The Towerlight, February 27, 1981

tl19810227-000 "Towerlight VOL. 74 No. 19 PUBLISHED BY THE STUDENTS OF TOWSON STATE UNIVERSITY TOWSON, MARYLAND 21204 We live, as we dream�alone. �Joseph Conrad February 27, 1981 Last Sunday, the third program in the 1980/81 Student Government Association Speaker Series featured John Dean (right), former counsel to President Richard Nixon, and syndicated columnist Jack Anderson (left). Dr. Richard Vatz, assistant professor of speech and mass communications, moderated the presentation entitled ""The Effects of Watergate on the Presidency."" Photo courtesy of Robert E. Wrigley, Jr. Oil prices: Watergate's surprising product by Michael Bennett Syndicated columnist and investi-gative reporter Jack Anderson sug-gested that Henry Kissinger and the Rockefeller family may be responsi-ble for the rise in Arab oil prices Which led to what Anderson called the. greatest transfer of wealth in history."" Anderson described the Rockefel-ler/ Kissinger connection Sunday night at the Towson Center, where he and John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon, spoke to a crowd of over 1,100 during the third Program in the 1980/81 Student Gov-ernment Association Speaker Series. Mid-Eastern oil Dean and Anderson spoke on ""The Effects of Watergate on the Presi-dency."" Anderson called the increase in the cost of Middle-Eastern oil ""a surprising effect of Watergate."" Anderson outlined the history of the Rockefeller family's involvement in Iran in his opening remarks. Ander-son said the U.S. role in Iran began in the early '50s when Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh was ousted and Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi took control of the govern- Ment. The U.S. supported the shah. According to Anderson, Mossadegh favored nationalizing Iran's oil fields. Anderson said that, while this posed no threat to U.S. security interests, it did threaten oil company profits. because of their interest in the Stan-dard Oil Company, the Rockefeller family had a stake in Iranian politics, he said. He also linked John Foster buttes, Secretary of State in 1953, with the Rockefeller family. Deal with shah In the spring of 1972, Nixon and tkissinger went to Iran to make a deal With the shah. The shah agreed but said he would need weapons. Nixon and Kissinger told the shah he could order as many as he wanted. When the question of who would pay for the arras arose, Kissinger said Congress Would never approve a massive aid bill for Iran. Anderson said one of the three men suggested raising oil prices. And so, according to Anderson, in 1972 Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger ,entered into a secret agreement with !Ile Shah of Iran to drastically raise me price of oil. � January of 1974, the price of rersian Gulf oil quadrupled. Ander- On said William Simon, Secretary of e Treasury, worked out a deal with 6audi Arabia whereby the Saudis tYould work to hold down oil prices. ,Anderson said that when Simon re-turned to Washington, Nixon was so :bsorbed with Watergate that Kis- Inger was free to thwart Simon's Plan. Anderson described the long-stand-relationship between Kissinger find the Rockefellers. He said � Kissin-rworked for the Rockefellers be-re he became part of the Nixon 'Ith/ now.linistration and works for them Anderson said he has secret uucuments to back his story. The next event in Anderson's scenario took place in 1972. Anderson said Henry Kissinger told Richard Nixon that, since the U.S. was becom-ing dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf and since neither the Congress nor the American people would sup-port a U.S. military build-up in the Middle East, we needed someone to protect our interests in the area. Kis-singer suggested the Shah of Iran. . Problematical theory Dr. Eric A. Belgrad, professor of political science, said Anderson's theory was problematical at best. ""I'd dearly like to see the documents. There is a lot of speculation and very little evidence,"" Belgrad said. ""I haven't seen any hard evidence. Kissinger was confronted with these allegations and he denied them. Since the McCarthy days, I'm hesitant to credit anyone who says he has secret documents and won't show them. If he has the documents, why won't he show them?"" he said. In his opening remarks, John Dean discussed the question of whether abuse of power began with Watergate. He said Richard Nixon asked him to look for ""old dirt."" Dean said he went back as far as Franklin Roosevelt's administration and was able to find a precedent for the things the Nixon people had done. Dirty tricks standard However, he said that the difference in the Nixon administration was that dirty tricks and abuses of office were the standard approach and not excep-tions to the rule. Dean said the mood has changed in Washington since Watergate. The media has become suspicious, and officials are afraid of being caught. He said the investigations involving Bert Lance, Hamilton Jordan, Billy Carter and other members of the Carter administ:ation are evidence of the effect of Watergate. ""Presidents were once presumed to be doing the right thing. After Water-gate there was a 180-degree turn. Presidents were believed to be doing wrong until they proved otherwise,"" Dean said. Dean said the numerous investi-gations were time-consuming and, therefore, damaging to Carter's Presidency. Dean and Anderson were asked if journalists were out to get Presidents. Anderson said reporters adopt the attitudes of people in power. ""They Correction It was incorrectly stated in last week's Towerlight that Mike Virden, SGA senator, said the SGA plans tc sell beer during the government operations committee to nominate members of the election committee. It should have stated that Virden said the SGA plans to sell beer during Friday concerts in the Pub. Towerlight regrets the error. breathe the rarefied atmosphere of Washington and begin to react as the people they're supposed to watch,"" Anderson said. Reporters' doubts