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Around the
Legislative bush
Bob Devaney is new preparing for the upcoming
battle against Oklahoma, but he might soon battle
another strong opponent--Gov. Exon.
The governor says he might suggest to the 192
Legislature that if the University is to get an increase in
state aid anywhere near the $6.8 million requested, it
will have to use money currently earmarked ior the
f ieldhouse, Devaney's pet project.
Last May, over the governor's veto, the Legislature
increased the cigarette tax 5c per pack and set aside the
increased revenue for the fieldhouse and a state office
building. The bill directed the State Building
Commission (which is headed by Exon) to nominate
architects for the projects. But almost half a year has
passed and the Commission has not nominated any
architects for the projects and has indicated that it is in
no rush to do so.
Exon is now suggesting that the estimated $7 miMion
in increased revenue from the tax be divided, with $4.6
million going to the general fund and the remainder
being used to finance a six-year bond issue to pay for
the fieldhouse.
The governor is stalling on the building projects in
hopes of having the earmarking feature eliminated by
the 1972 Legislature. The tax increase with its
earmarking feature has, not been well received by the
state and it is speculated that political pressure may
force some senators, who voted for the measure, to
switch over to Exon's way of thinking.
Exon is definitely neglecting his duties as governor
and circumventing the will of the Legislature by his
stalling tactics. However, Exon is correct in his criticism
of the method of financing the projects and the
priorities involved.
It appears that the earmarking section of the bill
might be reversed by the Legislature. Since the
fieldhouse and state office building have been delayed
this long, it makes some sense to wait until January
when the Legislature can decide on Exon's inaction.
If Devaney wins another national title the lawmakers
will be hard pressed to act favorably on the fieldhouse.
But hopefully the Legislature will realize that there are
higher priority items in the state than the fieldhouse and
the state office building.
Youth power
The country got its first look at the impact of the 18
year-old vote in recent nationwide municipal elections.
The readiest conclusion to be drawn from the elections
is that the youth vote will have a significant impact on
American politics, especially in college towns.
Here is a partial scoreboard showing the influence of
the youth vote:
-Boulder, Colo; Marshall, Minnesota; Ocala Fla.;and
Urbana, Ohio elected students to their city councils.
The Boulder city council now has a student majority.
--A recent law school graduate defeated a two-term
incumbent for mayor in Bloomington, Ind.; and
youth-oriented campaigns helped elect two men to the
city council in East Lansing, Mich.
However, there are limits to the youth vote as
demonstrated by the recent elections. For example,
young people failed to alter the outcome of the
elections for mayor in Philadelphia and Cleveland,
where conservative candidates won.
Undoubtedly the young voters will suffer defeats in
the electoral process. But the youth vote will also claim
many victories as more and more young people register.
Gary Seacrest
jabbed with phase one!
Then punched with
phase two . . .
i
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Voting
?S MissPP1 style
ken wlseman
Student Union
more than a building
Ken Wiseman k chairman of the Nebraska Union Planning
Committee.
It used to be thought that a union was something only for
the large university - something that would help overcome the
penalties of size by unifying the "big" campus and
personalizing and humanizing its procedures. A union vitally
contributes to this goal, but it does much more.
Many colleges are coming to recognize that the campus
environment furthers (or may deter) the fruitful use of student
time and learning process. They recognize that wherever young
people are gathered together away from home, a social center
and program are needed, and that the union is as normal and
necessary a part of the college equipment as dormitories, a
gymnasium, and library.
Study in the presence of a good teacher can provide an
experience never to be forgotten. But the impacts of such
moments, and the student's regard for the college, should not
be blurred or destroyed by overcrowded dining rooms, the
lack of ordinary small unrelated segments, a poverty of
meeting and discussion and other students. Much of what
students learn they learn from each other, and from faculty in
informal association outside the classroom.
Further, if people are to live together in harmony, they
must learn new social skills, and the meaning of serving the
common welfare. In college such lessons are often best learned
where students eat, work, and play together; where they meet
to discuss freely and act responsibly to solve, as members of a
student community, their'own group problems. A campus is
not complete without the essential facilities for such activities.
