Editorial opinion
Remember those sub-zero
February nights when you stood
shivering at the edge of Parking
Lot 80, waiting for the Inner Loop
to take you downtown for a mid
night snack?
Remember how your frozen
fingers toyed with the dime you
had dug from your parka pocket
for the fare?
And remember the student bus
drivers the friendly one who
always whistled or the curly-haired
one who sometimes made an un
scheduled stop for your con
venience?
If you do, preserve those
memories. They are in danger of
becoming extinct.
Recently, the Campus Loop bus
drivers requested that they be
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Letters to the Editor
Double standard
TO THE EDITOR: The dismissal of the fourth floor Beaver Hall
resident assistant Mike Morris is a blatant attempt by
Residential Life to victimize him.,The firing is a direct result of
the Phil Wilts chugging incident and conveniently provides a
scapegoat for Morris’ superiors at Residential Life.
Although the written University policy on alcoholic
beverages prohibits the possession, consumption and trans
portation of alcoholic beverages on campus, the practice
encouraged by Residential Life's area coordinators, and by
implication, their, superiors, Is otherwise. The unwritten, but
far more publicized policy is that the consumption, possession
and transportation of alcoholic beverages Is permitted as long
as it Is kept out of the hallways, public areas and when trans
ported, is discretely covered. The Instruction given to area
coordinators and resident assistants this week as a'result of
the Phil Wilts Incident are to enforce the written policy. This is
clear evidence that Its non-enforcement had been encouraged
at the time Wilts chugged himself hours of quiet rest at
Mountainview hospital.
Unfortunately for Morris, he had knowledge of the party at
which. Wilts chugged and followed the established procedure
of assuring that the p'arty was contained to a private room. It is
also a-mishap that Wilts is not a dorm resident, thus making it
Impossible for Morris to know that Wilts had a propensity to
chug liquor in quantities that kill less fortunate people.
The responsibility for the entire Phil Wilts Incident lies witn
two parties. The first party Is Phil Wilts. The second party is
the directors of Residential Life. They specified the policy
Morris was to implement. They failed to recognize the
potential consequences that Wilts has helped them realize and
they alone should bear the risk of castigation. The effort to
55 m.p.h. limit frustrates drivers, annoys officials
Back in the days of Nixon, before Patty Hearst was a martyr,
Congress passed a measure designed to limit speed on the
nation’s highways to 55 miles per hour. It was adopted as a
temporary measure (temporary, in the Washington dialect,
readily translates to “indefinite” or “as long as you’ll let us get
away with it.”) to reduce gasoline consumption.
The 55-mlle per hour celling has since been made permanent
by Congress, much to the chagrin of truckers and motorists,
law enforcement officials and oil companies.
Speed limits, by nature, are occasionally useful, usually
offensive creatures perpetrated on the motorist by people who
rarely drive their own cars, and even then predominantly within
metropolitan limits or on packed expressways.
It appears that .the nation’s drivers have had all they can
take: a study done by Motor Trend magazine found that almost
nobody drives at or below 55, and that the median highway
speed for passenger vehicles is 64 miles per hour. In one 91-
mile stretch, the Motor Trend test car maintained a constant
speed of 55 miles per hour. It was overtaken by 228 vehicles; It
passed two.
If only by reason of numbers, effective enforcement of the
highway speed limit is nearly impossible. With the in
creasingly widespread use of citizen's band radio, it is
becoming completely impossible. Those that get caught
speeding either do not have a radio, or are unlucky and foolish.
The aforementioned Motor Trend crew made one lap of
America, driving 7000 miles at an average speed of 70 miles per
hour. In one 393-mile stretch, they averaged 107 miles per
lour. They never got a ticket. While this Is admittedly Idiocy, it
Bus stop
allowed to organize a union under
an affiliate of the AFL-CIO. The
move was made to prevent their
absorption into the Teamsters
Local Union 8.
In the past year, we have heard
much about the Teamsters. We
have heard about their extensive
power. We have heard about the
enormous raises they voted to
grant to their leaders. And we un
doubtedly have heard about the
saga of the bizarre kidnaping of
Jimmy Hoffa.
But when a labor issue hits Hap
py'Valley and threatens to affect
its students, it’s time we heard a lit
tle bit more about the Teamsters.
Quite simply, if the Loop drivers
are swallowed up by the Team
sters, many students may find
themselves without jobs; their
circumvent this liability by dismissing Morris is a ploy of
unethical foundation. Mike Morris should be reinstated and his
peers should not be subjected to the double standard.