grew Dean said that since Watergate, reporters are more inclined to doubt. On the subject of Nixon's enemies list, Dean said the effects of the list were overrated. ""No one asked if anyone was ever investigated,"" he said. In a pre-lecture press confer-ence, Dean said the Nixon administra-tion's 1972 dirty tricks campaign was ineffective and counterproductive. Anderson agreed that the dirty tricks were stupid, but said they did have an effect in the '72 campaign. He said they were harmful to Edmund Muskie, because they caused Muskie to develop a sense of harassment which undermined his image as a calm and controlled politician. Federal cuts hit TSU Education by Francis C. Broccolino On February 18, President Ronald Reagan announced his proposed budget reductions for fiscal 1982, and among his recommendations was an eight percent cut in aid to education. If Congress passes these proposals, both Towson State's faculty and students could suffer. ""It's going to affect the University overall, period,"" said Bernadine Kreider, director of grants. ""Every-body will be affected; we're all victims."" She explained that, although eight percent does not seem like a great reduction, the actual money being cut will be several billion dollars nationwide. - Undoubtedly, those hardest hit will be the students, particularly the ones needing financial assistance to attend college. Under the Reagan plan, (which was recommended by the Office of Management and Bud-get), students will have a tougher time receiving Pell Grants (formerly Basic Educational Opportunity Grants) and Guaranteed Student Loans. ""The primary target seems to be the middle-income loans,"" said Dr. Joseph Cox, vice president for aca-demic affairs. ""As the cost of tuition has risen,"" Cox said, ""more and more families have come to depend on the middle-income loans."" However, he explained that part of the problem with student loans has been the record of default, which has been very high. To curtail this problem, Reagan's plan would reduce federal subsidies, even for the need-iest students, by ending the federal policy of paying the interest on loans while students are still in college. Instead, students would be expected to pay the interest, which would increase from nine percent to the current market rates. ""A lot of students at Towson State may be hurt,"" Cox said. ""Students who depend on these middle-in-come loans may be caught in a bind. It is terribly short-sighted to reduce the opportunity and ability of students to get an education."" Ironically, however, the reduction in financial aid could also help the University. ""Towson State could, in a strange kind of way, benefit,"" said Cox. ""Those attending private colleges outside of Maryland may be forced to come to Towson State because they can't get the financial aid to attend those private colleges."" Those students will likely come to Towson State, said Donald McCulloh, vice president for business and finance, ""because we feel we have the best public college in this area."" Although the University will probably lose some of its lower-income students, McCulloh said he thinks the University will gain more students than it loses. Yet, the University has already lost several students as a result of the proposed budget cuts. ""We are losing a program directly because of the budget cuts,"" said Cox, ""and it's a very good small program."" The program is the health records, administration program which, until this semester, had a cooperative with the United States Public Health Service Hos-pital on Wyman Park Drive. continued on page 2 Financial aid by Dana Bennett If President Ronald Reagan's plan to cut federal financial aid by 20 percent is passed by Congress, stu-dents at Towson State will be ""hit hard,"" Harriet Griffin, director of financial aid, said. About 65 percent of the University's students re-ceive some type of aid to help with the payment of their tuition, Griffin said. The cuts recommendedby the Office of Management and Budget, which are of major concern to Griffin are the Pell Grants (formerly Basic Educational Op-portunity Grants), National Direct Student Loans (NDSL), Guaranteed Student Loans (GSL) and Social Security. The Pell Grants will be restricted to students from families earning less than $25,000 a year. For those who do qualify, the grant will be cut an estimated $400 to $600 per student because the program will be underfunded by $811 million. This means that a student who qualified for the max-imum grant of $1,800 would receive about $1,200 un-less additional funds were appropriated. Griffin said that more students will be eligible for the Pell Grants because of the Home Equity Amend-ment which Congress passed in 1980. This amendment deleted the home as an asset in computing financial aid. Prior to this amendment, not only was the income of a family considered, but also whether or not the family owned a home. This amendment makes it possible for a family owning a home to be considered on an equal basis with a family that does not own a home. For example, a family earning $24,999 and owning a home will be just as eligible to receive a Pell Grant as a family who earns $24,999 and does not own a home. Because of this amendment more students will be eligible to receive the grant, but less money will be offered to the students, Griffin said. About 2,000 Towson State students received pell Grants this past year Griffin said, while 800 to 900 students received aid from NDSLs. ""These two programs are the backbone of financial aid,"" Griffin said. The NDSL program will be phased out over the next four years with 25 percent cut out each year. Under the current NDSL program the federal govern-ment supplies 90 percent of the funds towards a student's tuition and the University supplies the re-maining ten percent. The student repays the loan to the University and the money collected is used towards future NDSLs. The University collects between $100,000 to $200,000 a year in NDSLs. Griffin said the