To a great extent the East Campus Union has a
"deficinecy" of these facilities. That is to say that in some
cases the facilities are mediocre and in some cases
non-existent. In 1952 the facilities were described as
"temporary".
To correct this situation a certain portion of student fees
have been set aside specifically for the construction of a new
East Campus Union. The funds have reached a point at which
preliminary planing may be worthwhile.
But before actual architectural planning may proceed, a
needed study and a program analysis must be made. After all,
the average union provides 40 types of services and
socio-culture programs. With this in mind, the Union Planning
Committee, with cooperation of the Central Planning
Commission, administration, students and faculty, Is gathering
this basic information so that planning can proceed in a
reasonable programmed way.
The planning of a new union is not just the planning of a
certain kind of physical structure, or adapting an existing set
of facilities to a new circumstance. The planning of a union, in
the best sense, means arriving at a comprehensive,
well-considered plan for the community life of the University.
If a union is to respond effectively to the wide range of
needs and interests of a university population at leisure, if it is
to become genuinely a community center -- the social and
cultural heart of the campus -- it will draw together in one
place those facilities and activities which will give everyone in
the university family a reason for coming to the center.
Brevity in letters is requested and the
C f IvM'sli VI IVl II V Vr Daily Nebraskan reserves the right to
I II R 1 I I 1 U V I fll condense letters.. All letters must be
I Wl rll I 1 LJgjL IjimM vAJM accompanied by writer's true name but
1 rfrafTffS (YCnJ rrCI may be submitted for publication under
f 1 t-yqr M IJ & 15 1 V P8" name or initials- However, letters
I I L H 1 V Kl 11 IV l W J V I "V will be printed under a pen name or
AJLX' lUi' Imi --..'' initials at the editor's discretion.
, lr- , , firi ,, i im iiiiiiii hi "'"L jnr n i 1
WASH INGTON-One. of the more
embarrassing aspects of our democracy is that
we seldom do anything about fraud at the polls.
Take the case of Charles Evers, the first black
man ever to run for governor of Mississippi. The
final tally shows him with 158,000 votes. The
figure is almost certainly fraudulent.
How fraudulent we shall never know.
Certainly not enough to have made him a
winner over Gov.-elect Waller. But just as
certainly enough to defeat many of the black
candidates who ran for minor office on his
independent slate.
So say both private poll watchers and
government-paid observers who went to
Mississippi on election eve and have come back
both wise and angry.
Most of the fraud, they report, involved
white polling officials falsely instructing
illiterate blacks on how to vote. In some
counties, black illiteracy runs as high as 40,
and white officials, entering the polling booth
with the voter, saw to it that he voted for white
candidates. That was how 16 blacks running in
counties with black majorities all lost.
The proof in one such county, Humphreys,
came when a white observer found two
educated black voters and sent them into the
polling place with instructions to pretend
illiteracy. Their report will be delivered to the
Justice Department which may or may not
decide to prosecute.
Humphreys was probably the worst
example. In two townships. Midnight and
Louise, the voting booths were surrounded by
armed white toughs, who kept blacks away,
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
excluded poll watchers and federal observers
and made certain that Robert Clark, the only
black member of the Mississippi Legislature
failed to carry the preponderantly black
county.
But in a dozen other counties, similar tactics
were used. In Gulfport, Evers' poll watchers
were excluded from the voting places even after
Mr. Justice Stokes Robinson, Jr. of the
Mississippi Supreme Court had telephoned a
deputy sheriff with the news that he had issued
an injunction. The Sheriff's insistence that he
had to see it in writing effectively voided the
order of the court.
Phoenix, Miss., a black majority town,
delivered 134 votes for Waller to none for
Evers. In towns where government observers
were sent to watch polls, Evers and his black
ticket fared better. But the observers chosen
from the civil service lists by the Justice
Department-were thin on the ground, and
some of them took the trip South as an excuse
for a holiday. One stood by and remained silent
while an Evers' poll watcher got his teeth
knocked out. Others brought bedrolls and
retired early.
