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Thursday, March 31, 1977
University Dally Kansan
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Opinions on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Kansas or the School of Journalism
Colleges move 'up'
It is becoming more and more apparent that Fort Hays Kansas State College, Kansas State College at Pittsburgh and Emporia Kansas State College will soon cease to exist. Kansas State University will be Fort Hays State University, Pittsburgh State University and Emporia State University.
The Kansas House and Senate have approved bills changing the three schools to universities. The only thing holding up the change is that the House bill changes Pittsburg State's name to Southeast Kansas University of Pittsburg. This minor difficulty should be ironed out by the end of the week, however, and the number of state universities in Kansas will miraculously double.
LAST SEMESTER, when the changes were first proposed, the Kansan ran an editorial pointing out that the whole affair was a finalizing-and ending debasement of the English language.
Junior colleges have become community colleges and colleges have become universities. The next step is for KU and K-State, with their more extensive graduate programs and professional schools, to become "Universitatum or you want to get a bit more common with your culture," "Superviersities."
The argument was that there are fundamental differences between the experiences and studies available at KU and those a student gets at, say, Pittsburg. Not that the one experience is necessarily that much better than the other, just that they are undeniably different. Otherwise we all would have been called one thing all along.
BUT, ALAS, there is no fighting progress, no matter what direction it goes. The names will change.
Maybe, in the long run, it will be a good thing. In asking for the change, administrators for the three colleges said becoming "universities" would help them in their fight to recruit and keep good students and teachers and to help their graduates find
If all these good results can be obtained through simple semantics, then the change will be worth the trouble. The colleges are having enrollment and other troubles and deserve a break.
IT IS far from certain, however, that just making the colleges universities will do all these wonderful things. Recruiters and good teachers do more than look at a school's name to determine what the new name in the institutions—and the teachers' salaries—will be the same.
square.
Let us welcome, FHSU, PSU and ESU to the ranks of state universities. With reservations, of course, but with understanding of their reasoning and wishing them luck. They'll need it.
Basketball coaches come and basketball coaches go. Last week, Jack Hartman decided to do both.
Hartman is, of course, the Kansas State University basketball coach who quit his job to go to Oklahoma State and then went on to play for Kansas State 24 hours later. Hartman meekly told a press conference that he had changed his mind about going to Oklahoma State and had made a mistake by deciding to go there in the first place.
If it all sounds a little confusing, don't go complaining to Jersey Jermier, K-State's athletic director. He's the man who lost one of the country's most successful coaches (Hartman), was ready to promote his young assistant coach, a Brooklyn recruiting connection (Mark Reiner) when the old coach (Hartman) returned, giving the young coach (Reiner) second thoughts about staying at K-State himself.
REINER FINALLY agreed to stick with his old job, and his old boss, Hartman, has been welcomed back to Manhattan with open arms. All the players say they will stay, and the dust has apparently settled after an interesting week.
Three things are apparent after this game of musical coaches: K-State fans are happy, Oklahoma State fans are unhappy and Jack Hartman doesn't look very good.
Tux and Amy don't mix
Coach's only sin was indecision
Gerald Ford's visit to the White House last week was billed as a return to the good old days for the former president. The only shortcoming seemed to be that a good ole boy was residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
visit, and her hands were sticky with lemonade concentrate.
Ford and President Jimmy Carter allowed reporters and photographers to surround them for what those of the gobbledygook set like to call a media event. Members of the press who were there described Ford's decision to have a remarked that Ford's facial expression was so solennit it was almost grim.
JIMMY AND Rosalynn heard the knocking at the door and
favored palm from the forests of Pebble Beach. Ford, since he was a guest, won the right to choose his wood and Carter
THE PRESS gathering may have seemed friendly and easy-going. But the press corps was so busy meeting its deadline that it didn't know of a later meeting arranged between the two groups before meeting that didn't go as easily as the first.
Ford thought this second meeting was a dinner date and, accordingly, wore his tuxedo. He did not wear his shoes. House he didn't see so formal.
He knocked on the door and it was answered by Amy Carter. She recognized her former friend with a grim smile and with him. The grim expression Ford had worn most of the day faded with this handshake. It seems that he was coming from her father to make lemonade for this special
Jay Bemis Editorial Writer
came to give the former president a compassionate greeting. But it was an embarrassing greeting for Ford because all the Carters were dressed in blue jeans and summer cotton shirts—in contrast to this tuxedo.
While Rosalynl ady Off to wash her hands, Jimmy and Jerry went to the Oval Office for another chat.
"No thanks," Ford said. "It seems to be a little chiller in here than it used to be."
Carter, being the southern gentleman that he is, offered to take Ford's jacket.
"I HAVE AN extra cardigan sweater if you'd like," the President said.
Ford declined that offer too, but made another effort by building a fire. It was the choice of wood for the fire that marked the difference between the two men's political affiliations.
pitched some palm into the fireplace.
Carter wanted to burn some of his old hickory while Ford
Rosalynn and Amy brought in trays of food.
"Aren't we eating in the main dining room," Ford asked.
“WELL, WE usually eat here in the Oval Office, since it is warmer,” Carter said. “You see, the rest of the house is kept clean and sterile, around the fire adheres to my principles of toetherness.”
Amy was about to pour their guest some more lemonade as Ford was lighting his pipe for an after-dinner smoke. Pipe and cord ended and Ford ended up with a quart of lemonade all over his tux.
The dinner was a Southern one of course. Ford enjoyed the fried chicken and hush puppies, but he didn't clean up his grits.
BEFORE FORD left the White House, he and Carter performed the usual state custom of exchanging invitations for future visits to one another. Ford promised to teach Carter how to play golf and Carter promised to take Ford fishing off the Georgia coast.
