Viewpoint
The Battalion Wednesday
Texas A&M University May 16, 1979
University images in need of a boost
By PATRICIA McCORMACK
United Press International
Higher education, which in the United
States refers to what goes on in colleges and
universities, has troubles.
Among the most serious are an erosion of
public confidence plus some unethical be
havior, such as exploitation of graduate as
sistants and grade inflation.
Then, too, more than a few “education
consumers,” which means students and
their parents who are spending up to
$8,000 a year for tuition, room and board,
complain that, among other things, the
schools aren’t providing much guidance on
career matters.
And some bitterness is evident over gaps
between what’s promised in the school
catalog and what’s delivered in the class
room.
A braintrust of leaders from industry,
education, government and other walks of
life, meeting for four days at the 56th
American Assembly of Columbia Univer
sity, recently paid attention to such criti
cism as they picked apart higher education.
They attacked what one described as
“the soft underbelly of higher education”
and came up with suggestions to help
higher education restore its integrity —
and they called for prompt action.
The Assembly meets twice a year. It was
set up by Dwight D. Eisenhower at Co
lumbia in 1950. Nonpartisan, it publishes
proceedings to illuminate issues of United
States policy.
The Assembly’s higher education partic
ipants reached general agreement on many
points, including:
—A cerain malaise affects higher educa
tion. The public believes that there is waste
in its universities and colleges; they hear of
tenure and conclude it has become a job
security device for both the incompetent
and competent.
—There have been breaches of ethical
conduct, including: plagiarism by both stu
dents arid faculty; exploitation by faculty
and administrators of graduate students
and teaching assistants; “double-dipping”
by academic professionals from several
grant sources for the same labors per
formed; undisclosed selling of identical
scholarly works to more than one publica
tion; grade inflation and unwarranted rec
ommendations for students; and the injus-
tified imposition of prerequisites.
The Assembly’s proposals to restore in
tegrity included:
—E!ach institution should be explicit
about the standards of ethical behavior ex
pected of its trustees, administrators, fac
ulty, staff and students.
—In the face of declining enrollments,
institutions must plan and implement, in
dividually and cooperatively, actions to re
duce the size and cost of their operations —
and do it without jeopardizing academic
quality and access.
—Universities and colleges must be con
cerned with the declining quality of grade
school and high school education.
—Better links are needed between high
school and college programs — and an up
grading of entrance requirements, plus
remedial work for students with deficien
cies. But college crediits should not be
given for remedial courses.
—Because unionization is frequently de
structive of the collegiality and academic
standards essential to institutional integ
rity, faculty should, wherever possible, di
rect their efforts toward achieving effective
participation in institutional governance by
other means.
—Colleges and universities should not
misrepresent their course offerings, the job
prospects for graduates, the participation of
senior faculty in regular instruction, their
facilities, or other aspects of academic pro
grams.
—If it is to remain ethically sensitive
toward students, each institution must
prevent the exploitation or favored treat
ment of students who, for example, partici
pate in the performing arts, in intercol
legiate competition, or in faculty-student
research.
—Universities should provide more ef
fective personal academic, and career
counseling.
: —The integrity of higher education
could be threatened by centralized control.
For that reason, establishment of a national
department of education, as currently pro
posed, could not enhance integrity and
could diminish it.
Among the participants in the higher
education “think tank” at the American As
sembly’s headquarters’s Arden House,
Harriman, N.Y., were:
— University presidents:' Richard M.
Cyert, of Carnegie-Mellon, Pittsburgh;
Willard F. Enteman, of Bowdoin College;
Sister M. Coleman Nee, I.H.M.,
Marywood College, Scranton, Pa.;
Elizabeth T. Kennan, Mt. Holyoke Col
lege; Lt. Gen. Kenneth L. Tallman,
superintendent, U.S. Air Force Academy;
Wesley W. Posvar, University of
Pittburgh.
—From Congress and government: Rep.
