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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 3, 1969)
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN MONDAY, MARCH 3, 1969 PAGE 2 i 1 '.1 v 5 3 3 3 """SB rnside report -Hardin fights hunger, (tide Here come da' judg(ment) T'V.i'r. (.nrincr'e Alantim. morlre fh rnH nf n VPar- IJahg trial. But the 18,000-member jury may not Tff able to voice a verdict. Almost a year ago, the University affiliated "Iflth the National Student Association (NSA) on a Hftne-year trial basis. By rights, then, the students jTgmild have the opportunity to review the - "desirability of continued affiliation. ZZZ AS THE ASUN Constitutional Convention met Th weekend, however, one of the topics suggested Jw consideration was that of selecting an NSA I2S)resentative. . . , To coin a cliche, tiiis is putting the cart before 3ie ass. Shouldn't the students first be allowed ""tcf render a verdict on the NSA affiliation? ASUN president Mike Naeve indicated Sunday IJttfat a decision had not been reached on a second NSA referendum. . "ZZ ON A SUBJECT as historically controversial NSA affiliation, it would seem only right that ASUN seek a student consensus on the advantages (or disadvantages) of continuing with the And, at the very least, the Constitutional Con vention should restrain from incorporating NSA Into the Constitution until the University can democratically decide the question. Otherwise, it may again create a document vhich will be outmoded almost as soon as it is ratified. Ed Icenogle rtk Mium Ja.-T 1 HDTtC, PlEAtf, HOW W AftTAlM FWA PWMIjlNG PROttMY. ffliis is an emergency! We need the table 1" J I ,.f, II llt IM Mtftk i. .vU c y'J JF ' WWti' by Rowland Evans and Robert Novak Washington A minor incident last week in volving some 40 California grape pickers and tae U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed the tip of the iceberg of a fierce bureaucratic struggle about to surface here. The grape pickers, carrying proposals for distributing free food to the hungry poor, had made an appointment to see Dr. Charles Ernst, regional director of the department's consumer and marketing services. But they arrived at his office in San Francisco only , to find themselves locked out. ' ' There would be no interview, they were told, because it might compromise the government in a legal suit involving food distribution to the poor. DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED by this exclusion, the grape pickers then learned that Robert Finch, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), was in town. They went to his hotel, and Finch agreed not only to discuss their proposals but pro mised to tell President Nixon. Finch's eagerness to promote the cause of the hungry was no sudden inspiration. Finch and some of his top" aides, in fact, are now angling to take complete charge of surplus food distribution from the Agriculture Department, whose unwillingness or inability to get food to the hungry is pro verbial. For eight years during the Kennedy-Johnson administrations, for example, Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman never could unsnarl in getting food to the hungry, or even find out where and how many hungry people there the red tape hampering the Federal government are. THE REASON wasn't that Freeman is heartless. Rather, the Agriculture Department is geared not to consumer interests but to producer interests. Protecting that relationship are some of Washington's sharpest-eyed guards: Southern Con gressman who chair the committees controlling programs and appropriations for the Agriculture Department. v For example, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota, now conducting Senate hunger hearings, is the only non-Southerner among seven Democrats on the Senate Agriculture Committee. In the House, Agriculture Department money is under the tight control of Rep. Jamie Whitten of Mississippi, chair man of the Farm Appropriations Subcommittee, Most of these Southerners have no desire to convert the department into a national food dispenser for the hungry. BUT THINGS ARE changing at Agriculture under the new Secretary, Dr. Clifford Hardin. It was Hardin who personally made possible the dramatic change in the food stamp program an nounced last week, under which the poor in two South Carolina counties now receive food stamps free. Hardin, moreover, made that decision over the violent (but private) protest of his number one aide, Under Secretary Phil Campbell, a leading Georgia politician who switched from Democrat to Republican last fall. Campbell, in fact, quietly spread the word down South to friends in the press last week (after Hardin, McGovern, and Sen. