Seventy-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICMIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS ROGER RAPOPORT: The East Quad Administration Bldg. ':.. nr a s........is........} .7:,.....,-.......,.. n. .,v ...t",.. ^vr...,: ...v: ,t .. . ...............:}.Y :>.r:vr g.r...*..... + .:. . '. .. .. ... .A ... . .. ... ..-..,. -lw IZ =.uZ 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 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 I$ . , RA S ,EWAL S~.~:. w~ N. 1,