Millicent Fenwick, R.-N.J.; Alfred B. Fitt,
general counsel, Congressional Budget Of
fice; George B. Weathersby, Commis
sioner for Higher Education, State of In
diana; Rep. John Brademas, D.-Ind., the
majority whip of the House of Representa
tives.
—From industry and education organi
zations: Clifford D. Anderson, vice presi
dent, J.C. Penney Company; Winfred L.
Godwin, president. Southern Regional
Education Board, Atlanta; Charles Fran-
kel. Chairman of the Board, National
Humanities Center, North Carolina.
Take a look, America
British campaign techniques superior
By DAVID S. BRODER
LONDON — In a matter of five weeks,
the British have disposed of the chore of
conducting a national election campaign, a
task which seems to take two years at the
minimum in the United States. Thanks to a
provision for free television time for the
parties and a ban on paid political ads on the
airwaves, they have done so at a fraction of
the cost of an American presidential elec
tion.
In addition to brevity and economy, the
British election system appears to a first
time observer to offer certain other advan
tages over the American model. On one
hand, the campaigning is more personal
and local here than in the United States.
On the other, the issues are presented in a
more coherent national pattern.
Most of these advantages are the by
product of a parliamentary system based on
reasonably strong party structures. But
that system has its own built-in disadvan
tages as well. An organization called the
National Committee for Electoral Reform,
headed by Lord Harlech, the former am
bassador to Washington, has been taking
out large newspaper ads charging that the
“present voting system ... is unfair, unrep
resentative, anachronistic and thoroughly
undemocratic. ”
The headline on the ad proclaims: “Here
Are Two-Thirds of the Election Results.”
The ad lists the winning party in 402 of the
635 constituencies, each of which elects
one member to the House of Commons.
Because “only the marginals matter,” the
Harlech committee argues that voters in
those 400 or more safe constituencies are
effectively irrelevant to the campaign.
There are other problems as well. The
theoretical danger that critics of our elec
toral college system allege against it is more
than a theoretical danger in the parlia
mentary system. Twice in the last 30 years,
the British election system has made a win
ner a loser. Labor won more votes than the
Conservatives in 1951, but the Tories
gained more seats and took power. In Feb
ruary 1974, exactly the reverse happened.
The goal of the Harlech committee is to
substitute proportional representation for
the present system. That would be a boon
to the third-place Liberals, who win far
more votes than seats. But it risks forcing
coalition governments much of the time.
Meantime, there are other anomalies of
modern politics which seem as much be
yond the reach of the British system as they
do of ours. “Media events” by party leaders
are just as silly here as they are at home.
The sight of Jim Callaghan stalking down a
supermarket aisle to show his concern is
about as irrelevant — and as eagerly photo
graphed — as similar television gimmicks
in a presidential campaign.
Where the British system does excel is in
making a campaign simultaneously a cohe
rent national referendum and a local con
test with a high degree of personal in
volvement.
Most of the campaigning is done, liter
ally, on the voters doorstep, with canvass
teams of local party volunteers and candi
date “walkabouts,” or door-to-door tours.
No one is exempt from the discipline and
demands of this local campaigning.
Last weekend, in Plymouth, I watched
British Foreign Secretary David Owen
stand for almost two hours on a chilly after
noon in a downtown park, answering
pointed questions from constituents, on
topics ranging from Rhodesia to the Com
mon Market to the closed shop, welfare
fraud, servicemen’s pay increases and his
own action in crossing a civil-servants’ pic
ket line. Owen told one particularly persis
tent interrogator on Rhodesia that “You’re
being a pain in the ass,” but he stayed until
the questioning was finished.
At the same time this intensely personal
dialogue is occuring, there is enough disci
pline in the national parties to permit real
understanding and debate on the issues.
The party manifestoes, or platforms, carry
weight; they limit and define the positions
local candidates may take.
The party positions are debated at rival
press conferences, by government minis
ters and their “shadow cabinet” opposites,
every weekday morning in London. And,
with a relatively short campaign, the public
and private television networks do exten
sive news treatments of issues and cam
paigns — in 40-minute time blocs — every
evening, in addition to the free time they
make available to the parties for their own
programs.
