friday, October 3, 1975
daily nebraskan
page 4
' f
The lear
ninahurt us, no
V4
1
After three weeks of expectation, one week of
uncertainty and a whole day of speeches, Presi
dent Gerald Ford made his appearance in Omaha
Wednesday at ,the . Nebraska-Iowa White House
Conference on Domestic and Economic Affairs.
Complete with not-so-secretly 1 placed secret
service men, and whatseemed to be practically the.
whole of the Omaha Police Dept. glorying in their
confusion, the Omaha Hilton Hotel was turned
into a forum where Ford came to "learn and
listen." ' : "
And, indeed, the learning and the listening was
there. v 1
; But not as' we had hoped.
" The audience, representatives of 17 Iowa and
Nebraska organizations, listened to Ford and six of
his close administrators sprinkle their speeches
with adjectives such as soon, maybe, eminent and
possibly.
It also listened to jokes about Secretary of Agri
culture Earl Butz, Gov. J. James Exon and the
Nebraska football team. : V
We, for our part, also listened and learned. Three'
reporters and two photographers awakened if not
so bright, at least early, to get to Omaha on time.
In Omaha we listened to all of the speeches and
attended all of the news conferences.
In Lincoln we listened to our colleagues com
plain that nothing new happened. .
And from all of this listening we learned.
We learned just how the government public rela
tions machine works: the people who set up the
conference did just enough advance publicity to
get us to give up a day of classes to go to Omaha, enter through a back door. So we waited.
After all, the President does not come to Nebraska Suddenly he was there. It was easy to tell. His
every day. " , . voice came over a loud speaker in the press room
We learned that they probably would have been from an undisclosed place. -
happy to see that we devoted a front-page story We did learn that the President entered the
and our sacred double truck (centerfold, if you building through the front door. Unfortunately, we
like) to cover tne conterence. iney woum nave learned this after lunch
0
11
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The administration, the extended bureaucracy and the press.
Photo by Ted Kirit
been, but probably they did not stay long enough
to see it.
We learned that while local reporters lunched,
the Washington press corp invaded the press room,
taking over all desks, typewriters and phones, not
to mention the President's Press Secretary Ron
Neissen who only talks to Washington reporters.-
While we , were learning -all of this, we also
learned what we did not learn.
We did not learn when the President was
entering the building. Supposedly he was going to
mm
The final thing we learned was that listening to
the President in Omaha was much like listening to
him on television.
After all, the President did not enter until his
scheduled 4:30 p.m. appearance. When he did, he
spoke for 15 minutes and then answered only one
question of each representative from the 17 host
organizations. The rest of the audience sat and
watched as though they were not really there to
participate.
The White House had not come to the people.
The people were not invited. Only representatives
of them were. And the bureaucracy was extended.
At the scheduled 5:30 p.m. bewitching hour,
the President said goodnight.
' He walked off into the sunset-into some un
known room in the Hilton, to be seen again only
by the White House people.
We turned.off our sets, told those left in Lincoln
that they did not miss much. Except a rerun which
will be rerun again.
. . ... . . . . . j
And inursday we listened to eacn omer. aru
for the first time that day, we learned something:
that the White House p.r. had worked. Unfortun-
nfplv flip liamincr unc nnf at th rnnfefence. And
M V ) 4IV 111 f f MkV V W w-- -
unfortunately it was not before we had subjected
our readers to our zealousness.
The lesson hurt.
The Editors
RALPH
you ciuv
1
M '4
YOVKE ft cmoou
CHARACTER. YOU'RE
HOTEVEVf&L.
HOU) IS SOMEONE U)(TH A
ZIPPE1WB MUSTACHE AW
hair mm TO ACCEPT
THE AWARD AT MLFrME
OF WE F0OTBM-L GME?
LP"
'' 'n jf. Jim
Dear editor,
It seems that Campus Police (or at least a member of the
staff) has finally outdone itself.
Last Wednesday evening I went to my car parked in a
spot in the Sheldon Gallery lot where it has been parked
countless other evenings over the past three or four years,
only to find a ticket, carrying a S5 line tor
unauthorized area.
Finding this sudden transformation a bit much, I decid
ed to protest. After two visits to Campu3 Police'snd shuttl
ing through a couple of people I was shown into the office
of a young man whose exact power was not clear, only to
be told again there was nothing he could do.
I tried to make the point that they were trying, without
warning, to make people pay a $5 fine for something that .
had been condoned the day before.
(Apparently it had been an illegal parking area all along
but th rcld had never been enforced. Howl was supposed
oKnowtnauaoniKnow.j top of the original fine as there is this vear
The man appeared to be digging injiis pockets and Increases in both fines and punishment procedures are
TJllLm!!! Eua .cha,r'tThen;.fl totally absurd. Cale (we are on a first name basis) is trying
there was nothing he could do, he put my ticket and a to run this campus like a police state with his arbitrary
stack of one dollar bills on his desk and told me to go and ' bureaucratic rule chances
pay the ticket. Doing a fast burn I tossed the money back, I for one think students should be better represented
took my ticket and stomped out. jn Campus Police noli ,hano,8 -JJ.a of hinB told
luho tn J l.'l Ji ..... 0 '
As there were no other witnesses and it is his word
against mine, I won't even attempt to imagine where the
money came from or what he was trying to do, but from
just about any view it was a pretty shoddy and questionable
tactic.
If that is a normal practice of Campus Police. I'd
3cin in str0R8!y suSSest P0 change. If he thought it up all by
1 0 ui himself, itnmenna nver tVir huA hettnv Kou. .n.
--- - -" 4is tv m aui jtj'j i laiA
with someone else.
,. . . M. E. Tune
Police stato ,
Dear editor,
I was amazed to find when I purchased my parking
permit that the fine system was changed-not in the
students' favor, of course.
Last year they used a graduated fine system which was
a lot more tair, since your first violation was small. There
also was not an exhorbitant late payment fine placed on
what to do like mindless children.
Uncle Chunky
Editor'i note: "Gale" is Caff Cade, Campus Police chief.
Bowl of soup -
Dear editor,
In the Sept. 24 Daily Nebraskan, p. 8, someone wrote
an article on Latin American women in politics, in it were
mentioned two women of bona fide Latin American
countries, Brazil and Colombia, and one woman from
bowl of soup! My sympathies to this poor woman, who
must by now be permanently stained dark red.
The correct spelling of "Chili" is C-h-i-I-e and is
pronounced Chee-lay or anglized Chi-lec. The misspelling
seemed humorous to me but I doubt if you could get
Chilean to see it that way.
c ' , Lloyd A.Peterson
tutors note: Oops! Must have been a fly on the copy-