monday, february 2, 1976
page 4
daily nebraskan
ralph fej ton whccbf
BOY FINUY 0OM WAT A ffVElOOLY BIG
ftfflP HOOSS. v HOUSE IO A mEhW
IC
Variables dot workload question
University of Nebraska facul ty members are
being asked the universal question: "what do you
3o?" f
Under legislative mandate, faculty members at
NU's three campuses will be surveyed about the
hours they put in on the job.
The survey could raise interesting questions
about just what is to be included in a faculty
member's workload.
It is hard to assess the hourly value of a profes
sor or assistant professor. Yet is is assumed that
each faculty members rank is comparable in a
department by department basis.
One difference, until now, has been in salary
levels. A faculty member with rank of professor
in one department may be far ahead in pay over a
professor in another department.
Experience is one reason why salaries differ,
but professors in post-graduate professional disci
plines such as medicine and law are at a higher
salary level than their academic counterparts in
liberal arts departments.
Surveying how much time is spent on the job
by faculty members could prove to be another
measure of inequity between departments. In
some departments, with graduate assistants in re
lative abundance, professor's teaching duties
might not be as intense as in another department
with a limited number of faculty members and
few teaching assistants.
Hours of service outside the classroom are
another aspect of the job that could vary greatly
between departments depending on public service
and extension duties.
Scholarship is yet another survey area which
could find widely divergent activity among
faculty members of the same rank.
In the end, the survey may be somewhat useful
to the Nebraska Legislature. However, since the
point is to arrive at averages for departments and
other units, it should not be taken as the whole
truth.
Students know that faculty members, like
other people, are individuals. Survey figures won't
show that some are naturally better prepared for
class, more energetic and more academically
challenging than others.
And a survey won't change that, whatever
faculty members say they do with their time.
Vince Boucher
ofr I 'Accountability' -password lof Marvel's club
By Dick Piersol
Among the many pieces of legislation that trudged
through committee hearings in the statehouse this week
was a bill sponsored by Omaha Sen. John Cavanaugh rede
fining the duties of the Legislative Council, its executive
board and principal employees. As it now stands, the
executive board, elected at the first session of each Ne
braska Legislature, is the committee which refers bills to
standing committees for public hearing and hires legisla
tive employes including researchers, clerks, pages and '
fiscal analysts. .
Cavanaugh's bill would give the fiscal analysts responsi
bility for performance auditing of state agencies. That
duty, currently of limited scope, now lies with the state
auditor's office.
It all boils down to one word-accountability. Sen.
Richard Marvel of Hastings may not have invented the
word, but he certainly holds the distinction for having
used it most effectively.
The fiscal analysts would be uniquely suited to do per
formance auditing. They are the masters of quantification
in the statehouse. Given a bill, they produce a report on
its fiscal impact in a shake. They can analyze an agency's
budget until one's ears turn to stone. Performance audit
ing to them would be a piece of cake, were they not trap
ped in the middle of the most highly charged cat and
mouse game in state government.
That game is the Legislative budgetary process.
In past years, the fiscal analysts were the keystone in
preparing an appropriations bill. An agency made a re
quest for money, the governor gave his recommendation
and the fiscal analysts made theirs. Most often, the com
promise figure decided by the Appropriations Committee
made the fiscal analysts play the villain, although the gov
ernor's budget recommendation was often the smallest.
This year, the Appropriations Committee, under
Marvel's tutelage, have tried to remove the fiscal analysts
from that quagmire of intragovernmental squabbling. The
committee directed them to prepare budgets for each
agency which would allow an agency to fulfill its
statutory duties only-Marvel's "bare bones."
Then, directed by the committee, the analysts quanti-
innocent
Tasteless news decried
in lurid, titillating detail
By Arthur Hoppe
I rise today to decry the tasteless manner in which my
colleagues in the press are decrying the tasteless new
stories decrying the late President Kennedy's private
affairs.
You can't pick up a newspaper without reading some
columnist deploring all this sensationalism, which the
columnist then describes in lurid detail.
"Who cares," the columnist nobly begins, "whether
Mr. Kennedy did or did not have an affair with Marilyn
Monroe, a Mafia moll and 1,603 other women including'
as I have learned exclusively from the maitre d'hotel at
t. . r-j, n j . i?..- r .. ! innn
ue uaucu-uctuca muiul vuui i juvi uioun 111 47-rin
"Is it anybody's business that they checked in there at
12:43 pjn. on April 23 of that year and did $432.58
dn.
n
worth of damage in the subsequent 72 hours to the head
board and chandelier? What matters that they ordered the
following 62 items from room service. . ."
