~jg iceizn &ziI Seventy-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS For Whom the Film Shows? - Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. 'Truth Will Prevail NEWS PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staf writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 1968 NIGHT EDITOR: STEPHEN WILDSTROM Greek System--I: Sorority Discrimination ONLY two days after Panhel Presi- dent Ginny Mochel and sorority ad- visor Joan Ringel warned a reactionary Sorority President's Council that it was abdicating its responsibility in refusing to commit itself to fight discrimina- tion, Panhellenic Association is having its first leadership conference "to in- spire leadership among sorority wom- en." At no point in the agenda of the two- day conference is discussion planned concerning the alumnae recommenda- tion system and the discriminatory role it plays in membership selection. But silence in the area of discrimi- nation is nothing new to Panhel's Pres- ident's Council. After last Wednesday's meeting at which two hours of debate ended in the tabling of an anti-dis- crimination resolution, the series of rationalizations and platitudes mouth- ed by most of the sorority presidents added up to nothing but silence. While silence in some cases can' indi- cate wisdom-or at least prudence- Panhel President's Council has left an eloquernt gap that spells trouble for sororities. IT SEEMS that the group's refusal to face a defect within its own system that condones the careless judgment of other human beings can mean only one thing: sororities aren't really op- posed to discrimination. If they were, they would vote to abol- ish binding alumnae recommendations and say, "We are opposed to discrimi- nation." The issue is as simple as that: University sororities are either for or against discrimination. As long as binding or required rec- ommendations remain part of the membership selection process of soror- ities, an alumna veto, either stated or implicit, is possible. Regardless of the alumna's alleged reason for a veto, the criteria of race, religion, creed or na- tional origin is always possible. This kind of logic failed to pierce the minds of several presidents, however. One said, happily, "If we have trouble getting a recommendation on a girl, there are always ways to get around it--calling the high school principal, or having someone call friends of the girl." It did not occur to this president that admitting recommendations sometimes had to be "gotten around" virtually proved their worthlessness. 'Another defense was: "Oh, we don't ever get negative recommendations on girls because of those reasons. (race, etc.) Usually they- are because of mor- als charges." Linda Sloan, '68, executive vice-pres- ident of Panhel, said with understand- able sarcasm, "An eighty-year old woman can' call someone on a morals issue simply because she has a drink every weekend." Miss Sloan's reaction was typical of the feelings of most of the executive officers, who attempted to combat the stagnation of the coun- cil. Panhel President Ginny Mochel ac- cused the council of being "philosophi- cally committed" to a principle but rendering that principle meaningless by not acting on it. The alternatives facing sororities are two, and only one is anti-discrimina- tory. Despite sorority fears, that alter- native is not necessarily frought with wrathful Medusa-like alumnae and na- tional sanctions. IN SHORT, Panhel should commit it- self to non-discrimination by pass- ing next week the resolution refusing to accept any more binding or required recommendations in all further mem- bership selection. If the nationals threaten to dissaffil- iate the local chapters, they will be faced by the formidable fact of Uni- versity support for the locals through the Regents' By-law and SGC regula- tions opposing discrimination in Uni- versity-recognized organizations. But if sororities do not pass this res- olution and continue to accept alum- nae control in membership selection, they face not University support but university sanction. In this case, the university could, if it wished, with- draw recognition and make sorority houses ineligible for undergraduate housing. This would, in effect, destroy the chapters. THE FAILURE of Panhel President's Council to vote through the anti- discrimination resolution next week, after the presidents have "polled their chapters," could be the beginning of a serious disintegration of the campus sorority system. "I hope next week the sorority wom- en will be able to stand up for what they believe," said one high-ranking Panhel officer. But the statement re- flects an optimism, that Wednesday's sad meeting does not support. For this executive is implying that sorority women believe in something, while, in fact, they may believe in nothing at all. -ANNE BUESSER By WALLACE IMMEN HIGHER ADMISSION prices at Cinmea Guild and Cinema II will decease their debts, but the two groups may still be forc- ed to merge at the end of the semester. The student waiting in a week- end line only to find that the Architecture Aud. is filled may not realize that on other nights the house can be nearly deserted. For the most part, students have been stoical about the hike from $.50 to $.75, but movies are a fickle business and a few shows at Cinema Guild last week were nearly empty even on the week- end. After holding the price to 50 cents, the student theatres had seen their profit margin dwindle over the past year. Spiraling rental and operating costs drove both deeply into the red by the end of last term. Cinema II had to hold a benefit