page 4
daily nebraskan
thtirsday, fabruary 26, 1976
ralph by ron wheeler
Court implies appointees not puppets
-' .. a! HA noma uflll Ka i iaaA
WANK YOU I SOY, I SURE IMPRESSED
f for souk that guy.
aw
Jotf FINDING A JOb
IS 30106 TO BE EASIER
7?l)ftJ t THOUGHT.
cC
tu. j f ctiufont Court to rule against
the ASUN Senate's attempt to rescind CSL stu
dent appointees was a pat on the back for hard
working student representatives.
As has been pointed out in this space before,
. student appointees should be free to represent the
students-as they perceive the student needs and
desires and with their own intelligence.
They should not be dictated to by the student
government, the ASUN Senate, when vague
ideological differences occur between ASUN
senators and the appointees.
It has been observed that many student
appointees demonstrate more seriousness and
continuity than many student senators who rise
to make a fuss one month and resign the next.
ASUN Senate is an appointive mechanism as it
relates to students who serve on campus com
mittees and governing boards. It has no right, to
demand that appointees be its puppets.
The court is to be commended for realizing
this fact and emphasizing that specific cause is
needed to insist that an appointment be terminat
ed. .
Ultimately the court must have decided that
the wholesale removal, (or recall or rescision or
.t,,t.iir nthc.r semantic game will be used to
describe the action) was not fair to either the
student appointees or the students they represent.
Whatever comments are leveled against the
UNL student government, it is certainly more in
touch with the student body than the University
of Wisconsin Student Association (WSA).
The WSA pledged to contribute $2,000 to the
defense of David Fine, who allegedly participated
in the 1 970 bombing of the Army Research
Center in Madison. One student died in that
explosion. '
A group of students who oppose the move have
called for a campus referendum on the issue, say
ing they represent the majority of students who
are opposed to the defense fund.
Furthermore, the student newspaper, The
Daily Cardinal, hit a snag when their publication
board vetoed a $5,000 contribution to Fine's
defense.
The radical fires apparently still burn in some
quarters, however narrow they may be.
Vince Boucher
letters to
th editor
I am absolutely appalled by the article in the Daily
Nebraskan (Feb. 23) informing people about the food
stamp program. Food stamps are not a right. Food stamps
are a privilege extended to the "needy" by the govern
ment. No one has an inalienable right to food stamps, so
I do not understand the "publicity campaign" to put
more people on the taxpayers account. Some students are
taxpayers too, and many students who do not deserve
food stamps are getting them by sliding around flimsy
rules. This garbage must stop. A decent day's work (stu
dents included) would go a long way toward getting the
country off its panhandling attitude. We don't need any
more cheats on welfare than is absolutely essential. Some
people need assistance; not everyone is entitled to a free
handout from Uncle Sam.
Joesph Saame
Title IX deflowers Innocents
I think Title IX is ridiculous if it also pertains to or
ganizations like the Innocents. Who is the government to
tell the Innocents who to admit? And who in the Inno
cents is squeamish enough to comply with such a ridi-
culous piece of legislation.
If the Innocents do not particularly wish to have fe
male companionship, then it should not be forced on
them. The Indies have Mortar Board. We gave women the
vote, now they want our innocence. What is this world
going to do next?
Victor Kelly
con
pto
'Things that go bump in the night'
By Neil Klotz
In a darkened laboratory, the mad scientists huddle
over their creation. The monster had begun as a child.
Then they threw in some arms and legs and some limited
constitutional rights. Finally he was given a brain-the
ability to make choices. As the juice was turned on and
the ozone filled the air, the monster arose from the table
and thundered, "When will I get my money's worth from
this college?" The student-as-consumer was born.
Students pay for educational goods and services with
two to four years of their time and energy and often
several thousand dollars in tuition. Shouldn't they be pro
tected from fraud and violations of their rights like other
consumers?
So the great student-as-consumer debate goes. Perhaps
no discussion in higher education has produced more un
necessary confusion and fright as this one. Some critics
have conjured the image of a student-consumer Franken
stein staggering madly down the aisle of the educational
marketplace, tipping over those sacred potted concepts
like "the community of scholars," "faculty collegiality"
and "institutional individuality." Alas, we shall all be
reduced to crass merchandizing, they say.
Root rot
For one thing, those hallowed growths of higher edu
cation began to develop root rot long before the student-as-consumer
came along.
