Candidates discuss issues
(EDITOR'S NOTE) The following is the first installment of the complete transcript of the University Daily Kansan-sponsored candidates' debate which took place at 7.30 p.m. last Thursday, in the Kansas Union Forum Room.)
JONES: My name is Tim Jones, Editorial Editor of the Kansas. I'll be moderating this question and answer period and debate. We would like you to hold questions from the floor until after we're finished here, then we'll throw it open to anyone who would like to ask questions.
The way we are going to work
anybody else. The committees sit around sometimes and nothing gets done.
We need efficiency in our student government. We need to streamline ideas and action. I believe an able administrator must concentrate, always be sure the excess is stripped away until we get to the real heart of the problem, not tied up in parliamentary procedure, but really get up and get involved in the main issues.
More than this, the student body president is a leader—The leader of all students and of all interests of the student body.
If each of us, in a sense, could be the student body president,
the University, not just one faction of the students, but a representative of every living group, of all people.
And also, it is important to realize that in talking about just the executive part of the student government, you have to talk about both the president and the vice-president. The fact that it's going to be a tremendous job. According to the new student senate, the student body president is going to have to be attending almost 62 committee meetings a month.
It's going to be a tremendous job just for him to be able to do all of this. I think it's also important that this is where the
president of the student body. I would like to ask what you think you will do as the leader of the student senate. After talking with many of the candidates during the year, I find that it's going to be pretty tough to find a contingent of senators who can show up at all of these committee meetings and devote the time necessary to have an effective 15 per cent representation in the University Senate.
So I would like to ask, first of all, do you have, right now, a full contingent of senatorial candidates on your ballot or running in your party, and if you do, how do you plan to organize these senators into an effective group within the University Senate?
Photo by Ron Bishop
The great debate
Candidates and moderators at last Thursday's debate sponsored by the University Daily Kansan are (from left) Rusty Leffel, Prairie Village junior, and Frank Zilm, St. Louis, Mo., junior, of Campus Coalition; Ron Yates, Shawnee senior and Kansan editor-in-chief; Mark Edwards, Emporia junior,
and Rick von Ende, Abilene, Tex., graduate student, of Progressive Student Alliance; Tim Jones, East Aurora, N.Y., senior and Kansan editorial editor, and Dave Awbrey, Hutchinson junior, and Marilyn Bowman, Merriam junior, of Independent Student Party.
this is, I am going to ask one question, then one member of each party is going to answer this question for about three minutes, then the next party will take over.
Now the first question we have is kind of a brief one, but it also could be a long one. Define what you think is the role of the student body president.
We will try to work this kind of a round robin so that nobody has to go last all the time, so Rusty, would you like to kick it off?
LEFFEL: The student body president has kind of a dual role, especially in the new senate, because he's going to have to set a tone, and he's going to have to set a direction. This is what we tried to establish in our platform and in our whole campaign—this new direction for student government at KU.
The student body president has a dual role. One is as an administrator, and two is as a leader. Both are important, and you cannot have one without the other.
In his administrative capacity, the student body president, especially in this new year, must set the direction to guide and develop a new student government and organization that can function, and function well for all students.
You know, we start out with the new senate code and we have a pretty firm outline of what is going to be the organization of the new senate, but a lot of gaps have to be filled in.
This is the role of the new student body president—to fill in these gaps, to create the organizations that meet the needs that we have as students. To do this, we need an administrator. We need someone who can bring together legislation from the senate, and create the committees and the commissions that will do the work.
Believe me, I don't like committees any more than
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we would each have our own views of what would be best for the student body, and what we would like to see done. If the University of Kansaas were exactly the way I would like to have or the way you would like to have it, we might not agree, we might have different ideas.
So, the student body president is not in a position where he can force his own personal opinions and ideas and concepts of the University on the student body. Rather, he should be one who tries to lead the opinion of the student body in the goals and directions that he feels are right. And though that may not always be real popular, you have to face the issues and face what your concepts and ideas for the University are.
If I may just go a little further on this, the student body president has to be aggressive, and he has to a leader.
By this, I mean you have to be able to face students, you have to be able to face administrators. You have to go off and say, "No, sir. You're wrong." And you have to be firm in this. I would never have the faintest idea of hesitating, when the student body is behind the president, to face up to anyone and say, "This is what is right."
