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By JIM FREDERICKTexan Staff WriterMinority group members and staterepresentatives urged a crowd of about 300 Wednesday to “keep on the administration’s tail” for increased recruitment, to “sacrifice the hell out of vour life” for the community and to investigate the attitude of Student Government as well as that of the Board of Regents.Asst. Government Prof. Armando Gutierrez led off the rally by assailing the $400,000 minority recruitment appropriation as adequate for less than 90 minority students for the next four vears if all the money goes to financial aids.There is a recurring pattern of “never carrying through with anything’ on the part of the administration, the Raza Umda candidate for the Texas House said He also called attention to “intolerable” lack of attention to women's needs at the Student Health Center and to the “tricks” of Regent Frank C. Erwin, who. he charged, “all of a sudden wants minorities when representatives of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) come to campus.“We're not going to be fooled any more, Gutierrez said. “Our duty is ... to make our feelings known ... and keep on his(Erwin’s) tail ’ after HEW is gone.Rep Ben Reyes of Houston urged chicanos “to look where vou came from to know where you are going.” Chicano students, he said, have to take on even greater leadership roles. A degree won't mean anything “if you can’t relate to that community,” he said Reves noted there must be a credibility gap when the administration says it can’t find qualified students and at the same time Houston has more chicanos at Harvard than at Texas.Change has to come “through the political system.“ he said. “We have to come back again and again and again until changes are instituted, so that chicanos 10 vears from now “won't have to hassle with this very problem, he added.Houston Rep. Craig Washington also urged action through the system and added that legislators are mainly concerned with “dollars and cents ’and not with themore “humane” aspects of education There should be. he said, more direct communication between the powers that be” and students and less emphasis on buildingsAmong the calls for prolonged attention to the recruitment problem came one from student James Meadows Jr to investigate the racial policies of StudentGovernmentMeadows said that although Student Government President Sandv Kress had made an appeal to HEW. research indicated that out of 107 names appointed to committees there was onlv one with a Spanish surname, and there were no blacks, American Indians or orientals All other names on the government payrollwere Anglo-Saxon he added.Meadows labeled Kress a paternalistic white person who says he’s your friendbut when it comes down to the nittv%gritty won’t appoint minority students to committees ” Kress’ appointees, he added, were merely political hacks who do what he savs.Peggv Westmoreland of Women United listed a series ot women’s needs that she said continue to go unattended, such as a woman in the decision making process, maternitv leaves for women faculty, inex-Me ■' ■ ( v ygFpensive or 1’niversitv funded day care.rwinmore funding for women's athletics and a women’s studies department.Women and minorities both need, she added, “someone sympathetic (within the administration) to our needs.”Burke Armstrong and Holly Echo-Hawk presented a written statement from American Indians Now Texans (AINT) which called the plight of Native Americans at the University ... a condensed and distilled version of the manner most minority groups on campus are treated.No American Indians have ever been recruited by the University according to the statement The administration had reported to HEW a Native American population of 101 students, but. in what the statement termed “cruel irony,” the identity of other Indians is withheld from the Indians on campus” to prevent formation of their own “cultural group.”The University is interested in the number of minority students, it said, “for the federal money” and not as humans.Austin State Rep Larry Bales and City Councilman Jeff Friedman also made short statements of solidarity with the minority cause at the University.Bales commented that though “we made the commitment” to equal opportunity in elementary and secondary schools, we (the legislators) failed the test” for higher education. “I’m going to be forced to vote against the Permanent University Fund,” he said.Friedman said there was little the city could do for minority recruitment on cam-Ikpus but that “we should all get together and tell HEW what the real situation is.” He emphasized that at the University “to not do anything is to really discriminate.”Politics . . .Student Governmentpresidential and vice-presidential candidates will have the opportunityexplaintheir platforms and answer questions from the audience at an informal forumfrom noonp.m.Thursday on the Union Patio.Warmer . . .Thursday will be part-cloudy and warmer with a high near 80 and southwesterly winds 8 to 18 m.p.h. Low Thursday night will be in the upper 50s.
Newspaper Details
Austin Daily Texan
Austin, Texas, US
Thu, Feb 28, 1974
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
San A.
Texas, USA 15 May 2023
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