WGBH Journal; Boston University Tuition

Good evening and welcome to GBH Journal I'm Amy sands. Tonight we take a look at Boston University's recently announced 11 percent tuition hike. We hear from Dan Ford of the Union of Concerned Scientists about potential and actual accidents at nuclear power plants. Then a report on parent's choice a new magazine which keeps an eye on children's television. And finally Louis Lyons quotes Abraham Lincoln on human rights. All of that right after the local news. A special grand jury will be convened later this month to investigate last summer's disturbances at Walpole State Prison where both guards and prison inmates were injured. The jury will look into allegations of assault of conduct at Walpole. Prisoners have charged that guards used excessive force in quelling skirmishes while the guards claimed they were attacked with boiling water and homemade weapons. A group of legislators has pushed for an official probe of inmates allegations that they were beaten with clubs expected to testify in the proceedings are guards inmates and visitors. Meanwhile Governor King is moving rapidly to make prisons like Walpole a bit more populated. King who campaigned for mandatory prison

sentences capital punishment and quote no more soft judges will have 10 chances to change the character of the Massachusetts judicial system when he begin selection of 10 new superior court judges this year. NEIL LYNCH King's legal counsel said recently that some judges have been too lenient with offenders and added that he expected King's judicial candidates to be of a different category. Although agreement was reached at 5 a.m. this morning between Medford teachers and the school administration no classes were held today. Classes will resume tomorrow however. Negotiations for the teachers and the town have produced a tentative three year contract. Teachers were locked out of classes on Friday after about 88 of the town's 600 teachers called in sick on Thursday. The agreement was reached this morning without the use of a state appointed mediator. Meanwhile in Woburn three thousand students there were forced to find alternative transportation to school as workers for the carpenter bus lines continued their job action over a wage dispute. A quickly formed coalition of liberal legislators and college students have overturned a movement in the

legislature to raise the drinking age in Massachusetts to 21. Today the legislature in a rebuff to the Democratic leadership and Governor King voted instead to up the legal drinking age to 19. The interim 94 to 64 decision was greeted with cheers by hundreds of college students who crowded the public gallery for the 90 minute debate. Many in the crowd had traveled from the Amhurst campus of the University of Massachusetts. They spent the morning lobbying legislators to vote against a Committee proposal to raise the limit to 21. In other political news Massachusetts fair share attendance and consumer group today lashed out against Governor King's proposed caps on local taxation and spending. The group said the plan would not provide tax relief where it's needed. Meanwhile on the other side of the political spectrum the business oriented citizens for limited taxation is branding King's plan a paper tiger. Finally women who want to become members of the Jaycees won the support of another agency today as the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination ruled in favor of women's membership. The

organization has excluded women from its membership since its founding. But last fall in Middlesex Superior Court judge ordered the Jaycees not to implement an order ousting all women members. The NCA idea will now become involved in the debate as they try to negotiate an agreement between the national and state organizations and their women members before further hearings are held. And that's the news. Like all the other commodities of life the price of higher education is on the rise. A survey we've done of local colleges and universities has shown that the great majority will raise their tuition and room and board expenses for next year. Among the colleges we surveyed Tufts will raise their tuition $700. Harvard by four hundred fifty dollars Boston College three hundred thirty five dollars and Leslie college $200. Universities

which show no apparent profit are exempt from Carters anti-inflation limit of seven percent increase on prices at Boston University the tuition is going up by over 11 percent. Reporter Howard Horton takes a closer look at the B.O. tuition hike. You understand the moving occurred in terms that it can only attract by the quality of the educational and we feel that any effort to cut back on what we are offering or what they find attractive in the birthplace coming here would be counterproductive. Boston university's provost Harold Hanson citing inflation and wage increases. Boston University has informed students and their parents that suicide for next year will go up 490 dollars and room and board will increase by two hundred thirty dollars. This will bring the cost of a year's

worth of education at be you to seven thousand dollars. I asked provost Hansen whether this price would be out of range for most students and their parents. Nationally we're concerned about the increasing cost of education at all universities it's a national problem. The students will have to and their parents will have to make decisions about it. What they wish to do under the circumstances I personally believe very deep very firmly in the value of university education. And I sure that we are giving for for the cost. Felix Dallas is a student at Boston University and a staff member of the bee you exposure and independent newspaper serving the university community. So Dallas like many other students was not happy at the announcement of the tuition hike and felt it was uncalled for.

