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The East Quad Administration Bldg.
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Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH.
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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
I
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1967
NIGHT EDITOR: DANIEL OKRENT
Compromise Limits
Residential College
THE ANNOUNCEMENT MONDAY that
funds will not be available for the
development of the Residential College
on .North Campus as promised in April
166 casts serious doubt on the sincerity
of the University's commitment to an
experiment which could solve the dilem-
ma of higher education in a mass society.
The college is the most vital new pro-
gram to come to this campus in some
years. That it can be credited with such
a role is attested to by the spirit and
excitement which pervades its faculty
and student body. That it deserves suf-
ficient funding is beyond question.
But now it is announced that the funds
just aren't available. Why has the prom-
ised funding become a goal impossible
to reach? Funds were secured for the
New Administration Bldg., the new Uni-
versity Events Bldg. and the new Power
Theatre. It appears that sports, Power,
and the administration's own interests
have priority over a truly exciting experi-
ment in higher education.
T IS NOT alarmist to say that the
effects could be disastrous to the Resi-.
dential College idea. With enrollment
expected to approach 1200 in 1969, when
the college is scheduled to begin its first
junior class, they will find themselves
seriously short of necessary space. If East
Quad is remodeled, its capacity will be
reduced from the present 1000 to 600,
resulting in the added burden of forcing
juniors to live outside the college unit. As
Dean Robertson noted, it takes at least
two years to develop and complete the
needed construction program, and there
just isn't that time left to solve the
problem.
Inflated Fears
Of Inflation
MINOUS REPORTS EMANATING from
Capital Hill reveal that Wilbur Mills,
chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee, is softening in his adamant
opposition to the proposed Johnson tax
increase.
The obliging, Henry Fowler, Secretary
of the Treasury, apparently promised the
powerful Arkansas conservative that the
Administration is planning to couple a
proposal for new and far reaching cuts
In domestic spending with the 10 per
cent surcharge..
Such a willingness on the part of the
Administration to sacrifice the last faded
remnants of the much-heralded Great
Society in exchange for passage of the
war surtax must be extremely gratifying
to the fiscal: conservatives who comprise
t he overwhelming bulk of the Congres-
sional holdouts against the Johnson tax
plan.
The regressive nature of Congressional
econoie thinking is vividly indicated
oy the lack of any significant concern
that such a tax hike will lead to a serious
cut in domestic spending and a conse-
quent rise in unemployment.
A T A TIME when the Administration's
grasp on reality is exceedingly ten-
uous, it is not surprising to see the gov-
ernment paralyzed by the dread spectre
of inflation, despite the fact that a gal-
loping rise in prices has been unknown
in our recent economic history. However,
America has tolerated for a generation,
with little concern, unemployment levels
higher than most Western European
countries.
A new rise in unemployment will effect
primarily the Negroes and other minority
groups whose current rate of unemploy-
ment is already twice as high as whites.
Furthermore the Johnson tax hike falls
exceptionally hard on the backs of lower
income groups since the across the board
surcharge is proportional rather than
progressive.
The Johnson Administration's tax in-
crease is deeply ingrained in the Ameri-
can tradition by contending that if the
poor are lucky enough to be permitted
to fight our wars, it is only just that they
t Retired Residential College Director
Burton Thuma, the driving force behind
the college; noted with much regret that
with this compromise, "the college won't
have quite the identity it could have had.
This location doesn't lend itself to all that
we aimed for as does the North Campus
site." It is the best the Residential Col-
lege can do under the circumstances-the
circumstances being that they are being
given a raw deal by the administration.
THUS, RATHER THAN develop the com-
plete independent unit as planned,
members of the Residential College com-
munity must compromise' with admin-
istration-defined reality and implement,
only partially, their unique, carefully-
planned program.
This becomes all the more intolerable
when it is realized that this needn't be
the case. The far-sighted plans of men
like Thuma and Robertson have been
sacrificed to the inverted value-system
of an administration which says thei,
own administration building is taken care
of first, with student fees, thus avoiding
the quandary of Public Act 124.
The innovative Residential College was
forced to depend on private donations
which never materialized. The whole suc-
cess of the University's $55M Fund Drive
is diminished by the failure to secure the
needed funds.
Thuma also pointed out that many of
the people originally involved thought
that by getting the project going on
Central Campus they would be more
likely to be able to get funds later. But
the reverse has been the case. It is
exactly because the program is in opera-
tion that people can be forced to accept
the "lack-of-funds" excuse. If the pro-
gram hadn't been started at all, there
would be far more pressure to find the
funds.
