From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Jan. 10, 1974:

• A group calling itself the Mental Patients Support Committee was asking the Douglas County Commission to look at the policies allowing Bert Nash Mental Health Center to commit patients to state institutions. Louis Frydman, associate professor at Kansas University, said committing patients had “gotten to be a habit” at Bert Nash, and referred to the agency as “a conveyor belt” to state institutions. Frydman added that there were many cases of unjustified commitment in Douglas County and that many of these were made on the unproven assumption that state hospitals were more effective than community based mental health care. Bert Nash director Jan Snyder countered by saying that the purpose of the agency was to prevent hospitalization and that there had recently been “very, very few involuntary commitments made — none in the last year.”
• By a 3-2 vote this week, the Lawrence City Commission agreed to install a traffic signal at 27th Terrace and Louisiana as soon as the school board agreed to provide another access to the nearby South Junior High and Broken Arrow School. Commissioner Barkley Clark voted against the motion, saying that a traffic signal alone would solve the area’s problems; Commissioner John Emick voted against it for the opposite reason, arguing that a new access point alone would end the congestion without the addition of a signal.