Dave Crawford
. Sth-Flnance
Law of the Sea
TO THE EDITOR: Unfortunately, the things most often talked
about are not always the most important. For example,
newspaper reports on the Law of the Sea Conference failed to
mention that it presents the best present opportunity to take a
major- step toward effective world organization and world
order.
If a widely acceptable ocean treaty Is achieved and there Is a
good chance that it will be, it is expected to include a new type
of international organization, an authority for the deep ocean
seabeds which will have Its own revenue from minerals,
peaceful enforcement on mining companies, balanced and
acceptable control hampered neither by veto or straight one
nation-one vote and a tribunal with jurisdiction.not restricted
to states and reaching binding decisions. It would be
autonomous, a part of the UN family, but not controlled by the
UN Assembly or Security Council.
-This Seabed Authority could gain experience and establish
precedents which would make it a prototype for a World Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency. And the probable treaty
could also represent a major advance in dispute settlements.
Many nations, including the Soviet Union, for the first time are
expressing their willingness tp submit many types of ocean
disputes to binding third party decisions.
Both of these possible achievements are positive news for
the bicentennial
/
joes show how a radio-equipped car can make a travesty of the
speed limit.
Two studies undertaken recently by independent firms have
shown that even if motorists obeyed the 55-mile per hour limit,
gasoline consumption would be reduced by less than two per
cent rather than the 10 to 11 per cent expected by Congress. It
is gasoline pcJces that reduce consumption In a classical
supply and demand system, the higher the price of they
commodity, the fewer units are sold, relative to need. Because
gas prices are high, people are, quite logically, driving less and
making fewer trips on the highway.
Since the Implementation of the 55-mlle per hour speed
limit, there has been a significant reduction in highway
fatalities. The people who run the National Safety Institute In
Washington, always eager to clasp onto anything that they can
label a cause and effect relationship,'immediately proclaimed
that the drop in the number of highway deaths was a direct
result of the new speed limit. A number of experts In highway
safety say that this is not the case.
means of livelihood may be con
sumed by “professional” drivers.
A Teamster spokesman has
denied that any such negative con
sequence will occur. But teamster
membership requires that mem
bers work at least 30 hours per
week. Currently, all drivers work
LESS than that amount.
In all likelihood, few of them
would be able to increase their
workload to the Teamster standard
and still function as full-time
graduate or undergraduate
students.
It has been said that in unity
there is strength. But when faced
with amalgamation into such a
monstrous organization, the Loop
drivers may be better off standing
alone as individuals.
By MARILYN SALTZBERQ
Collegian Staff Writer
Daniel Schorr Is back In the spotlight. It’s been about
five months since the brash CBS Washington
correspondent leaked the House Intelligence Com
mittee report to the Village Voice after the full House
voted not to release It. This week, the former FBI agents
hired to lead the ethics committee Investigation finally
have completed Interviewing more than 400 witnesses
and the committee has begun hearings on the case
For Schorr, it's been a long time coming. Last winter
a barrage of criticism bombarded the Journalist once he
acknowledged himself as the source of the report. Press
and government officials smothered Schorr with attacks
from every direction:
President Ford offered “all the services and resources
of the executive branch” to track down Schorr’s source,
the House ordered' its ethics committee to begin a
preliminary inquiry into the possibility of citing him for
contempt.
The ethics committee, which had never formally
investigated anyone, but which Is now one of the
busiest committees in the House, was given a $150,000
budget and “far-reaching’ subpoena power” to In
vestigate the case. The Justice Department, with the
help of the FBI, began its own investigation of Schorr,'
and finally, CBS relieved Schorr of all his reporting
duties for an indefinite period.
Criticized for selling the document, offering it to an
anti-establishment paper and getting too personally
involved with his story, Schorr got
hls journalist siblings.
Daniel Schorr won't win any popularity contests. LBJ
J. D. McAulay
Professor of Education
ESAIE!
journalist, hustler, SOB »
and Nixon both called him a "sonofabltch.” Nixon
ordered an FBI Investigation of him and former CIA
director Richard Helms publicly called him “Killer
Schorr.” But few journalists will argue that he’s not a
hard worker. Schorr has had more than his quota of
firsts and exclusives, but he's suffered his share of
blunders as well and for this he has gained a reputation
for "over-hustling," for hyping his stories just a little
too much to get them aired.