Almost no one except the K-State fans was very pleased with Hartman's decision(s). He didn't mention the editorial, which grudgingly admitted that Hartman was a pretty fair coach, all things considered, but turnabout. The editorial said it wasn't very responsible of
"God bless you sir," Carter said as Ford was leaving, "and again, we hope you'll forgive Amy."
"That's all right," Ford said. "I'll have someone drop off the jeans and sweat before Betty and I return to Palm Beach."
That seems to be a bit too much. The level of play doesn't make much difference in a decision like this; to haul out a well-worked phrase, it's the principle of the matter, not the
but OSU as well. You just don't do this kind of thing in this day on the big-time level OSU and K-State ogy on."
Jerry Seib Editorial Writer
Hartman to toy with the basketball fortunes of two major universities in such a lax mapker.
size of the basketball programs, that is important.
THE OKLAHOMA STATE University U'Ocollegian, meanwhile, was understandably peeved at Hartman. Its editorial on the affair said, "He embarrassed not only himself,
And the principle here is that Jack Hartman thought he made a mistake and changed his mind. He had the courage to mistake it well before he to State Oklahoma State all "gretted it."
THE REAL TRAGEDY
would have occurred if Hartman had seen that he had made a mistake and taken the Oklahoma State job half-heartedly. There is no indication that Hartman was playing one school against the other or that he traveled the full 400 miles to pick up a few fast bucks from the highest binder. Indeed, it would be hard to even try something like that in 24 hours.
This isn't said to canonize Jack Hartman. The man is a graff coach who is sometimes abrasive to his own players and almost always abrasive to the press. Even when it appeared that he was leaving K-State, his played one game before deciding whether they had really cared for him—although all were appreciative of the winning tradition he had carried on at K-State.
HARTMAN IS A good coach who has had only one losing
season in 22 years of coaching.
But he is only one good coach in a whole sea of coaches, and Oklahoma State need not fire a man who didn't really want their head coaching job anyway.
If Hartman committed any sin, it was merely to change his mind. And if that’s a grievous difference between Jack Hartman changing his mind and anybody else changing his mind can be measured in headline sizes. Hartman’s decision to leave big news, making the fact he left Hartman and his mind even bigger news.
CHANGING JOBS twice in a day isn't to be recommended, and it endeared Hartman to almost no one. But he must have known that when he made his ultimate choice.
We should at least respect the man for admitting a mistake and standing red-faced before the world to admit it.
TSK, TSK, TSK. '
IRS system costly but needed
WASHINGTON - R doesn't happen often in the column-writing business, but it happens sometimes. You start into a room where someone comes down on the wrong side. Today finds me in bed with the Internal Revenue Service. There was a seldom been so embarrassed.
the controversy involves an effort by the IRS to develop and to install a brand-new, marvelously efficient system of computerized data retrieval. This system is also the Administration System or TAS. It would cost upwards of $750 million over the next several years. Once geared up, the system could produce five
years of a taxpayer's records in a matter of seconds.
When the IRS outlined its plan to the House Ways and Means
James J. Kilpatrick (c) 1977 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Committee last year, Chairman Al Ullman had some prudent reservations. He wondered if TAS could become a "system of enforcement" in political manipulation." He was concerned that individual privacy might not be sufficiently protected. He asked the Chief of Staff of Office of Technology Assessment to look into the matter.
© 1977 NYT Special Features
LAST MONTH the OTA released a report that tended, in general, to confirm Ullman's apprehensions. The OTA raised concerns about the proposed system—how it would operate, what risks it entailed, what safeguards would be installed. Because I was not understand, and because I feel passionate about protecting a citizen's privacy, I launched into the OTA report with a confident conclusion in view: computers, and full speed ahead!
Now I dumo. The arguments advanced by the IRS in favor of this system strike me as too tenuous. The OTA's thinly veiled arguments against it strike me as conjectural, hazy and just possibly paranoid. If the IRS can prove that future the heavy start-up costs, I'd go for a green light.
THE IRS NOW operates under a computerized system designed in 1958. Since then, the state of the art has advanced unbelievably. The proposed new network interconnected regional centers. All of its taxpayer's records, which novt tend to get scattered about, would be assembled and encoded. The system would function at twice the speed of computers in theory, inquiries that now take four or five weeks could be processed in two.
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Yes, the TAS contains some worrisome risks. An estimated 48,000 IRS employees would have to work long hours and would lend itself to interconnection with other governmental and military data retrieval systems. It is considered illegal for government officials, working in conspiracy with political figures or even in conspiracy with the press, could leak data calculated to damage a particular individual target.
THE IRS RESPONDS to the INSECURITY apprehensions by pointing to an impressive array of safeguards. Under the Privacy Act of 1974, the unauthorized disclosure of tax information is a felony up to five years in prison. Access to the data retrieval system would be controlled, so that only a few employees in positions of trust would have unlimited access. Every user of the system would leave an identifiable trail through the system and be agreeable to whatever further restrictions and safeguards Congress might wish to impose.
F
The conflict in this
proposition is at least as old as Ned Lud. He was the half-witted English workingman who attempted to halt the budding industrial revolution of 1779 by breaking up new machinery. I myself am subject to Luddites, and much of the truth that this is folly. The Internal Revenue Service has a complex, thankless, indispensable job to do. It cannot be expected to perform it with penn and hand-posted ledgers. If this proposed TAS will significantly improve efficiency without increasing the and due process, it would be stupid to impose Luddite objections.
I
These comments are not intended as wholesale criticism of the OTA report. The OTA staff has raised many questions that need to be raised. The OTA team is also confident computers doubtless will tempt unscrupulous fingers. Such risks ought not to be minimized—but they ought not to be blown either. If we expect the IRS to do a com-munication about a little enough to ask—we ought not to balk at providing the tools.
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