Viewpoint
The Battalion Friday
Texas A&M University April 21, 1978
On the right track
In the continuing attention to human rights in international affairs, one
bright spot should not go unnoticed.
The European Convention of Human Rights went into force a quarter
century ago. Control is exercised by the European Commission and the
European Court for Human Rights. Some 7,500 complaints about alleged
violations of human rights have been filed with the commission in the past 25
years.
Of these every third petition was directed against the federal republic of
West Germany and its judicial or penal institutions. But of these 2,500
complaints, not a single one has been sustained by the commission and the
court.
That is not only a remarkable record. It is a most heartening affirmation —
for a world which painfully recalls the hideous atrocities against human rights
of the Nazi regime in that same Germany — that nations and peoples and
institutions can change for the better. Let those who despair at times for the
future of human rights take courage from this accomplishments by the West
Germans.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
TELL YOU, THIS THING IS JUST GOING TOO FAR!
Carter reads the riot act
United Press International
WASHINGTON — President Carter
has admonished his troops to shape up.
Obviously concerned with his declining
popularity after 15 months in office. Carter
decided that his Cabinet and White House
staff were not performing up to par.
To make his point in the privacy of an
official family gathering, the president in
vited the Cabinet and chief advisers to
Camp David for a mountain-top soul
searching seance.
Carter, who apparently felt he knew
where the fault lies, “worked over every
body,” press secretary Jody Powell told
reporters with some pride. “He read the
riot act.”
Powell said he thinks “the general con
sensus there was that the problem in most
cases was not so much principals taking
pot shots at one another, but sort of indis
creet comments in front of other people
who would then repeat them to somebody
else, and then you finally reach somebody
that just has to prove that they are in the
know, and you guys know very well how
that works.
In other words, it is not those at the top
who are causing the backbiting, but “lower
echelon” unnamed bureaucrats and aides.
Washington Window
Before he took office, Carter gave his
Cabinet members full freedom to select
their staffs and to run their departments in
their own way. He told them that they did
not have to answer to any White House
aides.
President Richard Nixon’s Cabinet was
dominated by the White House staff, and
members could not get appointments with
Nixon without going through Oval Office
gatekeeper H.R. Haldeman.
Carter stressed the independence and
self reliance of the Cabinet in those begin
ning months. At the first meeting of the
Cabinet, he stunned reporters by an
nouncing that he was considering opening
such meetings to press coverage.
That idea was short-lived. Members did
not buy it on grounds that they needed
confidentiality to express themselves
freely, and Carter also had second thoughts.
But then the pendulum swung to a point
where more and more irritation was being
expressed in the inner White House
against so-called “leaks.”
Cabinet officials and their department
deputies were sometimes berated behind
their backs and accused for leaking stories
to the press.
Leaks, however, have not caused the
crisis of leadership in the Carter adminis
tration, nor the heavy criticism. Rather it
is the public perception that Carter has
failed to live up to his campaign promises
and that he has not been the “can do man
they had expected.
The top aides were told to stop their
“intramural squabbling and bickering,”
and to start operating as a team. Under
those circumstances, inevitably someone
is put in charge to keep the team on its
toes. A chief of staff, perhaps, but he will
not be called that in this administration.
There is no question that there will be a
change in the operations. Some of the
deputy White House staffers may find
themselves doing other jobs, and there
will be much more coordination and follow
through on policies with the departments.
While Carter previously was all in favor
of Cabinet officials speaking out for them
selves, it is clear there is now a movement
afoot to have the administration speak with
one voice.
It is not known if the president, during
the Camp David meetings, confessed to
any errors on his own part. But Powell
said, “Oh, sure,” when asked whether
Carter’s “shortcomings” also had been a
part of the discussion.
There were no resignations and none
asked for, but it was clear that Carter did
lay down the law and has decided that to
make his mark in history he must change
his style of governing.
Merit controversy hits judgeships
By DAVID S. BRODER
WASHINGTON — A lot of people are
cynical about politics and politicians these
days, but John F. Seiberling is not one of
them. When Seiberling, the Democratic
congressman from Akron, Ohio, heard
Jimmy Carter say, in his campaign, that he
wanted to take the judiciary and the Jus
tice Department out of the political pa
tronage system, he believed him.
