Comment: Government by Kim Cooley NATIONAL Watergate was one year old this spring. Everyday there seemed to be a new development concerning it. Indictments were handed down to most of President Nixon's aides. Accusations and counter-accusations were made. At this moment a special Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating the possibility of impeaching the president. How the Watergate affected the American people? According to pollsters more Democrats are being elected, because of the American people's disgust with Watergate. Indications are that the American people are losing respect for America and its government. Here is an example: at Marsh Valley High School in Idaho, students refused to stand when the national anthem was played. Another topic of major concern to the American people, the energy crisis, has left its mark on Weber State College. WSC Blue Key Honor Fraternity instigated a car pool policy that would encourage WSC students to conserve fuel. This policy allowed students who drove to school with three or more other students to have preferred parking spaces in the Fine Arts Center parking lot. This car pool met with some annoyance among WSC students who argued that since they paid $6.00 for a parking sticker they should be able to park anywhere on campus. In another move to conserve energy, Nixon ordered all thermostats on buildings and homes to be turned down to 68 degrees. In following this policy, WSC administrators set temperatures in campus classrooms from 55 to 68 degrees. The WSC administration also turned off hot water heaters in all campus buildings except the gym and the dorms. LOCAL In financial matters this year, WSC finally obtained allocations from the Utah State Legislature for its library addition and money to complete its peripheral road. Allocations for WSC's new Technical Education Building were dropped from second to thirty-eighth on the Utah State Legislature's budget list. There are forty items on the list. According to WSC President Joseph L. Bishop, the State Legislature is on the thirty-seventh item now. The WSC Library has often been subject of controversy because of its inadequate book supply. According to an article in the WSC newspaper the SIGNPOST, the library should seat 30% of the studentbody. The present library seats only 500 students instead of the required 2,500. Also, the WSC Library should have 50 books per student. At present it houses only half the number of books that it should, standards being set by the Northwest Accrediting Association. According to a SIGNPOST article, Weber State College faces accreditation probation by the NAA if these standards are not met. STUDENT A new form of student government was initiated this year. Gone are the absent senators and legislators of last year. In their place is the Executive Council. The Executive Council includes Read Hellewell, Associated Students of Weber State College President; Brent Johns, ASWSC Academic Vice President; Ron Ray, ASWSC Financial Vice President; Becky Sparkman, ASWSC Communications Vice President; Jack Helgesen, ASWSC Public Relations Vice President; Mike Stever, Activities Vice President; and Ken Lowe, ASWSC Student Services Vice President. Hellewell was well noted for his conservatism, and his administration was full of it. However, in my experience with him, he has always been willing to listen to both sides of a matter and he will thoroughly research all sides of an issue before making a decision. In my opinion, Hellewell and the entire Executive Council were very decisive and effective this year . . . certainly more effective than previous WSC student governments. The Council's decisiveness was displayed very well by its quick decision to dismiss Ombudsman Chairman Brad Post. Under the direction of Ken Lowe, Student Services Vice President, the Executive Council fired Post in one of its most controversial meetings this year. The aforementioned Post was informed that he would be dismissed ten minutes before the Council met. The reasons Lowe gave to the SIGNPOST and the Executive Council for requesting Post's dismissal were that Post was "ambulance chasing", Post had "the wrong philosophy about the Ombudsman office" and that Post "enticed student complaints". In further explaining Post's enticing students to sign complaints, Lowe used the 24 hour open house issue (see page 80) as an example of Post's entreating students to sign complaints. In a SIGNPOST interview, Post in turn stated that "Ken Lowe bragged about his success in getting students in the dorms to sign complaints against not having a 24 hour open house policy". Post also stated that "neither myself nor any of my staff ever directly or indirectly coerced any student into signing a complaint". Throughout the proceedings before and after Post's dismissal, the SIGNPOST did not give equal time to Post to answer Lowe's allegations until one month after his dismissal. According to several witnesses, many of Lowe's allegations were false and were not based upon all available evidence. However, Post was still dismissed from his position. Ron Ray, an Executive Council member was the only Council member absent from the meeting at which Post's dismissal was discussed. Ironically Ray was Ombudsman Chairman the year before Post was appointed, yet he was not at the meeting to defend Post. Post's trouble with the Executive Council went back to when he was appointed Ombudsman Chairman in the Spring of 1973. At that time, several Executive Council members said that they felt that Post was too radical and too vocal. Some of the Council members expressed their feelings that WSC students might be afraid to come to the Ombudsman office with complaints for the reasons mentioned above. I feel that although some of the charges brought against Post might have been correct, he was hastily and unfairly dismissed. In my opinion, Post was not given a fair chance to defend himself. He was granted no interview in the SIGNPOST until after he was dismissed. I also feel that the reasons given for his dismissal do not seem serious enough to warrant such a swift dismissal. To me, the timing of his dismissal was also unfair. Post was dismissed right after the last issue of the SIGNPOST for Fall Quarter had come out. Therefore Post and other WSC students were not given a chance to speak against his dismissal until one month after it had occurred. Garrison M. Carter was appointed to the position of Ombudsman Chairman in January. The other candidate for the job, Steve Ericson, found that he disagreed with the Executive Council's philosophy on what the Ombudsman's purpose should be. Carter said that he found no philosophical disagreement with the Council. I think Carter hardly ever found any disagreement with the Executive Council because his philosophy agrees with the Council's. In other major student government actions this year, a new student government coordinator was hired, a committee was formed to re-write the WSC Student Handbook, budgets were changed and people were fired. Although this year's student government was neither revolutionary, nor radical, they made several important decisions that affected all WSC students. (The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the rest of Retrospect's staff or of the studentbody.)