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Fridav. January 28,1977
University Daily Kansan
Comment
Opinions on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Kansas or the School of Journalism
Library a top need
It was good news indeed when the Board of Regents voted last week to amend the KU budget to allow the spending of an additional $380,000 for improvements to Watson and Spencer libraries.
If the action is approved as expected by the Kansas Legislature,the money will be spent on increasing shelf space,improving lighting and cleaning and painting both libraries' lower floors so they could be used for storage.
THE MONEY will come from some $1 million in surplus student fees collected last year as a result of larger-than-expected enrollments.
Adequate funding for libraries at Board of Regents institutions has been hard to come by in recent years. Library attests to that. Last summer, visiting building consultants hired to estimate the costs of renovating Watson, said the building's crowded central stacks made it a virtual fire trap.
Last fall, the library had to seek extra funding to pay student wages and maintain its regular business hours. Funds needed for basement renovation and the installation of a sprinkler system in case of fire haven*
been available without taking money already allocated for new book purchases—an indispensable part of any library budget.
Yes, the $380,000 is definitely needed. But that sort of piecemeal funding is not the long-range answer. University officials have plans for more necessary renovations and, eventually, construction of a new $6 million library. The problems facing KU's libraries cannot be solved with emergency fund supplements and rechanneled excess fees<sup>1</sup>.
A GOOD library is the heart of any college or university. And, as far as numbers of books are concerned, KU has a good library, ranking among the top state universities in the nation. But the library does not work well on unless they are kept in a facility that keeps them in good condition, safe and accessible to students and faculty.
These are hard times for university budgets, and both legislators and taxpayers are getting more and more cautious when it comes to money for higher education. Every year the budget battle gets more and more intense.
intense.
As KU fights its annual battle of the dollars, library funding should be a top priority.
"OH, YEAH, YOU THE BOY JIMMY RECOMMENDED..."
With the death of Clytice Nichols, who died last week at 71, the University lost one of its greatest natural resources.
Mrs. Nichols was the wife of former chancellor Raymond Nichols, who is best known for skillfully handling KU during the transition from E. Laurence Chalmers to Archie Dykes. She was much more than just Ray Nichol's wife, however.
FOR MORE than 45 years she was a volunteer leader and adviser to faculty, student and alumni organizations. In 1975, she was awarded the Fred Ewellsworth Medallion, the KU Alumni Association's
KU friend remembered
highest award, in recognition of her many services to the University.
She, like her husband, had a long love affair with KU. It began while she attended school here and never let up. Much of her free time was spent attending nearly all the University's theater, music and sports events.
The faculty and alumni who knew her best remember Mrs. Nichols as a perfect hostess
In a smaller college, Mrs. Nichols would probably be mourned by students who knew personally of her and could do so for her pride and fondness her services and wish we had known her services and wish we had known her services.
Schools have right to limit press
WASHINGTON—One of our suburban high schools recently erupted in a controversy over a student paper and its student editor. Virtually identical controversies crop up coast to coast. They are the offspring, alas, of alma martyr.
Our local contemplets was in the classic pattern. It occurred at a public school financed by public funds. The young woman
with the title editor conceive the idea of making a survey of "sexually active" students. Her thought was to determine what
was to hold down the high school pregnancy rate.
SO INSPIRED, the editor went out. gathered her
James J. Kilpatrick
cct 1977 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
they knew about conception, or more accurately about contraception, and to report her findings. Her laudable purpose
thought he was securing certain civil rights for the freed slaves: never in his wildest dreams, we may be certain, did he suppose he was securing the right of a student editor to publish a piece about diaphragms, vaginal foams and the pill.
City grassroots grow deep, firm
For many, the term 'grass roots' politics evokes visions of idealistic citizens hoping to achieve often obscure and ambiguous aims, which they deem necessary for the improvement of a particular community. What starts out as a genuine and sincere attempt to convert overshadowed by personal differences, ideological factionalism and lack of competent organization.
citizen involvement in determining school policies.
testing time of their viability, vitality and value to the community is at hand.
The Citizens for Mayor and Council Government, meanwhile, hopes to replace the present city manager- one of a mayor and district councilors.
For two Lawrence citizens' groups, the
Spurred on by dissatisfaction with the present city government structure and operation the groups, Lawrence Citizens' Voice and Citizens for Mayor and Council directed that new law be codified proclaiming that Lawrence desperately needs change and that change can occur
BOTH GROUPS find proof in the merits of their ideas from the present
charm, but when he was done the piece was dead.
W had a lesson in an editor's freedom just a few months ago, on the New York Times, when the publisher Punch盐ucker Publisher Punch盐ucker. The issue was an editorial endorsement of Pat Moynihan for it; the titler Oakes was for it; the subwriter was for it; Guess who won?
As a matter of law, the proposition strikes me as bizarre, but it is hard to tell what the federal courts will do with Massachusetts. A U.S. district judge in Massachusetts found in favor of a student editor in such a case. Federal judges are capable of any damn foolishness. A federal judge ruled not long ago that a college football player's right to play football is a proverb. You can't take from him without due process. Spin in your grave, Thad Stevens!
that it does. It must furthermore examine whether its program, which on the surface presents an impressive list of remedies to present illis, is truly realistic and practical in view of limited city finances and manpower.
Paul Addison
Editorial Writer
While applauding these groups and local neighborhood associations for their determination and obvious concern for the future of the city, each must learn to be prepared. It is also a present danger that it could merely replicate the system it hopes to improve.