BUT THE ADMINISTRATION is good at
meaningless compromises. It does it
whenever it can, like setting up commis-
sions to study pressing problems. There
is no one to picket and protest against
the injustice done to the Residential
College, however, because the administra-
tion has supposedly done the best it can
under the circumstances.
What ever the eventual outcome of the
Residential College Experiment, and its
future is uncertain, this ,episode reveals
that the administration of a university
is far too serious to be left to the ad-
ministrators.
-RON LANDSMAN
Presenting UN's
Rites of Fall'
THE ANNUAL "Rites of Fall" have begun
again in the United Nations General
Assembly.
For more than a decade, the U.N. has
reserved several days a year to debate
the admission of China to that august
body. A combination of American stead-
fast opposition to representation of the
government of nearly one-third of the
world's population, and China's own Red
Guard antics and invasion of India, have
succeeded in preventing admission.
Like most debates which go on for
years and years, the question of China's
right to sit in the U.N. has become sterile.
With the possible exception of Dean Rusk,
no one can argue in good faith that the
government imposed by Chiang Kai-shek
and his rag-tag remnants of the Kuomin-
tang on the unwilling Formosans is the
legitimate authority of Mainland China.
If that were so, the Bourbon pretender'
to the throne of Louis XVI would have
to be considered the legitimate ruler of
France.
THE DEBATE OVER whether or not
China is a "peace loving nation," as
specified by the U.N. Charter is an equal-
ly absurd point. No satisfactory definition
of "peace loving" has ever been devised
and at least China, unlike the United
States, Israel, Jordan, the United Arab
Renublic and Syria-all U.N. members-
IF THE LITERARY COLLEGE had been smart it would
have called the Residential College the "University
Events College" or the "Residential Administration Bldg."
For it's clear that basketball games and posh administra-
tive offices sell. Imaginative classrooms and student living
quarters don't.
The Residential College plan has been treated like a
stepchild ever since it was conceived here in 1962.
The original idea was to put two separate facilities
on the Ann Arbor municipal golf course along the Huron
River. The University planned to pay for a combined
classroom dormitory unit (finally budgeted at $11.8 mil-
lion) and persuade the Legislature to appropriate $5.2
million for a Residential College library and science
facility.
At first things looked good. In 1965 the Legislature
designated the library-science facility as one of five new
projects (worth $28 million) it wanted to go ahead on.
Planning money was offered.
IN PROBABLY the worst blunder of the 16 year
Hatcher administration, the University refused to take
the money because it didn't want to abide by a provision
in the 1965 capital outlay act (Public Act 124) that re-
quired state supervision of building planning and archi-
tect selection.
So the school got no money from the state for the new
college and then tried unsuccessfully for two years to get
the state to drop PA 124. Finally this fall the school joined
in a court challenge of PA 124 with several other state
schools.
Meanwhile on April 15, 1966 the Regents approved a
financing plan for the $11.8 million classroom-dormitory
unit. Although the financing was insecure President
Hatcher told the Regents it was "a red letter day for the
University."
The same day, Vice-President Pierpont said that Uni-
versity will use "all available resources to guarantee the
construction of the college." And he added that the
University is committed to using general "operating funds
to supplement whatever financing can be obtained
through loans and private gifts to the Residential Col-
lege.
In June, 1966 the Regents approved as "sources of
funds" for the new $11.8 million Residential College:
$7.5 million worth of revenue from a bond issue to be
repaid by student fees, $1.1 million from refinancing
South Quad, $1.4 million from other residence hall income
and $1.8 million in gifts from the $55 million fund drive.
THE PLAN didn't materialize. The key reason was that
only $35,000 worth of gift money came in leaving the
project almost $2 million short of funds. So the Residen-
tial College was left with no choice but to take over all
of seamy East Quad.
But even this make-shift arrangement spells trouble
since the University will have to acquire temporary hous-
ing in private apartment units for the college students
while the remodeling is going on.
What this sorry tale points up is that academics are
last on the priority list of the Office of Business and
Finance. Pierpont has neatly managed to come up with
an empty wallet for the Residential College when he
could find funds for many other buildings.
FOR EXAMPLE consider how the officials are paying
for the new $2.9 air-conditioned administration building
that has the virtue of saving them that long, hard one-
block walk from the present (19-year-old) administration
building to the parking ramp.
