DAS plans to continue
item-veto of Nil funds
A spokesman for the state
Department of Administrative
Services (DAS) has said DAS
will continue to refuse to pay
vouchers for certain University
expenses even though one
University official has
described the practice as
"clearly wrong."
Howard Neville, vice
president for the
administration, saic! it was
"clearly wrong" for DAS to
refuse to pay expenses of
candidates for key University
posts and their wives who visit
the university campus.
NEVILLE ADDED that the
University can't expect these
people to come to campus at
their own expense.
"That would take most of
the people right out of the
market," he said. "The good
candidates aren't looking for a
job."
The matter of vouchers to
reimburse candidates for office
was one issue which has caused
a conflict between the
University and DAS. The other
is the use of funds from federal
grants.
The NU position is that
expenditures which are
acceptable to the federal
government should be
approved by DAS even if they
are not in agreement with state
law. DAS Director Gus Lieske
does not agree.
"OBVIOUSLY, state law
supersedes state regulations,"
Lieske said. "Unless state law is
changed, we can't look at it
any other way."
Another DAS official said
that the department has no
legal right to pay for
candidates expenses. , This is
backed-up by an opinion
written by state Deputy Atty.
Gen. Gerald Vitamvas.
The opinion says:
"With respect to providing
meals for prospective
employees, we know of no
statutory authorization or
appropriation which would
permit such."
DAS officials said that the
reasoning of the attorney
general's opinion had been
extended to cover all expenses
for job candidates.
THE CONTROVERSY
arose when DAS returned
vouchers asking $304.49 to
reimburse a candidate who
flew with his wife from
Phoenix to Lincoln for
interviews and $313.60 to pay
for a dinner honoring a
candidate for a Medical Center
department chairmanship.
DAS has taken the position
that these expenditures may
not be made without the
contention of the University is
that reasonable expenditures
"to further the aims and goals"
of the University are
acceptable unless specifically
prohibited.
Though the debate has
continued DAS has not
changed its stand. Neville said
the candidate was reimbursed
through funds made available
by the University of Nebraska
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I
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1971 LINCOLN, NEBRASKA VOL.95 NO. 48
ASUN fails to gather quorum
ASUN has five vacancies
Five vacancies in the ASUN
Senate must be filled by the
end of the first semester. One
vacant seat is in the Graduate
and Professional Colleges, and
tour vacancies exist in
Teacher's College. Those who
would wish to interview for the
seat should pick up an
application at the ASUN
office, 335 Nebraska Union,
oeiore next 1 uesday
by Carol Strasser
Unable to vote on any
business due to lack of a
quorum, ASUN senators spent
most of the meeting
Wednesday criticizing the
senate structure and senate
apathy.
The opinions expressed
were that, not only are
students apathetic toward
ASUN, but so are some
senators.
. The senate needs to either
reform its present structure to
effectively exercise power or
abolish itself and create a new
governing board, according to
Sen. Ray Metoyer.
When the meeting ended at
5:30, 21 senators were present.
A quorum requires the
attendance of 24 of the 35
senators. There are currently
five vacant senate seats, four in
Teachers College and one in
Graduate and Professionals.
Michele Coyle, 1st Vice
President, asked senators to
evaluate ASUN's performance
on its three priorities
established in the fall:
educational reform, human
..rights and student services.
Senators also were asked for
suggestions which would guide
the senate committee working
on plans for a restructure of
ASUN.
Committee chairmen
reported about progress this
semester.
Although educational
reform is ASUN's number one
priority, not a single senator
came to the first organizational
meeting of the ASUN
Educational Reform
Committee, said Sen. John
Theisen, committee chairman.
"I got the feeling ASUN
doesn't care about educational
reform," he said.
The committee, which has
since gained another ASUN
senator in addition to its 15
members, is attempting to
expand the freshman seminar
and independent study
programs, Theisen said.
A program for junior
students which would allow
them to study in out-of-state
schools for resident tuition
rates in return for UNL
accepting junior students from
those schools at resident
tuition will be in effect next
year, Theisen said.
The committee also is
attempting to expand the Arts
and Sciences Colkje advising
stan irom two to live or six
full-time advisers.
The Human Rights
Committee has worked mostly
on the Program for Active
Committment to Education
(PACE) fund drive, said
chairman Ann Pedersen.
Letters were distributed to
faculty members from NU
Pres. D.B. Varner and interim
UNL Chancellor C. Peter
Magrath asking them to
contribute to PACE.
The ASUN Legislative
Liaison Committee is drawing
up a bill which would provide
matching funds from the state
for PACE and is attempting to
gain backers among state
senators.
Several senators said ASUN
has spread itself too thin, that
the senate should try to deal
with a few issues instead of
many.
The Senate needs to work
more in the line of student
services, one senator suggested.
The Senate doesn't directly
affect students' lives so they
are apathetic, said Sen. Shelley
Stall.
