* i7 3fMijpt Daiti
Seventy-nine years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan
Aayndrd St., Ann Arbor, Mich. 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.

JAMES WECHSLER

DAY, JANUARY 24, 1970

NIGHT EDITOR: DANIEL ZWERDLING

Teaching fellows need
a union all their own

e
IT IS HARD to stop thinking
about the murder of Joe Yab-
lonski, his wife and daughter.
Admittedly I have a special in-
volvement because his attorney
was my valued friend, Joe Rauh,
and for many months I knew of
Rauh's apprehension about the
atmosphere of violence and intimi-
dation which Yablonski's chal-
lenge to the UMW dictatorship had
evoked.
From an earlier time as a labor
reporter I knew enough about the
union to realize how rough a road
Yablonski faced when he decided
to defy the bureaucracy he h a d
served so long.
No one can say yet who did the
killing - whether it was a fringe
madness or a direct result of the
battle against union tyranny and
corruption he had led.
But this we do know: too many
men in public life - in h i g h
places in government, labor and
Congress - are murmuring that
they wish Rauh, Ralph Nader. and
others who enlisted in Yablonski's
crusade would drop the subject
and let the UMW resume business
as usual.

THERE ARE many motivations
for the quiet campaign to bury
the issues with the dead. T h e
AFL-CIO and Walter Reuther's
rival labor bloc are competing for
the allegiance of the unaffiliated
UMW and assume that Yablon-
ski's death signals the end of the
rebellion.
Both the Labor and the Justice
Depts. maintained a posture of
aloof neutrality throughout Yab-
lonski's embattled insurgence; he
was probably- instinctively regard-
ed as a troublemaker by men who
are disposed to revere power and
to disdain "lost causes."
Leading figures in both parties
long ago acquired an awe of the
UMW's political muscle (although
many rank-and-file miners, even
during the era of John L. Lewis,
often proved that they could not
be told how to vote).
Yet one wonders whether the
inertia reflects something m o r e
sickly than the caution of varied
vested interests. Are we becoming
a numb nation, so inured to murd-
er and agony in a world that
seems beyond rational control that

our capacity for
hausted?

WHEN WE read that the Bia-
frans have finally been crushed
and are reminded that literally
millions - many of them helpless
children - have been doomed to
starvation, the hugeness of t h e
disaster cripples imagination;
"how can anything adequate really
be done?"
The shock over disclosure of the
My Lai atrocities gives way to the.
comfortable second thought that
this is the ancient face of war,
and who started it, anyway, and.
after all, we have begun t r o o p
withdrawals.
Then the camera shifts to the
bodies of the Yablonskis and there
is momentary horror; these are
three isolated figures, somehow
more plausible than stacked mass-
es of slain or starved bodies. But
soon it is every man for himself
again and "nobody can really be
sure who did it." Does the iden-
tity of the assassins really deter-
mine the monstrosity of the crime?
The concluding reports of the

outrage is ex-

Commiission on the Causes a n d
Prevention of Violence (set up
after the slaying of Robert Ken-
nedy) have been filed; perhaps
some other commission will devote
a footnote to "Jock" Yablonski.
MEANWHILE, one hopes Yab-
lonski's name will not be foreot-
ten as the roll-calls of martyrdom
are recited. But honorable men-
tions are not enough, even if they
are preferable to evasion and sil-
ence.
The real question is whether
what he began will be carried oh
- regardless of the outcome of the
police hunt - and whether there
will be a mobilization of decent
opinion behind those who dare to
pursue the effort._
The .most tangible suggestion
being discussed now among those
who stood with Yablonski is the
formation of a public committee
to support the fight for reform
in the UMW. There is a nucleus
of miners who refuse to surrend-
er, but their ranks can be quick-
ly isolated and~broken unless they
have the support - one must even

