xt7cc24qnm98 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7cc24qnm98/data/mets.xml The Kentucky Kernel Kentucky -- Lexington The Kentucky Kernel 1977-01-18 Earlier Titles: Idea of University of Kentucky, The State College Cadet newspapers  English   Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. The Kentucky Kernel  The Kentucky Kernel, January 18, 1977 text The Kentucky Kernel, January 18, 1977 1977 1977-01-18 2020 true xt7cc24qnm98 section xt7cc24qnm98 New student lbs

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being proposed

By DICK GABRIEL
Msistant Managing Editor

Paper cuts may some day be a
thing of the past for cafeteria em-
ployees. That’s because the meal
bod: may be an endangered species,
too.
And the key to itall is the new type
of ID card that will be introduced
next year. Instead of the credit-card
motif with raised letters, UK
students will be issued an ID that
resembles a driver's license.

The new II) can be given to the
student at the time the ID photo is
taken, without the usual month wait
in between.

Food Services Director Allen
Rieman has proposed putting a
magnetic strip on the back of the
new ID, just like the strip on the
back of a bank credit card. The card
could then be used in a computer
system that would credit the student
for meals, according to meal plan.

That would mean cafeteria em-
ployees will no longer have to sit at
the dots and tear those tickets out of
grimy, tattered meal books.

George Ruschell, assistant to Vice
President for Business Affairs Jack
Blanton, said the new meal plan will
not be instituted next year, but that
he is considering the change. “It has
a lot of good aspects," Ruschell said.
“But it’s rather expensive.”

Ironically, rising expenses
prompted the search for a new type
of ID. The machine that UK
Photographic Services uses to
manufacture IDS is, according to
Jack Blanton. “about to spill its
guts.

“It’s just about gone," Blanton

said. “And it would take a $100,000
capital investment to get a new
one."

So, Blanton said, an alternative
was sought. Ruschell spearheaded
the search.

Ruschell said the driver’s license-
type cards are more economically
sound because they are cheaper to
produce than the raised-letter
variety. “All we‘re really using it
(raised-letter card) for is the check-
cashing service at the Student
Center," he said. Raised-letter
cards cost approximately $1 apiece
to manufacture.

Cameras used to produce the
current [US cost approximately
$3,600 apiece. Ruschell said the
cameras needed for the new cards
cost considerably less.

A Poloroid spokesman said the
new camera would cost at most
$1990 and the cost for an individual
card would be roughly 44 cents.

Rieman said the computerized
meal plan system would cost $35,000

butwould pay for itself in two years.
Acca‘ding to Rieman. the cost of
printing and distributing mealbooks,
added to the cost of man-hours in-
volved in counting the tickets after
every meal, would be replaced

The new system would also cancel
the possibility of students lending
meal books to others, eliminating
much of the need to ra'se prices for
meal plans.

For instance, a seven-day, two-
meal plan has a potential of 444
meals for one year. Rieman said the
total cost of food and labor for those
meals would be around $612. But,
through past experience, Reiman
said it Ins been determined that
students with that particular plan on
the average eat only 339 meals, or
76% per cent. Therefore, the student
is charged only $467 for the meal
plan, $145 below projected cost.

“If the percentage of participation
goes up, we’d have to increase
prices for the next year," Rieman
said.

EN TUCKY

Ker  

an independent student newspaper

Vol. LXVIII, Number 88
Tuesday, January 18, 1977

JAN 8 1977 ~ .

31'er

Another

Everyone knows the feeling by now. You‘re walking to
class. suddenly your feet go out from under you and
people look a lot taller. Art history major Sue Guinn

el

University ofKentuchy
Lexington, Kentucky

Natural gas use halted on campus

By DICK GABRIEL
Assistant Managing Editor

University officials have complied
with a request from the Columbia
Gas Company and have halted all
use of natural gas on campus. As of
noon yesterday, University fuel
sources had been shifted exclusively
to coal and oil, according to Jack
Blanton, vice president for business
affairs.

