ustxtxb_obs_1971_01_29_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

Abortion hearing set Austin Citizens’ Hearings on Abortion will be held on Saturday, Jan. 30, at the Main Ballroom of the University of Texas campus in Austin. The hearings are sponsored by the Texas Abortion Coalition, a group founded last fall to work for complete abortion reform. The one-day colloquium will include speeches by Roy Lucas, head of the Madison Constitutional Law Institute; Dr. Jane Hudson, a Minnesota doctor currently being prosecuted for her defiance of that state’s antiquated abortion law; the Rev. Robert Breihen, director of the Methodist Student Center in Austin, and Carol Coffee, director of Human Opportunities Corp oration of Austin-Travis. Women who have suffered personal tragedies because of the unconstitutional Texas abortion law will also speak. Registration begins at 9 a.m. and child care can be arranged through the registration desk. The colloquium will last from 9:45 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. with a noon lunch break. At 2:30 p.m. there will be a march to the state capitol and a rally for legislators there. of Mrs. Johnson might well indicate that Johnson decided he wanted someone more manageable and less volatile than Erwin to Erwin is probably not overjoyed that Gov. Preston Smith reappointed A. G. McNeese, Jr., chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Houston’s Bank of the Southwest,,to the Board of Regents. McNeese, a Daniel appointee to the board from 1959 to 1965, opposed Gov. John Connally when he refused to approve the granting of a university architectural contract to a Republican. Erwin sided with Connally. Another regent, former state Sen. John S. Redditt of Lufkin, resigned over the controversy \(Obs., The third new appointee is Dr. Joe Thomas Nelson of Weatherford.. He is an M.D. rather than a Ph.D. An aide to the governor called the Observer with the news that Claudia Taylor Johnson had been appointed to the board. “Jesus Christ,” a surprised Observer editor commented. “We thought about appointing him,” the aide replied. “But we were afraid the Senate wouldn’t confirm him.” Remember when Frank Erwin said Dr. William Arrowsmith hadn’t done doodly-squat for UT and was using the classics department as a “lucrative plaything?” Well, the American Council on Education released its quinquennial rankings of the nation’s top graduate schools last week. The UT graduate program-in classics had progressed from its 1965 ranking of a 15th place tie to hold tenth place in the new rankings. Included in the study are 130 universities. The classics department was one of eight of UT’s 33 graduate programs ranked in the top ten. Multiple ties for standing are common in the prestigious survey. The UT Austin Students’ Association used part of its student activity fee funds this school year to hire a lawyer. As far as the S.A. knows, it is the first student government in the country to hire a member of the Bar as a full-time students’ advocate. The attorney, Jim Boyle, was limited from the first by a regents’ ruling that he could not sue the university and he could not handle criminal cases. Boyle, however, has had significant successes in representing students and groups such as Gay Liberation before administrative boards and in wresting students from the clutches of avaricious landlords. Boyle has been so effective that the UT administration has now demanded that all Students’ Association employees sign affidavits stating that since they are paid by blanket tax funds, they are employees 10 The Texas Observer The FBI and the Harris County Sheriff’s Department deputies arrested three men about 25 miles west of Houston on Interstate 10 Jan. 15. An FBI informant said the men were on their way to California to bomb Pacifica Radio’s Los Angeles and Berkeley-San Francisco stations. The arrests came as a pleasant surprise to Pacifica’s Houston station, KPFT-FM, which was scheduled to go back on the air Jan. 20. The Houston listener-sponsored station was bombed off the air twice last year. Twenty-four-year old Jimmy Dale Hutto of Pasadena was jailed in lieu of a $100,000 cash bond. He was charged with conspiring to “injure, oppress and violate Americans and their right to free speech as provided under the First Amendment of the Constitution . .” The two Pasadena men with Hutton, Russell A. Rector, Jr., and Ronford Styron, were released on $ 25 , 000 personal recognizance bonds. FBI agents reported finding a .45 caliber revolver and Ku Klux Klan literature, but no explosives, in the car. This was not the first time Hutto was been in the news. He and Louis Beam, both of whom say they are members of the Klan, were questioned by police and then released last October concerning a bomb threat to KNUZ-AM in Houston \(Obs., This month’s Love and Squalor Award goes to Cong. W. R. Poage for his stellar job of gutting the Food Stamp Program. Poage and other members of his House committee not only managed to cut the program back, but also to insert a must-work clause. The new clause means that any employer can report any food stamp recipient for failing to take a job and so get the recipient out of the program no matter what the job, no matter what the pay, no matter if the recipient is a mother with six kids and no one to look after them while she works. Fifteen million undernourished Americans thank you, Congressman Poage. Wretched Excess of the Month Award goes to the San Antonio Express and News, for putting Jeanne Dixon’s predictions for 1971 all over the front page on Sunday, Jan. 3. The Express played the story, entitled “Jeanne Dixon Foresees Better Year,” as the left-hand lead and then jumped it to page 2 where it covered better than half the page. The Express marked the story with an “exclusive” tag, but it appeared in other Texas papers. When the Texas House passed Rep. Curtis Graves’ resolution paying tribute to the late Martin Luther King, Jr., two freshman representatives from Houston refused to have their names signed to the memorial resolution. Walter Mengden told reporters he had his name left off because Graves “said in the resolution that King was an advocate of non-violence, but everywhere he [King] went there was violence and bloodshed and I’m not going to vote for that regardless of Blythe asked to be recorded in the House Journal as having voted against the resolution. The Houston chapter of NOW \(The has a newsletter called The Broadside, edited by Helen Cassidy and Laura Douglas. Subscriptions cost $3 a year and can be obtained by writing to NOW’s Houston chapter, P. 0. Box 384, Bellaire, Tex. 77401. of the state. Employees of the state, cannot sue the state. Boyle speculates that if he is an employee of the state, his legal opinions would be subject to the approval , of the state attorney general. He and five other S.A. employees have refused to sign the affidavits and their salaries are being withheld. The controversy probably will go to the courts.