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Postmaster: If undeliverable, send Form 3579 to The Texas Observer, 600 West 7, Austin, TX 78701. IDialogue School Foundation, Erwin let Dean Keeton know he wanted them denied their pay raises. Keeton blocked the play again; but obviously there are many cases one never hears about, and the repressive tool of the salary insult has been sharpened further now that Shivers is chairman of the regents. The regents’ acting president at UT, Lorene Rogers, did not consult with deans as usual as she announced the university’s budget late last summer. She explained, under fire, that there hadn’t been time, the legislature had been late making its decisions. Odd, then, that her budget showed a pattern of punitive pay insults directed against campus dissenters and elected officials of faculty organizations. This was manna year for most of the faculty, who got long-overdue raises and bonuses, too. However, Tom Philpott and Standish Meacham, professors who showed support for students who were badly treated for protesting Vietnam architect McGeorge Bundy being a commencement speaker, got less than recommended. Dr. Joseph Berry, a microbiologist who defended an instructor who complained that Chancellor Charles LeMaistre had pressured her to change his son’s “F” to a “C,” was docked, relatively speaking. So was Dr. Edwin Allaire in philosophy, and it happened he had testified that Erwin could get a fair trial in Austin on a drunk driving Rounding out the “enemies list” were Dr. Forrest Hill, an economist who is state president of TACT, the Texas Association of College Teachers; Dr. David Gavenda, a professor of physics who is president of the UT chapter of TACT, and Dr. Larry Shepley, another physicist who is chairman of the UT chapter of the American Association of University Professors. There were others, too. This is a pattern. Rogers denied taking revenge, or sort of denied it. She said her salary decisions were not “consciously” motivated by displeasure with professors’ activities. Yet she was slamming around some of the best profs for instance the great teacher, Philpott. She of course had an affirmative duty to “consciously” shun penalizing teachers for speaking out, and obviously she did not. Indeed, there is some evidence she knew what she was doing and meant to do it. Alfred Schild, Ashbel Smith professor of physics, said in a letter to the student newspaper that as he remembered 16 The Texas Observer what his department chairman was told by Rogers over the phone, she said her decision to cut or eliminate the merit raises recommended for the TACT and AAUP campus chairmen was made because of their activities in those capacities. Well, now the regents’ selection of a permanent president was pending at this time. The general faculty had formally voted that they would not accept a president who had not been approved by their student-faculty advisory committee on the selection of same. Four separate times this committee explicitly voted unanimously that Rogers should not be the one. Thereupon, with a wondrous contempt for the community of learning they are supposed to respect and a wondrous appreciation for the woman who had just cut down the dissenters, the regents voted five to three for Rogers. The general faculty then, as Kaye Northcott reports, voted maybe 19 to 1 to ask her to resign, she said she wouldn’t, six thousand or so students rallied to protest. The only close parallel I can see to the hiring of Lorene Rogers in 1975 is the firing of Homer P. Rainey in 1944, for then as now the matter was clearly political, not educational, and then as now the regents acted as agents of business power against a united community of learning. The five who voted Rogers in were Banker Allan Shivers, Banker Ed Clark, Banker A. G. McNeese, Medical Doctor Joe Nelson, and Ex-John-BircherWalter Sterling. Well, they have their bank teller-president. Now what? If she insists in staying on where she’s not wanted, I repeat the only suggestion I have to make for the long run, a reform that would outlast the present students, faculty, and regents. The students should be given 25 to 50 voting memberships in the General Faculty so that together the students and faculty can form an assembly of learning. Then students and faculty could vote together, for instance, to select their own acting president to negotiate with the regents’ factotum. Surely the fundamental issue is local selfgovernment, and campuses all over the state can look and learn. Until the professors get up their zest for excitement enough to open their assemblies to voting student representatives, I think there’s no way, short of someone who respects education getting elected governor, that the political corruption of higher education in Texas can be ended. R.D. Gilley cleared The Sept. 5, 1975, issue of The Texas Observer discussed my legislative report to the Texas Women’s Political Caucus and a list of hard-core sexists which I had prepared. A legislative aide to Rep. Smith Gilley of Greenville called and advised me that Rep. Gilley has previously supported a female gubernatorial candidate and that he unequivocally supports the Equal Rights Amendment. Rep. Gilley’s aide assured me of the truth of these statements and, if that is the case, I may have made error in placing the name of Rep. Smith Gilley on such a list. Gretchen E. Raatz, P.O. Box 1409, Austin, Tex., 78767 Gilley was not in the Legislature when the ERA was ratified, however he does support it. He reports having a running battle with his legislative deskmate Bill Hilliard of Fort Worth on the subject. In 1972, Gilley supported Ben Barnes in the Democratic gubernatorial primary and Sissy Farenthold in the run-off Ed. Continue the fight Boy, how smug and self-satisfied I have been. I am a UT graduate from the late Fifties cheap rent, interposition, Ronnie’s Observer, and beautiful useless coeds who flaunted their many petticoats and sexy bobbie sox and said, “I cayn’t believe it!” every other sentence. .. . Anyways, I was privileged to be a participant in an historical happening. The first undergraduate black males that came to UT lived at our humble home the UT YMCA. We even got one elected to the student council. Heady Times, and I thought that social injustice was no more.. . Now 20 years later I go to a UT football game for Fiesta, and the shock is abrupt. It’s not our formerly lily-white football team that brings the amazement; it is the Longhorn Band. Ranks and ranks pass by, and there are so few black faces that I have decided that the blacks have forsaken music for busing. Apparently, every generation must continue the fight because, like the devil, the spirit of regression outlives us all. I cayn’t believe it! Mike Seidenberg, Rt. 8, 2008 Whitebead Trail, Austin, Tex. 78746.