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina announced the free food stamps) that there is no hunger in Dixie. Those who; sponsored the food stamp change, said Campbell, were only looking for headlines. . Thus, bureaucratic battling between HEW and Agriculture has its own counterpart inside. Agriculture. Campbell and the traditionalists want to continue the old way, as the farmer's advocate; Hardin is trying to break away and use his department's enormous resources to fight hunger. , THE STAKES ARE high. Some Democrats, in fact, suspect that President Nixon (a late convert to the anti-hunger campaign) may make hunger a key domestic issue. Finch, the Cabinet's most liberal member, has been quietly pushing that idea with Nixon. Finch's intimates insist that only HEW (with the accent on health) is geared up to handle massive distribution of food to the hungry poor, and Finch well understands the full political poten tial. A key Finch argument: control over programs and money would immediately switch from Southern-dominated agriculture committees to liberal-dominated labor committees if HEW got the job. Whether or not Nixon elevates the war on jiunger into a new-style poverty program (one where results would quickly show up), hunger has now become a major political issue with irresistible bipartisan support in Congress. It is in just such a climate, when a political plum is at stake in Washington, that bureaucratic infighting becomei most intense. (e USA, PsbUstwr-HaU Syndtoat. Flora Lewis Good news from the fringes by Flora Lewis New York Cambodia, which has an am bassador at the United Nations but none in Washington, has been quietly putting out word that it is interested in renewing relations with the United States. It is important, because there can hardly be any settlement of the Vietnam war without involv ing neighboring Cambodia. Even an effective truce is difficult to foresee unless something is dona about the Viet Cong bases entrenched on the Cam bodian side of the border. ' PRINCE SIHANOUK, the country's volatile but shrewd young ruler, broke relations with the U.S. In May, 1965. He held the U.S. responsible for an attack which he said four South Vietnamese planes had made on two Cambodian border villages. Besides, he was enraged by an article in Newsweek with some juicy reports about his Queen Mother. Last year, tensions were worse when the American military in Saigon sought the right of "hot pursuit" after Viet Cong fleeing to sanctuary in Cambodia. President Johnson refused, but border incidents have been recurrent. Sihanouk has never publicly admitted the existence of Viet Cong supply routes and strongholds in his territory. But he doesn't bother to deny it nowadays. There have been signs that he too is worried lest a settlement leave him with tens of thousands of Viet Cong encamped in his country. His Ambassador to the U.N., Huot Sambath, has been inquiring through indirect contacts just what the Nixon administration's policy is in Cam bodia. Early in February, Secretary of State William Rogers said the U.S. would like to restore ties with Egypt and Cambodia. But later, a spokesman said he mentioned Cambodia inadvertently. AMBASSADOR SAMBATH is telling people that Cambodia's only condition for ties with the U.S. is recognition of its sovereignly and its current boundaries. That is a long way from the apology and guarantees which Sihanouk had sought. The boundary question is ticklish because Cambodia has frontier quarrels with both South Vietnam and Thailand, but the word being sent back by the State Department, also indirectly, is that President Nixon is interested in renewing rela tions if he can be sure Sihanouk won't change his mind again soon. The borders don't seem to be the problem, but the U.S. does want a clear signal that the off-again on-again Cambodian chief of state has settled his course. INFORMAL TALKS between the two sides can be expected in the near future. If they do lead to a restoration of ties, it will be an important sign for optimism in the Paris peace talks. Sihanouk's aim has been to keep Cambodia out of the war and the war out of Cambodia, and he has been an astute bellwether of the way things are going. Another sign for hope is word of quiet talk in Saigon about relations with Cambodia. The Viet John Fryar ... Report cools snowball con The report of the Cornhusker Commission on Snowball Violence has just been released. The fin dings point to discrimination and poverty of activity as major factors in the recent disorders. . The commission noted that tempers in the campus ghettoes had reached the freezing point. One member stated, "For months, the University has been sitting on top of an icicle." AS DWELLERS of the high-rise tenements fought with WASP homeowners from the elite residential district, police were caught in the crossfire. Wet objects of unidentified composition were thrown at the authorities. Meanwhile, a local radio station has denied spurring the riot, emphasizing that it was only "covering the news." While tempers flared, further aggravation resulted from name-calling and injudicious use of Anglo-Saxon terms. The report counts among its pages 500 instances of the term "frat rat," and 257 examples of "Up against the wall, dormie." THE COMMISSION also examines the curious absence of a radical element, particularly in view M TIfW H M0U tAM6ttmi Should there be a student on the Board of Regents? Vanderbilt University and the University of Kentucky think so. In an experiment which could become a model for other colleges across the coun try, these two schools now include student representatives in their highest ruling body. ... AT A TIME when groups such as the SAC Committee and the Constitutional Convention are examining the role of students in the NU power structure, the inclusion of a student on the Board of Regents merits serious