ustxtxb_obs_1965_04_16_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

44.”MAAAA6,..1a646.,:r.,1 VA., A ‘ 90.4.1.44440116.~1111111164.4……. A livelier stuff than the horsy set’s. Donald C. Bubar, a Fort Worth lawyer, said that the TRA statistics were impressive, but that he preferred “statistics which show that a track totalizator will gobble up your paycheck nine times faster than a roulette wheel. These men have only one faith: the infallibility of their electronic totalization equipment.” Bubar said that handicapping a horse with saddle weights is like making Randy Matson toss an 18-pound shot against an unskilled Ghanian, for example, who would have to loft a mere 12 pounds. “It is not a sport or an amusement, it is a disease,” he said. “It is a monstrous sponge!” He went on, “If people have plain, ordinary horse sense, they’ll stay away from the tracks. Horse sense has been defined as the sense horses have which keeps them from betting on people.” The Rev. Carl Keightly of Dallas said, “I hate to admit it, but Mr. Red Berry has gotten on my conscience,” The Reverend Keightly revealed that, taking Berry’s suggestion, he had gone to Hot Springs to see the horses run. “Out of five hours of racing, I saw 15 minutes of actual horses running. There was no joy that I could see. They were all yelling, and I’ll tell you what they were saying. They were saying, ‘Ride that blankety-blank thing.’ They’re rooting for Black Beauty. Or whatever the name of their horse it. The most irrelevant thing at the track is a horse.” WORD COMES NOW from one representative that a TRA lobbyist told him that the association considered Pipkin’s bill doomed \(which Pipkin in effect adamendment to give Texas governors fouryear terms would please the TRA just as much. Presumably Gov. John Connally, with four years in the bag, could speak out for what Red Berry used to call “the poor little horses.” L. Higher Education in Texas ,-, The Continuing Mystery o Section 11 Austin Section 11 of the new higher education law in Texas, which gives the governor’s 18-member superboard the power to strike out any course that is being taught in Texas’ 22 colleges and universities, is not going to be modified by this session of the legislature. That is the clear import of events during the last month. The section has been endorsed in a private letter by Governor John Connally. Warnings by Rep. Bob Eckhardt, Houston, and in the Observer and elsewhere that Section 11 gives the superboard the power to censor courses on the basis of content have been in effect discounted by Chancellor Harry Ransom of the University of Texas, and the American Assn. of University Professors in Texas and the Texas Assn. of College Teachers have not been heard from on the subject one way or the other. The University of Texas faculty council, in a resolution compromising opinions that Section 11 is a menace to academic freedom and that it is not, said it is not, but endorsed legislation to make sure that it is not by limiting the superboard’s power over courses to eliminating those that cause needless duplication, fragmentation, or proliferation. Eckhardt’s bill to do this was endorsed by petitions signed by 300 University of Texas faculty members and 600 U.T. students, and by 1,362 students at Southwest Texas State College in San Marcos. However, this bill is moldering now in a hostile subcommittee; Connally has not answered Eckhardt’s letter to him asking him to back it and has not answered Eckhardt’s request for an appointment with him to talk about it. To the present day, no one has come forward to confess authorship of Section 11. Rep. Charles Wilson of Trinity, co-sponsor of the bill, told the Observer that “specifically,” Larry Temple of the governor’s staff “had” the amendment. Temple, how The Texas Observer ever, denied he had written it or knew who had. During an educator-forsaken hearing on Eckhardt’s bill in the House chamber, Eckhardt said, “Best I could ever find out about where the amendment came from was Larry Temple, and when I tried to find out its origin, apparently Temple had been struck by a blinding light somewhere between the legislature and the governor’s office and found the amendment in his hand. Now, I’m willing to accept that rather as a modern miracle.” Temple, who was in the House chamber at the time, threw back his head and laughed with everyone else, later lightly evading the Observer’s inquiry whether he believed in immaculate conception. Eckhardt told the House state affairs committee that Dr. George Sanchez, a professor at the University of Texas, wrote Connally that the superboard’s powers were not defensible and provided for “an invasion of professional judgment.” According to Eckhardt, Connally wrote Sanchez back that he thought Section 11 was a “pretty good provision . . . and said in short that there wasn’t anything going to be done about it.” AFTER the ,first blasts of criticism of Section 11, the locus of the debate shifted to the University of Texas campus. The Daily Texan, the student newspaper, editorialized about “the sickening discovery” that Section 11 handed the new coordinating board “dictatorial reins,” and the Texan reprinted the Observer’s editorial on the subject under a page-one, eightcolumn headline, ” ‘Framework for Tyranny’Observer’s ‘Required Reading.’ ” Dr. Ransom, seconded by his vice-chancellor, Dr. Norman Hackerman, said that not Section 11, but Section 14.2 was the most significant section of the new law. Section 14.2 says the superboard shall “develop and recommend minimum standards for academic freedom, academic responsibility and tenure.” Rep. Wilson has ex plained that this language is not stronger because the House would not accept stronger language. “So far as I know,” Dr. Ransom was quoted in the Texan, “this is the first time that academic freedom has been the subject of legislation.” He said existing governing boards already have the power to delete courses; “Section 11 was intended to eliminate proliferation of courses, period.” The Texan quoted Hackerman as saying, “Amendment 11 doesn’t introduce anything the rest of the bill can’t take care of.” Professor of law E. E. Goldstein notified the faculty council he was advancing a resolution for its approval, welcoming the new law, particularly approving Section 14, asserting the opinion that Section 11 “does not grant arbitrary power to the coordinating board” in that it requires the board to give “reasons therefor” when it deletes courses and that Section 11 had to be read in the context of the law’s purpose to improve educational efficiency, and asserting finally that the Faculty Council was “confident” that the coordinating board would exercise its powers “with wisdom and prudence and with a full awareness of American academic traditions.” The Texan said Goldstein called the dispute over Section 11 “a tempest in a teapot.” Goldstein has been identified in the past with liberal causes; for example, he backed students in theater stand-ins near the campus. Lately he has become identified in the minds of some faculty members with Governor Connally. For instance, the Observer is informed by a professor who was so approached, Goldstein circulated a memorandum to a number of U.T. faculty members suggesting that they agree to advise the governor on various matters and assuring them that no political commitment would be involved. Eckhardt commented on Goldstein’s construction of the law, “It’s a pretty well known proposition of statutory construe