The Greenville News from Greenville, South Carolina • Page 4

Ml jiUj 1 1 4A- Thursday, September 12, 1985 Exercise caution in college case 7 i sr, i i a i i i nil jt rn Francis Marion, then a two-year branch of the University of South Carolina system, had plans to become a separate four-year campus. It was less cumbersome to create one board, and the State College Board of Trustees was established in 1969 to oversee the Charleston campus and any four-year state-supported college created thereafter. Francis Marion and Lander followed. Such a board eases the competition and duplication that exist when separate boards look out for their own campuses' interests. The difficulty this state experiences in that regard is clear in the overlap that now exists between the engineering programs at Clemson and the University of South Carolina, and the medical schools at USC and the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

This is not to say that all South Carolina's higher education institutions should be grouped under one trustee board. But individual boards are not the automatic solution to problems like those experienced by the College of Charleston. Many of those mistakes can be corrected if the existing board applies more diligence to its oversight responsibilities. It doubtlessly will in light of this publicity. State lawmakers should be cautious about dismantling the state trustee board that oversees the College of Charleston, Francis Marion and Lander College.

The motivation behind the proposed revamping is well-intended, but setting up three boards could create more problems than it solves. Low Country legislators have raised legitimate questions about several recently disclosed problems on the Charleston campus. The school has seen a rapid increase in instruction and administrative costs, experienced recent security problems and been ordered to stop providing housing subsidies and other perks the law forbids to faculty and staff. But while questionable, these problems are not unheard of on a college campus. The trustee board certainly should have been more aware of what was going on, but the problems are clearly administrative in nature and fall within the direct purview of the college staff.

Replacing the present trustees with new ones wouldn't make that any less the case. A multi-institutional board was a reasonable solution for the state to choose in creating the present setup. The College of Charleston was interested in joining the state system in the late 1960s and the Legislature knew Democrats may lose black voters date." While conceding that no organi-'1' zation base exists for a black third" party, Nelson said that he expected to see many more black politicians pursue "a new policy of pragmatism seeking goals that are not dependent on white sup-u port." Agreeing, Thomas E. Cava-" nagh, a specialist in black politics' at the National Research Council, said in a recent paper that more blacks will run as Independents in local races in the South, in orders to avoid the Democratic runoftu primaries which have been a tar-. get of Jackson's complaints.

Suc-t cess for some of those campaigns would obviously add to the ibility of a Jackson independent-candidacy in 1988. As Cavanagh pointed out, the relative advantages and tages for blacks' working within the Democratic Party "will continue to divide black elites along generational and to pit black electoral and party leaders dependent on white constituent and financial support, against indigenous community and religious leaders who played a key networking role in the Jack son campaign." But the overlooked finding that 59 percent of the black voters-would have followed Jackson out of the Democratic Party in 1984 cannot be ignored by Democratiq leaders forever. J'v (C) WASHINGTON POST COMPANY WASHINGTON The unspoken assumption among most of those involved in the effort to reshape the Democratic Party after two successive landslide presidential defeats is: We've got the blacks; let's concentrate on getting more whites. They don't put it that crudely, of course. They prefer to talk about "getting back in the mainstream" or "erasing the special-interest label." But there are few Democratic leaders who are unaware of the implications of the racial polarization in the Jimmy Carter and Walter F.

Mondale votes. Both those men got more than 9 out of 10 blacks to vote for them, but gained the support of fewer than 4 out of 10 whites. As a result, they were wiped out in 1980 and 1984 by Ronald Reagan. As they prepare for 1986 and 1988, the emphasis among the Democrats is clearly on improving their acceptability to middle-class white voters, by demonstrating their concern about budget deficits, a strong, efficient defense, retirement benefits and tax burdens. But while most Democrats are busy courting the straying white voters from yuppies to hard-pressed farmers there is growing intellectual and political dissent among blacks.

In the past few weeks, there has been substantial discussion among black politicians, and almost none among whites, about one striking finding from a survey of black voters taken before the 1984 election. That survey showed that 59 percent of the 1,150 respondents said that if Jesse L. Jackson had decided to run as an Independent in November of 1984, they would support him against Mondale and Reagan. This astonishing response, if carried out, would have left Mondale with less than one-third of the popular vote. And it "makes a Republican a shoo-in in 1988, if Jackson decides to run as an Independent next time," commented Rep.

Mickey Leland (D-Texas), the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and a 1984 Mondale supporter. Jackson is, of course, saying nothing about his 1988 plans, and he is the key. Three-fourths of the blacks surveyed rejected the idea of a separate black party as an abstraction, while a heavy majority said they would follow Jackson as an Independent presidential candidate. The knowledge that perhaps 6 million of the 10 million black voters were ready to follow Jackson out of the Democratic Party and might be again certainly casts a different light on the intra-party policy debates. The key finding from the National Black Election Study was reported by Shirley Hatchett and Ronald Brown of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research in a recent bulletin of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

The lack of notice it drew from white Democratic Party leaders is an indication of the party's preoccupation with the pursuit of turned-off white voters. But it is also evidence to many blacks of a growing gulf between the party leadership and the Democrats' most loyal constituency. Leland, who calls himself "very much of a Democratic Party insider and loyalist," says: "It's harder and harder to defend that position to people outside the party when the Democratic Party just does not show any leadership on black people's behalf." The national survey indicated that Jackson's support was concentrated among younger and better-educated blacks, the ones who are sure to be the political activists of the next decade or more. One of them, William Nelson, of Ohio State University, told a panel on black politics at the recent American Political Science Assn. convention that "black leaders have been forced to reassess their relationship with the Democratic Party." As he put it, "the Democrats have decided that black leaders should be shunned.

