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Other Texas-based interests registered to lobby \( though the names of their repretional Conference of Non-Profit Shipping Assn. of Houston and the Plains Cotton Growers of Lubbock. An individual registered as a lobbyist but who didn’t indicate whom he represented was Lowell Davis of Houston. Among those registered during the last quarter of 1967 was Frank W. Denius of Austin, who is a partner in the LBJassociated law firm of former Ambassador to Australia Ed Clark. Denius represented the Texas Electric Service Co. of Fort Worth, Dallas Power and Light Co. and Texas Power and Light of Dallas, as did John Goldsum, also of Austin. A former state legislator and one-time hopeful speaker of the Texas house, Gene Fondren, Taylor, represented Texas railroads. Fondren quit the house when it became apparent that Rep. Gus Mutscher, Brenham, had a commanding lead in pledges for the speakership when Barnes moved on. Unease at SWT g/ There now is a stir among the fac ulty members of Southwest Texas State College, San Marcos, about the problems raised in the Observer about the dissertation of the SWT president, Dr. James McCrocklin. McCrocklin is on temporary leave from the college, serving as No. 2 man in the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, to return to SWT in January. Concern at the college had arisen about the dissertation and its similarity to the master’s thesis of McCrocklin’s wife. Faculty members decided, after a time, to let the senior college regents handle the matter. Since then, the regents have twice voiced their confidence in McCrocklin, and the board chairman, Emil Rassman, Midland, says “this matter is now and should be forever closed.” So, the regents having made their determination, those faculty members who are not satisfied that the questions raised in the Observer article have been dealt with satisfactorily are these days considering how to proceed. The regents first considered the problem at their August meeting and issued a statement saying they believed the McCrocklins’ thesis and dissertation were written on “different aspects of the same broad subject.” When, thereafter, the national press took up the story the regents felt it necessary to issue a second statement, which was done Oct. 4, reaffirming the earlier resolution. In the meantime, McCrocklin had been named one of ten delegates to a UNESCO meeting in Paris this month. The nomination was routinely sent to the senate foreign relations committee. Sen. Wayne Morse of Oregon raised objections, citing the questions raised about McCrocklin’s 6 The Texas Observer dissertation. This seemed to raise the possibility that McCrocklin would be removed from the delegation but Morse was called home to Oregon to attend a funeral. During that time committee colleague, Sen. John Sparkman of Alabama, had what people on the committee staff call a “personal conversation” with McCrocklin. Sparkman then is said by staff members, to nave told Morse, in effect, “For goodness sake, the foreign relations committee has been a hairshirt for the president for three years. Let’s look the other way for a change; if the Texas academic community doesn’t care to deal with this situation, why involve the US Senate?” When the matter came up on the senate floor Texas Sen. Ralph Yarborough said, “I desire to be reported as voting ‘nay’ on . . . the nomination of James H. McCrocklin, of Texas. I desire to be recorded as voting ‘nay’ . . . I vote ‘nay’ on the nomination of James H. McCrocklin. I vote ‘yea’ on the other nine of that delegation.” Yarborough did not say why he so voted; it is known that he was not particularly in favor of McCrocklin’s apnomination of the HEW post \(the senator this summer declined to say whether he favored or opposed the appointment, when routinely queried by senate colAcademia v The philosophy department’s budget council at the University of Texas at Austin reversed a decision it had made last spring and recommended that leftist professor Larry Caroline be retained. A further reversal for UT administration people who want Caroline out occurred when the arts and sciences faculty passed a resolution, by 167-120, condemning the action of regents chairman Frank Erwin, Jr. The resolution complained that Erwin publicly attacked Caroline before the budget council had made its first determination. Caroline raised Erwin’s ire last fall by advocating a second American revolution. Despite the latest developments it appears Caroline will depart UT at the end of the current academic year. The department chairman and the dean of arts and sciences are among those at UT who want Caroline to go, and the deliberations of the philosophy department’s budget council are not binding, leading a number of persons on the campus to wonder aloud why bother to have such a council to determine questions of retaining faculty members. V Some 500 students at the University of Texas at El Paso demonstrated on campus against what they believe is the impending appointment of El Paso Mayor Judson Williams as the next UTEP president. Top UT officials raised some eyebrows by promptly sending Williams an apology and ordering that the demonstrators be disciplined. g/ In his soon-to-be-released book James Ridgeway, an editor of the New Republic, complains that the American university is becoming the lackey of industry and the military. UT-Austin president Norman Hackerman and Jack Maguire, the UT Ex-Students’ Assn. director, are among board members of a new proposed Austin bank. Miscellany v Liberal candidate Don Yarborough evidently is, these days, turning over in his mind the possibility of running for mayor of Houston next year. Several reports have reached the Observer of DY’s giving such an eventuality some consideration, and Yarborough recently told a Houston reporter that he is, indeed, thinking it over. He has run well in Houston in his four statewide races \(except in 1964, the year of the assassiHe is presently rebuilding his law practice and business interests and working to complete a book. The book, he says, will contain suggestions as to governmental improvements at all levels; he says he has some solutions for such problems. Yarborough says he lost less than $5,000 in this year’s loss in the Democratic gubernatorial primary and that he owes another $50,000 or so from the 1964 campaign. Who might be Preston Smith’s key gubernatorial appointees? Speculation in knowledgeable circles is that Dorsey Hardeman, the San Angelo senator who lost the Democratic nomination to Pete Snelson last spring, might be Smith’s secretary of state. Hardeman has told close friends that he would like to move back to Austin. Former Gov. Allan Shivers, who has endorsed Smith as well as Richard Nixon, is considered a possible chairman for the UT board of regents. V The Houston Chronicle, which picked up the weekly cartoon of Jules Feiffer when the competition Post dropped it earlier this year \(Obs., likewise dropped the strip. The word in Houston journalistic circles is that the decision to discontinue running the pungent social comment was taken on the basis of some four or five strips that the Chronicle has not run. g o 0 HemisFair lost an estimated $5.5 mil lion after an attendance of about 85% of the anticipated 7.2 million. The civic debate over whether the fair was worth all the trouble persists in San Antonio. The two newspapers there contend it was, as do the rest of the business leadership. Dissenters, a minority, believe the city’s pressing social needs were eclipsed in recent years by efforts leading up to the fair. vr Observer readers may expect a run down on the impending vote on amending once more the state constitution, as well as a discussion of legislative and congressional races in the Nov. 1 issue.