But the most blatant case involves Buck Artwald,
whose tasteless column runs in the Rappahoe, N M., Town
Crier. To decry the tastelessness of the whole mess,
Artwald actually made up a woman who claimed to have
had a romance with Mr. Kennedy. Excerpts from his
tasteless column follow:
Irma LaDulce, 58, (the column begins) held a press
conference today to announce her affair with the late
President.
"Mc and the kids, we're ul real proud of Irma," said
her husband, Al, a driving instructor. "She was a real
swinger in her day."
"That's right," said Irma. "I never thought of him as
the President. To me, he was just plain old Jack
Kennerly." (cq)
"Kennedy, Irma," said Al.
"Right," said Irma. "Maybe it was his funny Southern
his wife, Mamie, didn't understand him."
"Jackie, Irma," said Al.
"right," said Irma. "Maybe it was his funny Southern
accent. Anyhow, that was just before I had an affair with
the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. He sure was a
Grand Dragon. But so was Harry."
"Jack, Irma."
"Him, too. He was always calling me up and asking me
when I was coming back to Pittsburgh so he could
mitc Hou again -
Johr8'0"' ImU' And 1 thlnk yU mcan Lvndon
"Yeah, big guy. Now him. . ."
"Don't tell, Irma!" cried Al. "Wait till we tell th
paperback rights." we m me
Well, this tasteless column ends with Irma suonnHi
wiling her memoir, for $37.50 and . sS SliKS??
say it i a cheap shot. Ktiware. i
.n-K bUineSS ?fudcLcrvin8 Knsationalsim in order to
titillate readers with the sensational details must it ?
for one, wholeheartedly decry it. ,op' '
(CcpyrloM Chrontcl Pubiltfilng Co. 176)
fied "issues," those items the committee specifically
wanted an agency to justify, whether or not they were
budget improvements or something an agency had taken
for granted. They also quantified agencies' suggested im
provements and budget items which appear to hive a con
sensus of legislative supports.
In NU's case, the "issues" were workload revision and
salary parity with top Big 8 Conference institutions. Some
university officials apparently interpreted that action as
an attempt to cut the heart out of the university. Such
was not the case. It was an attempt to make university
officials define that institution.
That magic word "accountability"
The committee has been hesitant to grant some major
concessions to the university, namely, single sum appro
priation to allow the NU Board of Regents flexibility in
spending, without some guarantee of that magic word
accountability. For more than two months administrators
and senators have been circling one another, the fiscal
analysts in the middle, without really addressing the issues
both groups want resolved. They have another chance
when Gov. J. James Exon's budget recommendation is
heard, probably this week or early next.
The governor's budget calls for $4 million less than the
Appropriations Committee's proposal, and $16 million
less than the $100 million NU administrators originally
requested. But it includes more flexibility than the regents
have ever had.
Information is more powerful than momey, as it has
always been. Among the senators, university administra
tors, the governor and legislative fiscal analysts is enough
power to make the university what each group and indivi
dual wants it to be, and still be accountable to those who
have the least power and the most at stake-the students
and the taxpayers.
Let us see NU pass that performance audit.
letters to
the editor
Remove Memorial Stadium
I currently am enrolled in ray last semester at UNL.
j,, 8 y four vears. 1 have seen priorities shift drast
ically. Good teachers have resigned due to the lack of
sufficient salaries, while the football staff is living "high
on tne nog. Before I graduate, I must give these suggest
ions that would alleviate this imbalance of priorities.
1. incorporate our present football staff into the pre
sent physical education facility.
wJ,KComphte tnd totaI removal of Memorial Stadium
S ouM 4CC0mPlih the following. First, it would
m,?re parkil58 spaces for the faculty and students.
rSnX?' 1 tremoVal w"ld provide ample Astroturf
carpeting for Andrews and Burnett Halls
. 3,;Slumns a,nd beams salvaged by the removal could
plaza " KU,pturc e,cmnts for the Student Union
feAoT? are and ar certain to enrage
ttJkJ?t.5 u fa.RS but 0,8 university is a collection of
coneges and schools, not football trophies and red blazers.
Better dead than red
y