They blame us for whites rejecting the Democratic candi South Carolina cast leads national effort The nomination of U.S. District Judge Billy Wilkins as chairman of a panel to draft uniform guidelines for federal courts to use in sentencing puts that significant task in capable hands. Wilkins lends needed prosecutorial perspective to this sentencing guidelines project. He should also be acquainted with how his home state of South Carolina went astray in trying to accomplish the same goal. A South Carolina refrain runs throughout this national project.

It was the brainchild of Sen. Strom Thurmond, who authored a thoughtful, comprehensive act that is regarded as the most far-reaching overhaul of federal criminal law in history. The 635-page act includes innovative ways to seize drug dealers' assets pioneered by another Thurmond protege, former U.S. Attorney Henry McMaster. Thurmond's goal was to give federal judges expanded powers to deny bail to convicted criminals and dangerous defendants awaiting trial.

The act also abolished parole which McMaster recently suggested South Carolina think about doing, too and requires that sentencing provisions be redesigned to eliminate disparities. Wilkins knows from his own considerable experience as 13th Circuit solicitor, as well as his tenure on the federal bench, that much is lost when the courts give widely varying penalties for the same offenses. Such disparities demean the judicial system; they are unjust for the public, the victims and the accused. Unlike South Carolina's Associate Supreme Court Justice David Harwell, who worked hard only to see his sentencing recommendations pointedly ignored, Wilkins work will be put into effect unless rejected by Congress. When Thurmond's legislation became law, it looked like Harwell's work might influence the federal sentencing guidelines, and that South Carolina could provide national leadership.

That lost opportunity is an opening for Wilkins' contribution. (803) 298-4100 J. Kelly Sisk, 1913-1980 Mebone Publisher C. Franklin Adams Associate Editor, News Editorial Poge i IU would decrease. However, the.i best way to lower insurance rates would be to change the insurance laws to allow insurance compa-f nies to assign more financial re-7, sponsibility to persons who endan-i( ger their own lives or the lives otz others.

'x'S. The free market can work won-" ders if allowed to operate without government interference. I'i 'I A Violent crime is a serious lem in South Carolina, and so is; drunk driving. Law enforcement officials should put all their effort and time into trying to solve theseir problems. 1911 1 uiiU They should not be asked fd waste their precious time harass-" ing persons who do not pose a dan- ger to anyone besides If the mandatory motorcycle' helmet bill is enacted into law, violent criminals will be the bene-' ficiaries, for law enforcement offK cials will have a little less time spend solving real crimes.

For this reason, freedom-loving individuals should oppose this unrea-'. sonablebill. Letters to editor A telephone number should ac company complete address on letters submitted for Letters that cannot be verified will not be published. erate blacks by radical blacks, or that many responsible blacks oppose sanctions? I oppose apartheid, but you don't have to burn down the house to get rid of the rats. Blacks who work and live in South Africa now are much better off than they would be under a communist-oriented one-party black government which an ANC victory would surely bring.

It is notable that those who now lead in "helping" South African blacks (e.g. Congressman Solarz, Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson) also "helped" lead Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique and others into total disaster. "One man, one vote, one time" is their legacy, which should warn us to avoid similar solutions for South Africa. Pro-IRA rally disgusts reader By MRS. A.B.

GILLEN II Ottoway Drive I read with disgust in The Greenville News and Greenville Piedmont Sept. 1 about the New York police in the pro-IRA rally celebrating the anniversary of Lord Mountbatten's brutal killing. How dare they? These guys are as sick as the IRA. Their so-called comrades bomb the limbs off innocent people, then go into church and confess, and all is forgiven. How primitive.

The IRA doesn't want this situation to end as most of them don't work, and they seek a living from businesses, getting protection money to help their so-called cause. And if these people don't pay up, their business or shop is bombed. Britain doesn't need Northern Ireland, or for that matter want it. But, like the situation in the Fauklands and Gibraltar, it went to a vote on the majority of the people. Helmet bill called intrusive By DAVID MORRIS Box 50643, Columbia It seems that politicians will never quit trying to tell individuals how to lead their lives.

Sen. David Thomas (R-Greenville) has pre-filed a bill to make motorcyclists wear helmets, whether or not they want to. Libertarians denounce this needless invasion of individual rights. The government's job is to protect us from criminals, not from our own decisions. Sen.

Thomas justifies this bill by claiming that insurance rates ft' Sanctions not right solution By RAY H. SMITH 4514 Hill Road, Anderson For every problem, it has been said, there is a solution which is simple, obvious and wrong. It seems that the U.S. Congress is on the verge of choosing exactly the wrong solution to the problem of apartheid in South Africa, namely, to impose economic sanctions. Who would be hurt by economic sanctions? Mainly blacks you can't help them by throwing them out of work.

Who would be helped? Mainly the African National Congress (ANC), the pro-Soviet radical organization whose goal is "to make the country ungovernable" (their words) and lead ultimately to a black-led Marxist government such as now exists in Zimbabwe, once the prosperous pro-Western Rhodesia. Liberals, such as Butler Derrick, can be expected to vote for sanctions, but why would normally sensible Congressman Carroll Campbell and Floyd Spence vote to sell out a valued ally? Could it be because of dishonest reporting that conceals the fact that much of the killing is of mod- SOUTH CAROLINA'S UADINO NIWSPAKR he (Srectunlle News Published bv The Greenville News-Piedmont Company 305 S. Main Street 29601 A Division of Multimedia, Inc. Telephone B. H.

Peace, 1873-1934 Roger C. Peace, 1899-1968 William deB. President and Thomas P. Inman Editor, News Editorial Page.