The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Wednesday
April 15, 1981
Slouch
I THIS IS PAV
By Jim Earle
91
THAT OUR
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BAYLUE
4- /sr-8
Discussion centers
on good government
By DAVID S. BRODER
DURHAM, N.C. — Maybe it was be
cause the session was held in the common
room of the Duke University divinity
school, in the heart of the Bible Belt, and
during Lent. But it was the most unex
pected discussion of government manage
ment I have ever heard. It was all about
ethics.
It was part of the 10th anniversary celeb
ration of the Institute of Policy Sciences and
Public Affairs which Terry Sanford and Joel
Fleishman have created down here. The
assignment from moderator Bob Behn to
the five panelists was to propound one “out
rageous idea” apiece about running public-
sector enterprises. And, without prear
rangement, it turned out that they all
wanted to talk about the question of getting
“good government,” not in the sense of effi
ciency but in the ethical dimension.
Their focus was broad, not narrow — not
just avoiding scandal or conflict-of-interest
through disclosure of assets or outside
sources of income. No, what they wanted to
talk about was the old question of how one
determines the public good.
At first, it seemed surprising. But as the
informal discussion wore on into the night,
it appeared more plausible that the moral
dimension of the “good government” ques
tion was coming to the fore.
For one thing, as recently noted in my
column on the Connecticut Mutual Life In
surance Co. survey, the political atmos
phere is suffused with “moral questions”
placed on the agenda by the quarter of the
American people who are themselves
preoccupied with religious and moral con
cerns.
Second, the political failure of the en-
gineer-President Jimmy Carter — whose
administration had more professional eco
nomists in its policy-making leadership
than any other in history — was bound to
cause questions about the “scientific”
approach to public-management.
As Colin Dively of Boston University,
one of the panelists, said, the failure of the
“engineering model” of public administra
tion is its denial that the decision-makers in
the bureaucracy are, in fact, imposing their
ethical judgments on their decisions.
His suggestion was that, instead of pre
tending to a pristine, methodological purity
which they do not attain, bureaucrats rec
ognize that they are power-brokering, risk
taking, self-promoting entrepreneurs —
and be held accountable for the moral judg
ments inplicit in their actions.
Warped
Tuition hike could be killed r 1 a "
So you’ve got a couple of more years to
go before you get that elusive sheepskin?
And you say you’re making it on your own
because your parents are too poor to pay for
your schooling outright, but too ‘rich’ to get
a government grant? Middle-class, in other
words.
But you’re gonna make it, right?
It may be tougher than you think.
Bills currently before both houses of the
state legislature, if passed, will cause tui
tion for state-supported schools in Texas to
double. That means where you paid $60 for
15 hours, you’re now going to pay $120.
And if you’re classified as out-of-state,
multiply that by 10 and see how you like
paying $1,200 for tuition. Not food, not
books, not a car. Tuition.
But wait — you say you want a medical or
dental degree?
Got any rich relatives that like you a lot?
You’ll probably need them.
These bills would hike medical school
tuition for in-state students from $400 per
12-month academic year to $3,600. Dental
students will have to fork over $2,500.
Double that for out-of-state students.
Yes, that’s $7,200 and $5,000, respectively.
Okay, you say you can handle it, you’ll
just increase the amount you request in
student financial aid from Uncle Sugar.
Think again. President Reagan’s “New
Beginnings” economic program calls for a
$9.2 billion decrease in student financial aid
over the next five years, although aid for
students in severe financial need will prob-
Flush center
By Terry Duran
ably be increased somewhat. And a reorga
nization of the guaranteed student loan
program includes increasing the interest
rate from seven to nine percent and de
creasing the amount available to middle-
class students.
Now — remember about the room and
board rate increase in the fall? Don’t think
you’re safe because you live in an apart
ment. They’re going up, too. The inexor
able law of supply and demand, you know,
free enterprise and all that.
How’s that for a triple whammy? And it
centers on the middle class. Fee increases,
even in these amounts, are not really going
to bother the students whose financial back
ground is, to say the least, comfortable.
