Atlligau Biatty 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 AT-LARGE The Waxing of Skis and Waning of Life Ly NEIL SHISTER - Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MIcH. Truth Will Prevail NEWS PHONE: 764-0552 I' .t a-, . .. . . _ ~ I Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1967 NIGHT EDITOR: NEAL BRUSS Drawing a Clear Line On Conflict of Interest MICHIGAN ATTY. GEN. Frank Kelley's announcement that he will rule on possible conflict of interests concerning the business activities of Michigan State University President John Hannah and MSU Vice President for Business and Finance and Treasurer Philip J. May is a wise decision. The statute concerning conflict of in- terest was passed in the 1966 session of the legislature and further clarification of the law is necessary. Kelley's decision will lay the groundwork for clearly de- fining the proper activities of university officials and their relationships to com- panies doing business with their educa- tional institutions. Both Hannah and May have made con- siderable sums of money in East Lansing real estate. In Hannah's case it may have been unintentional. In May's situa- tion, it may have been the actions of an intelligent businessman investing wisely HOWEVER, HANNAH and May are not businessmen but officials of a major state-supported university which is con- tinually expanding and thus continually offering opportunities for lucrative in- vestments. A different code of conduct may be necessary to determine whether their actions are indeed legitimate. The Attorney General in September ruled that it was not the proper role for a University official to remain on the board of a company conducting business with that educational institution. The ruling on Hannah and May will afford Kelley another opportunity to further define what is legal and proper for state officials. The facts of the Hannah and May busi- ness transaction are extremely compli- cated: * From 1940 to as recently as 1963, Hannah accumulated some 180 acres of land adjacent to the campus. He says he purchased the land for retirement pur- poses, but sold the parcel this past July for nearly $1 million to the Walter Neller Real Estate Company of Lansing. Vice- President May is on the board of the Neller Company. " May and the Philip Jessee Company, a holding company whose secretary treasurer is May's wife, purchased land from the Whiteley Foundation on Michi- gan Avenue, opposite the MSU campus last year. After securing a $1.1 million mortgage from Michigan National Bank, (MSU's chief fiscal agent), the Philip Jesse Company contracted to build an office building on the site. May resigned his post as director of the Michigan Na- tional Bank following Kelley's September conflict of interest ruling. A portion of the building is leased to International Business Machines, Inc. IBM does a sub- stantial amount of business with MSU. KELLEY'S INVESTIGATION will clear the air about the propriety of these actions. -MARK LEVIN 4 AM SITTING here waxing the skis I just bought," writes the Fish from Boston, "and I am thinking how it was in Ann Arbor just before the first snows. It wasn't so good." Perhaps Marty the Fish, itinerant drifter, has be- come our last tangible symbol of sanity. More or less broke and largely homeless, the Fish last year severed the umbilical cords that tied him to society and ever since has been making it wherever he can find it. Neither a hippie nor a professional 'head,' he lives these days doing what he calls "daring the army to find me." He has evolved a long way from the first days when he showed up on this campus, "hot as hell to get myself into Harvard Law School and the good life." He did serve a brief stint in medical school, got scared that socialized medicine was going to take all his money, and then cold split. The world is going mad, he says. The bourgeois style of life no longer is merely debilitating, but now it has become dangerous. "You can't find yourself in what you own, so you start figuring maybe it's because what you own isn't enough so you set out to get more. You have a bunch of people crazy to get more, and it's bound to explode. It's starting." Dialectical materialism according to the Fish. "I guess I like money, but not enough to sell my soul for it. The only easy out is to find me some millionaire woman who wants to support me forever. I am looking, but it seems they aren't too accessible except to mil- lionaire's sons." ANYWAY, THE FISH drops me a note now and then from wherever he happens to be. They are refresh- ing because he is neither political ("if I ever vote it will only be on a bet-As long as the government stays away fro mme, I'll stay away from it") nor self-con- sciously intellectual nor arty nor 'in.' He is simply the Fish-hopelessly heathen, non-vio- lent and pretty-much asocial He won't make the world work any better, but then again he won't make it any worse. And this is what he writes these days from Boston. "I am sitting her waxing the skis I just bought and I am thinking how it was in Ann Arbor just before the first snows. It wasn't so good. ."I hear it's not so good there now, either. Got a long letter that says the spirit on campus is real bad. People are going through the motions they have always been going through, but it says they seem to be getting steadily less and less out of them. Maybe it's the war, and the fact that most of the older boys don't really know where they'll= be next year because of the draft situation and it's starting to blow their