that $11,000 for every class I teach?"
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John Pike
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assistant professor at about $11,000."
"Mahatma Taylor, I realize that the sacrifice that knowledge pays is better than the great gifts offered by wealth. Neverless, you've got to be out of your mind!"
"Mr. Ji, perhaps you could take in some extra dough by preaching on your own on weekends. What do you say?"
"GOOD TO HAVE YOU obear, Mr. JI. You'll round out our faculty. There is one minor difference here. We don't know quite how to put it."
"The superior man is slow to promise, prompt to fulfill. But I'll take it."
"Mahatma Taylor, without knowledge there is no meditation, without mediation there is no understanding the knowledge and meditation is near Heaven. Now what is it you want to tell me?"
"Mr. Ji, you've gained quite a reputation lately as a playboy. It certainly wouldn't sit well with the University if one of our faculty members couldn't know what to say. You know the old saying: They who spend much time with women cease to practice meditation."
"MAHTMA TAYLOR, the best meditation isn't in words."
"Well, Mr. Ji, I guess the University can't expect you to be perfect. After all, you are different."
"Tell your University friends that even perfection is an imperfection."
"I'll tell them, Mr. Ji. When truth and right go hand in hand, a statement bears reputation."
"Some other time, Mahatma Taylor."