Blanton said 57 per cent of the fuel
being burned now is oil and 43 per
centis coal, butwhen coalbumers in
the High Street plant are operable,
the ratio of coal burned will increase
to 65 per cent

Natural gas was 25 per cent of
UK‘s fuel source but because of sub-
zero temperatures, there has been a
severe shortage in the state. Gov.
Julian Carroll announced Sunday
night that the Division of Disaster
and Emergency Services had been
placed on round-the-clock
operations.

UK is currently using 28,000
gallons of oil per day. But Jim
Wessels, Physical Plant Division
director. said the oil has been
coming in slowly because of the
barge tie-up on the Ohio River. The
oil is being trucked in from the
Ashland Oil Refineries in Ashland. a

Gil Skillman. left. and Gerry Oberst pose with some of the booty
they’ve won as UK's ace debathg team. At right Is the first-place prise
from the University of Southern California invitational tournament.
where they were judged thebest of 108 teams.

seven-hour round trip. UK also has
122,(l)0 gallons on reserve.

Blanton also announced that all
hot water in University office
buildings will be shut off effective
yesterday afternoon. He was quick
to add that hot water will not be
terminated in dormitories and food
service buildings.

“It looks like a three-day
proposition," Wessels said.

The coal burners in the High
Street plant have not been fired in
two years and were used then for the
same reason, cold weather. Ac-
cording to Blanton, the burners take
36 hours to fire, plus a waiver from
the air pollution control board.

Because of the emergency
weather status, Blanton said he has
offered the use of Memorial
Coliseum and all other UK facilities
to Lexington Mayor Foster Pettit.
The facilities will be available to the
public only at Pettit’s request.

Canceling classes was never
brought up. “We haven‘t even
considered it," said Blanton.
“Unless some major catastrophe
happers, the University won’t close.
We can operate independent of
natural gas.

“Unless we send the students
home, we can‘t close dormitories or
food service buidings anyway,” he
said. '

UK debate team
conquers coast

By JIM McNAIR
Kernel Staff Writer

In a year supposedly for
rebuilding, UK’s top debate team
has made accomplishments that are
undebatably astounding. And its
members, Gil Skillman and Gerry
Oberst, won’t argue the fact that a
little hard work was involved.

Having taken a first, a second, and
a tie for fourth in invitational
tournaments on the West Coast,
Skillman and Oberst are hardly
breathing easy as they face five
more tournaments this semester,
including the big daddy of them all,
the National Debate Tournament,
which ends the debating season in
April. They debate next at Harvard,
Feb. 2-4.

The entire UK debate squad is
coached and coordinated by speech
professor J. W. Patterson. A second
varsity team is composed of Dave
Howard and John McClung, whose
achievements haven't reached the
limelight yet.

Skillman and Oberst, seniors
majoring in economics and
philosophy respectively, have been
debating together for three years at
UK.

Skillman, named top speaker at a
California State-Fullerton com-
petition, has been active during the
five years since he began debating.

Oberst started earlier, seven
years ago in high school, but cir-
cumstances forced him out of the
picture for one of those years. He
was the top speaker at Houston in
1975.

Is useful in other ways

Skillman explained the debater’s
role as it applies to him: “It’s more
than just a hobby. It has a lot of
impacton your future life because it
helps you when you apply for
graduate school or employment. For
instance, 1 was hired at the Nor-
thwestern High School Speech In-
stitute to teach debate. "

“It seemed like something I’d
enjoy, ”Oberst reminisced. “I en-
joyed the activity, the argumen-
tation, and the attempt to persuade
people. One of the long range effects
is that you learn to speak and think
better."

At the beginning of the debating
year, a topic is selected by the
country’s debate community. (This
year's topic is “whether or not the
federal government should
strengthen consumer product safety
guarantees"). When the topic is
announcement, debaters im-
mediately begin research, which
dqiends highly on the specialized
publiatims available.

Continued on back page

V.- ‘H- _ 4“ ”- 1 _.

snow fall?

struggles to keep her balance as Chris Black. left.
\iisely keeps his hands to himself. They were walking

 

 

today——

metro

All urban-county government buildings were closed here
yesterday afternoon and were to remain closed today and possibly
tomorrow in an effort to conserve natural gas. Mayor Foster Pettit
said sub-freezing temperatures had created a “critical situation" in
the community. Pettit said heat Would be turned off in all
government buildings and only emergency government functions
would continue.

