f editorial openfoflpog J
: TTT. IN
In case of fire . .
The startling revelation that city campus
buildings have not been state inspected for
fire hazards and safety-improvement work in
more than 12 years is, to say the least,
upsetting. It more or less confirms the fact
that in coming to the University one risks not
only his sanity, but also his life.
Obviously, someone has been dangerously
negligent in checking up on the University's
fire safety progress. Who that someone is
appears to be less obvious, however.
There has been some conspicuous
looking-the-other-way in the state fire
marshall's office. Fire Marshal Joe Pluta can't
be entirely blamed, however. When he took
office in 1971 his predecessors left him with
nr ranrrrior winlatinrK
The blame for the lack of care and
compliance probably lies more with
University officials. Those in whose care the
University's facilities lie can only be expected
to see that the entire system complies with
reasonable and cautious guidelines provided
by the state office.
The fact that the University has yet to
comply with 1960 orders for improvements,
reflects shoddily on administrative officials.
In all those areas where violations were cited,
10 ears worth of students have been
subjected unknowingly to dangers they had
the right to believe did not exist.
The University is clearly negligent in this
matter.
This negligence is, however, the direct
result of something other than sloth on the
rwt of the administration, ixiegngence nab
become necessary due to lack of funds.
For far too long the University has had to
get by with inadequate funds for renovation
and plant maintenance, areas vital to fire
safety The University has been forced to
expand with far too little in the way of funds
provided. .
The blame for the inadequacy of funds
must be placed with both the Board of
Regents and the Unicameral for overzealous
and uncautious budget-cutting. It is this
fund-slashing which has forced the University
to neglect necessaries-including fire safety.
There must be immediate and total
compliance with fire safety regulations, no
matter what the cost, to avoid a fire tragedy
in the tinder-box University.
Jim bray
Gallup poll
conclusively
indicates
Nixon win
john
vihstad
In 1968 the state of Rhode Island had the dubious
distinction of giving Hubert Humphrey his largest percentage
of the vote of any state in the Union-a gigantic 65 per cent.
And indicative of how bad off the Democrats really are four
years later is a recent poll that shows Rhode Island,
traditionally the strongest Democratic state in the country
north of the Mason-Dixon line, being won 2-to-1 again-this
time by President Nixon.
Indeed, if the election were held today, George McGovem
would do well to capture 17 electoral votes, those of the
District of Columbia and Massachusetts. The latest Gallup poll
shows the President leading his Democratic opponent by 64
per cent to 30 per cent, with a very low 6 per cent still
undecided.
This Nixon lead over McGovern is a mere one point short of
the same lead President Johnson held over Republican
nominee Barry Goldwater at a comparable point in the 1964
campaign. The new Harris survey, generally more favorable to
the Democrats than is Gallup, shows Nixon leading 63 per cent
to 29 per cent, an identical spread of 34 points, which, if
translated into popular votes, means 54.4 million for Nixon
and only 25.5 million for McGovern.
To be sure, the gap is bound to narrow somewhat as party
loyalties reassert themselves and November 7 gets closer, but it
should be remembered that never before in history has a
candidate started as far behind as George McGovern and gone
on to win by election day. Furthermore, the leader in the
Labor Day polls almost invariably wins on election day, the
irregular Truman upset of Dewey back in 1948 being the only
exception. Indeed, most of the early poll leaders have been
able to increase their victory margins by polling day, and none
has dropped more than 4 percentage points during the course
of a campaign.
In the always close election of 1960, Mr. Nixon's poll
percentage was never lower than 45 per cent nor higher than
50 per cent in any survey taken after August of that year.
In his 1962 race for the California governorship with
Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, Nixon's poll figures never changed
more than three points either way.
And in 1968, a campaign in which he received far less credit
for winning than blame for losing in 1960, the President was
stuck at from 42 to 44 per cent of the electorate in the six
Gallup campaign polls, an amazing statistical consistency. It
was Hubert Humphrey who narrowed the gap by rising in the
polls, not Richard Nixon by falling, that made the election so
dose.
