uss candidacies, policies
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following three interviews with student presidential and vice-presidential candidates were conducted last week by John Gillie, Kansan Copy Chief.)
Presidential candidate for Student Senate, running on the Progressive Student Alliance (PSA) is Mark Edwards, Emporia junior. Twenty-year old Edwards is a political science and history major and is serving as chairman of Collegiate Young Republicans at KU. He is also assistant to Aldon Bell, assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in a grassroots politics class.
Rick von Ende, Abilene, Tex., graduate student, the candidate for Student Senate vice-president on the PSA ticket, is a political science major. Von Ende, 27, is chairman of the All-Student Council and president of Pi Sigma Alpha, a political science honor society.
ed to organize'
you leave here to make sure you did do this study''? In each case it seems to be contradictory.
- Kansan: You mean to tell me that you can't do both—pass the exam and do independent study? Are they mutually exclusive?
Von Ende: If you put a great deal of faith in independent study, you would also be saying that with twice weekly classes, as we propose, your reading and so forth, you're going to accumulate enough knowledge to have an appreciation of Western Civ. ideals.
Edwards: No. Many students have been accusing us of creating another member of the establishment. This is a student-oriented person—an ombudsman is an advocate
- Kansan: Is the Campus Grievance Officer, the okabudsman, whom you propose really necessary? Will he be another member of the administration?
- There are many students who come up here who are overwhelmed. They have no idea of the channels available to get things done.
- Kansas: Give me an example of when this ombudsman could be of help.
- Edwards: Suppose you are willfully misgraded. I had a friend who was. He really felt he got messed up on a grade. First, he went to the department and the departmental head said to go talk to the instructor. The instructor had already taken off on one of his summer programs. It took until October of the next year to get the grade changed.
- Kansan: What abut the dean of students? Isn't he supposed to handle these kinds of problems?
- Edwards: The problem is that it's very hard to contact him. I know. I have tried to make contacts with Dean Balfour and never gotten through to the man.
- Kansan: If the students hire this man, where will the funds come from? How much will the program cost? Can we afford it?
- Von Ende: We're not sure. How much would it take to hire a good prof? Around $15,000, then three secretaries at $5,000 each. That would be $30,000. We could pay him from the Student Activity Fund.
- Kansan: Speaking of the Student Activity Fund, one of your planks asks for student determination of the use of the Student Activity Fund. Don't students do that now?
- Edwards: In theory we're supposed to. In fact, we're not. There was no fanfare made of it at all. In past years, for instance, $11 was allotted to the athletic department from the Student Activity Fund. All of a sudden, on about page 16 in the UDK last month, there was a two-line blurb that said now instead of $11, $12.03 will be allotted. Rick, who is ASC chairman, knew nothing about it. Joe Goering and Clif Conrad knew nothing about it. In theory we're supposed to know something about it, but we don't.
- Kansan: Legally, who controls the fund?
Von Ende: We do. Legally and theoretically.
Edwards: Rick, how can they establish a $30,000 slush fund as we suspect?
Von Ende: Any organization must have a contingency fund. We can't seem to find out what happens to every cent of the Student Activity Fund.
- Kansan: Should blacks be given preference in receiving the scholarship funds derived from the Kansas Union Bookstore rebates?
- Kansan: What is your feeling on the question of tutorial programs for athletes? You include this as a plank.
Edwards: It's our feeling that it's really discriminatory to the whites to make it easier for blacks to obtain the scholarships. You can't make special provisions whether a person is black or white.
Edwards: The tutorial system now is very lax. A lot of athletes have to take a reduced load and after eight semesters they don't have enough hours to graduate. We feel the University should provide assistance for nine and 10 semesters, instead of ending financial assistance when eligibility ends.
Edwards: I know of a boy from Panama who couldn't speak a word of English. He went to Strong Hall. They gave him all the literature and wished him on his way. He spent three nights in the Eldridge Hotel before he found a place to stay. We feel the least we can do for foreign students who come to our country is make sure there is enough dorm space available for them, or find them some decent off-campus housing.