inured

to murder and agony

say the protection - of men
whose names and influence mat-
ter.
One almost hears the cynical re-
tort that "this isn't as important
as a lot of other things." To
many labor statesmen a public
body would immediately seem an
ominous precedent and a threat
how many authentically demo-
cratic unions are there in the
year 1970, and who is to condemn
"Tony" Boyle for certain excesses
of autocracy?
BUT THERE must be places to
begin anew if there is to be a
real counter attack on the afflic-
tion of violence - and of fatal-
istic acquiescence. This is one
such place, and this is the time,
unless it is true that ice water
has filled tto many veins and that
injustice can no longer inspire
more than a moment of lament-
ation. Perhaps what we are really
asking is whether. the phrase "si-
lent majority" is becoming a euph-
emism for the paralyzed accept-
ance of primitivism.
@ New York Post

[E ATTEMPTS by the University
teaching fellow union to gain recog-
on as a collective bargaining agent
all University teaching fellows de-
res the support of all students and
Ilty.
Unixersity attorney has already in-
,ted that the University might chal-
;e the union's claim to represent the
hing fellows. This challenge would be
ed on one of two grounds.
he first would be that the teaching
ows rightly should be classified with
other academic personnel and there-
should not have a separate union.
that fails, the University would ar-
that the teaching fellows should be
sifiled with the other student employes
for that reason should not have a
orate union.
P R E S E N T I N G the University's
grounds for challenging the union;
attorney has clearly presented the
son a teaching fellow union is needed.
he ambiguity of teaching fellows'
us has robbed them of all normal
hanism for ,grievances. Because of
ir status as students, teaching fellows
excluded from the departmental grie-
ce system. Similarly, it would be un-
listic to include teaching fellows in
student grievance procedure because
y are teachers.
elatedly attempting to deal with the
thing fellows' plight, Senate Assem-
recently directed three of its com-
tees to study various problems of
thing fellows.
ut this makes the same mistake that
ny of the committees and boards of

the University schools and colleges. It
leaves the teaching fellows out of the
entire decision-making 'process.
ONCE AGAIN, a group of professors'
omniscience on all matters-non-aca-
demic included - is assumed. The Uni-
versity has yet to learn the difference
between a study, and a solution.
Meanwhile, there is no workable me-
chanism for dealing with the problem of
teaching fellows.
Even if the Senate Assembly commit-
tees were able to do a thorough study of
teaching fellow problems, and even if
by some quirk they acted on this study,
they would have only solved the problems
that exist today. But they will not have
prevented new grievances from reaching
the problem state-something a union
might be able to accomplish.
If recognition is-not granted, the only
consequence of the teaching fellows' con-
tinued impotence would be a resort to
coercive power.r
ALTHOUGH TIHE union's spokesman
believes the courts would eventually
uphold their recognition, they are fear-
ful that such a fight would "cost us bad-
ly in terms of time and money."
All the teaching fellows want is a way
to negotiate wage and problems concern-
ing family allowances, class size and grie-
vance procedures.
The recognition of the teaching fellows
union as a collective bargaining agent is
in the best interest of nearly everyone
in the University community.
-ALEXA CANADY

4)

.4.NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN-

'College is irrelevant'

because it is

Carswell' s

'racism':

Does it make a difference?