show to pay creditors for over $1,000. The deficits had nothing to do with the Cinema Guild court de- fense of the film "Flaming Crea- tures," a point which University officials did not understand. Ap- parently in fear of funding part of the obscenity trial, the Office of Student Organizations last semester avoided any action on a plea from Cinema Guild, ask- ing to help them reduce expend- itures. A Guild letter sent to administrators explained that private donations to a defense fun covered nearly all the legal fees. They were interested in ab- olishing a University rule that projectionists a n d custodians must be hired through the Plant Department. Under the present system, they are charged for regular electric- ians employed at the Plant De- partment, who are on a higher pay scale than area union pro- jectionists who are not University employes. But the most dis- couaging part of the bill is a 10 per cent charge for "overhead costs," which Plant Department has so far refused to define. It was computed that the removal of this could save at least $60 a week for both theatres. APPROVAL OF THE PLAN would eliminate the overhead and cut payroll costs. Such ex- penses now amount to little more than a student subsidy for the Plant Department. Because of University regulations, it is esti- mated that student theatres cost one-third more to maintain than the local commercial theatres. The capaciay of the auditoriums is also much too small to handle showings of popular films. But, the administration argues that giving special treatment to any student organization will set a precedent for future conces- sions. Suggestions that the Uni- versity subsidize the operations must, of course, be firmly reject- ed because they would destroy the Cinema's independence: If finances ever become impossible again, a loan from the University has even been suggested. But the impact of higher prices on improving the financial pic- ture of the theaters will be less than would appear on first glance. This is because many film dis- tributors compute rental costs on the basis of a percentage of ad- mission receipts (often more than 50 per cent). Thus, higher prices bring in little actual in- crease in revenue and can merely ward off bankrupcy, Old Time Crowds at Cinema Guild RENTAL FEES are likely to go up again soon and students should not be shackled with another price rise. Lower costs resulting from a reduction in projection- ist fees to current union scale, is the logical key to running stu- dent cinema in the black. A study should also be made of auditor- ium rental prices. The rates are now between $.60 and $ 70 even though the student theatres use them on a regular basis. With students paying higher prices, it is now time for the administration to take some action to save both student film programs. Without them, the student's movie choices would be limited to Butterfield theatres, which recently raised their prices from $1.50 to $1.75. While coordination would not mean merger, it should bring the boards much closer than they have been in the past. They have been unsuccessful in attempting to define what kind of films each will show and in setting up any distinct policy statements. Many of their problems stem from the high turnover of the students. The distinctions have never been sharp, but Cinema Guild's exper- imental and vintage film pro- grams seldom overlap with Cine- ma II's penchant for recent re- leases. A COORDINATED plan, sadly lacking last year, will be re- quired to avoid another money crisis. Talk of merger came only because the student leaders were helpless to persuade the Plant Department to relent. There are better ways out of financial problems than abandonment and there is a crucial need for both film programs on campus. Letters: Con-Con and a S talling SGC I To the Editor: . FOR OVER five weeks I have silently observed the unfactual out-pourings of personal opinion, the stalling, and the engineered campaign by persons such as John Koza (Letters, Jan. 10) to utilize the select committee on the Con- stitutional Convention to thwart the will of the students on this campus. At issue is whether delegates to con-con should be selected by pe- tition or general election. An ex- amination of the two proposals will show the fallacy of Koza's arguments. While an election does' involve one selection (and rejec- tion) process, a petition would in- vole 150 selection or rejection pro- cesses. We are told that the prospective delegate is not subjected to an examination of his views with peti- tioning. This is an insult to every student, for I doubt that college students sign petitions without knowing what they sign. Rather, the delegate will have to converse with and explain his position to each of 150 persons. It is in an election that this personalscontact and chance for questioning will not occur. Mr. Koza then goes on to con- tradict himself. In paragraph two wevareatold that the delegate will never again see or be accountable to those who select him, yet in paragraph three we are told that the delegates will be only "pliant bodies" of organized power groups. WHAT ARE THESE organized groups of power? IHA has trouble mustering quorums, IFC has just had a big versus little house fight and its leadership disavows polit- ical actions, and the truly political groups such as Young Republicans, Young Dems, and Voice have a membership in the 200-300 range. Even if by a miracle they got every member to support a "cabal select- ed" delegate it would be difficult to pack a convention with two delegates. It is a campus-wide election which would