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(O editorial & a. The President must . . . done Destructive support To the Editor: Dr. Ketter must tell us if our University will ever be completed. Hemust tell us how this University will respond to declining enrollment and what effect budget cuts will have on our education. The President must tell us about the academic future of this University. The President must tell us what Academic Plans and General Education mean to our academic careers. The President must explain why there is no comprehensive device for teaching evaluations. These represent just a few of the areas which directly affect us as students. Today we must have the President examine these issues and other ones. A leader is accountable to those he serves. The University serves us, the students, so come to Haas Lounge at 4:00 p.m. and make President Ketter be accountable to our needs! At 4:00 p.m. in Haas Lounge, University President, Robert L. Ketter, will address the student body. Dr. Ketter will tell us about the State of our University as we head into a new decade. However, it will not be until after the President speaks that we have our greatest responsibility. At that time we must ask hard, pointed insightful questions of this University’s leader. Dr. Ketter has remained as Presdient because he has been able to answer questions and respond to criticism from individuals both on this campus and in the community. Today is our opportunity to see if the President can effectively respond to our needs. The President must tell us what is being done to improve the quality of life at UB. He should address himself not only to the long term visions of a field-house and centralized studbnt activity space on Amherst but what is presently being After dropping out of UB approximately 30 years ago—after a rough and rugged season of Freshman football—Jimmy Griffin worked in local industry, attended Erie Community College, slung drafts in a tavern he ran on the South Side, served in the State Assembly and then, two years ago, somehow got himself elected mayor. On campus, where many view him as an inarticulate and reactionary anti-intellectual, Griffin has never been a favorite of students. Elected Mayor on the Conservative ticket (his own Democratic party didn’t want him) t he defeated State Assemblyman Arthur O. Eve who received much more campus support. But as far as The Spectrum is concerned, Griffin Is well on his way to making amends with the University: In his Wednesday night address to two dozen students in the Fillmore Room, he termed University President Robert L. Ketter “great,” and heartily endorsed the man’s quest to retain his post. The Spectrum has maintained that Ketter’s tenure should be carefully analyzed before jumping to conclusions. Griffin has failed to do this. No amount of editorializing, no amount of campus protesting, no amount of political rain-dancing could have possibly injured Ketter more than an endorsement from an ill-informed Jimmy Griffin. Here is the kind of man who supports Ketter, hereafter to be known as the “Ketter-kind-of-guy.” What follows is a Griffin reader, quotes mostly taken from an interview with then-Feature Editor Robert G. Basil ran with the Mayor last Spring: On students; Joel D. Mayersohn, President Student Association “Most of the problems [at UB] are caused by students outside the city of Buffalo.” i “The best thing [for all students] to do is to go out in private industry and make a buck. Then you realize what it means to be a taxpayer;\ , “I don’t think you see [student] activism once a t)oy or girl becomes a man or woman and has to earn their [sic] daily bread.” “I think student activism is the worst way of making changes ” On Viet Nam; “I felt that if the activists On student activism I call them immature children these so-called educated people ... had used a different approach [during the anti-war years at the turn of the decade] we might have seen an earlier end to the Viet Nam war.” On manners and clothes: “I think that some of the workers down on the waterfront show more manners than you University people do. Some dress better, too.” On SA and GSA votes of “no-confidence” of Ketter two years ago: \Well the students have been wrong before. They’re probably wrong again.\ It’s apparent to us that Griffin does not view the student body as filled with Ketter-kind-of-guys. As a matter of fact, it would seem that Griffin wishes all of the students here, especially downstaters, would just quit school, like he did, and get a job in “the real adult world.\ And although Griffin swiftly damns students’ efforts to change the structure of this (gag) “real world” and its governmental system, the man readily expresses his beliefs concerning how our student government should be changed. For example, he believes that the Mandatory Student Activity Fee, which supports either partially or completely' the majority of activities on campus, should be abolished. In Griffin’s address Wednesday, until a woman from the audience questioned him, he virtually ignored the University as one of the city’s assets. So, in a certain way, Ketter is a lot like our Mayor: our President virtually ignores students as one of the University’s assets. 31 |i Nuclear Attack Treat/ Organization The Spectrum Henry’s confidence Vot. 30, No. 30 Friday, 26 October 1979 To the Editor: good reason that no course was available. (The penultimate paragraph suggests that some faculty on the campus think that this is a condition we should return to.) Despite this handicap, I chose to do a dissertation which required great knowledge of both the Caribbean and Atro-America—because I was interested. I remain interested and nearly all my work has had to do with these two regions oribsif linkages. I remain interested in Africa, too, of course but it would be idle to pretend that I can work effectively on all three fronts. Editor-in-Chief Daniel S. Parker May I offer a brief clarifying comments on statements touching my academic competence in the article on page 3 of your October 19 issue. I prefer the Chairman of the Department to respond to whatever endangers the reputation of the Department but some matters touch me personally and immediately and I shall confine myself to them. The first of them is almost a quibble but, as with the second, there is a possible implication that my students have been exposed to an incompetent. That is serious. Managing Editor Joyce Howe Managing Editor Kathleen McDonough News Editor Elena Cacavas Mark Mellzer Assistant . Joe Simon Graphics City vacant National Assistant vacant Assistant Contributing Robert G Basil Photo Tom Buchanan Assistant Cathy Carlson Sports Dave Davidson Copy Peter Howard Prodigal Sun Campus Art Diractor Rebecca Bernstefn Feature Jon-Michael Glionna vacant . . Dennis Goris Robbie Cohen vacant . Garry Preneta Dennis R. Floss Carlos Vallarino The Dean is quoted as saying that “based on academic merit, I could not give my support to Henry.” Without descending into detail, I would have been much happier, as the Dean himself could tell you, if the quoted statement ran instead “based on an unfortunate procedually- distorted view of Henry's academic merit. ” • do not . think I had much difficulty in demonstrating—within perhaps one minute, or at most two, of i&arning of the Personnel Committee’s reflections —that the Committee s assumptions were mistaken. There is some honest disagreement as to whether the mistakes were excusable or not. Thank you very much indeed. Education vacant Environmental Marc Sherman Arts Music Ralph Allen Tim Switala It is no secret that I regard the range of teaching I have been engaged in—interdisciplinary treatments of Africa, Afro- America and the Caribbean—as extraordinary and excessively demanding and I have made it clear that I want to withdraw from the first. It was to that end that I persuaded the Chairman to seek to recruit an African historian. This circumstance has apparently led to the belief that I was \trained in the area of Caribbean Studies not African.\ Let me throw some light on this matter My graduate training was in Political Theory and Development Politics-the latter meaning African Politics almost exclusively. I have never done any supervised study, even at high school on either Afro-America or the Caribbean—for the Business Manager BUI Finkelstein The Spectrum is served by College Press Service, Reid Newspaper Syndicate, Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Collegiate Headlines Service and Pacific News Service. The Spectrum is represented for national advertising by Communications and Advertising Services to Students, Inc. Circulation average: 15,000 The Spectrum offices are located in 355 Squire Hail Stale University of New York at Buffalo. 3435 Main Street. Buffalo, New York 14214 Telephone: (716) 831-5455. editorial: (716) 831-5419. business Copyright 1979 Buffalo, N Y The Spectrum Student Periodical. Inc Editorial policy is determined by the Edilor-in-Chief. Republtcallon ol any matter herein without the express consent ol the Eaitor-in-Chiel is strictly forbidden • Keith S. Henry Ph.D.