Letters Policy
crises in the Lawrence city government structure that have brought numerous resignations and disputes between several employee groups, city commissioners and Buford Watson, city manager.
Letters to the editor are welcomed but should be typewritten, double-spaced and no longer than 400 words. All letters are edited and may be condensed according to space limitations and the editor's judgment. Letters must be signed; KU students must provide their academic standing and hometown; faculty must provide their position; others must provide their address.
IN BOTH cases, preliminary observation of their programs and motives reveals organized and cohesive groups with firm beliefs in their direction and goals. Participants in Saturday's Citizens' Voice convention, for instance, unanimously voted for 'grass roots' neighborhood institutions, were implemented, would unintimately bring improvements in the quality of life to the city.
only by listening to the "voice of the people."
material, and wrote her story.
Then the principal killed it. The local school board sustained the principal. The distraught editor, her pet project thus ended. Joan of Arc on a pyre of the First Amendment. She charged that her right to freedom of the press had been violated. Various civil libertarians took up the cry. Censorship. Prior to print! Oppression most vile!
THE CITIZENS for Mayor and Council Government need to closely examine whether their aim to replace the city manager by an elected-at-large mayor would be any real improvement on the present system. Selecting councilmen from city districts would perhaps make the city government more representative of the citizens, but wouldn't alleviate the problem of non-professional, part-time public servants hindered by the constraints of job obligations and time.
LAWRENCE needs a city government that can truly proclaim itself representative of all the interests of the city. Neither of the new groups would necessarily bring great changes to the city, but through continued active support from other important areas would be voiced and discussed in a wider arena than at city commission meetings. And that, surely, is what democracy is all about.
In the group's scheme there would seem, in fact, to be few checks and balances to prevent councillors from being dominated by a mayor in the same city; the group feels the present city commissioners are dominated by the city manager.
The Citizens' Voice program, which supports environmental and local business development, must actively work to find its program really does have the support of the majority of local citizens. It can't simply presume
Their hope is that prospective city commissioners who were endorsed by those present at the convention will consciously press for such programs as a Lawrence mass transit program, neighborhood preservation and increased
You didn't hear Oakes bellyclapping that he had been denied freedom of press on the Times, and of freedom of reason: the Times was not his press to be free with. Oakes had a right to oppose Moynihan; he was at liberty to write whatever he liked, but the constitutional right to have his stuff printed in the Times.*
The legal theory behind this argument is to this effect. The Fourteenth Amendment says that a state may not deprive any person of life, liberty or property without the process of law. The Supreme Court has ruled that the freedom of the press as protected by the First Amendment. Therefore the principal of a public school, as an agent of the state, may not deprive a student editor of the liberty to publish what the editor please
THIS PROPOSITION would have astounded the late Steve Shewey of Pennsylvania, the Fourteenth Amendment, the gentleman from Pennsylvania
BUT IF some cockalorum on the bench will support this nonsense, few professional editors will go along. There is a possibility that he happens also to be his own publisher, who possesses the "right" the student editors assert. In the ordinary case, an editor's liberty stops where the author is standing. I know; I have been an editor; this is the way life is. I worked under one of the most tolerant, delightful publishers ever born. When Tennant Bryan killed one of my pieces, he killed it humanely, under the anesthesia of his
THIS HAS to be the rule. Any other system means anarchy; it means the end of publishing authority. In his high school curriculum, itself fulfills the publisher's role. So long as student papers live by institutional subduy, their editors have precisely the same liberty, more or less, of managing them than student editors are unwilling to accept the ultimate veto power of a high school principal or college president, let them control the campus. Then when they appoint some strong-willed editor, they can kill his stuff. And so it goes.
Page should be forum
To the editor:
Regarding your request for feedback from readers, I would like to repeat a criticism I expressed to the editor last
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KANSAN
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semester that I feel has not yet been satisfactorily resolved.
It is my perception that the editorial page, specifically those editorials written by student journalists, reflect a specific ideological outlook rather than providing a forum for discussion. I am not given editorial should not be required to give a fair and complete representation of all opinions on the subject under which the editorial should present the opinion of that individual writer.
However, I believe, and I think most responsible journalists would agree, that a newspaper's editorial page should contain editorials from people with diverse perspectives, especially a newspaper financed through compulsory fees from a diverse population, thus imitated from an expression of dissatisfaction in the matter, or any other aspect for that reason, in the marketplace.
The excuse that I was given last semester was that it was difficult to locate editorial writers who weren't so liberal. I
hope this semester's search proves more productive.
I hope the new policy of unsigned editors will not lead to an abdication of this responsibility and to a further tilt to the editor's side. As a single, consistent, activist personality for the paper.
Robert Jennings Lawrence senior
Racism not limited
To the editor:
We wish to respond to the letter addressing the issue of racism in sorority rush. We are pleased that a sorority member had the courage to publicly question the tradition of white membership within the Greek system.
It is important to note that racism is not limited to the Greek system, but is a part of it. In the KUY, racism has been an ongoing concern, and in dealing with it we first had to come to grips with the racism own white organization.
Racism is too often rationalized away instead of being dealt with openly. Reasons are found to support the status quo. We share Ms. Tolleson's frustration in identifying and dealing with the real issue, and we join others in calling for dialogue in what might be an important first step in beginning the process of the elimination of racism on the KU campus.
Ken Jones Representing the KU-Y Board