The Supreme Court yesterday turned' down attempts by
Lexington officials to bar the Defense Department’s transferring of.
almost 3,000 jobs from the Lexington-Bluegrass Army Depot. The
justices let stand a decision by the 6th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals
that the government was justified in ordering the transfer of 2.650
military and civilian jobs from the communications repair base at
Lexington. Some 1,600 civilian workers are to be still employed at
the Army base after the transfers.

nation

A five-man firing squad executed killer Gary Gilmore
yesterday. minutes after a federal appeals court rejected the last
attempt by death penalty opponents to keep him alive against his
wishes. The execution was the first in the United States in nearly 10
years. The last-minute efforts of death penalty opponents included a
bid to the Supreme Court to reverse the ruling of the 10th US.
Circuit of Appeals overturning U. S. District Judge Willis Bitter‘s
stay of execution granted seven hours before the execution. A
capital punishment opponent called Utah “barbaric." A supporter
of the execution said ~delaying tactics had been “torture" for
Gilmore. The death announcement was met with silence by about 60
death penalty opponents demonstrating outside the prison fence. In
another demonstration in Washington, eight persons were arrested
for refusing to leave the Supreme Court building after the Court
refused to hear the case. Those who had led the fight against the
death penalty conceded Gilmore’s death represents a stinging
psychological defeat. “The United States now departs from
prevailing standards of Western democracies, joining the Soviet
Union and South Africa in this bizarre punishment." declared
attorneys for the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People.

No Kentucky convict seems likely to be executed in the near
future, despite the example set by Gilmore's death. “The likelihood
of execution is very dim,“ said Jim Baker. chief counsel for the
Corrections Department.

Jimmy Carter‘s right hand will rest on the Bible used in his
mother’s family for 150 years when he swears on Thursday to
“faithfully execute the office of President of the United States."
While the oath is one prescribed in the Constitution. the platform on
which he stands is Constructed especially for the occasion. as it has
been since the time of James Monroe. Television viewers of the
ceremony, beginning at 11:30 am. will be considerably more
Comfortable than the 100,000 expected at the ceremony. Weather
forecasters say the temperature will be near 20 degrees under fair
skies.

world

A bridge collapsed on top of a speeding Commuter train
yesterday near Sydney; Australia killing a number of perSons and
injuring more than 100. Police said the death toll could go as high as
60. “It‘s ,a frightful tragedy," said police inspector Ray Williams.
“the worst we have ever had. Quite a lot of people have been killed.“

weather.

Today will be cloudy with a chance of snow. The high should
reach 10 above. Tonight should be clearing and cold with a low of
about zero. There is a so per cent chance of precipitation today.
There is no report of what we did to deserve the weather we have
had.

Compiled from Associated Press
and National Weather Bureau dispatches.

 

—-Sieve Schuler

between the (‘ommerce and Engineering buildings.

 

  

 

 

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Spineless

In one ti the sneakiest, backroom, legislative
maneuvers since Wayne Hays and Liz Ray left
town, Congress is “unvoting itself” a pay raise.
It‘s bad enough that Washington lawmakers are
padding their pockets, but they don’t even have
the guts to vote on the record.

This bureaucratic tactic was made possible
when Congress established in 1972 the federal
pay board, which actually serves as a public
relations front. If the board decides that federal
employes deserve an across the board raise, it
, automatically becomes effective in 30 days. That
is, unless Congress makes the highly unlikely
move of voting against it.

A few days ago, the board recommended a pay
increase for federal employes including
senators. representatives, agency directors and
some federal judges. Not surprisingly,
congressmen were the benefactors of a 28.9
percent raise from $44,600 to $57,500.

Other pay raises are 34.5 per cent for deputy
secretaries of major executive departments
(from $44,600 to $69000) and 47.6 per cent for
some federal judges (from $44,600 to $65,000).

In addition, more than 20,000 Washington of-
ficials would earn pay hikes ranging from $945 to
$9.400 a year if Congress does as expected and
allows the raises to become effective.