consideration. The advantages to such an arrangement are. obvious. In the first place a student "Regent" could serve as a "sounding board" by which the Regents would test policy decisions affecting student life. As it stands now, most Board business is considered at the behest of the Chancellor and the assorted Deans who are always present at Regents meetings. Board contact with students Is normally limited to coffees, workshops and other meetings contrived by campus organizations to bring "student-Board communications." Unfortunately these gatherings are too often artificial and unrepresentative of students' real concerns. . STUDENTS COS into direct contact with of the vulnerability of the military-industrial com plex housing School of Commerce girls Jn. Heppner Hall. There is some debate about the Chancellor's refusal to call in the ROTC, choosing instead to "let them have their fun." A supplementary minority report examines the use of outside agitators, particularly condemning four Vietnam veterans on leave who "heard about it on the radio and decided to join in." No one seems to wish to carry the burden of blame for the disorders. The fraternities claim, "We were Just helping the independents to get to know their next-door neighbors." Dormies state, "Come and live here for a while and you can see for yourself why it happened." Suggested solutions have been proposed in the report. The first deals with the police, including snow riot training and the issuance of ice scrapers and ski goggles. THE SECOND proposal deals with the con struction of a hockey stadium on sixteenth street mor regent Regent business only when a particularly "hot" issue. such as deferred Greek Rush comes before the group. This leaves the Board free to make many decisions of equal significance to students on the sole basis of the Chancellor's view of "what is best for the student body." While he naturally would not speak for every student at NU, an elected student representative could give the Board an understanding of student opinion on specific policies as only he could see it Including a student on the Board of Regents would also help to erase the Board's image among students, who see it as a group of tight-fisted businessmen who run the University corporation from the sanctity of their "closed meetings," with little feeling for their student constituents. The Regents' acceptance of student represen tation would be concrete evidence of the' professed concern that students be given k large role in MTs governing process. ... SUCH A change would not be easy to effect, especially if students were to push for voting representation. But it does not seem too radical for NU students to demand non-voting representa tion on the Board in a capacity similar to that held by the Chancellor and the Corporation Secretary "on behalf of the Institution." namese and Cambodians don't like each other, but at least some Saigon leaders are coming to see they will have to have agreements with Cam bodia to make any settlement barring renewed infiltration stick. The South Vietnamese idea at this stage is that the best way to come to terms with Sihanouk is through the French. Paris and Saigon have also broken - relations, but they have had quiet talks about reopening ties. The main obstacle is the Paris peace talks, in which the French insist on maintaining strict neutrality. France has no official relations with either Saigon or Hanoi, and doesn't want to be one-sided. BUT THERE HAS been a good deal of talk about moving the conference when it gets to a second, substantive stage. Some Vietnamese leaders would like it moved all the way to the 17th parallel, on the border between North and South Vietnam. Other suggestions have been Geneva or a neutral Asian city. The U.S. could pave the way for a Vietnamese Cambodian understanding if it establishes an em bassy in Pnompenh before Saigon opens a channel to Sihanouk through Paris, Either way, these tentative diplomatic moves show that statesmen are beginning to think con cretely about peace in Southeast Asia. It's still far off, but it is becoming more than a shimmering mirage. Cambodia isn't the heart of the matter but it is providing good news from the fringes. (C) W, Ntwxtey, Inc. troversy to channel cooling emotions. In addition, the conv missing advocates the purchase and distribution of space heaters to warm things up. Finally, there is a strong movement for snow control legislation, a move sure to be challenged by lobbies of parka salesmen and ski shops. The more optimistic members of the com mission are hoping that spring will solve the prob lems. Or, as one administrator put it, "Sno prob lematall." Automobile inspection "The bumper on impact breaks the grill which punctures the radiator emptying the cooling system which burns up the engine cutting off tho power brakes thus permitting a rear end collision ... 1" DAILY NEBRASKAN du jmmum jmi! m ijimin, Nb sISJlSS. -' liv? N - m-xm MtaS rbar"u' rrku' " , Editorial Staff Su N2 t3l,w " rkwo: Kd!Urll Awt-unl cHm J"" fc" Wood, Ikx-u IMiwr Man s w ii jo t, -nm -M.rn, count. mr. roriui AdMUttoo, Lvi ruipl, Mara hchvMi, Sums Mutd. Basnets Staff rurt H,.".-"'. .""i", Bo'l UmI A4 Kuiaior Joel Dart.l jTm '17' Bora!w Ron ltoMn" 4f-orarr Mar : dJiSSl le Mn"r R-w P.vHa. Rlrk tteraB. Jam.