Text of Chalmers press conference
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have they waited two weeks or six weeks before evacuating students from a building that is desperately needed to continue the educational process? I have some concerns about that kind of delay myself, unless these happen to be on campuses that have excess space, and I've not encountered any such campuses in recent years.
Press: What would be your reaction if a large number of students would like to see an autonomous black studies program on this campus?
Chalmers: Again, this requires some definition. If you mean a curricular program of especially developed courses that may or may not be grouped as a major or a minor, I rather feel that there is a great deal of relevance to such a curriculum. If on the other hand, you mean establishing exclusive facilities for any group, we've been constrained from doing this for any group throughout the history of public higher education. Recent directives from HEW and other agencies make that restraint quite clear.
Press: You said once that KU is "bursting at the seams." Do you have any plans at all to alleviate the situation?
Chalmers: (chuckle) None. Obviously the need is for new construction in a fair number of areas, and I must admit that this is a hasty judgment on my part. Believe it or not, until this morning, my entire exposure to the campus was one brief twenty-minute drive through the campus. Your faculty and student and board committees seem a great deal more interested in personal values and interaction, than in my impressions of the physical plant, for which I am most grateful.
I did have an opportunity to enter several of the buildings where it seemed to me that the facilities were crowded and outdated and either in need of additional facilities, or badly in need of renovation. Of course the effort has to be one of getting funds from federal sources, state government and private sources, in order to provide heightened facilities for students and faculty.
Press: What do you believe to be your most important task as the chancellor of a major Mid-Western university?
Chalmers: To effectively represent the students, and faculty of that university to the other interested constituents of the legislature. Any university president or chancellor who does not recognize that he is first-class in all respects, is either prone to an unhappy or short-lived career.
Press: Can you comment on the relationship of the
university toward military research, especially that of classified nature?
Chalmers: I think the presence of classified research on a University campus rates very valid questions—whether or not this is in the realm of scholarship as most faculty members understand it, that is, scholarship whose results are in the public realm and should be available to all interested and concerned. I have some of the same kind of concern, as a matter of fact, about research that is exceedingly applied, rather than that which has a potential for stretching beyond a given location or a given time.
Talents that are a symbol on a campus like this are much too valuable to focus upon a highly restricted problem, whether it's a military restriction, or the restriction of one community, a "here and now" problem that has little or no opportunity to be generalized to another time or another place. I believe faculty members, graduate students and undergraduate students, in their involvement in scholarly research, ought constantly to pursue those problems that have the greatest potential impact across time and across space.
Press: Could you explain what you mean by applied research?
Chalmers: In the area of educational research, a professor of English education has the option of helping a seventh grade English teacher in a small rural high school to improve her course of study, her technique, her curriculum and the like, or the opportunity to develop, to study and research several innovative seventh grade English curricula, which might potentially benefit the teaching of seventh-grade English across the length and breadth of this nation. I would feel that the choice of the former, no matter how appealing it might be on a personal basis, would be unfortunate.
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Press: You also said once that you hoped to open the channels of communication between the students and the administration. Have you thought of any concrete ways in which this could be done, committees or something?
Chalmers: I hope my earlier quote isn't quite accurate. I believe that those channels are very wide open at the University of Kansas. A more accurate statement would be, to keep them open.
No, I haven't contemplated any specific techniques because I think these probably emerge with the changing times and change with changing times. Obviously a major first effort would have to be an implementation of the University Code, subject of course to the Regents' approval. Probably later this month the code will be considered. This, I am certain, will be a time-consuming task, because of its uniqueness, and because of the necessary involvement of the many faculty members, students and administrators to make it more effective.
Press: Do you believe that the actual size of the University should have limits placed upon it?
Chalmers: I doubt that a specific sum total size has any meaning at all in higher education. What does have a great deal of signifiance is when a University attempts to grow at some rapid pace without the necessary resources, without the necessary structures, without the understanding and acceptance of its constituents, and without much planning for such growth. I think more often than not, when we hear the complaint that a university has grown too large, it has lost sight of its goals and purposes, or its individual students, more often than not this does not reflect an absolute number of problems as much as a lack of careful planning for that growth.
Press: Would you give us an interpretation of dissent under the law as opposed to dissent in violation of the law?
Chalmers: An interpretation or examples?
Press: Examples
Press: Would you give us an interpretation of academic freedom?
Chalmers: Yes. In the simplest terms, to respect the truth above all else, a tolerance for ambiguity where truth is not clearly perceptible. That may just sum it up.
Chalmers: The form of peaceful protest is frequently well-established—the gatherings at appropriate places on a university campus, within designated rooms, sometimes with an advance notice or a registration, simply to make sure that the heat's turned on and the lights are working—conducted in a manner that isn't disruptive in terms of noise level or blocking the flow of traffic, and the like. These obviously have to be carefully thought out with references to any specific campus, because each presents a different set of problems in terms of dissent that is not disruptive.
The opposite course is prefectly self-evident, when classrooms are vitally needed, are already inadequate to meet the needs, and a half-dozen or dozen are suddenly rendered useless by virtue of the fact that a building has been occupied—that's violent, illegal disruption.
Press: Tuitions are rising on virtually all college campuses. Do you think the state should be paying more for the cost of education?
Chalmers: Well, I suppose that in the best of all possible worlds, I would like to see universal higher education available to every student regardless of the ability to pay.
This may mean a greater share of the burden by the taxpayer or increased loans and private scholarships and the like or the taxpayers as a partial
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