tl19701002-000 "Towerlight Vol. XXII, No. 3 Towson State College, Baltimore, Maryland 21204 October 2, 1970 Contraception Crusader Comes To Curse Careless Coitus Tonight at 8:00 p.m. in Stephens' Auditorium, Towson State College will be host to Bill Baird, nationally known advocate of birth control and abortion reform. This lecture is free and open to the public. Baird, 37 years of age, is the director and founder of the New York Parent Aid Society, a non-profit organization concerned with birth control, abortion, and drug abuse. He is the former clinical director . of Emko, a national pharmaceutical manufacturer, which produces contraceptives. He is presently a consultant to the New York State Senate Sub- Committee on Health and Mental Health as well as an advisor on birth control to the New Jersey State Legislature. Baird has received national recognition for his crusading ef-forts to remove restrictions on birth control. He was arrested in New York in 1966 for distributing contraceptive information, and as a result, effected a change in New York laws befitting the poor. He ?'as also arrested in New Jersey in 1967, where he served a twenty-day prison term. This arrest also in-fluenced a change in the law concerning contraceptives. In the same year, he was arrested in Massachusetts for displaying a birth control pill and giving a package of contraceptive foam to a twenty-three year old woman. For these two offenses he faced a prison term of ten years-five for each offense. Also, in the state of Massachusetts, Baird was sen-tenced to three months in prison and served 36 days of that sentence in the Suffolk County jail for giving a Boston coed a non-prescription birth control product - at her request. This was in violation of the ""Crimes against Chastity Laws."" An appeal was made to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, but failed. The case is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court with Baird banking for the unconstitutionality of said laws. Baird is also responsible for setting up the first mobile clinic to BILL BAIRD go into ghetto areas, such as Ilarlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, to counsel women. Ile also set up the first and only abortion referral clinic in New York. This clinic helped over 3,000 women find help to rid themselves of unwanted pregnancies. Baird summarizes his attitude about his ""crusade"" for birth control and abortion reform: ""Six years ago I held a job that paid me $20,000 a year, and my wife and I and our four children looked forward to a relatively comfortable , undistrurbed future. It just so happened that I found I couldn't look both in this direction and into the eyes of a woman dying from a self-induced abortion at the same time. Could you?"" Editor's note: Baird's Parent's :lid Society is locale(' al 1575 Commonwealth Iz'enue, Brighton. Massachusetts. The phone is (6/7) 783-0060. photo by Quante "" Promise you won't think badly of me "" see PAGE 2 for further information . Scholar Aid Controversy The SGA Senate met for the first time for the academic year last Tuesday and spent most of its time listening to the reports of the top three executives of the Student Government who were empowered under the SGA constitution to act for the Senate over the summer months. SGA President Richard Neidig made several important an-nouncements of major change of policy that occured over the summer. Towson now has an orientation program which in-cludes sections run by the Black Student Union, while a new ad-dition to the administration in October will be Mr. George Pruitt, who comes from Illinois State University to direct a new orien-tation program that now comes under the Student Personnel di vision. Neidig also referred to con-sultations with Dr. James L. Fisher and Dr. Richard Gillespie over the summer that led to the publication of the handbook on ""Campus Disruption,"" which was distributed at registration, and announced that Towson would be withdrawing from the National Student Association. The Senate then moved on to elect five students to the new AcademicCounci I. Representatives of the Black Student Union were on hand to make nominations and in fact. two of their members, Arthur Woodward and Lawrence Mills were elected. Others elected by the Senate from the 13 nominations ere John Wighton, Steve Murphy, and Mike Corkran, who will be coordinating student members of college committees this year. The last two pieces of business for the Senate were ratification of a new elections and financial policies passed over the summer, The Elections Policy was ratified with a minimum of discussion. However, the new financial policy presented by SGA Treasurer Ron DeAbreu was heatedly discussed. The main controversy in the new policy was the section dealing with scholar aids to certain positions of student leadership on campus. The new 'policy includes scholar aid increases of S650. Defending these increases, DeAbreu, said that the philosophy of the aid was not that certain student leaders ought to be paid for their services, but that since these positions carry with them large measures of respon-sibility and demand many man-hours, students with a financial need could not devote themselves as fully as they wished to the job because they had to work to stay in school. Citing the SGA presidency and the Towerlight editorship as the best examples, he said that the job of president of SGA was a 12- month one, since President Richard Neidig had to spend up to three days a week on campus this summer, and could not hold a full-time summer job. Scholar aid only covers eight months of the year Also, he said the job of editing the newspaper was a full-time one and demanded much more time than the editor could afford to give, since he was obliged to work to stay in school. He found this to be one of the problems with Towerlight last year. Senator Blaine Taylor, coun-tering these arguments, felt that the raise was ethically and practically unjustifiable. Ii is reasoning was that 1.) A student should not run for office unless he could afford it, 2.) That the job is a voluntary one and pay should be received with gratitude not ex-pectation, and 3.( That there are students who take a full 18-credits, work full time at night and are married while others work part-time and student teach. The senate denied ratification, but President Neidig, in an-nouncing reconsideration for next Senate meeting. challenged any student to do what Taylor suggested and be effective in any job that presently receives scholar aid. lie argued finally that this would lead to a situation where only a certain class of students would be able to fill these positions, namely, those students sufficiently well-off not to have to work to stay in school. INSIDE Letters The Club The Right Side Sports Page 2 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 "