And the increases are only going to make it
more apparent that the financially needy
need help — and they’ll get it. It’s the
students who are definitely not rich, but not
really poor, who are going to be sandwiched
in the middle. Hence the phrase, “middle
class,” I guess.
The only thing is, it doesn’t have to be
like that. Room and board rates are going
up; that’s already been approved. Like
wise, it is unlikely that anything we do will
influence decisions made in the grealt i
fantasyland on the Potomac. Howeve; Getting tickets
tuition increase legislation is still upa mnoying and time
air. Two more votes are necessarytoH \ Option passes, \
tuition increase bill in committee;! icertain seat in G
Caperton of College Station is one off :vents sponsored 1
more-or-less undecided members m . °® c f su P er '' is
could swing it. mdpass holders ha
Caperton is straddling the fence lea an )uy u " tK ‘
he doesn’t know what the people ofCr! j “Option passes
Station want. Over 30,000 of thosep; nembers or the g
are students at Texas A&M, andl’di Of the 1,900 a\
that every one of those 30,000 couldi Pass holders 1
piece ofpaper and an envelopeandast , urra 7 sai . 1 11
ji r r . i • r then the seat goes
regardless ol postal increases.
Now, I grant you, Texas student | The total cost c
paid 4.4 percent of their educational! rertified mail. The
in 1980, as opposed to 15.8 percentinl br each concert,
out-of-state students’ share was 43.5; Option passes a
cent, down from 63.1 in the samepei 'ear they were sol
And I also grant you that the Legist s “In past years th
Budget Board overestimated the amoin ® w weeks,” she sr
state revenues this year by about two| >etter than averag
cent, so everybody is having to doa! , Town Ha ^ tar !
belt-tightening. The state budget i ^“uingtd
quired by law to be balanced; we has; “But next year
provisions for deficit spending. Fine; ia jd. “We’re going
good. jame.”
But last year, the state had a $11.83 This school year
lion surplus. Where did that go? Nob Gatlin and the C
I’ve talked to knows. Daniels Band, Jin
Caperton’s address is P.O. Box 121 The Broadway
Capitol Station, Austin, 78711. There 1 in ame ’
sentative from the Bryan-College Sti
area is Bill Presnal, P.O. Box 2910, Ansi
78769. Need I say more?
The two current super-bureaucrats on
the panel agreed. Jan Patterson, deputy
commissioner of administration for North
Carolina, and Peter Goldmark, executive
director of the New York-New Jersey Port
Authority, both argued the necessity of
seeing “the human consequences” of pub
lic-policy decisions.
Goldmark went so far as to suggest as his
“Outrageous idea” a variant of the Chinese
Communist technique of sending the party
cadres back to the factories and fields. “I
would,” he said, “require senior managers
to spend one week a year as front-line deliv
erers of the service they are administering
— the corrections commissioner as a jailer;
the hospital administrator as an orderly; the
transit commissioner as a bus driver.”
The utility of this approach struck me an
hour later when Health and Human Ser
vices Secretary Richard S. Schweiker was
arguing —with the aid of graphs, pie-charts
and many, many numbers — that statistic
ally speaking, Ronald Reagan’s budget cuts
were mere pinpricks in the welfare state.
But there is no doubt that Reagan has
finally forced bureaucrats, as well as the
public, to ask what government should be
doing — a value question if there ever was
one.
Jim Joseph, the recently retired under
secretary of interior and a minister himself,
had obviously been thinking about the
question. In his five minutes on the panel,
he presented in summary form five criteria
for judging the worth of government ex
penditures, derived from an appropriate
source, the preamble to the Constitution.
It remained for Mark Moore of the facul
ty of the redoubtable John F. Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard to cap
the discussion. He remarked that its stu
dents are brainy and ambitious (but guilty
enough about their ambition not to go to the
business school) and therefore prone to the
“technocratic fantasy” that they can do good
just by being smart. Moore said that even at
Harvard, they are now teaching that “ethic
al ideas are so pwerful in resolving manage
ment issues and motivating organizations
that they are, competitively, and advan
tageous tool.”