NOT LONG ago my 18-year-old
son told me that he had decid-
ed to drop out of college. He'd
stuck it out for a year and a half
with occasional flashes of en-
thusiasm but mostly in the spirit
of a lovable, faithful and obed-
ient family dog performing a trick
that everybody but he enjoyed.
When he informed me of his de-
cision, his voice sounded tired, fag-
ged out.
This happens a lot to parents
and children. The children quit;
they give up following the career
line their parents and the world
have prescribed for them. It's us-
ually called rebellion but if you
have talked to many of these kids
you'd be more inclined to say it
was exhaustion. They remind you
less of revoltees than persons who
can't go another day, who've tried
to hassle it out and only succeed-
ed in progressively dropping to
now low levels of spirit and energy.
CALLING THIS dycrasia of the
vital juices rebellion leads par-
ents to apply all the emotional
thumb screws - and they have
many - to make their large,
grown children pick themselves up
and go at it ,again. No middle-
class white American parent can
be completely innocent of enjoying
the fantasy cocktail party where
their son. the Nobel laureate,. is
introduced to the neighbors. Af-
ter all, a guy with a kid who wins
a Nobel Prize must have some-
thing going for him.
A young man's not so sure he's
going to be alive to enjoy the fu-
ture we're forever urging him to
prepare for. Aside from the grow-
ing ecological perils which a r e
vivid to young people, there is
the draft and the morbid question
mark it puts at the end of every
thought a young man can have
about his hopes and ambitions.
THE NEW law does nothing to
eliminate uncertainty. It keeps the
old abuses while forcing every-
body to play a game of blackjack
against the dealer Death. Some
young people don't mind too
much; others can't stand it. For
them school becomes a place of
compulsion, more of a hideout
against death with the rictus of
bureaucracy and lottery on its face
than a hideaway for contempla-
tion and learning.
Even without the draft many
colleges have become unhappy;

places. They often are just what
their critics say they are, over-
peopled, overorganized institutions
with too many lines, too much
bookkeeping and too many tests.
In many places nonpolitical
students must tolerate and nego-
tiate the battling and the uproar.
the strikes and the sit-ins, t h e
court orders and the expulsions.
If you don't have a taste for that
kind of life, the sempiternal acri-
mony on some campuses will drive
you out.
ThERE ARE other elements de-
pressing the blood sugar count.
There is what kids call "irrelevan-
cy." This excessively used a n d
poorly defined word does have a
serviceable meaning in relation to
education. It can be used to mean
that what you learn has no fruit-
ful connection withanything
you're likely to do, think or be.
Smarter kids from reasonably
good high schools have caught on
to the fact that what goes on in
many - not all - colleges has an
attenuating and vanishing con-
nection with their future work.
They see that the B.A. doesn't pre-
pare you to do anything, that it
only certifies you as one who no
longer has to be kept off the job
market and is now employable.
NOT TOO long ago colleges
made middle class ladies and gen-
tlemen. They taught people how to
fake it in a white collar way. This
was usually done by putting peo-
ple through a liberal arts curri-
culum which was heavily loaded
with humanities, the subjects that
act as the pumice and polish need-
ed to couth people up.
Increasingly the better h i g h
schools have taken over this chore.
That's where you now learn the
names of the better books" and
possibly read them. A middle class
youth, especially if he comes from
a home where there are lots of
books and records and mannered.
conversation, has already learned
the variety of white collar roles.
He knows how teachers, doctors,
lawyers and executives are sup-
posed to behave. He must either
begin to learn the substance of
these occupations or go out of his
mind with this vain, repetitive
practice of behavior he's mastered.
COLLEGE is still a necessary
and helpful place for people who've
gone to bad schools and c o m e

from families where they don't
read. It's also a good place for
people who want to specialize,
particularly if their field of in-
terest demands the use of ex-
pensive and elaborate equipment
- provided they're allowed to
work at their specialty and not
pe put through years of academic
hazing and waiting before they're
let at the electron microscope.
For the rest, it's hard to see
what they get out of college. Yet
dropping out isn't easy. There's a
vast social conspiracy to force a
kid into welfare, into the army qr
back to school.
A kid with an adequate educa-
tion - middle class polish, that
.is - must learn to lie and affect
bad English and lower class man-
nerisms if he wants a simple fac-
tory job. Personnel managers make
a specialty of catching out the
"over-educated" and denying them
employment. At the same time,
other personnel managers block
them out of the executive trainee
program because they haven't
served their full four years on
the gothic rock pile.