For another, the concept of students-as-consumers is
-only a concept, nothing more. It's another way of dis
cussing student rights, just as the concept of college stu
dent as children is a way of not discussing them. Just
because students are more than consumers does not mean
we can't use the model to see how they use their energy
and money.
For a closer look at the alleged monster, we can ex
amine three major forces caught in the act of creating
him.
1. The growth of student legal rights. Students literal
ly began- as children in the eyes of the law. Until the
1960s, college administrators legally acted as students'
parents (in loco parentis), and could suspend, e'xpell,
censor,- and otherwise abridge students' constituUonal
rights. The courts kept hands off, even though father was
laving into the kid behind the ivory tower. But that began
to change. From 1969 to 1975 the U.S. Supreme Court
bet-an to see public school students as American citizens.
After almost 200 years, they were given the First Amend
ment rights to free speech, press and assembly: Fourth
Amendment rights to freedom from illegal search and
seizure, and Hth Amendment rights to the limited due
process for informatl hearings before they can be sus
pended or expelled.
During the same time, the 26th Amendment gave 18-year-olds
the right to vote and laid the student-as-child
to rest forever. Meanwhile the college administrator has
been dethroned from his position as almighty father to a
less exalted one as restricted tyrant.
"Unless they major
in multi-national corporate
economics. . .students find
that the B.A, they invested in
has been devalued
in the job market."
The inevitable expansion of student rights puts admin
istrators on the same level with students: orders don't
come from above; they are negotiated in a contract. In the
past year, several students have filed suits against their
schools to establish the college catalog as a legally binding
contract. Their educational contracts were breached, they
clam, when courses and degree requirements changed
arbitrarily or when promised instruction was not
delivered.
2. Government regulation of financial aid programs.
With student loan defaults on the rise, the feds looked for
a better way to stem the tide than sending enforcers traip
sing after bankrupt students. The U.S. Office of Educa
tion (OE) found that many students defaulted because
terms of their loans were never explained or because their
school folded before the term ended.
Private correspondence and trade schools were tapped
as major culprits, initiating open warfare that has not
ended yet. Last year both OE and the Federal Trade Com
mission issued regulations that required schools to dis
close more and better Information to prospective stu
dents and to set up fair and equitable refund policies.
Since these regulations only vaguely described what
schools had to do, another branch of the student
consumer tree sprouted: the "better information" cane
Under a federal grant, 11 institutions are developing
"model prospectuses" that would present everything stu
dents should know about a school before enrolline
Even while holding the banner of student consumerism'
the government's hands are not completely clean. Some
officials are less interested in protecting against fraud
than they are in using the consumer model to protect the
Ford administration's "free market" theory of token out
lays for financial aid. It's like this: let tuition increase to
meet higher costs. It's a free market, so let those consu
mers who can afford it foot the bill. All others can stay
home.
3. General consumer unrest. The 1930s' labor revolts
saw workers win the right to collectively bargain for
better salaries and conditions with management. But tliey
soon discovered what they won at the bargaining table
they lost at the cash register Corporate fraud and price
fixing, inferior and unsafe merchandise, polluted food and
drugs, and monopolistic credit prices jelled the concept
of the endangered consumer in the public's mind.
In addition, as the economy sputters but refuses to
kick over and unemployment hovers around 8 per cent,
more people have had less to do with the well-advertised
"good life " Reside? the hard-core poor, we now have
the nouveau poor, a consumer block beginning to ques
tion the forces that have made them what they are today.
Prime candidates
As part of the future economic structure, students are
prime candidates for the new poor. Unless they major in
multi-national corporate economics or intelligence gather
ing, students find that the B.A. they invested in has been
devalued in the job market.
Like the fear that passes through a line of cattle about
to be slaughtered, trepidation over the awaiting ax has
moved students to assert their rights as consumers.
Faculty members have asserted their rights as workers in
collective bargaining.
In this uneasy atmosphere, students could provoke a
change for the better, or they could wait passively tor
stockbrokers to start jumping out of windows again, "
student consumerism is io be effective, it must go beyond
a demand for better information about available educav
tional choices and about which choice Is the "best buy.
The real question is: who decides what choices will oe
offered in the first place? Student consumer protection
should strike in the backrooms of the educational market,
where until now government and business have maae
all the ordws. It's time to turn the supermarket into a
co-op, where student consumers have an equal voice ij
determining where their time, energy and skills are useo.
Formulating new purposes will not be easy, but H' the
only way out.
If student consumers linger to count pennies while the
store bums, they'll only add to the number of monsters
already on the bone pile.
