Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Nov. 20, 1975, edition 1 / Page 6
Part of Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
ir "rsi rf$ ce fr rs n 1 J U Howard Stone Thursday, November 20, 1975 for Student leadership Power Many of the services offered by the University are completely student-oriented, as in the Student Stores, the Guidance and Testing Center and the Career Planning and Placement Center. Other services, such as those offered by the Carolina Union and the several food service locations have primarily a student orientation yet serve other members of the University as well. And other services, such as campus security and the library system, are only partly student-oriented. In certain university communities, those services aimed first at the student population are' run by corporations under student control. At Harvard, the Harvard Co-op (pronounced "coop" in Cambridge) is a student-owned and student-operated book and supply store. Students at Harvard receive discounts on purchases which are credited to the students according to accounts under their student identification numbers. At UCLA, students control the bookstore, cafeteria and similar campus services and concessions. At this University, students have some voice in the management of student services. The Union Board of Directors is headed by a student and has several student members on it. Student Stores has an advisory committee with student representation, as does the food service. But the professional management of the Carolina Union is hired and fired by the office of Student Affairs. The final decisions for the bookstore and food service are ultimately the responsibility of the University administration which acts upon the recommendation of the advisory bodies. . ... .v-... . .There is no overall system of student control over student services. But student control is not the only thing absent now. There is also little student responsibility for these services. If the food service does not meet expectations, students blame the latig Cole C. Campbell Editor 83rd Year of Editorial Freedom Bill Bates It certainly is interesting how Student Government operates. Those of us who were naive assumed, just naturally of course, that everyone in Student Government worked for the students. In fact, the reason most new people came into my administration was just out of interest in serving the student body. Just recently. Student Government has been racked with controversy. The problem seems to have been (although most of you may dismiss me as a biased source) that personal activities mixed with professional duties. That is by the wayside now. The enthusiasm that was engendered early this year has now slacked off. Again, it is only the dedicated that remain and actively work on constructive programs, while the rest of the student body write Student Government off as a farce or a learning ground for future political ambition. If politics is as back-biting on a national and state level, then no wonder our national institutions are floundering. Faculty Council is not better its sessions are long, and very little is accomplished by the larger Faculty Council meeting that has Prisoners sharing administration. If the bookstore's prices are too high, students blame the administration. If a physician at the health service is insensitive, students blame the administration. What is needed is a system in which student responsibility and student control can be merged in order that the student population can offer some of its talent and energies to the daily management of this University. The administration should not be saddled with the responsibility of providing flawless service to students. If the University is a training ground for responsible citizenship, then students ought to assume responsibility for self government, self-government including the provision of vital community services. This kind of contribution and assumption of responsibility can come, however, only with the opportunity for greater student management of student services. Students cannot assume the responsibility for a service they can not control. .Students cannot exercise self-government when all such a government can do is pass advisory resolutions. What is needed is power sharing between elements of the University. Those aspects of University life which relate primarily to servicing students ought to be run primarily by students. Those which relate to students and faculty members should be controlled by both. Only with such power sharing can all sectors of the University contribute to it as a community and not just as an extended library with classrooms. It will probably be a long time before students on this campus achieve- the responsibility and influence that our. fellows at some other campuses have achieved. But we must not lose sight of our responsibility to the University community, even if that responsibility and its corollary requirement of power are not yet recognized by the entire University. Jim Grimsley Managing Editor Greg Porter Associate Editor Jim Roberts News Editor Robin Clark Features Editor Susan Shackelford Sport Editor Barnie Day Projects Editor Joyce Fitzpatrick , Graphic Arts Editor not already been hashed out in committee. Faculty Council is an important tradition, but its meetings are dry and drawn out. CGC has the same problem except that CGC lacks the wisdom to limit its dryness to a mandatory one hour and forty-five minute adjournment time. It would rather argue aimlessly about issues . that make little difference to the student body, while the major issues go unstudied and pass without any rational input from the CGC. And that is how it stands. The shared power concepts of University government fascinate many of us who share a commitment to this University. What 1 mean by "shared power" is that all participate to some extent in the governing process. That is where the ill-conceived and misnamed "war on the administration" received its backing. Now that that has subsided, I think it is time that the University community (faculty, staff, administration, students) all look for ways to improve the system. Communication and channels of "Morally it makes no difference whether a man is killed in war or is condemned to starve to death by the indifference of others." This thought, presented by Willy Brandt to the United Nations General Assembly m 1 973, is the basic position underlying today's Fast For A World Harvest. The Rome Food Conference estimated that there are 460 million severely malnourished people in the world, and projected the total to increase to 750 million by 1985. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN estimates that from ten to twenty million people starve to death each year. Why is this so? To some extent, the problem can be attributed to variations in climate which cause fluctuations in yearly productions of food. But the deeper nature of the crisis is not so much a global scarcity of food as it is a maldistribution of agricultural resources. According to FAO statistics, the United States and Canada, with eight per cent of the world's population, control 20 per cent of its food supply while" Europe, with 25 per cent of the people, has 48 per cent of the food. The other side of the story is that South America's 10 per cent of the world's people have only eight per cent of the food, Africa's 10 percent have only 4 per cent of the food, and, most incredibly of all, Asia's 40 per cent of the total world population has access to only 14 per cent of the world's food production. While trade and aid offset this to a small degree, the simple fact is that people in the "developed" world consume far more food than is needed for simple nutritional health while many in the rest of the world go hungry. While trade could be increased, poor families spend up to 80 per cent of their income for food right now. What about aid? Last year, at the height of the drought-provoked famine in many areas of the world, the United States shipped four times as much food to Cambodia and South Vietnam (to bolster their failing military efforts) as to starvation-ridden Bangladesh and Sahelian Africa. It took a special amendment to the ironically named Food For Peace program (P.L. 480) to force the administration to limit political food aid to 30 per cent of the total food aid given in any year. With this politicization of the food problem on a global level, what are the prospects for constructive action? Clearly, the effort must focus on helping local A far cry from responsible journalism To the editor: Questioning the motives of the bill calling for the referendum on proposed constitutional amendments in your recent editorial "Piecemeal Reform" was certainly your prerogative, Mr. Campbell, but failing to ask these representatives what those motives were before deciding what they were was a far cry from responsible journalism. Finding a more flagrant example of "guilt by association" would be a difficult task indeed. In my own case, being a supporter of the proposed referendum and constitutional changes is tantamount to taking a "jab at Student Body President Bill Bates" and voting for a comptroller bill that would make my sponsorship appear most hypocritical. If anything, 1 have been considered part of the "Bates faction" based on my voting record, and, what's more, 1 have been very consistent not in the least hypocritical in support of moves to ensure or enhance a separation of powers. For example, I opposed the comptroller bill on the grounds that it established a legislative officer performing an executive function. In the same editorial, Mr. Campbell, you heroically proclaim that constant amendment of the constitution by CGC denigrates thevalueof thedocument. Would you mind telling me to which "amendments after amendments" you're referring? I missed but one CGC meeting since this session began in March and I know of only four such amendments, three of which were overwhelmingly approved by the student body. The fourth, on co-representation, was accepted in similar fashion, but due to technicalities must be voted on again. And participation often close off, depending much on the personalities involved. Faculty Council concerns itself with a grading proposal, and declines to add three voting students, claiming that tradition and their own domain of authority will be jeopardized by adding students to a distinctly faculty council project. CGC concerns itself with extension of power of the executive branch, feeling that their own power to make decisions is jeopardized by the executive power. Their aim to make student government a parliamentary system will not make the legislative branch of SG any more efficient or worthy of student support. What is needed is a change of attitude as a first step. That change wouid be toward attitudes that look out for the total university good, rather than bickering on petty issues and worrying over domains of authority. Once engulfed, we remain prisoners of petty concerns. No one remembers the problems that academics, housing, consumer and legal protection, and student rights, among peccy concerns farmers to increase their outputs. No one knows how many farmers there are, but the World Bank estimates that there are perhaps a billion small farmers, many of whom produce largely or entirely the food for their own families. These family farms probably account for about three-fifths of Africa's agricultural production and one-third of Latin America's, with Asia falling somewhere in between. When crops fail, the result is hunger, if not starvation. The health of all, particularly children, is impaired; the capacity for work, the ability to learn, diminished. In North America, where the average farmer can feed 46 people besides himself, people usually think of small-scale, labor-intensive farms as inefficient. This is true where labor is scarce and capital plentiful. But in poor countries, where capital is scarce and labor plentiful, new seed varieties, adequate water and improved implements, combined with hand cultivation, can result in dramatic yield it's my understanding that you supported them all, Mr. Editor. Then you use the power of the editor's pen to take another "across the board" jab at CGC. You do not aim it at individuals for then you'd surely have to have something to stand on. You label the Council "newly reform conscious," emphasizing that it has had over five months to act on this and past Councils have had two years. Thus, you seem to imply from this that the idea had never been discussed until just now, when it was "hastily conceived," since it had never before been in the form of a resolution. Well, Mr. Campbell, 1 personally had discussed this proposal with fellow representatives and other student government officials ever since the beginning of the fall semester, and, not wanting it to be hastily conceived, I have w aited for events to confirm or disprove my feelings on the issue. For example, the ability of the president to vote against, veto, and vote to sustain his veto, as in the case of the treasurer's line of succession bill, clearly demonstrated to me the present imbalance in the system of checks and balances and the ongoing violation of the doctrine of separation of power upon which Student Government supposedly operates. For the benefit of the majority of readers who have not seen a copy of RRJ-57-205, I should like to paraphrase that piece of legislation. Article 1 would remove the president's power to serve as a voting member of the CGC. Article II would increase the number of votes needed to override a presidential veto from a majority to three-fifths. And finally, Article' III calls for a campus referendum to be held Jan. 21, others, present. And these are still neglecting the state issues concerning