- Kansan: What do you mean when you say in your platform the University should guarantee foreign student housing?
Awbrey: 'run solely on issues'
- Kansan: Why are you, David Awbrey, running for student body president?
Awbrey: About a month ago I was approached by a group of people who said they were tired of politics as they were at KU and also tired of not being able to win, sitting on the corner and yelling about the injustices in our society and injustices at KU and the fact that politics at KU have been nothing but personality politics-vote for your fraternity boy from Shawnee Mission. The real students who were really interested in society were shoved back in the corner. Student government was completely irrelevant. And something had to happen before forces took over the University.
A group of people agreed I would probably be the best candidate. I had connections with the Greek part of the campus. I am very left—not very far left—and that's a bad word. But I am liberal. I hate terms. I am a person very concerned about the issues, about KU. I saw the ISP platform and I agreed with it in total and I also made arrangements that this campaign would not be a personality campaign. We are going to run on the issues—solely on the issues.
Bowman: The reason I'm running is because I really believe in the issues, because I believe KU has an interested student body and I'm one of those people who wants to see some effective social change.
- Kansan: But you've never been on ASC?
Awbrey: No, I had no connection with ASC, but I was on the University Rights Committee which investigated housing problems and racism. I've been on the Institutional Racism Research Committee.
I teach a Liberal Arts and Sciences 48 course which deals with present social issues.
I feel I do have some comprehension of KU's place in society and student government's place at KU
I feel I'm qualified because I am concerned, I'm willing to listen and I have no set dogmas, no set ideology that I'm going to force on people.
I'm not on an ego trip as some of the other candidates are. I'm not that personally interested in being student body president and if the other candidates would adopt the ISP platform and agree with us, I would certainly drop out.
- Kansan: What about your qualifications, Marilyn?
- Bowman: One of the biggest was that I never have been involved in student government because I believed it to be irrelevant. But, I see potential for meaningful change here now.
- Kansan: What is the role of the president?
Bowman: This involves the ISP concept of a strong executive—not just a strong president but a strong executive team to be the initiator in the types of changes that should take place.
Awbrey: We're going to try to lay a good foundation, make the Senate Code work effectively.
- Kansan: Do you see yourself a strong leader of change and, if so, won't it be just the left that influences you?
Awbrey: Certainly we are initiators of action, of change, and I generally think left, but I realize that if the students don't think left, they come first. We have gone around saying we think that each dorm should be able to decide what they want. If Elsworth Hall decides they want to close at 8 p.m., then all right. We don't want to force our ideology down people's throats.
I think, if anything, ISP is liberatarian—do your own thing. We're planning at least once or twice a week to go around to different houses and speak and talk to kids.
Awbrey: What is your biggest concern? I think every boy is concerned about the draft, about the unjust war we are fighting.
- Kansan: Your platform has often been criticized as being too broad, and beyond the sphere of the campus government. Obviously you don't think so. Why?
KU has military research, ROTC and military recruiters. And if people are going to say that that does not simply exist at KU, they are ignoring what's going on here on campus. True, we cannot solve the war. But I have criticized Mark and Rusty because I know they feel the same way about the war and they simply don't talk about it. And I see they're avoiding the issue. That's nothing more than political cowardice.
Saying Vietnam is irrelevant is putting a paper wall around KU and pretending the rest of the world does not exist.
We see the war, racism and paternalism as the major problems at KU.
- Kansan: Isn't it hypocritical to be a Greek and be in ROTC as you are and profess these left wing views? *
Awbrey: Why is being in ISP incompatible with being a Greek? The Greeks have expressed strong support for our tutorial program. The Greeks have a social conscience. I don't like to label people. I don't like the Greeks to be labeled conservative and reactionary.