The result is an election in which the
personal popularity of the party leaders —
where Callaghan has a clear advantage —
can be weighed by the voters against their
expressed preference for the Tory position
on most of the major issues.
One recent poll showed, for example,
that 66 percent of the voters knew the To
ries advocated income tax reductions fi
nanced from reduced government spend
ing, while only 15 percent thought that was
a Labor position. Even higher proportions
of voters understood the party differences
on issues of limiting trade union power and
cutting off welfare benefits to strikers’
families.
American politics would be improved if
we could find similarly effective devices for
getting issue-content into our protracted
campaigns.
(c)The Washington Post
Company
A Californian’s look at the gas crunch
By JACK V. FOX
United Press International
LOS ANGELES — The headlines tell
about the gasoline shortage and the lines
waiting at filling stations but if you read the
fine print the story is really about the
American automobile.
The Los Angeles metropolitan area has
around eight million people. If there is one
common denominator among them it is
their dependence on cars.
People in Southern California drive to
work on a freeway system that is a miracle
of highway engineering.
We drive to the beaches, the mountains,
the deserts, the ballgames.
We drive our kids to school. We drive to
the supermarkets and discount stores and
dry cleaners.
We drive to friends’ homes 40 miles away
for an evening. We drive to our doctors,
our movie theaters, our restuarants.
We drive our dogs to a park.
We drive bumper to bumper on Hol
lywood Boulevard and Van Nuys and
Broadway for no reason other than just to
drive.
We drive to the racetracks, the golf
courses. We swarm the shopping centers at
Christmastime so that it drives the joy out
of the season. And on New Year’s day one
experience of driving to the Rose Bowl is
enough for a lifetime.
We drive to Palm Springs and Las Vegas
and Santa Barbara and Laguna Beach and
Lake Arrowhead and Yosemite and San
Francisco. Our parking lots have splotched
Los Angeles into a cement wasteland.
And we are driving 7 percent more this
year than we did last.
If the people who live in Atlanta,
Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, De
troit, Houston, Kansas City, New York,
Philadelphia or Washington, think they
have seen a traffic jam, they should see Los
Angeles on a summer Sunday evening
when the residents stream back into town.
There are 16,000 service stations in
California, almost half of them in the Los
Angeles area.
So in these past 10 days when the
gasoline well began to run dry a panic hit
Los Angeles.
It was ironic in a way. Down around
Long Beach the grasshopper pumps were
pulling from an oil field ranking second in
the continental United States only behind
Texas. The offshore wells dot the horizon
and massive tankers sail past the shoreline
loaded with Alaskan oil because there is no
refinery capacity here to handle the crude.
The “horror stories” of violence in the
lines were true. But they were one small
facet of the big picture and it was perhaps
even more scary.
It was estimated that if Southern Califor
nians would buy only two less gallons of
gasoline a week the “crisis” would
moderate. But voluntary conservation
wasn’t the prevailing mood.
Rather the mood was generally one of
these:
—The giant gasoline companies were the
villains and there would be plenty once gas
hit $1 a gallon.
—The federal government was at fault
for shortchanging California.
—The filling station operators were to
blame for staying open only a couple of
hours a day and closing altogether on
weekends.
—It was all a giant conspiracy. '
The odd-even license plate rationing
plan may begin to have an effect by rjext
week but as of Saturday the lines were
longer than ever.
And so far Southern Californians haven’t
taken a good look at themselves and their
driving habits.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev visited
the United States in 1957 and at one point
on his tour he arrived at the airport in
Pittsburgh. On the 15-mile drive into town
his cavalcade threaded through literally
tens of thousands of people who had driven
out and parked along the highway for a
sight of him.
Khrushchev was asked if he was not im
pressed by the display of affluence on the
part of the American “common man. ”
“I think they would have been smarter to
take a bus, ” he said.
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Top of the News
CAMPUS
Services pending for Walker
Services are pending in Hempstead for Texas A&M Universit)
veterinary student Stuart Walker of Houston. Walker is the 13tli
student fatality of the 1978-79 academic year. He was traveling alone
in his car on FM 359 near Hempstead when the accident occurred
Silver Taps will be held in September.