One argument used by proponents of the in-
crease is thatfederalemployes have had only a 5
per cent raise since 1969, while the cost of living
has increased 61 per cent. Another argument
being advanced is that relatively low salaries
are undermining the government’s ability to
attract and keep skilled executives.

According to the Christian Science Monitor,
the pay of many upper-level federal officials has
been frozen since 1969 (except for the 5 per cent
raise), while salaries of comparable executives
outside government have risen 55 per cent.

A move is afoot by some congressmen, in
cluding Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd,
to link the increases with a law requiring more
thourough finacial disclosure by federal of-
ficials; the theory being that the public will
swallow the raise if covered with the sugar-
coated disclosure law. But if the increase is not
allowed, Byrd warns, “it means that only the
wealthy will represent the people in the
legislative branch.”

You‘re breaking our hearts, senator.

Our poor representative are starving on a
salary that currently puts them in the top 5 per
cent income bracket. Not only are federal em-
ployes exceedingly well paid, they also receive
numerous fringe benefits that pay increase
advocates conveniently ingnore.

Making life bearable for congressmen are
franking privileges, travel pay, foreign ex-

TRB

from Washington

Congress gives itself a raise

 

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cursions, large administrative staffs, use of
government facilities (not to mention corporate
vacation sites) and all at taxpayers’ expense.

It’s a shame that federal employes can’t seem
to makeit on a salary that is close to 10 times the
average family income. It’s also mystifying that
Congress can’t find funds for public works
projects to alleviate the 8 per cent unem-
ployment rate, but can find bucks to feed their
own opulent faces.

As for retaining qualified personnel in

a.

 

government jobs, it’s absurd to assert that more
money will come close to matching what cor-
porations can offer. It’s largely power and
prestige that attracts persons to government.
Very few can conceivibly have hopes of making
it rich in government (unless, of course, they’re
elected vice president).

It doesn’t matter how much congressmen are
paid since they can always find a way to make
public office profitable. But the real issue is that
congressmen are lumped together with other

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federal officials that may deserve a modest
raise.

In plain English, Congress has done nothing to
deserve a raise. If our esteemed representatives
could justify a pay raise, then why won’t they
come out. from behind the skirts of the pay board
and vote for the raise on the record.

But, more than likely, Congress will let the
increase slip into law and the ride out the storm.
It’s just another case of government getting the
wheat while the public gets the shaft.

Ford departs with economic swan song

 

 

In the White House, wondering
why he lost the election, sits
President Ford. It would be more
graceful if he could depart at once
but the law requires him to stay as a
lame duck, casualty exposed to
public pity. and he believes in doing
his duty. But if he has to stay he is
going to speak his mind. He has told
us that he favors statehood for
i’uerto Rico. and repeats that he
advocates reduced federal ex-
penditures, and a tax cut for the
middle classes. Though he doesn‘t
stress it this tax cut would also
benefit the rich: he would also boost
taxes for the poor (by raising social
security contributions.) It was the
poor, the blacks, the un-
derprivileged who, if anybody,
defeated him.

Mr. Ford is too unimaginative to
alter the conservative economic
formula that has guided him for two
and a half years, and he is too
generous to let his heart-ache find
vent on hisconqueror. He knows that
the messages he sends to Congress
will be treated with contempt But
he believes in them. He is laying it
on the line. He is establishing a jump
off position for Republicans who will
run two years hence. it will be a

strong position if Jimmy Carter
doesn’t deliver. Almost certainly
Republicans will make gains in
Congress at midterm (they can’t go
much lower). The Ford budget and
energy and State of the Union
messages are first guns of political
1%0.

Jimmy Carter is making oblique
replies to the lame-duck president in
this odd exchange. He is holding his
finger up to the wind to see if
business is getting better by itself. If
it does maybe he won’t have to ask
Congress to give it so much
stimults. He doesn‘t want to be
tagged “big spender” by opponents
if it isn’t necessary.

Here we have the basic domestic
issue of the recent presidential
campaign repeated, 1 think. though
somehow it never got sharply
defined last year. Mr. Ford didn’t
want to act drastically to meet the
worst recession in 40 years; he
believed in Keynes and the theory of
compematu'y government spending
and all that, buthe didn’t want to go
allouton it. Mr. Carter, by contrast,
offered a change, and got elected.