Evers who has now returned to his mayoral
duties in Fayette has decided not to bring
evidence of fraud on his own behalf. But he will
try to contest local elections where blacks were
defeated in black districts and where evidence
of coercion and fraud can be found.
"Some of the white people of Mississippi
weren't very good sports," Evers says. 'They
could have beaten me without cheating. Why
did they want to cheat too?"
Copyright 1971, Los Angeles Times
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1971
Dear editor,
On page 2 of Monday's Daily Nebraskan one reads a
headline: "Conference ends in complaints." The final session
of the Third National Conference on Experimental Colleges
was indeed exciting, but less for "strong dissatisfaction" with
the Conferences' format as reported by the newspaper than for
the suggestions made by these study critics.
An initial verbal spasm urged that rather than talking
together in workshops it would have been far better to hug
each other and scream together. Others in the group suggested
that the next conference be a non-conference, that instead we
meet for five days or a week -- and including the faculty if
they could get away that long - on a farm or in a field and
really get into each other's lives, really meet each other as
human beings.
You and I know that's a beautiful thought. A small group
wanted to set up a nation wide tour-by-bus of people into the
"really new" education--this was ideologically acceptable to
the complainants, but seemed a cop out. And a good number
of people, many of whom were from cities and villages perhaps
more advanced culturally and who therefore found the
dissident rheotoric two years old, wanted to deal with some
actual and present questions.
These were: (1) the format of the next conference -
national or, because of the size of the Nebraska conference
suggests the widespread and substantial interest in
experimental programs, regional. And (2) the two strong
proposals, on which many of the conference participants had
been thinking for a day and a half, for. a means of national
coordination, even to the sharing of resources for study and
evaluation, of the major new movement in colleges across the
country.
Did you know that not counting Centennial Program
representatives, there were 387 deans, teachers, and students
from 100 programs and universities and independent colleges?
For comparison, there were 60 schools and a total of 250
people at the University of Michigan conference a year ago.
Something very large is happening. And the noisy claque of
some thirty people from four schools rather pales, doesn't it?
It was a good conference, apparently even a rich one for
schools like the University of Virginia planning experimental
programs or for those trying to fight through hard problems of
one kind or another.
Some of the workshops -- those on evaluation and on the
politics of starting and keeping programs, for example -- were
both high-powered. and disciplined in getting at the matters
many people wanted to get at. Some divided and subdivided to
celebrate points of view, others managed a solid term of hard
debate. .
The special panel on schools that failed-Nasson in Main,
Fordham's Bensalem, North Carolina's Project Hinton-was a
room-buster, as was one on off-campus study (Gene Harding
talked about NOVA in that one). A sensitivity-oriented
presentation out of Oakland University on popular culture ran
for two days to a self-selecting clientele.
But do you know what most of the people at the
conference thought most exciting and ceative? Talking
together about their programs and colleges - even to 6 a.m.
And working together toward the national unit, which some
hope will be centered in Lincoln.
The conference was worth it, though. And we thank you
for paying some attention. It's not often that the University
gets looked at by college students and faculty from all over the
nation. And although the Sunday noon claque gave us a noisy
moment, quite a few other things went on, as you can see, and
rather good things at that.
T. E. Beck, Jr.
Senior Fellow
Centennial Education Program
Dear editor, ....
In the editorial column of the Nov. 10 Daily Nebraskan the
editor has exhibited an unparalleled narrow-mindedness in
evaluating the season's last half time show.
The overriding purpose of the band's halftime show needs
to be pointed out to the editor: the show is performed for the
public's entertainment rather than as a social commentary. I
share the anti-war views of the editor, however, to use a band
performance to express this view is highly inappropriate, as
well as in bad taste.