tuition increases, a decrease in funds going to the university, or the possible loss of $40 million in utility sales monies, which the state may appropriate to itself rather than to the University. Carolina has suffered because it has been apathetic. For her to continue as the best university in North Carolina and one of the best in the nation, all groups, including students, faculty, and the administration must offer their own commitment to the greater University good. Only when all three work together can that dream become a reality. The Student-Faculty-Administration Conference, to be held the weekend of November 21-23, will be the first attempt at ensuring cooperation. What comes out of that meeting will set the stage not only for next year, but for the next twenty years. It is the beginning of a cooperative movement toward a greater and better university. Bill Bates, student body president, is a senior political science major from Fayetteille. UST FOR R V A increases. When coupled with land reform, access to credit, education and marketing cooperatives, small farmers have equalled or surpassed per acre production on this continent. It is neither practical nor likely for the remote villages of South Asia, Sahelian Africa and Latin America's Altiplano to be fed by the wheat and cornfields of North America. They must depend for their food upon the harvest of their own farmers. The Fast For A World Harvest is an attempt to confront the problems of hunger in the world. By choosing hunger for 24 hours and donating what you would have spent on food you can make both a symbolic and a concrete statement of concern and support for the world's hungry. Congruent with the understanding of hunger outlined above, the organizations to which the money raised will be donated are primarily involved with helping people to help themselves, bypassing political maneuverings. Oxfam America supports international projects of "rmktmr rrr n ' fit SOTJLYE QpiCE will give you ttoble in the senate, a liberal cmce will GIVE YOU TROUBLE TO REAGAN-AND IF D0NT CHOOSE A WOfAAN, TIL MAKE YOJR LIFE HELL. 1976, and stipulates that if the amendments are approved, they shall not take effect until the first meeting of the 58th Session of the CGC (next March). Now, from this, I believe any rational person could perceive the following: ( 1 ) that Article II 'is intended to give the President greater strength in an area more consistent with the doctrine of separation of power, and (2) that Article III makes it quite clear that the current student body president Bill Bates is in no way affected by these amendments. In relation to the latter point, the impression that Bill Bates would be somehow "victimized" exemplifies the type of fallacious notions promulgated by an editorial that lacked nearly everything but an abundance of innuendo and slander. It is my firm belief that this resolution, after fair consideration, will be approved by both the CGC and the student body. Jay Tannen CGC Representative 447 Morrison Amazing grace To the editor Amazing grace! The entire Campus Governing Council has joined the O'Neal bloc! Or at least that seems to be the suggestion of the DTH's ill-considered editorial on the proposal to remove the student body president from CGC and grant him an extended veto power. Far from being the narrow attempt of a small, vicious faction to conduct a "personal vendetta," the amendment is a collaboration of three individuals representing a wide spectrum of campus opinion. (Since when is Jay Tanne a Mike O'Neal lackey? Since when is Tal Lassiter anybody's lackey?) Far from being hastily slapped together, the philosophy behind the amendment has been long-discussed, as far back as CGC's self-evaluatory hearings of last spring. The issues (issues, not personalities) arose out of the constitutional discussions involved with the comptroller bill, and the solution it represents appears to have support of a wide range of factions. , . rngMMMm p C ' ' &pT WAT ' 3 odVi CeJc training and supplying farmers with tools and materials with which to support themselves. The Inter Church Council (ICC) is a Chapel Hill-Carrboro group supported by the United Way and other concerned organizations. It too concentrates on providing services and aid directly to those who need it here in our own community. The problem is large and it may seem that any individual contribution is meaningless. But the sum of many individuals working together is real progress. In one of his novels, Richard Brautigan proclaims that "we have the power to transform our lives into brand new instantaneous rituals that we calmly act out when something hard comes up that we must do." World hunger presents us w ith just such a hard problem. It is up to us to prove Brautigan correct. Howard Stone is a graduate student in journalism who lives in Chapel Hill. Little space in the editorial seems dev oted to the amendment's actual merits. The editor concedes that a confusion of the separation of powers exists; he suggests that a two thirds, rather than a three-fifths override might be preferable. (He might have mentioned that any expansion of the margin needed to ov erride the president's veto, from its present simple majority, increases the President's power enormously. He might also have mentioned that the president would not lose his floor rights, i.e., the right to participate in CGC debates. But no matter.) So what reasons can he cite for his position? Well, maybe a further revision of the constitution is necessary perhaps a "more comprehensive" plan, which would not "bore" the student body with amendments (at least, less than they're already bored with elections in general.) Yet. if the DTH editor would for a moment forget his fixation with "newsworthy" personalities and devote his attention to the numerous proposals already under discussion by the CGC Priorities Committee, the Rules and Judiciary Committee and other groups, he would see such a study is already underway. He might even notice that some of his pet schemes preventing dual office-holding in the executive and legislative branches, revising or expanding the council have already been snapped up and are on the drawing-board for consideration. , In short, the editor's demands for "more study" of the questions strongly resemble the executive's tactics regarding the comptroller bill a fine old Southern tradition known as the indefinite filibuster. Hang the issues hell, ignore the issues - we don't like it. so it ain't going to go. Instead of boring the students with raucous verbiage, trying to turn rational debate into petty, w hite-hat. black-hat feuds, the DTH editor might well shut his mouth once in a while and try something different - thinking. Ben Steelman. Chairperson CGC Rules and Judiciary Committee I
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Nov. 20, 1975, edition 1
6
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75