When President Carter urged legisla
tion to create 150 new federal district
judges, John Seiberling thought it would
be wonderful if those judges were chosen
on merit — not through the patronage of
their home-state senators.
Seiberling offered an amendment in the
House, requiring that before those judge-
ships .could be filled, the president must
establish “procedures and guidelines for
the selection, on the basis of merit, of
nominees,” for those posts.
House Republicans, who had little to
lose from the change, supported the idea
unanimously; so did most House Demo
crats, who are also excluded from the judi
cial patronage pool unless their state hap
pens to have no Democratic senators.
But, knowing well that the Senate
would not voluntarily deny itself this pa
tronage, the House took the precaution of
insisting, in a separate 321-19 roll-call
vote, that its representatives in the
House-Senate conference keep the merit
selection provisions in the final bill.
It turned out that the House conferees
did need to have their spines stiffened.
When the conference met, senators of-
Letters to the editor
fered substitute language, calling on the
president to issue “standards and
guidelines for merit selection, but. omit
ting any “procedures” for seeing that they
were carried out.
C ommentary
Seiberling wrote Chairman Peter W.
Rodino (D-N.J.) of the House Judiciary
Committee that the Senate language
would do no more than “codify the existing
practice and imply that district court
judges are already chosen by a merit selec
tion system. ” What Seiberling wanted was
a requirement that all senators have merit
boards to recommend judgeship candi
dates to the president.
Rodino did not see it that way. “It is my
firm intent, of course, to uphold the
House position,” he wrote, “but we should
not be inflexibly wedded to the House
language.” Other House conferees were
even more wobbly. Rep. Barbara Jordan
(D-Texas) called the House language “hol
low, vain and useless.”
By a 5-4 vote, with Seiberling in the
minority, the House conferees decided to
accept a slightly reworked version of the
Senate language, omitting any reference
to selection procedures.
The effect is to leave it to each senator to
decide what he wants to do. Senators from
18 states have set up some form of judicial
“merit-selections” boards, but most of
them are controlled by the senator’s ap
pointees spidiire piirely advisory to him.
Where, one may ask, were President
Carter and his administration while
Seiberling and Company were fighting to
keep merit selection from being mugged?
As usual, the answer is complicated.
Back on March 3, at a news conference
with college editors, Carter was asked a
carefully constructed question, referring
to the administration’s studied neutrality
toward the fate of the Seiberling amend
ment. “Your administration has failed to
support this,” the questioner said. “Will
you reconcile your campaign promise and
support this?”
“I’m in favor of anything that’s possible,
either done by administrative act, volun
tary action on the part of U.S. senators or
congressional action that would guarantee
merit selection of every person appointed
to a position of responsibility in the
judiciary,” the president said.
“Within the framework of my own au
thority, I have acted already. And I would
favor an extension of that authority
through congressional action. . .”
That sounded straightforward enough.
But one week later, on March 10, when
Attorney General Griffin Bell was before
the House Judiciary Committee, Seiberl
ing asked him if the administration would
support the House provisions in confer
ence.
“Well,” said the president’s close
friend, “I haven’t taken a position on that
yet, because I was waiting for the confer
ence committee to start. I felt I would be
called upon to give some statement, how
that language yvbuld be implchignted in
the event it stays in the legislation. I
would rather keep my options open if I can
right now.”
Keeping options open turned out to
mean keeping the administration’s mouth
shut, while the merit selection procedures
were mugged in the conference commit
tee.
Associate Attorney Gen. Michael J.
Egan says, “We have not taken any posi
tion with respect to it, except that the
president favors merit selection in almost
any form.
While Carter made the point to the stu
dent editors that he had written a personal
note to every Democratic senator asking
him to create a merit-selection board for
judicial nominees, Egan said, “We’ve
been fearful that they (Seiberling and his
friends) would attempt to require use of
(such) commissions on the district court
level. We did have some problems on that
. . .and we felt that flexibility should be
maintained.”
Only one other point is relevant to this
story. The argument recounted here was
taking place at the same time the Panama
Canal treaties were pending. One outspo
ken opponent of taking judges out of the
senatorial patronage pool happens to be
Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-
W.Va.). And the spokesman for his
viewpoint among the conferees happened
to be Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.)
