Awbrey to run
Campus politics in turmoil
By JOANNA WIEBE
Kansan News Editor
A new presidential candidate for Student Senate emerged from the political shuffle late yesterday afternoon, following an abortive attempt by campus politicos to merge the Action Coalition (ACT) and Independent Student Party (ISP).
Wild fluctuations on the campus political scene, where parties emerge, disappear and re-emerge within the space of hours, make it difficult to predict whether the present parties and candidates will still stand when the Kansan reaches the distribution boxes today.
Awbrey is candidate
David Awbrey, Hutchinson junior, informed the University Daily Kansan yesterday afternoon that he would be a candidate in the spring elections for Student Senate president.
He replaces Bob Stoddard, Mission junior, who filed his candidacy several weeks ago. Stoddard was unavailable for comment last night, so it is not known whether he will attempt to maintain his candidacy.
ACT leaders told the Kansan yesterday that the proposed merger was Stoddard's idea, and that he was hesitant about his candidacy from the beginning. Hansen maintains candidacy
Inherent in the suggested union of the two parties was the idea that Bill Hansen, Kansas City first-year law student, would run for vice president under the ACT-ISP label.
Hansen's queasiness over his move is what ultimately squashed the 2-hour coalition of the two parties.
When a group of campus politicians entered the Kansan newsroom yesterday to declare the merger, formally decided on only a few minutes earlier, Hansen stood off to one side and said he would like to prepare a statement on why he had decided to change his candidacy from president to vice president.
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In this statement, he mentioned his "growing involvement with the Law Student's Civil Rights Research Council, along with the considerable time required for first year studies in law," saying, in effect, that he was too busy to run for president.
However, after thinking it over, he decided that, although politics sometimes makes strange befellows, the ACT was one bed he wasn't going to crawl into.
He reaffirmed his presidential candidacy at the All-Student Council (ASC) meeting last night, in an effort to counteract any rumors to the contrary.
"Rumors which have been abundant in the community within the past few days were not totally incorrect," he said. "I find my growing involvement with the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council, coupled with the stringencies of my first law law studies constraining."
"Nevertheless," he said, "I intend to persist with whatever assets, both in money and people, that I am able to compile."
Support questioned
He said earlier that ISP leaders had expressed some doubts as to ISP's ability to function alone, without the political machinery of ACT.
"Support from those who have traditionally run this campus will not be forthcoming, I fully realize," Hansen told the ASC members last night.
He added that he did not request this support, "save for support from those who are committed to constructive and non-violent change. The world we live in . . . does not invite the timid, the selfish, the violent, he self-serving."
"New priorities"
Among the "new priorities." Hansen intends to offer in his campaign "is the opportunity
for those who heretofore have run student government, to vote with us to change what was so adequately diagnosed last spring as irrelevant and absurd.
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"This election will allow both Greek and independent voters their first opportunity to decide on issues, not personalities," Hansen said.
Students will be able to decide, as free human beings, what they can do "to make a better life and world for other human beings, not Phillips 66 Oil," he said.
He explained the last statement as a protest against the University's increasing "trade school" complexion.
Uneasy coalition
ACT chairman Collene Collins, Leavenworth junior, said yesterday her group had wanted to merge with ISP because the platforms of both groups were similar.
The uneasy ACT-ISP coalition had a life of about two hours.
The leaders who had decided upon the merger included ISP chairman Peter Monge, New York senior; Hansen; Miss Collins, and Abwreby.
Few of the other candidates on both parties had been informed of the decision to merge, or the subsequent un-merging.
The new candidate on the scene, Awbrey, is a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity, the University Human Rights
Committee and the Institutional Racism Research Committee. He is an instructor in LAS 48, the New Left course, this semester. He also has been listed on the honor roll.
Since Hansen scotched the plan of running as Awbrey's vice president, Awbrey is running vice president-less, at least for the time being.
ISP has announced a public meeting at 8:30 p.m., tomorrow in the Kansas Union Forum Room, Hansen said.
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