The new building is being financed with a $2 million
ten-year bank loan and another $900,000 from the Uni-
versity's temporary investment pool. All this money will
be repaid out of student fees at a rate of $340,000 an-
nually over 18 to 20 years.
And the new $6.7 million University Events Bldg. is
being entirely financed by bonds that will be repaid by
student fees at $10 per student a year.
The question is why couldn't Pierpont dip into student
fees for a student building when he could use them for
an administration building?
Why wasn't there any money available from the tem-
porary investment fund for the Residential College?
And why does the Residential College library-science
facility have to be built with state funds (which are
unavailable because of PA 124) when the Administration
Bldg. could be built with assured student fees? Couldn't
the Administration Bldg. have been requested from the
Legislature while the Residential College was built with
student fees?
FINALLY, why has the Residential College been such
a low priority item before such less important facilities as
a new basketball stadium and administration building?
The answer is that officials here are simply not
willing to "use all available resources to guarantee the
construction of the college," as Pierpont claimed last
year.
And equally important the administration is not will-
ing to make any sacrifices itself. After all, the admin-
istration would never dream of converting East Quad into
an administration building.
4
Hollywood's New, Breed of Violence,
By RICHARD AYERS
VIOLENCE of a very peculiar
sort is coming to prominence
in American films. Hollywood, of
course, is famous for celebrating
violence in the gangster and cow-
boy movies made since 1930.
But the violence is becoming
qualitative rather than quantita-
tive. The virtue of a 1930's gang-
ster movie was the number of
people who were shot; the virtue
of Corman's "St. Valentine's Day
Massacre" is the way they are
shot.
Movies are taking a deep, al-
most analytical look at violence.
This is not' to say they are "show-
ing the evils of violence for what
they are" as critics of the thirties
always begged them to. On the
contrary, the critics are now dis-
turbed by the "unashamed cele-
bration of violence" in such films
as "Bonnie and Clyde."
Put another way, the concep-
tualization and acceptance of vio-
lence has developed along with
the American Left. Henry Fonda
in "Grapes of Wrath" was the
victimized recipient of the fruits
of American Captalism. Bogart in
"Casablanca" was the alienated
existentialist who only brought
himself to an act of violence at
the end of the last reel. Warren
Beatty in "Bonnie and Clyde" is
the rebellious existentialist who
transforms his role from victim
to victor by a life of violence.
IT GOES without saying that
none of these films must be true
to the period with which they are
concerned. A movie made in 1967
about the American depression is
only important in that it express-
es the attitudes of the time in
which it is made.
Roger Corman's films also cele-
brate violence. In "Wild Angels"
and "St. Valentine's Day Mas-
sacre," violence becomes a sexual
fantasy. Taking many of the at-
titudes of the American under-
ground, Corman constructs anti-
dialectical violence. That is, vio-
lence is not the result (except
superficially) or the cause of
anything; it only serves as grati-
fication in its very acting out.
"Wild Angels" inspired a long
s e r i e s of motorcycle movies:
"Devil's Angels," "Hell's Angels on
Wheels," "Born Losers," etc. These
films have developed the myth of
the motorcycle gang beyond recog-
nition, seeking more violence and
less motorcycles. In fact, in "Born
Losers," motorcycles appear only
a few times.
NUMEROUS OTHER films are
important in this wave of vio-
lence. "Fistful of Dollars" (adapt-
ed from the Japanese film "Seven
Samurai" by Kurosawa) is the
most violent, and most success-
ful, western on American campus-
es.. "The Dirty Dozen," a film
about twelve condemned prison-
ers on a suicide mission to kill
Nazi officers, is one of the most
violent films of the year.
The violence in modern Ameri-
can movies is uncompromising. It
is not moralized about. It is a
quality of the "good guys." It
represents a new attitude toward
American power and a new atti-
tude toward how to change it.
Hollywood is not taking a stand
with the left. But it is responsible
to reflect the feelings of the vic-
timized if it is making films about
the victimized. Violence is going
throughl the same birth pangs in
the movies as it is on the left.
Bonnie and Clyde
A number of American films
make up the rise of this new
mood. What they all have in com-
mon is a core of violence; the
peak of the film comes not at the
last kiss or tear, but in the firing
of guns.
The most celebrated is "Bonnie
and Clyde," directed by Arthur
Penn. Receiving almost unani-,
mous critical disapproval, the
film has subsequently been one of
the biggest successes in the box
offices of both cities and cam-
puses.
In fact, Time Magazine is
planning to run a cover story
on it. "Bonnie and Clyde" is THE
left-wing movie in social analysis
and reaction to it. Clyde Barrow
does not decide that he must pro-
test for redress of grievances; in
fact, he doesn't decide anything.