allow packing of the convention. From past experience I know that it is those with money, many friends, well-known names, and access to publicity materials that win elections. The voter would be asked to choose from a large number of unknown candidates. It would not be the personal knowl- edge of position required to solicit a signature, but a popularity con- test with limited turn-out. Another disadvantage of an election is its limitation on the number of delegates. It would ex- clude those interested persons not backed by a campaign machine. With petitioning, all interested persons could become delegates by exerting a little extra effort to contact grads and others who do not normally vote in SGC elect- ions. This would give greater rep- resentation in the convention without incurring tremendous cost in time and money to delegates. FINALLY, Mr. Koza let slip that the convention is not planned to meet until after the next SGC election. The original intention was for the convention to be done and place its proposal before the voters in that election. It appears SGC in an attempt at self-preservation has adopted the stalling tactic of referal to committee that they so loudly de- plore in the Administration of the University. -Don Racheter Executive Vice-Pres. IHA Secret Research To the Editor: 'HOPE YOU can find room in your letters column for the, opinion of an alumnus on a mat- ter of great concern to a number of us; a matter which should be of tremendous concern to the stu- dent body and faculty. This is the matterrofsecretagovernment sponsored research at the Uni- versity, most of which is of a military nature and is designed to increase the effectiveness of weapons capability. The first thing that's wrong with it is it's secret. Universities shouldn't have any secrets. THE SECOND thing that's wrong with it is that it has to do with weapons capability. The University should be a place where everything antithetical to weap- ons capability receives maximum nourishment. Someone at the University chooses to accept these contracts. The intellectual resources and the administrative capabilities of the people who run the University might better be directed to fos- tering the continued development of such important things as the Residential College System and the general enrichment of the educational experience. -Carl Ally Writers To the Editor: CREATIVE writing on this cam- pus is stiffled beyond the class- room. The three or four respec- table literary magazines on cam- pus deal mainly with the finished product and have little more con- cern with the creative process than a rejection slip. Even if an authors' work is accepted for publication he gets little or no constructive criticism. Through this process the author learns only if his writing is ac- ceptable or not acceptable; he gets no explanation of why he is in either category and no sugges- tion of his strong points or his weak points. Constructive criticism is a ma- jor necessity to creative writing and serves as a stimulous to both authors and critics. A DISCUSSION group actively concerned with the creation and criticism of creative writing has as an advantage on this campus the availability of professional advice and many opportunities to publish. A campus of this size and cali- bre should contain as many in- terested individuals as is neces- sary to form a writers workshop, even if only on an informal level to start. -Don Dorrance BR The Sounds of Silence State of the Union Message THE NOT UNEXPECTED appointment of Clark Clifford as Secretary of De- fense is merely another indication of the continuing insulation of the President and his administration from any hostile viewpoints both within and without the Government on the war in Vietnam. Robert McNamara was a man whom it was rumored had grave doubts about the ends of our Vietnam policy secreted be- neath the exterior of the ever-obliging technocrat. However, Clifford, a long- time Johnson crony, will undoubtedly be- come the kind of Secretary of Defense The Daily is a member of the Associated Press and Collegiate Press Service. Fall and winter subscription rate: $4.50 per term by carrier ($5 by mail); $8.00 for regular academic school year ($9 by mall). Daily except Monday during regular academic school year. Daily except Sunday and Monday during regular summer session. Second class pnstage paid at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 430 Maynard St, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 48i04. Editorial Staff ROGER RAPOPORT, Editor MEREDITH EIKER, Managing Editor MICHAEL HEFFER ROBERT KLIVANS City Editor Editorial Director SUSAN ELAN.............Associate Managing Editor STEPHEN FIRSHEIN ...... Associate Managing Editor LAURENCE MEDOW......Associate Managing Editor JOHN LOTTIER........Associate Editorial irector who will add little breadth to any dis- cussion of foreign policy goals. And if any lesson is to be learned from the folly of Vietnam, the Administration's shifting justifications for involvement in- dicate that it is that the ends of Ameri- can foreign policy must undergo a radi- cal revision. The powerlessness engendered by the inaccessibility of the President to hostile viewpoints undoubtedly prompted Thurs- day's outburst by Eartha Kitt which brought tears to the eyes of Lady Bird Johnson. President Johnson indicated in his State of the Union Message that the only questions he is willing to 'answer these days are his own rhetorical ones. Needless to say this imperious aloofness does little to encourage constructive debate of our national alternatives. The replacement of the