The student I was totally appalled because I know the fact that most my classes are very big. Plus my friend's question is very big and so many talk about quality education and stuff. It's very hard to see the quality of anything in a class the same size of the class that I'd be sitting in at UMass for example and paying one third the price of UMass one paying $7000 a GO TO BE YOU. And you see for example that they announced the. Plans to build a 25 million dollar building that was an early estimate which the university said and the recent 35 story building they plan to build on that. That's kind of a slap in your face when you sit back and look at that and they send one hand they're going to go bankrupt if there's a strike or if we have to pay increase in wages that but at the same time they're willing to pay twenty five million dollars for a new building. Right we're going to have. Very cautious about adding more to it than a burden to the purchase of property. Our part here is that. We will in many many of the

cases simply move the property in commercial fashion so that it pays for itself. Isn't it true though that at this time you have a lot of land which has been purchased which is undeveloped a lot I don't think that's true we don't have. This is not a wealthy University in terms of dollars or property. According to information obtained from the Registry at the Suffolk Superior Court Boston University property purchases since January 1st 1078 up till today are valued over three and one half million dollars. The university is clearly engaged in policies of expansion and growth according to feel exhausted Dallas Boston University can manipulate its budget lines to show a need for increased tuition when in fact there is considerable financial surplus tied up in reserves and property. In addition So Dallas complains that lack of financial disclosure makes it difficult to fully assess the financial

stature of the university. We haven't had a chance to look at the books if they were made public we would but we know from last year we had a copy of the university budget and it indicated in their that they divide their budget up into educational budget and operating budget operating as maintenance your buildings and stuff like that your education your question expand your faculty you know what we what we did see and it's pretty clearly a line item on the budget that they transferred something like 4 million dollars from the education budget over into the poverty budget. And so and then they announced the surplus which of course is a lot smaller than my transfer. So you think that the tuition funds are being used to purchase real property for the university. Exactly. On Wednesday of this week there will be a university wide teaching sponsored by a wide range of students faculty and staff organizations at Boston University. The purpose of this teacher will be to examine the current administrative practices of the

university with a tuition hike to be high on the agenda. The teaching is likely to produce some alternatives to the proposed tuitions hike which will get wide backing on the campus. It will then be up to the administration to reconsider its decision on the proposed tuition hike. This is Howard Horton for GBH Journal. Back in 1977 the federal government was forced to reveal its secret record of accidents and safety defects at nuclear power plants during the last decade. The so-called nugget file compiled by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stands a foot high. It became public after the Union of Concerned Scientists filed a Freedom of Information suit. The union has since come through the report and last week announced a count of two hundred eighty four

deficiencies. A frightening array of actual mishaps near disasters and ominous failures of safeguard systems. The union warns that the public health danger is great at worst leading to massive radiation poisoning of populated areas. Reporter David Freud Brooke spoke recently with the Union of Concerned Scientists executive director Daniel Ford. In one commercial reactor operating in the Midwest according to the Nugget file they discovered that there was a lot of radioactivity all around the plant. An investigation was carried out and it was found that the plant drinking water bubblers in the hallway. The water was intensely radioactive and further checks revealed that a 3000 gallon radioactive waste tank was accidentally hooked up to the plant drinking water system. In another case a reactor in California General Electric test reactor they had a problem they were making a repair

to the facility and of course as lots of radioactive water around used as coolant becomes radioactive when the water goes through the reactor and instead of. Having a suitable valve to close off the section of pipe that they were working on they took what the nugget file described as a regulation size basket ball. They put some more electrical tape around it and stuffed it in the pipe and the only problem was that in the middle of their repair operation the pipe digested the basketball so fourteen thousand gallons of radioactive water causing exposure to the workers and whatnot spilled into the basement of this plant. And I think that we are very much concerned that when you see case after case of this type of negligence and carelessness you really begin to get very serious doubts as to whether the nuclear

power plants that we have now are safe enough to operate. What did you learn about the nuclear plants within the six New England states. Are there any main problems. Well New England's plan certainly featured in the nugget file for example was a very serious situation reported there affecting the main plant which is up along the coast up in Wisc acid. And as we all know various types of safety apparatus in the plants one of them is the emergency cooling system. And they found that the plant had gone into operation with its emergency cooling system the key valve for that shut off. There are other circumstances the Haddam neck plant in Connecticut SoCal Connecticut Yankee plant and the mill stone plant in Connecticut have had according to the

Nugget file. I mean just just crazy examples of electrical system defects. You take cases disclosed in the nugget file relating to the reactor control rods the control rods of the emergency brakes if you will that are installed so that they can be swiftly put into the reactor to stop the nuclear chain reaction if you have to shut the plant down. Very quickly Will I finally found you know simple wiring errors such that the button which is supposed to put the control rod in that is to put down the emergency brake. In fact takes the control rod out. Once the government did notice the effects and deficiency is is there any indication in the nugget file that you've looked through of how efficiently the government sought to correct the mistakes.