AS LONG as this state of af-
fairs persists educational reform
of a basic nature is next to im-
possible. No matter how clever
or diverting or entertaining the
teachers are, no matter how brain
blowing the vis-ed devices and the
computer toys, if the schools are
stuffed with people who don't
want and don't need to be there,
you will have trouble but no
change on campus.
The students will find what
they're doing irrelevant because it
is, and the only hope we'll have
that they don't burn these insti-
tutions down is that we can keep
them stultified with dope, liquor,
sex, athletics and psychiatric
therapy.
The beginning of rational change
will come when young people who
don't want to go to college are
allowed to go to work. That time
seems to be receding instead of
approaching. There's almost no
occupation which isn't busy raising
its ljrofessional standards, as they
like to say, but which really means,
narrowing the door of entry.

FOR PEOPLE like my son this
means marginal living. But he's
being joined by many, many more.
Youthful vagabondage wandering,
catching on here or theret for a
few days, trying to make it a com-
mune, three or four people living
off the proceeds of one job, moving
about, playing music, studying and
starving, moping and wondering,
trying to start businesses and
farms, clogging up whole city
neighborhoods. This is becoming
more and more common.
As a nation we're The " Old
Woman Who Lived in the Shoe
and even the Army has too many
young men to know what to do, so
we will do nothing about our ex-
cess human production.
The best hope is that instead of
sitting in on the dean who can't
possibly help them, they'll sit in
on the employment office and
chant, "Give us useful, valuable,
dignified work or put us in a real
jail."
© Los AngelesTimes Syndicate


4,

Letters to the Editor

THE REVELATION that Harrold Cars-
well, the most recent nominee for
the empty seat on the Supreme Court,
should have made at least one virulently
racist speech in his political youth should
come as no surprise to anyone, consider-
ing that he was running for elective -of-'
fice in Georgia at the time.
Despite, a "thorough" investigation of
Carswell's background by the Justice
Dept., it was not until a local reporter
thought to check the back issues of a
newspaper the nominee edited from 1946
to 1948 that his "racist" past was revealed.
In a number of editorials, and in a speech
before the American Legion delivered
Aug. 13, 1948, Carswell stated that he
stood fast by the principles of segregation
and white supremacy.
N THE SPEECH, he blasted President
Truman's proposed Civil Rights bill,
calling it a "Civil Wrongs program".and
"a political football, obvious on its face
as an attempt to corral the bloc vot-
ing of Harlem." Declaring himself "a
Southerner by ancestry, birth, training,,
inclination, belief, and practice," the
young Carswell affirmed his "firm, vig-
orous belief in the principles of white
supremacy," and declared that he would
"always" be governed by them.
While it seems unfair to hold a man
too stringently to the beliefs of heis youth,
such about-faces as Carswell seems to
have experienced are far more believ-
able when they occur at one's political ex-
pense rather than in one's favor. Thus
the shift in parties by former Senator
Wayne Morse and by Senator Strom
Thurmond - whatever else one may
think of the two men - is strong evi-
dence of their sincerity and strength
of purpose.
JF CARSWELL was - as he claims - an
integrationist in racist's clothing in
1948, his speech and subsequent denun-
ciation df it are evidence of a chameleon-
like personality not too different from
that of the man who has nominated him.
If Carswell - was a racist when and
where it was fashionable to be so, and
now take a more enlightened view after
attitudes have changed, it seems un-