(c) 1978 The Washington Post
UT student offers opinions of gay reactions
Editor:
The A&M student body:
I attend The University and am writing
in response to the A&M student body’s
reaction to “Blue Jeans Day” sponsored by
the National Gay Task Force. That was the
most narrow-minded, reactionary re
sponse to such a simple symbol of opposi
tion to the oppression of their (the gays’)
rights that I have ever seen. This is just
another example of how conservative and
untolerant a school can become.
I would suggest your student body re
view its values and morals, and that
perhaps the reaction was so intense be
cause of how insecure your males are
about their masculinity. This simple act of
defiance on the part of gays threatened
them to the degree that it put the majority
of Aggies into a fervored pitch of fear that
if they wore blue jeans they would be
thought gay (heaven forbid).
I would also like to congratulate The
Battalion on its tolerance of others’ views
and support of the First Amendment to
the degree that it will print an ad that is
contrary to the majority of the student
body’s befiefs.
— Neal P. Pfeiffer
U.T. freshman — Psychology major
Narrow-minded
Editor:
I am not out to insult the A&M student
body but I feel the need to say something.
This is my first semester here and I am a
little disappointed. Because I an an out-
of-stater I have listened and watched to try
and understand the Texas way. This has
included along with the pleasant things
hearing a professor use the term bush-
bunnies, hearing racial jokes and reading
in Thursday’s Battalion that Gays have no
civil liberties.
Only because I have gone to other uni
versities and lived different places in the
country do I know that so much can be
learned by just being a little open-minded.
This is supposed to be a place of higher
learning. We should be expanding with
our knowledge and ridding ourselves of
prejudices in preparation for (I hate to use
the term) the real world. Unfortunately
the bulk of the A&M student body is too
worried about what Jane or Joe Blow in
the next room will think should any dis
crepancy in opinion arise. I don’t want to
hear violins but this is really too bad.
There are so many different backgrounds
represented on this campus yet the
strongest cliche I have been witness to is
alive and well. This was illustrated Friday.
I am sorry to tell ya, folks, but Gays exist. I
do not agree with their way of life but I
have to support their right to it. We all
should because someday we may have our
civil liberties questioned.
The Blue Jean Day idea was not too
original but why the devil let it be such a
big deal? I wore my jeans Friday and did
not find myself surrounded by Gays, beat
up by rednecks or feeling lesbian tenden
cies Saturday morning.
Let’s see some individualism out there.
It could be rewarding if not a nice change.
— Amanda Creighton, ’80
Stick to yells
Editor:
Now that the furor of elections and Blue
Jeans Day has passed, I would like to ex
press my concern about the actions of yell
leaders Reagan, Hancock and Wright.
Their “Beat the hell out of Dolph Briscoe”
yell at the Clements rally was entirely un
called for. They are elected by the student
body to lead yells at athletic events, not
beer and pizza political rallies.
They have a legitimate right to be in
volved in politics, but they should not be
dressed in yell leader uniforms and per
forming a yell created for an athletic
event.
One duty of the Ross Volunteers is to act
as an honor guard for the governor of this
state. And I feel it shows poor taste for
elected representatives of our student
body to be shouting beat the hell out of
that same governor.
I have no great admiration for Dolph
Briscoe, but I did not vote for yell leaders
to express my or anyone else’s political
opinions. In tbe future they should confine
their activities to the job we elect them to
perform.
— Harvey Laas, ’79
No islands here
Editor:
Monday’s responses to Blue Jean Day
confirmed my estimation that the future of
this country is in trouble.
The predominant message implied by
these letters was that those who did change
their normal attire were “intimidated” or
“vain“.
In response to this, I say Bologna! This is
an important issue which will greatly affect
the future of TAMU. The attack on the
people, for showing preference, is a poor
excuse for apathy. I suggest that Mr.’s
Willey, Chandler, and Jones review the
judgements they passed down on those in
dividuals who care!
Mr. Schlain suggests that all Anti-Gays
are “closed-minded bigots” and that they
should be sent off to some island. The
elimination of prejudice can be accom
plished by changing the human race to one
color, having the same sex, class, religion,
etc. An alternative is to give everyone a
prefrontal lobotomy. I think if any group of
individuals should be sent to an island, it
should be Mr. Schlain and his fellow liter
ary contributors with their distorted out
looks on the situations.
