NEWS CONFERENCE 255

A. I had a conference yesterday with Mr. Batterton, the head of the
Juvenile Services Division, Dr. Gilbert Ware, my program executive
in this area, and Mr. Lally, and I received reports about the Victor
Cullen situation from Mr. Batterton. It would appear that some of
the accusations that were leveled may have been slightly exaggerated.
This does not indicate that I don't think the situation is something to
worry about up there. We are sending people up there to look over
the situation, and I hope to get up there myself at the earliest possible
moment to make a personal inspection.

Q. Will you announce your visit beforehand?

A. No, when I go it will be unheralded. I would like to see the in-
stitution as it exists on a day to day basis, not as it would exist in
preparation for my visit.

Q. I have in front of me the Philadelphia Bulletin, the story of last
night that deals with Senator Dirksen almost getting ready, it says
here, to jump up in the Senate and announce that the last two states
have passed resolutions to call a Constitutional Convention to rule
out, or try to modify, the one-man one-vote thing. This question
has been asked of you several times before, but how closely are you
watching the situation and how fast are you prepared to move, pos-
sibly, to call a special session of this Legislature?

A. We're not watching it as closely as we should, I don't think, and
I guess if there's any validity to that article you mentioned, we had
better watch it a little closer. I'm not really able to tell you at the
moment, and I suppose I should be able to, exactly where that thing
stands. But I'm going to look into it since you have jogged my mem-
ory. I'm very interested in seeing that we do everything we can to
make another effort to remove Maryland from the list of states that
are calling for that Federal Constitutional Convention, if the matter
becomes critical.

Q. Why?

A. Because I believe that at this time, under the pressures of the
country, I believe that no good can come out of that Federal Consti-
tutional Convention. And I would hate to see Maryland, a State that's
operated so well under reapportionment, change to another system of
representation. Certainly, nobody can quarrel with the fact that we
had a productive legislative session, and none of the rural counties
that I have been into in the past couple months have any complaint
about being discriminated against by virtue of reapportionment. It