Well I think that is probably the most disturbing aspect of the nugget file. It is extremely rare to find a serious incident that occurred for example one plant and to see the government bothered to check other plants to see whether they may have the same defect. That's part of the regulatory breakdown. Another part of the regulatory breakdown is the same plants time and time again. Are you in the nugget file I mean year after year. If you take you know for example you know some of the plants in northen in South Carolina are run by the Duke Power Company I mean there are regular appearance in the nugget file. You take the Consolidated Edison plants outside New York City or the Commonwealth Edison plants near Chicago and it's obvious that the utility companies are simply

flagrantly repeatedly violating the safety regulations and they are allowed to do this no one has taken away their license. No one has forced appropriate corrective action. Daniel Ford executive director of the Union of Concerned Scientists the National Organization of 65000 members based in Cambridge. He spoke with Journal reporter David Friedberg. If your children are typical by the time they are 15 they will have spent 10000 hours in school and twenty two thousand hours in front of the television set. So says parents choice a new bi monthly magazine devoted to exploring the educational and political issues of children's books television and films published by a group of parents teachers and

writers in Wapping parents choice sees itself not as an advocate like its neighbor organization in Newton. Action for Children's Television. But as an informational resource for concerned parents. The magazine has its origins in the energy and concern of a woman named Diana Greene who is now the magazine's editor. Here she is with reporter Marcia Hirtz in my teaching our children literate Ragland. I was talking with a number of students who were on five parents and all of them had so many questions out. Is there any information available on television. Is there any information available on radio. Where can I find this information. And then I did started doing some research and I came across a poll that had been done by the Carnegie Foundation and apparently three out of every four American parents wished to become more

involved in their children's education. But they feel they lacked the information and confidence to do so. And that was really the beginning of parents to ace it was this sea that began rolling around in my head. Exactly what kind of information does Parents Choice provide for parents. OK we provide information on the media. The books that are being published The old as well as the new books. Ah information on what is available on TV explorations of it examinations of it. Examinations of the movies. Ah examinations of radio two ways of social political issues. Do you have opinions about what you're doing. Writers have opinions and certainly we have opinions but we are not what we are most definitely not trying to do is saying this is good and this is bad what we're trying to do is say this is what

there is. There is an enormous amount of information. There is an enormous amount of their enormous amount of possibilities for children. Ah there are possibilities that in many ways confuse parents and what we're saying is here is the information There's glitter there's gold and we would like to offer you a taste of the gold. The first issue we had an article on reading aloud the joys of it reminiscences of a parent who of course had been a child. We had Saturday morning eight to 11 which later was called Saturday morning fever. We all know what that's about. Reviews of movies or films we have. We probably are the only people who review story records. So really it's not parents choice is not an advocacy magazine is more an informational magazine right. Here it is make your own choices explain to me a little bit what the

long term goals of parent's choice are. The long term thing and it's really a very long term goal Marcia. It's there are certain questions there are questions of standards of ethics of education humanity and survival that concern parents in some cases it's probably on a subconscious level but that it's a deep concern I think to many many parents. But these are questions that parents choice wants to get out in the open to bring together. One place and explore. By doing this what we hope to do is form a community of parents of people trying to raise not small clones of themselves or are current and confused American standards of success but thoughtful broad minded and I underline courageous young people what we think that that community might do finally would be form an

effective lobby in behalf of children. Is there reason you've chosen to name your magazine parents choice. Is there a reason that you've geared it specifically for parents. How about teachers counselors social workers and all other adults that are in contact with children. Well certainly we hope that we hope to have teachers and many teachers have been subscribing to parents choice but most particularly we've ended children because we feel that they're the authorities and that's in quotes and organizations have emerged who are gradually removing responsibility for children's minds from their own mothers and fathers. We have made an assumption and that is that the the mother or the father or both together. He is responsible for the growth of her or his child. It is in a sense a step forward in the past.