minds. Especially since so many are morally opposed to the war and are worrying about what they'll do if they get their notices. "Maybe I'm in way over my head, talking like this, but it sure seems that the quality of the lives of the people I kno whas never been so low. Everyone admits it. The standard question of greeting is not 'how are you?' but 'how are you-really?' "Very few people feel like they're into anything that's real. The standard feeling is like you're standing outside yourself, watching somebody else live life badly and knowing that it's you. "It's so damned hard to believe. In aything. It seems all the reliable faiths have somehow failed us. Was talking with a girl a while back who said 'the thing so many people have in common now, almost the only thing, is despair.' "THIS ALL BRINGS me back to how Ann Arbor is after all the leaves are gone and you can't sit outside on the Diag anymore. That was the way I always dated the year, whether or not it was warm enough to go out- side and sit. "But when it wasn't, and when you first realized that it wasn't anymore, it was as if something inside of you had died again and there was nothing to replace it unless you were in love. I could never understand the feeling, there was something of genuineddesperation to it, but it always hit. In November. "It wasn't, either, just finals on their way and papers due. It was more like something real, maybe the only thing that felt real, in your life had gone and for a while you couldn't figure out what was different but you just knew that everything had somehow changed. "Well, me and Flora-who is now helping me wax my skis-are tired of writing this letter. I think we will make our way to the bar where we drink these days. Flora used to go to school too, and thinks that it's something in the education process itself that's de- structive and makes everybody tired and stale by the time they're through. "I'll have to do a little more drinking with her before I can tell you if she's right or not. Never trust anybody until you've drunk with them." AND AS ALWAYS, the Fish had spoken truth with his characteristic flair, leaving it for the pundits to pick up the pieces and try to paste everything back together again. *" A Letters: Alternative to LIU's Deteriorating Society Putting Waterman in a Mail Box STUDENTS HATE LINES. Other than that seemingly inevitable slow-down, the University's current advance classifi- cation and registration process works pretty well. Ernest Zimmermann, assistant to the Vice President for Academic Affairs and head of the Registrar's office, will be making several modifications on the pres- ent system: the lines going into Water- man Gym during Winter Registration will be split between those people who advance classify and those have not; address cards will be distributed early in December to avoid the tie-up in the Natural Resource Building; and one of the many cards may be eliminated from the registration process. All these changes work within the present system. PUT THE SYSTEM itself must be changed. Waterman Gym, home of so many students during registration-es- pecially grad students who cannot ad- vance classify, will be torn down in the next three to five years, possibly to make way for a pharmacy annex. Zimmermann said that a decentralized registration at the IM building, Yost fieldhouse, or the yet to bebcompleted Special Events Build- ing would be a "nightmare." Increased use of computers would speed up the entire process and registration by mail, such as the system used at Michi- gan State University, would eliminate Waterman entirely. Each of these changes will need careful consideration. The present system has great flexi- bility. Advance classification begins early and lasts for ten Weeks. Associate Dean of the literary college James Shaw, be- lieves students are asked to make choices on next term's courses before they are far enough into the present term. Stu- dents can drop and add courses during advance classification. If a time sched- ule is turned in early enough, a student can have the time and teachers he de- sires. But this flexibility lessens the effi- ciency of the system. A COMPUTER SYSTEM would guaran- tee courses but not hours. Advance classification would have to be manda- tory and course changes could not be made until classes start. Student selec- tions would be - run off together with courses divided as Shaw suggested as "must have," "possibles," and "alter- nates." Adapting a computer to a multitude of variables will be expensive. However, in- creasing Enumbers of students and the desire for efficiency will eventually result in more use of computers. The undesire- able schedules that could accrue from such a system would be adjusted by making the results of the programming available several days prior to the begin- ning of classes. Adjustments could then be made by humans. Registration by mail would require a minimum of inconvenience. Students can complete the necessary cards for Univer- sity files during the preceeding trimester. To assure an accurate count of students, a down-payment on tuition would have to be sent in with the registration form. With such a system the process of ad- vance classification can be made more efficient and less bothersome while re- taining the flexibility of registration. -MIKE THORYN To the Editor: CAUGHT IN the throes of Viet- nam and the racial problem, American Society and polity is faced with a crisis. Both of these issues are virtually interrelated due to diversion of resources from