The question of student
power needs to be discussed by
the restructuring committee,
Turn to page 3.
Orchestra conductors confront changing roles
For America's 1 1 Of) svmnhnnv nrrhpttri thc -1 .1 j W
For America's 1,100 svmphonv orchestras, these
are turbulent times. Never have there been more of
them playing so often and so innovative a selection of
programs. Yet they are confronting a seething
cultural climate and a continuing financial plight.
This article is the second of three on the fast-changing
state of U.S. orchestras today.
by Jacquin Sanders
Newsweek Feature Service
At a recent New York Philharmonic performance,
conductor Pierre Boulez came to a passage, in a
Charles Ives work, that contained two unrelated
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Andre Previn. . ."I'm in the last of the truly
peripatetic professions."
luyiwiiv niveau 01 summoning an assistant, as is
customary, to take over one of the rhythms, Boulez
conducted them both, one with each hand.
His reward was the kind conductors dream of-and
audiences don't even notice. In a traditional, though
rare, gesture of praise at the conclusion of the piece,
the orchestra members shuffled their feet.
The relationship between conductor and
conducted has always been a complex one-and these
days it is getting even more complex. In the past, the
man on the podium was the artist, and the orchestra
was the clay to be molded, shaped and sometimes
twisted as he saw fit.
In a rigid caste system, the conductor was a
one-man upper caste and those who opposed his rule
were fortunate to have a chance to resign before they
were fired.
BUT THE GIANTS-the Koussevitskys, the Szells
and their like-are dead, and musicians these days
seem determined that there will be no latter-day
versions. Though the conductor is still boss and still
sets the tone, he must use .his power with tact and
circumspection.
Members of the London Symphony now have the
right to hire and fire their conductor. While no
American orchestra has yet reached this stage of
musical democracy, it is clearly in the wind.
American musicians are increasingly demanding
not only a say in who conducts them but also in who
plays with them.
The San Francisco Symphony, for instance, now
has a 10-man committee with a veto on the hiring of
new musicians. And members of the Detroit
Symphony released a poll that showed they had
voted 83 to 3 (with several abstentions) against
retaining conductor Sixtcn Ehrling after 1973 when
his 1 0-year contract will run out.
ANOTHER CHANGE in the conductor's life is the
necessity to spend large amounts of time and energy
jet-hopping from one guest conductorship to another.
And sometimes there are tandem conductorships,
such as Andre Previn had for a time as conductor of
both the Houston and the London Symphonies. Now
Previn is officially only the London conductor but he
still logs 26,000 air mites a year.
I'm in the last of the truly peripatetic
professions," he said in the midst of a two-week
period last summer in which he rehearsed for and
conducted two concerts with the Detroit Symphony,
three with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and then
returned to Britain (for a day with his wife, Mia
Farrow) before taking the London Symphony on the
following day to Edinburgh.
"You have to tour," he says philosophically. "If I
didn't do it, I think my attractiveness to the London
Symphony would diminish. In a way, guest
conducting is an important form of promotion for
the orchestra as well as for myself."
Some of the old-line music men take a dim view of
the new breed of conductors. "It's become the
profession of a traveling salesman," snorts WiLji:
Steinberg, long the music director of the Boston
Symphony.
"I WAS BORN in the last century, and I plan to
- conduct myself in the manner of my generation," he
adds. "A conductor has to stay put to educate an
orchestra."
But even Steinberg no longer quite lives up to his
words. At 72, he has become musical director of a
second symphony, the Pittsburgh, even as he
continues to serve in Boston.
Most of the younger conductors take the new
atmosphere for granted. Exuberant young Seiji
Ozawa looks barely more than half his 34 years as
laughingly, zestfully he conducts the San Francisco
Symphony. The stately hauteur of a Stokowski or a
Toscanini never seemed so far in the past.
FANS OF ZUBIN Mehta, conductor of the Los
Angeles Philharmonic, call him "Zubi-baby", and on
at least one occasion the Indian-bom conductor did
the unthinkable; he publicly labeled a rival
orchestra-the New York Philharmonic as
"second-rate."
Twenty-six-year-old Michael Tilson Thomas wears
magenta shirts, French sunglasses, drives a gleaming
blue Porsche and holds down two jobs: associate
conductor of the Boston Symphony and musical
director of the Buffalo Symphony. He is the kind of
highly contemporary conductor who does not want
to settle in with one orchestra-or to settle for a single
musical image.
"WHAT EXCITES me very much," he says, "is
that the programming I'm doing in Buffalo is quite
different from the work I'm doing in Boston. And
that's all very different from the guest conducting
and the work I'm doing in Europe.
"It's very exciting that one city thinks of me as a
contemporary music conductor and another as a
Mahler conductor and another as a baroque music
conductor. I think the world of music is beginning to
encounter a species of conductor whose allegiances
are outside the standard, four-rehearsal, prepared
program of a symphony orchestra."