In the Pike papers case, instead of a hero, Schorr was
branded a "secret-spiller.” The once-glorlous, not-so
long-ago days of exposing secrets and corruption
seemed to crumble beneath Schorr's hustling feet. The
passion for "telling-all” a la Bernstein and Woodward or
Seymour Hersch has faded recently, (unless of course
It’s a juicy sex scandal). With Watergate Just far enough
in the past and with the death of CIA agent Richard
Welch, a number of other Pike committee leaks and the
Ford-Reagan issue of the U.S. as a second rate power
just close enough to the present, the time was ripe for
an all out battle between government secrecy and press
disclosure. Under the Ford administration’s anti
exposure war, Schorr’s sin of disclosure seemed more
criminal than the CIA bribes and assassination plots he
was revealing.
But the tug-of-war deemed necessary between
government -and the -press by our~founding fathers
seems to have come to a temporary government victory
in the Schorr case, not because Schorr was wrong, (that
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Dr. B.J. Campbell, director of the Highway Safety Research
Center at the University of North Carolina, said that
“ . . . there are a combination of things that happened as a
result of the energy shortage each of which contributed to
lowering the number of deaths but speed is one of the lesser
influences.”
Campbell stresses changes in the “why, when and where of
accidents." He points out, for example, that a family at
tempting to cut its total driving by ten percent over the course
of a year might curtail the driving of its teenage member by 60
per cent. “That’s going to have a marked multiplying effect in
decreasing deaths because of the age group’s very high ac
cident rate.”
In the end, it becomes simply a question of mobility versus
safety. Throughout the twentieth century, Americans have
worshipped speed and efficiency, even at the expense of
safety. It's a fact of life.
Congress made automobile manufacturers put seat belts In
cars. When it was discovered that they were not being used,
Congress made manufacturers install buzzers and other
noxious devices that irritated the driver to the point where he
did one of several things.
The driver could put on his seatbelt; he could wrap it around
a conveniently placed door handle; buckle it permanently
behind him; pull it out of the retractor and knot it; or, as in the
case of many action-oriented individuals, he could rip the
buzzer from its wires and smash it for good measure (I did
this; it fe!t,good). At last, Congress came around to the logical
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Collegian forum
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remains to be seen), but because the charges have been
sounded but not resolved.
If Schorr Is cited for contempt or charged under the
general espionage statutes, 0.K., at least he'll have
chance to defend himself. But the longer the In
vestigation lingers on the more harmful it Is for Schorr
since the only lasting effects of the affair will be the bad
publicity the press and Schorr have received.
The ethics committee basically wants to uncovdr
Schorr’s source but It Is unlikely that Schorr will do the.
revealing himself. However, other resolutions con-'*
cerning the consequence of leaks and the shaky
classification sysytem, may evolve from the hearings.
Thus the Investigation must be serious and thorough.
In March, John Flynt Jr., ethics committee chairman,
estimated that the probe would run through July 31.
No one knows better than a reporter that
are slow and time consuming but for Schorr, nothing
has been more frustrating and condemning than the
recent months of silence. Granted, the ethics com
mittee has been overburdened with work lately and sept
scandals may be more engrossing to study than a cocky
reporter accused of spilling the beans but Schorr’s case
must be resolved and soon. I
As the completion date for the investigation ap
proaches, no extensions should be granted. A speedy
decision must be reached. If the committee findis
something to charge Schorr with, fine, do it quickly and
publicly. If it can’t find anything, even better, say so and
give the poor man back his good name.
point of view (logic takes’ longer to manifest itself in
Washington. It’s something in the water.) and decided that if
people wanted to wear seat belts, they would. If not, nothing
short of summary execution of non-users will force them to
buckle up. It’s the same story with the speed limit. The only
people driving 55 are those who drove 55 before all the
hullaballoo began.
sCollegian
JANICE SELINGER
Summer Editor
BOARD-OF EDITORS: EDITORIAL EDITOR, Janie Musala;;
NEWS EDITOR, Paula Gochnour; WIRE EDITOR, Laura
Shemick; COPY EDITORS, Debbie Fitch, Mike Joseph;'
SPORTS EDITOR, Bob Buday; PHOTO EDITOR, Barry
Wyshinski; WEATHERMAN, Scott Chesner.
Mailing Address: Box 467, State College, Pa. 16801
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