And ROTC I'm very much in favor of. But we have said we should eliminate credit for ROTC. ROTC has a right to be on campus. Last year I personally found three or four alternatives about what I could do about the draft.
I could go to Canada. That isn't good because I'm an American and I love my country. I could go to the seminary, but that would be a cop out. I could go to jail, yet I'm an American and when you go to jail you lose your privileges as an American. So I thought I have to
serve my country. Peace Corps is not deferable. So, I figured if I went into ROTC I could become an officer. I could, one, serve my country and, two, hopefully change the Army in some small way. I know in the ROTC department a lot of professors feel the same way we do.
- Kansan: The black-white problem is looming larger every day on the campus. How do you feel about giving blacks greater opportunity than whites, particularly in reference to he recent black pom-pon squad episode?
Awbrey: We can't realize what it is to be black. We can intellectualize about it, but we must realize underprivileged whites are one step ahead of any underprivileged black mainly because of their skin color. I think he should more black perform.
I think we should recruit more black professors.
We have four blacks running on ISP. We are the only party that's taken interest in blacks.
On the black pom-pon incident, the student body president should take a stand on every major incident on the campus. I criticized Clif Conrad for not doing this.
I am all in favor of the black pom-pon girls, I would have come out and had black pom-pon girls.
I don't feel the arrangement like this is tokenism. Unless the blacks are integrated into our society, we'll have one black and one white society at KU.
Why is our undergraduate school so good and our graduate school that bad? All the published reports by rating services say KU's Graduate School is not that top. We feel that with graduates doing about 40 per cent of the teaching, we cannot remain this high as long as our graduate school is not so good.
- Kansan: The ISP platform criticizes graduate education at KU. Why are you so concerned? What is the basis for the criticism?
- Awbrey: Graduate school is such a touchy subject here at KU. And the fact is KU is one of the top undergraduate schools in the nation. Look at the number of Wilson scholars and Fullbright scholarships.
- Kansan: Your platform hits at the high cost of education. How do you propose to reduce this cost.
Awbrey: We have come up with an exchange bookstore.
The bookstore works something like this. Returning your book to the Union Bookstore now, you get half what you paid for it and someone the next semester pays 3/4 the price for it. We feel that when a person has a $5 chemistry book, he goes to the exchange bookstore and fills out a card and it's placed in a file. And say another person comes into the store and wants a chemistry book. He looks in the file and contacts you. It cost you $5 and the Union Bookstore would have given you $2.50 for the book and sold it for $3.50. You sell it to him for $3. He saves money and you make money.
Also there is the idea about the co-op grocery store and the co-op drug store. Did you know that food prices in the city of Lawrence are 10 to 15 per cent higher than in Kansas City or Topeka?
Bowman: What we're saying is we could keep the Lawrence merchants from exploiting their captive student body. By the University buying the foods in large quantities the only ones who are going to be hit are the large chain stores.
- Kansan: Won't this enlarge the town-gown split and drive local merchants out of business?
- Bowman: We feel there are enough people other than University people living in Lawrence to support the merchants.
- Kansan: The chains only?
- Bowman: We figure that a couple living in Stouffer Place could lower their food bill from $15 a week to $9 or $10.
- Kansan: Really?
Awbrey: The students in the city of Lawrence have no voice in the city government. This is a university town the University is getting nothing from this town.
Dave Awbrey
Marilyn Bowman
David Awbrey, Hutchinson junior, is presidential candidate on the Independent Student Party (ISP) ticket. A history major, he is a member of the University Human Rights Committee and the institutional racism research committee. He also teaches a course on the New Left.
Marilyn Bowman, Merriam junior, is vice-presidential candidate on the ISP ticket. Majoring in anthropology, Miss Bowman plans to attend graduate school and enter social work. She has been a delegate and parliamentarian for Model United Nations, and is a member of Daughters of Diana. She was on the Student Union Activities Foreign Affairs seminar committee and the special events publicity committee.