EDWARDS: In response to the question, about what the role of the student body president should be in the University society, I think it's important to analyze the fact that, for the first time, student government can really be relevant to the students. The old day of passing a resolution and hoping the administration will act on it—that day is over.
And this is what is important that the student body be behind the president, and that he not act on his personal ideas and prejudices, but rather his integrity. This is why it has to be our student government.
So this is why the student body president has to be a creator, and in being a creator, he has to be a representative.
role of the vice-president comes in, to be able to help out and be an initiator also.
He must be a representative of the majority of the students of
In addition to eing a creator, he must also be representative of all the ceremonial things that have to go on that unfortunately the student body president has to attend to.
AWBREY: Unfortunately, I have to differ with Mark and Rusty on the concept of the student body president.
The president cannot be all things to all people. He cannot, just by virtue of being elected, in some miraculous way, become a little part of each one of you. The student body president must be the representative of the people, the spokesman of the people, but he also must be true to his own beliefs.
I feel, in this campaign, we have stated our beliefs. We are running on an ideological and philosophical basis, mainly bacause, we do not envision the student body president as personality king of the campus, with the Pepsodent smile.
We feel that the reforms we are asking for in our University, in our nation, cannot be done in one year. We feel the student body president must be an initiator of legislation, an initiator of action. He must initiate this action with the idea that the changes which are needed in this University are going to take years to come.
He cannot be concerned only with himself, only concerned with being a hilltopper; he cannot be concerned with being in Sachem, he cannot be concerned with ingratiating himself with the administration. He must not call the administration 'Sir.' He must call the administration 'partner'. This is what I feel very strongly about that we do not call the administration sir, we do not call the paternalistic administration in this University sir; they call us partner, and we cooperate with them in a joint effort to make this University a viable and effective place in which to live.
YATES: We have gotten some answers about what each of the candidates feels he should do as
How do you plan to promote attendance, something that even our great white fathers back in Washington have trouble with? How do you plan to promote attendance to the senates which are traditionally long-winded and time consuming affairs? Do you plan to initiate some kind of a discipline in the rank so that these people will show up and be able to give the student body a full 15 per cent representation? I will start with Mark Edwards.
EDWARDS: In response to the question about a full slate of candidates running on the Progressive Student Alliance, we don't have a full slate, basically because the purpose of the Senate is to encourage people to run independently.
In the past, as you well know, it's been the type of thing where the Greeks have so many representatives, and so many representatives out of this area.
We're hoping that people win run independently, and that's why we got in to the race. This is what we've encouraged throughout. We didn't encourage people to run in the Colleges-within-the-Colleges because basically we felt that there were ten to twelve different students coming to us from each college asking to run on our slate. We felt we should encourage all of them to run and actually become better participants in the University, feeling they are not closed out by a particular party because they couldn't qualify to run on their particular slate. We encouraged them all to run, and we're going to endorse them all. This is why we didn't have anybody running from the Colleges-within-the-Colleges. them all. This is why we didn't have anybody running from the Colleges-within-the-Colleges. We feel that students, once they get in to the Senate, and if they feel that they're elected through a party, this definitely isn't conducive to good senate action, because they feel maybe they're compelled to follow the party.
We want students to operate on their own, independently. We feel that's how we can achieve it—to encourage them to run independently.
Going on, you talk about how we're going to encourage people to come to all the committee meetings. All we can say is by creating atmosphere.
Instill in the students that for the first time, they can have a viable student government that can operate for them if they are actually willing to participate, actually put in the long hours of committee work that it takes. It's going to be a hard thing to do. A lot of students feel that it is not going to work, and a lot of faculty people feel the same.
It's a challenge to the students to actually put in the time at these committee meetings.
As far as discipline, what are you going to do to them if they don't come? All we can do about this is wait and see what
the response is going to be.
We can go ahead and create committee work, we can call for the first senate meeting, we can recognize the election of three special representatives to the University council that are carry-overs from the old ASC.
These are specific things we can do immediately upon election, and through immediately showing the people that we are industrious and want to get the student senate on the road, and a university government that will really pick up and do something for the students for once.
(See tomorrow's University Daily Kansan for the second installment of last Thursday's debate.)
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