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Campaign gaps need filling
With four City Council positions up for
election this spring, the City Council hopefully
will do in the next few weeks what it failed to do
two years ago-pass a stricter campaign reporting
law.
The city law department has drawn up a
proposal which would require candidates to
report contributions and expenditures. It would
also limit the size of individual contributions and
the amount any candidate or political committee
could receive or spend.
The present proposal represents an
improvement over the campaign reporting bill
introduced to the council in the fall of 1972 by
Councilwoman Helen Boosalis. It exempts
candidates from reporting volunteer services,
necessary travel expenses and filing fees-a
requirement some 1972 council members said
would mean too much paperwork.
It also is tougher than its 1972 counterpart.
This year's version applies to committees as well
as mayoral and council candidates.
The new oroDosal has the advantage of
A ----- J l w
plugging some gaping loopholes in present state
law, which requires campaign committees to
report contributions and expenditures in excess
of $25.
By requiring candidates, not just campaign
committees, to file reports, the situation will be
avoided in which a candidate doesn't worry
about filing a report because his committee is
responsible for it. The new proposal would levy a
$100 to $500 fine on any candidate, committee
or contributor who doesn't report.
The time has come to get tough on campaign
contributions and spending. This country's
politicians have been allowed too long to put
their best foot forward without telling who is
paying for their shoes.
State and federal governments have been
giving a great deal of attention to campaign laws.
The City Council should take the initiative and
pass a campaign reporting law that will fill in the
gaps.
Wes Albers
College teaches careers ; lesson in life ignored
Heeding the advice of elders to "grow up" and "be
responsible" in addition to learning that society really
wants colleges to produce technicians, not
philosophers, students clearly have left the days of
'60s-style campus upheaval far behind. We have tuned
out the distractions of social-political concerns and
have concentrated on gaining marketable skills.
If you're 22 and exhausted by the draining
experience of four years of college, you do want to
get out on your own and be responsible. Being on
your own offers the opportunity to shape your own
life without pressure from parents, professors and
administrators.
It also becomes easier and easier to do your job
and accept the subtle, discreet social pressures that
being responsible' entails. Barbered hair, appropriate
reverence for conformities, attending cocktail
parties-all can be accepted because they are expected
of one who is responsible.
Unless you have great patience and endurance, it
can be easy to accept these subtle demands for
conformity and become a solid member of cheerful,
unquestioning Middle America-regardless of what
your original intentions may have been.
Most of us would like to believe we will live the
kind of life we want to live without regard for such
pressures.
Yet all of us, even those who have lost themselves
totally in the pursuit of a comfortable career, seem to
share a common feeling of uneasiness about entering
the realm of responsibility.
What we feel, I think, is a vague apprehension that
we are not sufficiently prepared to meet the pressures
that responsibility carries. Probably we do not doubt
our ability to meet the challenges our new jobs or
academic undertakings present. These pressures will
seem minimal compared to the subtle pressures that
will challenge our basic attitudes toward life, society
or other human beings.
Perhaps the uneasiness we feel is more a
recongition that we have not taken the time to reflect
on these things. It seems that we move through
college gaining conditioned knowledge about a career
situation, while developing a certain amount of
hostility toward the demands that such a career puts
on pleasure and freedom. Surprisingly, however, after
four years in an environment filled with social
criticism and emphasis on freedom of thought, we
have little of the depth of intellect or ethical
judgment necessary to clearly articulate our
uneasiness about entering "the system".
rickjohnson
rhymes and reasons
As we approach the end of our college careers, we
begin to realize how vague our feelings of uneasiness
are. We have feelings of hostility toward the discipline
that new jobs require. We worry about confronting
the challenges and tragedies of life itself. Yet we have
spent little time formulating intellectual frameworks
for these emotional responses.
All of us will spend four years, and perhaps we will
spend four more years, preparing for a vocation. We
will work, worry, and study in order to prepare
ourselves to adequately fill a vocational role.
But how much thought and preparation have we
given to the other roles that we must fill. Have we
spent enough time considering what it means to be a
mother or father? Have we contemplated all the
implications of being a man or woman? Have we
spent any significant amount of time in trying to
understand what it means to relate to our fellow
man?
If we spend perhaps eight years preparing to fill a
role that will occupy less than 25 per cent of our
time, how much time is a sufficient amount tospend
reflecting on what it means to be happy?
Some of us may not have even examined our lives
and reflected upon the goals we are seeking. Without
a well articulated idea of our goals and why we are
pursuing them, it seems we are not making a
commitment to a type of life we want to lead, but are
merely drifting with the social current.
Before we accept the measure of traditional
standards, it seems essential that we spend time in
reflective thought deciding how we ourselves are
going to gauge the success or failure of our lives.
It is .crucial that we take some time early in life to
give thought to these and other questions. This seems
to be the only way that we can maintain control of
the direction our lives are taking.
Our uneasiness arises from the realization that we
spend so much time preparing for a job that will be
infinitely simpler than raising children or living a just
life. Uneasiness now, concerning the hours upon
hours spent readying ourselves to play a relatively
minor role, while in large measure neglecting the
questions that really will be important to our lives,
may be insignificant, however. Insignificant compared
to the trauma of facing these questions 50 years too
late.
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page 4
daily nebraskan
Wednesday, february 12, 1975
