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Show Editorial Be Careful The Publications Council, like Al Capp's Joe Btsflsk, manages to transact most of its business under storm clouds. In the resulting shade, the council's smiling efforts to "do the right thing" are sometimes misunderstood and maligned. And like any heterogeneous group of six students, four professors and an alumn blessed with the elbow room necessary neces-sary to maintain a student press relatively independent of, administration and ASUU pressures, the Publications Council, Coun-cil, is occasionally going to emerge from the storm clouds all wet. Nevertheless, with the appointment of the new council almost at hand, simple precautions can be taken to bar vested interests and axe grinders from the group without further endangering the autonomy of the student press. Most council members in the past have made exaggerated efforts to avoid conflict of interests. But all have not. There must be enough qualified students interested in serving long hours on the Publications Council without appointing ap-pointing someone who inevitably ends up in the editor's office of-fice asking for a personal favor on behalf of some project or stunt that the council member "just happens to be involved in" and "just happens to drop by to put in a good word" for. The same member must be suspect when he votes on an issue concerning an editor who either turns down or complies to such requests for favor. Conflict of interests has no place in the Publications Council. Neither the associated students, nor the faculty nor the administration profits from publications beholden to pressure groups. The Chronicle urges the Student Faculty Board, the Alumni Association and the president of the University to carefully consider their appointments in an effort to bar conflict con-flict of interests and axe grinding from the council. |