Great Society needs to Vietnam requirements. They are enormous issues which are eating away at the body politic, spreading like a cancer, creating profound dissen- sion, division and polarization of opinion. A major element in this crisis is the failure of presidential lead- ership. After an excellent start on Great Society programs, President Johnson has permitted himself to become mesmerized and paralyzed by the exigencies of the war in Vietnam. Instead of becoming a master of that conflict, he has per- mitted it to overwhelm him. As a result, he and we with him are wallowing in a state of helpless paralysis. Under the circumstances, we feel that as liberal democrats we have no choice but to consider alterna- tives to Johnson in 1968. Obviously there are several such potential al- ternatives. In this spirit we call upon our colleagues, friends, and associates to come and hear Senator McCar- thy on his visit to Ann Arbor on Friday, November 10. -Alexander Eckstein Prof. of Economics -Samuel Eldersveld Prof. of Political Science -Theodore Newcom, Prof. of Sociology and Psychology -Allbert Reiss Prof. of Sociology -William Willcox Prof. of History Dusobs To the Editor: U NDOUBTEDLY compelled by unconscious drives to make their assertion about declining IM Recommendations To the Editor: WE ARE CONCERNED about an implication in a Daily article (Nov. 4) that appraisals written by professors in answer to student re- quests should be screened by the University's Appointments Bureau so that unfavorable letters would not be sent to prospective employ- ers. A student may choose as care- fully as he wishes before asking a professor for a letter, and he may discuss the content of the letter, with the professor it both agree to do so. But just as the professor feels obligated to produce an hon- est evaluation, so must he be able to expect that this appraisal will in fact reach prospective employ- ers. It is obviously in everyone's interest to keep the reputation of the Bureau untarnished. -Bernard A. Galler Department of Mathematics and Communication Sciences -Bruce W. Arden Department of Communication Sciences Hypocrisy To the Editor: IT IS FINE for The Daily to take the position against the Uni- versity accepting contracts for classified military research. But does not The Daily, in the very same issue in which a front page editorial condemning war research appears, print a quarter page ad- vertisement for which The Daily accepted money from the Law- rence Radiation Laboratory of the University of California which en- gages in the exact same activities which the editors condemn? The mere acceptance of this advertise- ment makeshme doubt the ser- iousness with which you back your statements. . -Charles Benet, Grad Seven to One To the Editor: I HAVE $10 that says Miss Rose- Grace Faucher is wrong in her statement that there is one copy of a title for every seven students to whom the title is assigned in the Closed Reserve System. I have four classes requiring Closed Re- serve Reading: Econ. 421, Econ. 457, Econ. 465 and Psych. 453. The reading lists were distributed at the beginning of the semester so there has been "sufficient time to allow their purchase as well as making of the necessary records." Nor, I believe, are any of the assigned titles out of print. Miss Faucher may have my $10 if she can find an aggregate rate of one book to seven students in my classes. Otherwise, I would be happy to receive her money. Are you game, Miss Faucher? -Bill Hayden, '68 SGC To the Editor: W HY HAVEN'T there been any articles in The Daily on the proposed Student Government Council Constitutional Conven- tion? The SGC elections are less than a week away and yet students have had no opportunity to be- come informed about this impor- tant issue. There is still enough time for The Daily to redeem itself for its negligence in reporting.'How about interviews with some SGC mem- bers-including, of course, Don Tucker-as well as the SGC can- didates? It is extremely important that students know how the candi- dates themselves feel so we know who really has the students' in- terests in mind. --Brad Ginter , LSA, '74 * "IF~ 1715 (I.INN. -'AY'RE AFEfR, LET'$S ENtD THEM A MAV.' sports come true, The Daily sports staff is making every effort to deny the existence of the Inde- pendent League. No mention has been made of the results of Mon- day's Independent League cham- pionship game, in which the Dusobs defeated a good Geology Club team 6-0, capping a perfect season. Prior to that game the Dusobs had scored an average of 29 points a game, were unscored upon, and had yielded but four first downs. No playoff between the fra- ternity and dormitory champions will determine the overall IM champions. It is obvious that our team can't show its superiority if we are ignored. We suggest that there be a four team playoff be- tween the winners from the fra- ternity, dormitory, independent, and professional fraternityleagues, thus representing all facets of the IM football program. The winners will be the true overall champions, and they will be the Dusobs. -Frank Starr Manager, Dusobs 10 ..................................... ............... ............................ ........... ..... ..... .. .. .: .... ... .......::.Y:vr;.................^l aYn:."rv: :.:Y: Y."LLv ^.Y" .":."Y r.. ................................. .n...............Lt..n..........,...........t......". h......n ....n. .tl . .......L...t .! . ! ..:....ty.,.. . ............ 4 ...............r ... .....4.....,... .... ..r... ..."v:r:::'rtiSi:ti