LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
at-large house? Painful apportionment
THE KANSAS Legislature is currently struggling through the business of reapportionment, an unpleasant affair for any rural based legislature.
ONE PLAN approved for introduction Tuesday by the House Legislative Apportionment Committee, has at-large elections, with a guarantee that every county would have a member in the lower house. In other words, the reapportionment in that proposal is not really reapportionment at all, but rather a subterfuge to avoid the whole problem.
IT IS HARD to believe that such a plan could be seriously considered by the House, which is currently under order from the State Supreme Court to fairly re-district itself by April 1.
TWO YEARS AGO, the Illinois lower house was elected on an at-large basis, after the Republican legislature and the Democratic governor failed to agree on how new districts should be formed. The resulting ballot, about a yard long, with over 200 names on it, made a mockery of the election.
likely to lose them if the Legislature ever adopts a plan giving the populous areas a fair share of the legislative seats, this sympathy has limits.
WHILE ONE can certainly sympathize with rural legislators anxious to keep their jobs, and
COURTS IN the past several years have consistently ruled that state legislatures must be apportioned on a one man-one vote basis. Gov. Avery, addressing the opening of the special session on reapportionment yesterday noted that no "useful purposes would be served" in discussing the "arguments for or against the judicial philosophy involved in the apportionment decision." The decision has been made by the state Supreme Court and the legislature must obey it
RURAL AREAS should be represented in Topeka, but only in proportion to the people that live there. To have it otherwise would deny the state's urban population its fair representation.
HOPEFULLY the legislature will recognize this fact, and apportion the state in representative districts as required by the courts, and as requested by the Governor.
BUT JUDGING from the apparently serious consideration that some legislators are giving the at-large plan, the legislature is still trying to find some way out of giving every man a full vote
Justin Beck
"AN' ON A CLEAR WARM DAY WE HAVE A MOST UNLIGLIAL VIEW OF ALL TH' SUN DECKS IN TH' NEIGHBORHOOD."
the people say...
Student wage fight hard, hopefully rewarding
Letters to the editor should be typed, double space on a 70 space line, and must be signed. Length should not be over 600 words. Any letter submitted to the editor may be edited prior to publication.
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Student labor
Every year students at this university spend thousands of hours in organized activities ranging from the frenzy of party politics to student peace demonstrations. Their goals range from the very quixotic to the very chaotic. In no case, however, is their light harder or potentially more rewarding than ours. We're after money.
WE IN student labor believe that the basic student wage on campus has not kept up with the rising cost of attending college. The basic student wage of 80 cents an hour is not enough to allow the student to earn money for books, supplies and commodities without limiting the necessary time for his studies.
today, many of the available campus job positions are not filled by unversity students simply because the return is not sufficient. Even in the residence hall, it is difficult to maintain a full staff
to work the switchboards and cafeterias, again, simply because of the poor pay.
IN THE LAST four years, fees have gone up $40 a semester, and
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
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the cost of living has risen a considerable extent, but the basic student pay has gone up only five cents an hour. For the average worker this means an increase of only six dollars a semester.
The obvious question is—what can we do and what can we reasonably ask? First we must organize as much support as we can from the student body, the parents of KU students, student service groups and even from the local area to petition the state legislature to raise the student wage allotment.
TO BE CONTENT with badgering the administration is neither effective nor wise. The coefers of the university can be filled only by the state, and it is there that the pressure must be applied. We want the university administration's support, but we can go ahead without it.
Next to mass petition by the student body (many of whom will be voting during the next state election), the most effective groups we could win to our support would be the parents, as taxpayers and voters, and the local business men.
WE CAN expect at least some support from the downtown Lawrence area because it is obvious that the more money students have, the more will be spent in this area. Although wage increases on campus would eventually affect the minimum wage of the entire area, the money gained through economic return would more than counterbalance this.
Finally, we should consider what the effect of a wage increase would be on the level of student fees. This university employs approximately 2,400 students in capacities ranging from lab instructors to cafeteria workers. Although neither the business office nor the chancellor's office were able to quote exact figures, Vice-Chancellor Raymond Nichols guessed that a 20 per cent raise for every employee would cost about $200,000. This would cost each student about $7 a semester.
OUR TASK is obvious but not simple. It is too late to hope for state action this year, but we can prepare for the next budget. The idea of a student pay raise was brought up at the last meeting of the legislature, but since it
received little support from either the students or other groups, it did not pass. We can try to see that this does not happen again.
If we maintain reasonable requests and constant effort, we have more than a fighting chance to see our hopes realized.
-Mike Youngblood
★★★
Sorority rush
The Greek system provides many fine opportunities for growth in a university community.
LET IT comes to my attention
Don't you think she's overdoing it a bit?
that a mistake has been made and perhaps one that could be confused with the intrinsic nature of the Greek system. I refer to the front page story appearing in the UDK on Tuesday, February 8th. It told of the sororities pledging 298 out of 351 women during rush.
The third and final paragraph in this somewhat routine story was a bit surprising. It mentioned that only two Negro girls signed up. It gave their names and home towns, then proceeded to say that they could not complete rush due to below standard grade averages.
SEVERAL QUESTIONS come to mind. First, why were these two girls singled out of the many whose grades were not high enough for rush? The story is discriminatory in this respect either through conscious engineering, unconscious editing, or poor writing. Second, what right does the general public have to know the names of two people whose grades were inferior by this standard? Did the girls release the information? It seems unlikely.
The last question is perhaps most significant. Who did release this material? The organization of the article implies the Dean of Women's office was responsible. If that office was asked about the activities of Negroes in rush this year, it would seem logical that the Dean would cover accusations of discrimination by reporting the only two Negroes to apply did not have sufficient grades.
But to release their names is quite another matter. This constitutes an invasion of privacy that does not befit either the Dean of Women's office or the UDK.
—(Name with he^147)
UP's support
The University Party (UP), the also-rans of KU political life now support the goals of the Student Labor Organization. Wonderful, now if only somebody would support UP.
Justin Beck
2 Daily Kenson Thursday, February 17, 1966