354               Vetoes

academic freedom. What is now sought for the University
is not a safeguard against outside meddling with its scho-
lastic interests. Rather the issue is whether the Legis-
lature and its agencies shall abdicate in respect to all of
the University's affairs, non-academic as well as academic.

With certain apparent exceptions of no great conse-
quence, this bill, like its predecessor, expressly releases the
University from all restraints by any other State board,
bureau, department or commission. No department of the
State, especially one receiving millions of dollars a year,
should be granted such complete independence. The enum-
erated "exceptions" such as a reservation to the Governor
and other State officials of a right to attend meetings of the
Board of Regents when requests for appropriations are
being considered, create the mere illusion of a restraint on
the University and are meaningless.

Members of the General Assembly should seriously ask
themselves the following questions:

1.  Why should all purchases be exempted from the pro-
cedures established for other departments to prevent favor-
itism and to promote economy? Appropriately modified
procedures might be worked out between the State Pur-
chasing Bureau and the University; but why dispense with
every check upon the expenditure of these millions of dol-
lars for supplies and services of a non-academic character?
The specification of a so-called "exception" to the broad
grant of autonomy under this bill in the form of a provision
that the University shall have the "right to use" the pur-
chasing facilities of the State, is no limitation at all. It
confers an option and gives merely the appearance of a
limitation.

If the State's system of purchases is beneficial in the case
of all other agencies, no reason appears for discarding it in
this instance. It is significant that a recent survey by a
committee of the Purchasing Agents Association disclosed
no reason for excluding the University or any other State
agency from the central purchasing procedure. It does not
seem to me wise to retain the law as to purchases for the
Health Department, the Department of Education, the State
Roads Commission and other branches of the State Govern-
ment, while wholly exempting the University.

2.  Why should non-academic employees be selected with-
out the merit system? It is surely not enough to answer
that once they have been chosen without the merit system,
they will be blanketed in. It is difficult to see why steno-
graphers, clerks, bookkeepers, maintenance people, watch-