ustxtxb_obs_1965_03_05_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

shouldn’t teach a course in etymology. That’s the authority that I think the board ought to have.” Could such power lead to a superboard cutting out courses for reasons of economic theory or politics? “Certainly it could,” Wilson replied, “but personally I will have more confidence in the committee of 18 Governor Connally appoints,” [that is, in the coordinating board,] “than I will the present boards of regents. They” [that is, the governor’s not-yet-appointed superboard,] “wouldn’t have fired Koeninger, for example. I bet C. Smith Ramsey won’t be on the board. I hope Ed Gossett won’t be.” \(The two men last named are members of the governing board that fired Dr. Rupert Koeninger from Sam Houston State Teachers’ College in 1963, resulting in that school’s being placed on the censured list by the American Assn. of University Pro”There was no effort to slick something by, because I didn’t think anybody would be opposed to it,” Wilson said of .the House non-debate on the new Section 11. “I really think that this committee is going to be a lot more reasonable in academic freedom than these boards of regentsIt couldn’t be any less. I believe the new board will have roughly the same position as the governor’s committee of 25. It’ll be businessoriented, but they’re so damn bigI don’t think they’ll be small time about it. The president of Texas Instruments isn’t going to do anything like these small-time punks do.” Questioned further on where the new Section 11 came from, Wilson said it did come from the governor’s office. “Specifically,” Wilson said, “Larry Temple had it.” Temple is an aide of Governor Connally’s. Asked what educators had said or thought about the new Section 11, Wilson said, “Sure didn’t any voice any opposition.” THE OBSERVER asked Joe Moore, an assistant to the governor who worked on the bill, where the new section had come from. “Several people discussed it with me,” he said, “who exactly I don’t remember. They were afraid it was written in such a way that they’d have to send in all existing courses for approval. That was never intended.” The Observer stated to Moore that the bill as passed gives the superboard the right to veto “all courses” and asked him where this wording had come from. 72ext gssue: Wait oft Avettv gi2 7exas The Texas Observer Russell Lee Rep. Bob Eckhardt, Houston “This would create the most effective machinery for the suppression of academic freedom that has ever existed in Texas.” He responded with a reference to the section’s change that the reporting just had to be once a year, and the board had to give a hearing and notice. Educators had asked for these changes, he recalled. Had educators asked that the bill be expanded to “all courses,” the Observer asked Moore? “No,” he said. He said that since the Legislative Budget Board’s report on higher education had contained some stringent proposals, he had looked through it to see if this was the source of the wording. but had not found a parallel proposal. Then as of the moment, he did not know where the new Section 11 came from? “No,” Moore said, he agreed he did not. “I had worked on a draft” of the section, but not the one that brought “all courses” under its terms, he said. “My understanding` is that this originated in the House, and we didn’t put it in,” Larry Temple told the Observer. “Some member wanted to make it clear they wouldn’t have to report every week or two, and this way they could report every year.” Questioned about the requirement that the governing boards annually list for the superboard the content, scope, and prerequisites of all courses, Temple said, “As a practical matter, if I read that correctly, every time the university prints a final announcement of courses that you can buy for a dime or a quarter, it can just submit that.” Temple said that the new Section 11 “didn’t come from us,” although there had been several amendments the governor’s office had been asked if they objected to, “and we said no.” Others had been passed they would just as soon had not, Temple said, but “We’re not dissatisfied with any of those they passed, let me say that.” REP. ECKHARDT, interviewed by telephone, said that he would introduce a bill the next morning to limit the board’s authority to courses that enlarge existing offerings or overlap and to limit the superboard’s basis for deleting courses to “its function regarding economy and efficiency of coordination, and not with respect to educational or academic policy.” He also intended to make a personal privilege speech the next morning, Eckhardt said, that “there was concealment, whether intentional or unintentional,” in the House debate. “They didn’t say anything about taking out the clear limitation on the basis for the superboard’s decisions,” Eckhardt said. Had he understood the new Section 11 applied to all courses? “No, only for purposes of preventing overlapping,” he said. “In effect the general purpose clause leads you to believe it’s to limit overlapping.” Speaking of the bill as passed, Eckhardt said: “This would create the most effective machinery for the suppression of academic freedom that has ever existed in Texas, because this big board is much further from the faculty and regents than present boards are. Usually members of the present boards are alumni of the school, and they have much closer contact with the faculty and with the administration than a purely political board, operating with statewide authority. “Furthermore, regents today are extra careful not to enter into questions of academic freedom, because the faculty is so jealous of it. We have made tremendous strides in academic freedom since, say, 1940, because the boards have been educated by their faculties and administrations about it. A big hoard like this is under no such controls, with its consolidated power statewide over higher education.” Section 11, Eckhardt said, “virtually gives a line veto of curriculum. If a professor of economics is not teaching in accord with a particular orthodoxy, he may find that particular field merged with another course, and that course is not in existence next year, and he’s without a job.” Temple had said he intended to check further in his papers to see if he could trace the origin of the new Section 11. Tuesday morning he told the Observer, “I still when I check back into itI don’t know where the origin of this thing is.” Sen. Richter had consulted with the governor’s office about some amendments, Temple recalled, and “All we said was that we didn’t have any objection. We weren’t Ransom Comments Communicating with him by telephone to New York City, the Observer asked Dr. Harry Ransom, chancellor of the University of Texas and a member of the governor’s committee of 25, for comment on the new Section 11. He commented: “I think that it would be sensible for a coordinating board to prevent the useless proliferation or the useless initiation of courses or programs which were not supported by the faculty and the resources for study in which either led to duplication or the establishment of a program that could not be justified. But I would be unalterably opposedas every member of the educational community would be to any censorship of the materials or the substance of a specific course offered by a program already approved or which had the proper faculty, the proper facilities, and the approval of the governing board of the institution.”