His personality and life style are
violent. Joad in "Grapes of
Wrath" says "Why do the banks
want to foreclose us? Who's the
man in charge? I wanna shoot
him." Clyde merely says "We rob
banks."
Arthur Penn has also directed
the first effort in this attitude
toward violence in westerns, "The
Left-Handed Gun." Starring Paul
Newman in perhaps his best role,
as Billy the Kid, "The Left-Hand-
ed Gun" is u n i q u e among
westerns.
BILLY'S VIOLENCE is not the
cliche "law of the West" with a
passive sort of violence which is
as common as apple pie. It is a
violence which can only be de-
scribed as "soul." Billy is, as he
puts it, "burning inside with
something I can't put out. I gotta
. ,. .I gotta."
LET T ERS: Kahn Replies to Regental Rules Acton
SI
THE BOARD OF REGENTS, in
its Nov. 17 Statement, asserts
that it alone has legal authority to
make regulations for the Univer-
sity. This point is now, and always
has been, well understood by both
the student body and SGC.
The Regents must understand
in turn that the practical, as op-
posed to legal, authority to make
rules for any group must be based
on the consent of the governed. If
this is true in every community,
it is especially true in a uni-
versity, where freedom of in-
quiry has historically been asso-
ciated with communal self-govern-
ment. Threats of expulsions, or the
use of police or the National
Guard, are not adequate substi-
tutes for self-government. Resort
to such measures can only lead-
as at Berkeley, Wisconsin and else-
where-to the destruction of the
institution.
UNFORTUNATELY it is not
true, as their statement asserts,
that the Regents have revised out-
moded regulations to conform with
the needs of a changing commu-
nity. Quite the contrary: Univer-
sity rules and procedures have re-
mained a morass of paternalistic,
self-contradictory precepts better
suited to the needs of the 1920's
than the 1960's.
and, indeed, will probably widen
considerably.
Both the Reed Report and
the Knauss Report have endorsed
this position. As you yourselves
note and approve, the faculty too
has endorsed this position. After
five years (since the Reed Report)
isn't it about time that the deci-
sion be made and that students be
allowed to assume the fullrespon-
sibility for their own lives?
SECOND, while administrative
channels do exist, you seem to
neglect the problem of how effec-
tive these channels have been in
the past in solving basic problems.
The channels of which you speak,
to my mind, have functioned
neither effectively nor properly.
Before basic problems can be
solved on this campus, students
must be recognized as full, par-
ticipating members of the Uni-
versity community, with the full
rights and responsibilities of any
other member of the community.
Finally, I am happy to see that
the Regents are willing to meet
with members of SGC. Since we
can speak only as representatives
of the student body, any meeting
we hold with you will, of course,
have to be open to our constitu-
ents. Meanwhile, until the Regents
recognize the rights of students,
students will continue to make and
existence of such classified pro-
jects. This has danger for both
the academic community and for
society as a whole.
However, the growing schism
between the academic and the
technological communities, and
between these communities and
society at large may pose even
greater dangers. In this country
it may already be appropriate to
call this schism a chasm. When
viewed world-wide, the problems
which arise from differences be-
tween men have already proven
to be catastrophic. These schisms
between major segments of, man-
kind bode many additional dan-
gers for the future and every ef-
fort should be made to close these
gaps.
Considering the current state
of the world, it is inevitable that
classified research will be con-
ducted. Its total elimination can
only be brought about by funda-
mental changes in human society.
We all strive for such changes.
Indeed, this is a major function
of centers of learning. But these
changes are not likely to occur
in the immediate future.
IN THIS context I feel strongly
that it would be most unfortunate
to force classified research off the
campus into total isolation from
the "free" scientific community.
Ac ,. ta n r .,.nnc n n rnniic
Michigan will meet its charge by
setting an ethical example to the
world through reasoned recogni-
tion of the issues rather than by
abdication of its responsibilities.
We should not support measures
which seem only based on the
hope that the problem will dis-
appear if this undesirable type of
research can be forced off campus
where it cannot be seen; such a
move toward isolationism would
only accentuate the problem.
I write on this matter because l
have not seen the view expressed
above in any of the literature on
this subject which has been dis-
tributed on campus. I believe this
view considers the long-term con-
sequences of our action rather
than constituting a short-term
emotional response to our frus-
tration at the current confusion
of human society.
-George W. Nace
Professor of Zoology
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