Football ticket applications due
The deadline for football season ticket orders to be submitted for
priority seating in June 1, 1979. Ticket applications or further infor
mation on football tickets is available from the Athletic Ticket Office
at 845-2311 or in G. Rollie White Coliseum Room 110. The deadline
for turning in baseball tickets from rained-out games for refunds is
May 25.
STATE
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Coast Guard to investigate deaf/is ?
Coast Guard officers in Galveston charged with determining why
eight men died in the collapse of an oil drilling platform have
scheduled a preliminary hearing for Tuesday “to see what will be
presented” and a formal hearing Wednesday. Meanwhile, Atlantic
Pacific, owners of the rig, filed a federal court petition seeking exon
eration from damage claims in the accident, or, alternatively, limita
tion of damages to $1.25 million — the insured value of the platform,
One leg of the 115-foot-long jack-up rig Ranger I collapsed Thursday
night, plunging the platform and 34 workers into the sea. The bodies
of seven of the missing were not recovered.
n
3 injured preventing explosion
Crewmen on a burning towboat off of Freeport prevented a possi
ble explosion Tuesday by unhooking a 279-foot barge loaded with
highly flammable benzene, a Coast Guard spokesman said. Three
crewmen were injured, including one doused with diesel fuel that
caught fire. Harry said sparks from a generator ignited diesel fuel on
the Jennifer Cummins as it towed the barge on the Old Brazos River
at Freeport about 12:30 a.m. He said the towboat was run aground
and the fire extinguished a short while later.
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NATION
NRC to monitor striking plant
lew
idu
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has sent an inspector
to monitor operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Veraon,
Vt., during its strike by 65 employees. Technicians at the plant
walked off the job at midnight Monday in a contract dispute, leaving
the state’s lone nuclear facility to be run by supervisory personnel.
Management officials have said they can run the plant themselves
with as few as five people during a strike. Wisner said the NRC will
check to see that the management officials are qualified, but stressed
the regulatory agency will not directly supervise operation of the
plant. The striking employes include maintenance personnel, electri
cians and other technical workers.
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Firemen exposed to radiation
Eighteen persons in Beatty.Nev., including 12 members of a vol
unteer fire department, will undergo medical examinations after
being exposed to radiation from a tractor-trailer loaded with contain
ers of low-level radioactive waste which exploded and burned at a
desert dumping ground 110 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Beatty
Fire Chief Bill Sullivan said the unidentified driver saw smoke com
ing from his cargo 5 a.m. Monday and drove his truck through a chain
marking the entrance of the dump site, unhooked the trailer and
drove 10 miles to Beatty to report the fire. Six employees of the
Nuclear Energy Co., wearing garbedine overalls, foot covers and
masks entered the truck to fight the fire. Members of the fire de
partment, none of whom entered the trailer, did not wear masks. The
smoldering cargo was dumped into a 35-foot deep trench and workers
using bulldzoers covered it with five feet of earth. Moore said on-site
readings revealed the firefighters received “very low exposure. He
said company and state officials were investigating whether the mate
rial was improperly shipped.
WORLD
Khomeni: ‘anyone' can kill Shah
The chief of Iran’s central Islamic court Tuesday indirectly invited
the Palestine Liberation Organization to execute the exiled Shah
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, now living in the Bahamas. Sheikh Sadegh
Khalkhali addressed a crowd of 30,000 people in Tehran. “Not
everyone who takes the road to terrorism is a terrorist, but (he) is an
agent of the sentence (of death) handed down by the Islamic revolu
tionary court,” Khalkhali said. He said, quoting a “message from
(Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini,” that anyone, Iranian or Palestinian,
Moslem or non-Moslem or even from the Bahamas, was free to exe
cute Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
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WEATHER
Sunny and warm, fair and mild with a high in the low to mid
80’s and a low in the high 60’s. Winds will be southerly at 8-14
mph.
-
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