Mr. Ford is consistent with his
State of the Union message a year

ago which rejected efforts to try to
“transform the country through
massive national programs.” He
argued these didn’t work. “To hold
down the cost of living,” he told the
eight or nine million unemployed,
“we must hold down the cost of
government.” It was as simple as
that. Now he is blasting the same
targets again. Last week it was “the
new Federal programs.” It is
heroic! His ship is sinking anti he is
going down firing every gun

The State of the Union message is
one of the most important political
art forms. Mr. Ford is required to
deliver one more, Jan. 12. He
probably will not r'se to the poetic
fancy of lu'medecessor who gave us
“the lift d a driving dream," and
worked the phrase into another state
paper later or. Yes, Nixon uttered
that in 1970 and two years af-
terwards told the country on a more
prosaic note that “we can look with
confideme to 1972 as the year when
the backof inflation will bebroken."
(Double digits lay ahead). And
Nixon too. in 1974 waited for ap-
plause after the line, “There will be
no recession in the United States of
America. That was the speech
whee he said, "One year of
Watergate is enough.” He was outin

seven montis. Everyone here is
waiting for Jimmy Carter‘s
lnaugr ral address and the suspense
is building up. That's because he has
pulled awayfrom some of his earlier
campaign positions and defined
others nrore rigorously. He has also
picked a conformist cabinet. A
shiver goes through liberal sup-
porters, though the stream of con-
servative Ford utterances makes
Carter look like a Norman Thomas
progressive by contrast. Yet the
punling new president is still to an
extraordinary degree a veiled
figure. The speech on Jan. 20 may
end some of the uncertainty and set
the tone for four years.

One of the most remarkable things
abort the two years, worldwide,
recession is the highly gradualist
remedies that the leading industrial
natiars have adopted toward it. This
isn't just the United States, where
energetic measures are stymied by
veto, but in West Germany and
Japan also. Together the three
account for about two-thirds of total
output of the western industrial
world. If there‘s one thing other
democracies want ardently at this
time it’s for the United States
economy to dart hitting again on all
etht cylinda's.

President Ford is offering a
federal budget which he says could
be “balanced” in two years. Non-
sense; it's a fantasy. The 24-nalion
OECI) (Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development)
says we arar’t out of the woods yet,
we need stimulus; that the worst
recession since the war is apt to be
followed by the slowest recovery
since the war unless something
energetic is done. This usually
reliable organization forecasts a
further drop in the leading in-
dicators. Now is the time, says
OECD, for a “second stage
booster," the kind Congress has
been voting, Ford vetoing, and
Carter promising.

President Ford himself offers a
boost, a $10 billion tax cut for in-
dividuals and 82.5 billion for cor-
paations Tire catch is that like last
year he wants to match the tax cut
roughly with cuts in federal spen-
ding. His goal, in other words, is to
reduce the burden ar Americans
who pay incane taxes (not the poor,
they don‘t pay them) without great!
increasing federal deficits. “ 0
increase the deficit to further
stimulan: the economy," sagely
warns one of Mr. Ford‘s ultra-

conservative advisers, Treasury
Secretary Simon, “would be un-
necessary and unwise.” Nobody
paid much attention.

As a matter of fact, most middle-
road economists think stimulus
could be given now without much
danger of inflation. MIT‘s Paul
Samuelson wants a tax cutof 10 to 20
billion plus expansion (not con-
traction) of federal spending.
Writing in Newsweek heseems tobe
wondering where Jimmy Carter
currently stands. The last Democrat
to end an 8-year Republican regime,
he recalls, was Kennedy. There was
a recsa'on then, too. Kennedy,
notes Samuelson significantly, had
to “resist trying to curry farm with
the conservative financiers and
business executives whose advice
has already served Gerald Fed and

the nation badly. He adds, drily,
“that pity tocurry favorwon’twork

anyway.”

 

TRB from Washington Is a national
column syndicated by he New
Republic. a weekly publication on
politics and the arts. It is write! by
78-year-old Richard Lee Stroll. who
is also Washington correspondent
for 1hr- (‘hrlstiaa Science Mar.
“I‘llll appears weekly.

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