University Would not feel the pinch of the NDSL cut back until the fall of 1983. The University will have enough funds through the accumulated loan collections to manage until then. The program that will affect the largest amount of students is the GSL which nationally provides $4.8 billion to students yearly. Currently 1,600 Towson students receive GSLs, and in the fall an estimated 3,000 students were planning continued on page 2 Council approves self-study committee by Katherine Dunn The Academic Council, Monday, approved a motion to set up a Uni-versity self-study committee. The Council later tabled a motion to recommend that the State Board for Higher Education (SBHE) address the problem of tension between Tow-son State and the Board of Trustees for State Colleges and Universities. The self-study committee would monitor the current self-study process of the University and make recom-mendations for its improvement. President Hoke Smith, who drafted the proposal, said he thinks the com-mittee is necessary because as the University continues to mature, it needs to look at itself and see how well it is doing. Smith wrote in the proposal that ""continuing self-study and evaluation are necessary for effective and timely decision-making throughout the Uni-versity. The self-study process is now decentralized throughout the Univer-sity,"" and Smith would like to see a ""focal point for the integration of existing and yet-to-be-developed self-study and evaluation procedures. ""This will enhance the decision-making process by facilitating the development of information nec-essary to relevant and timely deci-sions."" Smith said the committee would improve the flow of information within the University. There has been a tendency at the University, as there is at any university, Smith explained, for information not to get to everyone who should be aware of it. The self-study committee would provide more confidence for faculty members, because they would have an outlet to initiate studies, said Smith. The committee could either conduct studies itself or give them out to other committees of the Council which deal with specific areas. Smith said the committee would help the accreditation process because self-studies are usually re-quested when accreditation is studied. If the committee could continue to study different areas on a regular basis, it would cut down on the work load. The self-study committee would consist of nine faculty members�six appionted by the chairman of the Council and three elected by the fac-ulty at large, two students, the vice president for academic affairs or his representative, and the chairman of the Council or her representative. The committee would become a standing committee of the Academic Council. The motion to have the SBHE study the tension between the University and the Board of Trustees was tabled. John B. Mitchell, professor of art, who introduced the motion, said he wanted the chairman of the Academic Council to write a letter to SBHE recommend-ing that it study the tension between the University and the Board. Mitchell based his recommendation on the Middle States Association report of April 26, 1979, which states, ""Certainly the greatest concern of John Mitchell campus leaders and administrators at Towson is their belief that their Board of Trustees has not and perhaps can-not deal equitably with Towson, the oldest, by far the largest, and cer-tainly one of the two most renowned of the public institutions in the state. Towsonites are convinced that the Board, in attempting to serve five other public universities and colleges which are much less cost efficient than Towson, has not been able to be an effective advocate of this uni-versity . ."" Mitchell said he wants the Board ""to address the problem through a thorough and objective study."" Mitchell said he was prompted to submit the motion because the Board is considering closing Lida Lee Tall. He said that incident is an example of the lack of internal governance of the University. Smith said he did not think the ten-sion was as great as Mitchell did. He said his dealings with the Board are sometimes frustrating, but all the other college presidents under the Board have the same frustration. Dr. James J. Hill, Jr., associate professor of English, said he thinks the proper channel through which to fight is the president, not the Academic Council. Mitchell said Smith could not be as effective when confronting the Board as the Council because he has the ""role of a double-agent,"" he must work with both the University and the Board. Hill said there are serious matters on which he disagrees with the Board, like the percentage of faculty pay raises. There are ""serious tensions between our institution and the Board,"" said Hill. ""I don't have the faith in the State Board for looking into this matter and doing us any good. There's always a power struggle between us and the State Board,"" said Hill. Hill said he might support the motion if Lida Lee Tall is closed. He recommended that the Council vote against the motion until the Board decides the fate of Lida Lee Tall. Mitchell said because it takes so long for action to be taken, the Council should make the recommendation now. Smith was opposed to the motion because so many rumors are surfac-ing in Annapolis about the reorgani-zation of the state college system, including one rumor that the Board may close the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. ""I think now is a very poor time to take off after our Board,"" said Smith. In this issue INDOOR SOCCER has blasted its way Into Baltimore, breathing new life into the Civic Center. Read about the fun on page 3. MEN'S SWIMMING: Towson State's men's swimming team is still undefeated. They just won the 'rid- State Championship, and they're headed for the Eastern Seaboards at Dartmouth. Read all about the big splash. Page 7. RAGING BULL: Robert De Niro and Martin Scorese were nominated for Oscars for their work on ""Raging Bull."" Review on page 4. "