Even the peace-loving Nebraskan editor must acknowledge
the important part the armed services play in enforcing peace
in areas other than Southeast Asia. In addition, anyone
condemning the playing of "This Is My Country" and the
formation of the letters "USA" should seriously re-examine
his values if he insists on calling himself an American.
A reference was made to UNL Band Director Jack Snider
who "last year. . .was quite upset after the card section flashed
the peace sign during a game." As a journalism major, I am
ashamed of my colleague for slanting this by omitting the fact
that the card section did this "ad lib" and not according to the
show, which is what upset Mr. Snider. Perhaps, even a Daily
Nebraskan editor would become "upset" if someone on the
staff performed an assignment contrary to instructions.
Harvey E. Watson
f U oNiy
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i u r- 1 1 I i n n i
J LLbUU 3
EBRA5KA UniOH BalLOOmO
. . Ji-iO.ORAA nouus: 47Z-Z&H9. advertising.
472 2590. Second class postage rates paid at Lincoln. Nebras
Subscription rates ar $5 per semester or $9 per year. Pub .had
Monday. Wednesday. Thursday and Friday dur.nt , the schoo year
except during vacation and exam periods. Member of the
Intercollegiate Press, National Educational Advertising Service.
The Daily Nebraskan is a student publication, .editorially
independent of the Univeristy of Nebraska's administration, faculty
""Vddr'r,! rhe'oaTirNebraskan. 34 Nebraska Union. University of
Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68508.
GIVE THE NATION
BACK TO ITS PEOPLE
John W. Gardner, Chairman
Common Cause
Former Secretary
ot Health, Education and Welfare
Who said citizen action is futile? Populism in the
nineteenth century left an indelible mark on the
nation. Citizen action won the vote for women in
1920 and brought the abolition of child labor. The
labor movement, the civil rights movement, the
peace movement, the gonservation movement all
began with concerned citizens. If we had waited for
the government or Congress or the parties to initiate
any of them, we'd still be waiting. Try to think of a
significant movement in our national life that was
Initiated by the bureaucracy. Or by Congress. Or by
the parties.
For a while, we lost confidence in our capacity to
act as citizens, but the citizen is getting back to his
feet. And citizen action is taking on a tough minded
professional edge it never had before. Never has our
society needed more desperately the life-giving
spark of citizen action. We must make our instru
ments of self-government work. We must halt the
abuse of the public interest by self-seeking special
interests.
The special interests buy favor through campaign
gifts. What flows back is literally scores of billions of
dollars in tax breaks, in lucrative defense contracts,
in favored treatment of certain regulated industries,
in tolerance of monopolistic practices. And the tax
payer foots the bill.
To combat such pervasive corruption, we must
strike at the two instruments of corruption in public
life money and secrecy.
To combat the corrupting power of money, we
must control campaign spending and lobbying, and
require full disclosure of conflict of interest on the
part of public officials.
To tear away the veil of secrecy, we must enact
"freedom of information" or "right to know" statutes
which require that the public business be done pub
licly. And that's only a beginning. We can regain
command of our instruments of self-government.
To accomplish this, each citizen must become an
activist, especially the college student with his
newly acquired right to vote. He must make his voice
heard. Common Cause, a national citizens' lobby,
was created to accomplish just that. It hoped to en
roll 100,000 members in its first year, ana ct that
number in 23 weeks! On its first anniversary, it had
200,000 members.
It was the chief citizens' group lobbying tor the Constitu
tional Amendment on the 18-year old vote.
It joined with environmental groups to defeat the SST.
It brought the first real challenge in a generation to the
tyrannical seniority system in Congress.
It helped bring the House of Representatives to its first
recorded vote on the Vietnam War.
It has sued the major parties to enjoin them from violat
ing the campaign spending laws.
There is much more to do. And the time to do it is
now. The American people are tired of being bilked
and manipulated. It's time to give this country back
to its people. For additional information, write Com
mon Cause, Box 220, Washington, D.C. 20044.
This space is contributed as a
People Service by The Van Heusen Company
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PAGE 5
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1971
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
PAGE 4
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