— Eugene W.K. Soo, ’78
\
Top of the News
Campus
Faulk to speak at benefit
John Henry Faulk, the nationally known humorist and speaker
from Madisonville, will appear in a benefit performance for the
Bryan-College Station Association for Retarded Citizens Sunday.
Musical festivities will also be included at the informal gathering at
the Grove on the Texas A&M campus from 1 to 9 p.m. Aggies Aid
Retarded Kids is sponsoring the individuals and music groups per
forming to benefit the retarded. AARK will accept a dollar contribu
tion at the gate.
OCSA to host beer bust
The Off-Campus Student Association will host a dance and beer
bust for all off-campus students Saturday, 8 p.m., at the Quonset
Hut. The tickets will cost $1 and will include music, beer, cokes and
chips. Tickets may be purchased at the Student Progams Office in
room 216 in the MSC and at the OCSA Cubicle. Texas law prohibits
sale of tickets at the door.
State
Assistant police chief fired
Houston Police Chief Harry Caldwell Thursday fired one of his
assistant chiefs being investigaed on federal charges of obstruction of
justice after he refused to resign. City attorneys served Carrol M.
Lynn, a former police chief in a recent administration, his indefinite
suspension papers. Lynn was arrested April 11 by FBI agents after he
allegedly accepted a $25,000 bribe from a Houston oilman to “put in
the fix” on a federal securities investigation. Lynn’s suspension must
be reviewed by the civil service commission. He has a right to appeal.
Chief s son charged in shooting
The son of Galveston Police Chief Ernest Galvan was charged
Thursday with shooting two patrol officers following a barroom brawl
and a chase ending on a beach highway location called “Dead Man s
Curve. Eddie Galvan, 30, was charged with aggravated assault on a
police officer, attempted capital murder and aggravated kidnapping.
What started as a minor bar disturbance ended in a chase after Galvan
fled the bar in a hijacked pickup truck with its occupant. Police
caught Galvan after the vehicle crashed about seven miles from
downtown.
Police find dynamite in raid
Fort Worth police Thursday found nine sticks of dynamite, several
guns and possibly stolen merchandise in a raid on what was de
scribed as the headquarters of the Bandidos motorcycle gang. Four
were arrested in a raid Tuesday, but police released them while
officials tried to trace the dynamite and merchandise. Twelve gang
members were arrested April 9 in a brawl at a chili cookoff that
resulted in seven knife injuries.
Nation
Former FBI head arraigned
Former FBI Director L. Patrick Gray and two senior assistants
were arraigned Thursday for their alleged part in illegal wiretaps and
mail openings during a hunt for fugitive Weatherman terrorists.
Gray, former Associate Director Mark Felt and former Intelligence
Chief Edward S. Miller were called before U.S. District Judge
William B. Bryant to plead to charges of conspiring to violate civil
rights of surveillance targets. The former officials were indicted last
week for their alleged part in the illegal mail openings and wiretaps of
friends and associates of fugitive radicals in New York City in the
early 1970s. The criminal prosecution of Gray, Felt and Miller and
the administrative punishment of 70 others have been heatedly pro
tested by FBI agents and retired agents.
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EPA orders recall by Chrysler
The Euvircmmeutwl Vs-vAcvASou Agency said Thursday Vt Ws y>v
dered Chrysler Corp. to stop the sale of some of its 1978 cars unless
an exhaust problem is fixed and to recall 77,0(X) of them for the same
reason. The agency said the cars affected by the order are certain
models of the Plymouth Fury, Dodge Monaco, Charger, Magnum
and Diplomat, and the Chrysler Cordoba and LeBaron equipped
with 318-cubic-inch engines. Chrysler said it planned to make a
production line modification next week to correct the situation in
advance of an April 29 deadline set by EPA for the company to halt
sales.
Weather
Fair skies with mild temperatures today. Increasing cloudi
ness and warmer this afternoon. High today upper 70s, low
tonight near 60. High tomorrow near 80. Winds from the
southeast at 12-18 mph. 30 percent chance of rain late Satur
day afternoon and evening.
The Battalion
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