free-wheeling Kennedy-style press conference with the infrequent, intimate and relatively pre- staged Johnsonian variety is another prime example of this continuing trend. An even more blatant example of the hyper-royalist isolation of the Admin- istration is the adamant and intransi- gient refusal of Secretary of State Rusk to deign to testify-or even appear-be- fore the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. Decentralization: Key to School Reform? A* By DAVID KNOKE THE BUNDY report on decen- tralization of public education sent last month to the state legis- lature byNew York's Mayor John V. Lindsay could potentially transform the entire face of pub- lic education in our large cities. New York's long tradition as a leader in school reformrwarrants close attention in every urban area to the controversy which this report has already generated. The central issue in the Bundy report revolves around the recom- mendation of dismantling the Board of Education's policy-mak- ing apparatus and turning con- trol over some 900 schools and over a million students to a fed eration of "local" boards serving neighborhood districts within the city. A community school system of 30 to 60 "local" boards would replace the current bureaucrat- ically top-heavy system, which would have powers to appoint can- didates for most supervisory posts. The developing controversy swings around the possibility of decentralized public education at the expense of increasing political intrusion into the school system. For each district would have six available. But the winds of change, as in most instances of major so- cial reform, had begun to stir long before the political structure recognized its necessity. Articulate spokesmenfor reform like James B. Conant have been arguing for years for restructur- ing school systems to match neighborhood needs. The 1954 Su- preme Court ruling on school inte- gration has caught educators at a loss for the best means of imple- mentation. Meanwhile the ponderous, iner- tia ridden New York system of Regents exams, tenure and promo- tion - coupled with accelerating mass exodus of the inner-city by middle-class white families-com- bined in acutely discriminatory ways against the poor and the ra cial minority students in the na- tion's largest school system. The disparity in pupil achievement be- tween the deprived districts of the inner city and the affluent sub- urban communities which attract- ed the better teachers and higher per-capita expenditures had not gone unnoticed by inner-city par- ents. THE FIRST grassroots rum- blings for community control was way a belated recognition of emer- gent social realities that are work- ing to reshape public education from the bottom up. The contro- versial aspect of the report, if it is implemented, will be the con- flict that could ensue at the grass- roots level in its attempt to force reform from the top down as well. Caught in the middle of the re- form effors are the entrenched in- terests of the Board of Education, the Board of Examiners and the teachers' unions. A common charge against decentralization has been that it will re-introduce the old political ward system which was eliminated from the current structure by reforms 70 years ago. THE REAL FEARS behind de- centralization appear to be the drastic loss of power which op- position groups would incur. The Board of Education would be re- duced to nothing more than a central co-ordinating agency for the budgetry, employment and ed- ucational policies of the local boards. In an effort to lessen the im- pact of the community control has succeeded, however, in a modification of the Bundy report to allow the central board to re- tain continued powers of quality control and supervision. Despite the overtones of self- interest in the bureaucratic cri- ticisms of the plan, cogent argu- ments against decentralization have been raised. In particular, there is no certainty that the new 12-14,000 pupil district under lo- cal leadership would markedly improve the quality of education the students receive. The possi- bilities of detrimental political, racial and religious influences up- on curricula and teacher hiring policies are very real. Problems of attracting and holding good teachers in the ghetto districts would still remain. SOME EXPERTS see an alter- native to decentralization in step- ping-up massive infusions of funds to the schools and increas- ing busing of pupils between schools to counteract prevalent de facto segregation. These alternatives, do not stand up under recent findings in ties of the plight of inner-city schools. The decentralization re- port was originally requested by a legislature chary of doling out more funds. Busing a few for- tunate individuals to better dis- tricts will not help those left be- hind- and may conceivably have detrimental effects on efforts to create a sense of community within the local neighborhoods. The problem for the parents and pupils boilsidown to one of util- izing political leverage to pull themselves out of the "spiral of decline," in the words of the re- port. Criticisms that the report would permit greater intrusion of politics into education belies the fact that politics has always been there, but not on the side of the Negroes and Puerto Ricans whose improvement has been retarded by an education system imposed from above. As Joseph Featherstone writes in The New Republic, "Although the Bundy report skirts the theo- retical question, it clearly offers a practical opportunity to make something productive out of the babble of voices in the city talking hl nnkr nnfrnr, "