That is a long way from Sen. Daniel Pat
rick Moynihan’s recent joking observation
that what budget director David A. Stock-
man learned in the 1960s at the Harvard
divinity school was that “there is no moral
ity, and, therefore, there can be no immoral
policy.”
It represents real progress, I guess.
By TRACEY BI
Battalion Kc
The energy out
intil the year 200
[espite energy p
ivebeen plaguing
luntry, the execu
fTexas Energy and
‘uesday.
Milton L. Hallov
y the Texas A&
'enter for Energ;
lesources, spoke
nergy outlook for
le Rudder Forun
Energy consuin);
lignite will overta
consumption in Te
id. The cost of W
exas lignite will st
itant until that tin
imaining cheapei
Increases in th(
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isportation cos
It’s your turn
Don’t mind sharing education’s cost
Editor:
I have recently seen several students re
fer to a tuition hike as a raise in taxes. I was
under the impression that tuition is what a
student contributes for his or her educa
tion. Taxes, on the other hand, are what the
people of the state of Texas pay for us to go
to school. An increase in tuition would
mean that a student is contributing more
toward the cost of his education. That
doesn’t seem too unreasonable. Who will
receive most of the benefits of this educa
tion anyway?
I would also like to question the reason
ing behind David Collins’ statement that
“. . . if one student gets nailed, it’s too
many. ” I would like to give that poor stu
dent some credit. If he really wants an
education and is forced to drop out for lack
of funds, I would like to think that he
would work a semester, save his money,
and come back the next semester. Or that
same student could take a lighter course
load and put in a few more hours at work.
Before I finish, I would just like to say
that I am working to put myself through
school and I will be as reluctant to let go of
my tuition money as anybody. I am glad to
be here at A&M and I am grateful that the
state is paying so much of the cost of my
education. I just don’t feel it is my place to
complain if they want me to bear a little
more of the responsibility.
Susan Brown ’82
Texas’ depende
rude oil will conti
ntil 2000, Hallov
rrrm
Center helps blues
Editor:
- I am writing to any and all apartment
dwellers who are singing the blues. Some
times it can be really frustrating if your
requests for repairs go unanswered or if you
feel like no one cares.
There is an office in the Department of
Student Affairs which can help you with
tenant/landlord problems. The staff in the
Off Campus Center are willing to listen and
help you understand your rights and« [
sponsibilities as a tenant, as well as you
alternatives.
We help off campus students with
concerns related to off campus living. Soi
of our services include listings of off camp'
housing, a roommate locator service, row
mate counseling and conflict
tenant/landlord information, a car pool
ferral service, and general information ali
out off campus living.
The Off Campus Center is located
Puryear Hall directly across from d
YMCA Building. We are open Monit
through Friday, 8 a.m. until 5 p.m,,8f
1741.
Please call or come by if we can help)®
in any way.
Louann Scfflli
Off Campus Advi#
mi
OI
By Scott McCullar
The Battalion
MEMBER
l S P S 045 360
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Congress
Editor Dillard Stone
Managing Editor Angelique Copeland
Asst. Managing Editor Todd Woodard
City Editor Debbie Nelson
Asst. City Editor Marcy Boyce
Photo Editor Greg Gammon
Sports Editor Ritchie Priddy
Focus Editor Cathy Saathoff
Asst. Focus Editor Susan Hopkins
News Editors Venita McCellon,
Scot K. Meyer
StaffWriters Carolyn Barnes,
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Terry Duran, Bemie Fette, Cindy Gee,
Phyllis Henderson, Kathleen McElroy,
Belinda McCoy, Kathy O’Connell, Denise Richter,
Rick Stolle
Cartoonist Scott McCullar
Photographers Chuck Chapman, Brian Tate
Brian late
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SCRAP GOU
GOLD IKGO’
DENTAL GO]
WEDDING Bi
Mothers hl
glass ring