Diana Greene editor of parents choice the magazine is available only through subscription and for more information. You can write parent's choice at Box 1 8 5 in Massachusetts in a not so unrelated story a Boston University Dean is defending the school's receipt of a two hundred and twenty thousand dollar grant from the federal government to study how students watch television. But you was the recent recipient of U.S. Senator William Proxmire Golden Fleece award a prize the senator gives out each month for alleged government waste. Acting dean Donna stunned us of bee Hughes communications school defended the program as one which will explore whether or not it's possible to teach kids how to look at television with a critical and perceptive eye Danders feels television brings viewers a lot of false reality that there are no real Dr Well BS yet that paternalistic character gets a quarter of a million letters a year looking for medical advice. Donna's and her colleagues are planning to write a 12 week curriculum and test it out this semester and be used to dence. The elusive ideal of human rights has been on the minds of many governments during the past decade.

The definition of human rights seems to change from one nation to another and whether it is a politician giving lip service to the concept or activists fighting for the lives of people caught in the middle. Human rights have become one of the news phrases of the 70s. Louis Lyons tonight takes a look at the idea of human rights with a bit of historical perspective. Our State Department yesterday issued a global survey that they say shows an increased awareness of human rights conditions around the world. Their report covers one hundred fifteen countries. All those included in the foreign aid program of the United States. The aid program is itself the report asserts an effective instrument of our human rights policy. Country by country the condition revealed on even some showing progress some glaring violations. The timing of this 700 page report could hardly have been accidental to coincide with the birthday of Abraham Lincoln who proclaimed the most basic of all human rights the right to be free of slavery. Timing was of the

very essence of his proclamation. He had taken it up with his cabinet just five days after the batter had stopped Lee's invasion of Maryland and with that had interrupted the discussion between the French and British governments jointly recognizing the Confederacy. Grant was just saying that and Te Deum was no victory but for his purposes Lincoln chose to count it the victory that he'd been waiting for. It had the possible claim that it was Lee who withdrew to Virginia. The Union forces held their ground. Historians say it could have been the decisive battle of the war had McClellan pursued he failed to follow and for that Lincoln removed him. But Burnside following McClellan led only to the disaster at Fredericksburg. Then hooker last chance as well so it was high off the next year before Gettysburg. When it had to be done all over again. Lincoln was running out of generals for the discovery of Grant came

late. So all the military and political situation had not advanced romantic him. When my going to address his midterm message to Congress. His term in the war had dragged through the second year of national discouragement in this depth of morale. The president urged the Congress in very general terms to plan for a Constitutional Convention that would require the gradual elimination of slavery. It's in the final words of that message that Lincoln's irons reached a memorable height of the Gettysburg Address and the first and second inaugural the dogmas of the quiet past are in adequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise to the occasion as our case is new so we must think anew act. We must do this in thrall our self fellow citizens we cannot escape

history. We have this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us the fiery trial. So which we pass. Well light is now on a more distant to the latest generation. Four weeks later he issued the Proclamation of Emancipation. Sandberg notes the word distant throb familiar then as now perhaps the first time Lincoln used it he seemed almost to imply Sandberg says that the men might give emancipation to others. Each must achieve his own this and Tom and rise out of his old self into a new self a very different slice of history Barbara Tuchman brings us in her account of the calamitous fourteenth century. In her book a distant mirror

published by Cannot historians have skirted the 14th century she says in her preface because it would not fit into a pattern of human progress and quote its conglomeration of disasters wrought the disintegration of civilization the century of the Hundred Years War that led Europe to waged for the Black Death that killed half the population of the then known world of the final fatal crusade that wrecked the knighthood of Christendom against a Moslem tide the cism of the medieval church that divided kingdoms between rival popes to discredit religion. The savagery of repressions of continuous risings of heretical cults and peasant revolts against the plunder cruelty and corruption of rulers and clergy. But the horror story of that age that she's so brilliantly examines Mrs. Tuchman calls consoling in a period of similar disarray. That's our period. If our last decade or two of collapsing assumptions has been a period of unusual

discomfort she writes It's reassuring to know that the human species had lived through worse before. She goes on quote After the experience of the terrible 20th century we have greater fellow feeling for a distraught age whose rules were breaking down under the pressure of adverse and violent events. We recognize with a painful twinge the marks of a period of anguish when there's no sense of an assured future and quote We can fill in the details to world wars the Nazi Holocaust the Vietnam carnage the Palestinian wars the dissolution of stable societies an endless revolution. Now Iran's today and from this devil's rule the economic and AK that are wise men can answer. Expressed finally in the unprecedented joining of unemployment with inflation. Commentator Louis Lyons and that is GBH journal for this Monday evening. Producer for tonight show is Greg Fitzgerald and the engineer is my son the Perry Carter production assistants came from

Dion Celine and Becky Rourke. My name is Amy sands. Have a good evening.