But what is most amazing about these statistics projecting a
Nixon sweep is the fact that they show the President's
popularity to cut across virtually every social
barrier-geography, education, income, occupation, religion,
ethnic origin, race, age, or sex mean nothing anymore. The
President leads McGovern just as much in large, industrial, and
usually Democratic Michigan and New York as he does in
small, agricultural, and dependably Republican Idaho and
Nebraska.
Low-income people earning less than $5,000 a year favor
Nixon almost as much as a businessman making four times
that sum. Manual workers and labor union families, once at
the central core of the New Deal Democratic coalition,
currently favor Nixon by over 2-to-1.
Nixon leads among heretofore primarily Democratic
Catholic voters, 62 per cent to McGovem's 29 per cent.
Substantial GOP inroads are also being made in the Jewish,
black, chicano, and Indian communities. What has to be taken
as most astonishing of all is that McGovern's fellow registered
Democrats give him but 47 per cent of their vote, to an
astounding 43 per cent of the Democratic vote for the
Republican President.
Particularly disappointing to lonesome George, however,
must be his wholesale reversal with what up to now has been
the key McGovern group: young people under 30. Nixon leads
even here, 61 per cent to 36 per cent, reflecting youth's
growing disillusionment with the Democratic ticket and its
leader's non-existent credibility.
The most important question, of course, is how can this be?
tl. i;M in the fact that. now. more than ever (to
borrow from the GOP slogan) the Republicans clearly embody
the middle ground thinking of America's citizens. The
American majority is just lying there, forsaken by the
Democrats, waiting to be won over by the Republicans and
the GOP this fall possesses not only the power to vanquish the
Democrals. but also to turn itself into the new majority party.
ii i inn in , hi i iwjiiw
O i&k
& ;
4int"t '
" - $ ft J?
'ft r
JC-- f- -
One of the Republican Party's major weaknesses in the past
has been that it has failed to reach out to the varied groups
that really make up the masses of America: the blue collar
wage-earner, ethnic groups, Catholics, Jews, blacks, and the
Spanish -speaking.
That is changing now, as anyone who witnessed this year's
GOP National Convention could attest. Black delegates more
than doubled: from 1.9 per cent in 1968 to 4 per cent this
year. A third of the 1972 delegates were women still not
good enough-but much better than the 17 per cent figure
four years ago. And this has been accomplished in the true
American spirit voluntarily without artificial quotas and
imposed "guidelines".
Another previous fault of the Republican Party has been its
preoccupation with the negative, without offering positive,
constructive alternative programs of their own. But this, too, is
changing.
The 1972 Republican platform hails the Administration's
positive achievement s-from slowing the rise in crime and
inflation, to increased funds for urban renewal and rural
redevelopment, to enlarged employment opportunities and
minority hiring, to arms limitation aggreements with the
Soviet Union. There are still more legislative proposals now
awaiting action by the Congress but lying idle while the
Democratic leaders are busy sniping away at the White House
for supposedly doing nothing to solve the nation's ills.
It seems to us that an undercurrent of renewed hope, a
rejuvenated sense of self-purpose, and with them, a regained
feeling of unity and brotherhood is seeping into the American
soul. For if the American people are splintered and divided, as
the Democrats like to say that we are, it is because they have
contributed to the feelings of mistrust and melancholy so
easily exploited for cheap political gain in America.
It is they, and not the Republicans, who have fueled the
fires of fear and doubt. It is they who routinely condemn the
President every time he opens his mouth.
We can once again look with pride and faith to an
Administration in Washington that has seized the
opportunities of the present to build a better world for all in
the future. We believe in President Nixon and his party, now.
more than ever.
v.
daily nebraskan
Wednesday, September 20, 1972
page 4