clearly by Richard Nixon himself. The
President, we may remember, began his
career by smearing nearly everyone with-
ing reach with the label "Communist"
and climaxed it by appointing J o h n
Mitchell as Attorney General.
IT IS NO coincidence that Nixon once
again has chosen to appoint a South-
erner to the vacant Supreme Court seat.
Whether the infamous "Southern ,strat-
egy" is designed to undermine the slow
trend toward the amelioration of the
Southern blacks' lot, or whether it is
intended merely to woo Democratic white
votes in the region, is hard to determine,
because it is very difficult to separate
one from the other.
Nonetheless, Carswell's early newspap-r
editorials' and speech may prove embar-
rassing to the administration, as they
are sure to further alienate the nation's
black voters from the Republican Party.
Reportedly, the 1948 address to the Amer-
ican Legion has been printed and is be-
ing circulated in the New York ghettoes,
while spokesmen for the "moderate"
NAACP - who had denounced Cars-
well's nomination before the speech was
made public - called it a "conclusive
ground for his rejection by the Senate."
BUT THE administration has seemingly
decided that it doesn't care what
blacks think of it, and is more con-
cerned with Carswell's financial integrity
-which Nixon hopes can assure his con-
firmation by the Senate.,
This integrity was established by the
same Mitchell investigation which fail-
ed to unearth the nominee's early rac-
ism, and while it is hard to believe there
is much truth in anything the Attorney
General says, this at least must stand
unchallenged unless it is proved other-
wise.
4ND IF CARSWELL'S record proves
clean, he will probably be approved
by the Senate even in the face of his
1946-48 writings. For the Congress has
an unfortunate tendency to acquiesce in
any President's selection of most federal
judges, and, having already rejected the
nomination of Clement Haynsworth,
canoa lhpr .c r n hardlyobniectt inarS-

Breaking heads
To the Editor:
I SEE in your issue of Jan. 21
that a group of the SDS wants to
start a revolution with "guns" in=-
stead ofrbricks. May an old history
man, who has studied scores of
revolutions, offer them some prac-
*tical advice? I leave out of ,my
letter all moral considerations; nor
brevity's sake, and write only of
feasibility.
It is true, of course, chat revolu-
tions are always made by minori-
ties, :for most people are under-
standably unwilling to risk getiing
killed. But in every successtul
revolution that I have ever known
or heard of (I mean real revolu-
tions not mere coups d'etats in
which one dictator replaces an-
other) one of the two conditions
was present, and very frequently
both: either the rebels had the
suport of the buld of the army,
or the sympathy of the majority
of the population.
Those rebellions which had
neither were invariably crusled

\ ,
l
i *wti,
i
R I
,
:
,'
; ,
. V
:t
..
; :
t r
,
.a,,,"'" iR t , R s
+ f F
1 ._
S ' ,, ti ~, r
A I Ik..
1. i
1 --....__
~ - ,._
f. .
w I.. .. . f

and often led to a counter-revolu-
tionary reactions. Force, consent,
or both, are essential.
NOW IT, is too obvious to need
pointing out that the bulk of the
American army is not at present
in a state of mutiny, nor likely to
become so, and; there is no rebel
armed force in this country which
can even be compared to it in ac-
tual or potential strength. So the
issue becomes one of majority
opinion.
Elections do not always repre-
sent popular sentiment, but they
are closest measure of it which
have as yet been devised. Congress
is elected; how many "revolution-
ists" are in the capitol? The Presi-
dent is elected; how many "revolu-
tionists" voted for any of the
major candidates in 1968, or any
other recent American election?
BUT, IF you don't like elections
as a test, take Gallup polls or any
other statistical measurement. It is
a fact that the American people,
in bulk, are divided between con-
servatives and liberals; the radical
revolutionary element, willing to
use violence, has never, even in
times of great poverty and depres-
sion, been as many as fiv per cent.
To 'call them "the people," as the
SDS letter put it, is laughable..
What I have always feared is
not a revolutionary take-over, im- .
possible in this country, but an
attempt to do so, which can only
end in failure, frustrations, and
probably reaction. So think twice
before you go for those ", guns,"
gentlemen of the extreme Left.
Other people have guns too. As
for my own views, I think that all4
question are better settled by
counting heads than by breaking
them.
t-Preston Slosson
professor emeritus
History department
Jan. 21
Cuba
To the Editor:
A THE END OF January, six
hundred people, two hundred
blacks, two hundred browns, and
two hundred whites, will leave the
United States for the Republic of
Cuba. For two months these mem-
bers of the Venceremos Brigade
will cut sugar cane in the cane
fields of Cuba. The members of
the Brigade will work with Cuban

create productive lives in a pro-
ductive society. For t h e Cuban
people, liberation began with the
overthrow of Batista and the ex-
pulsion of United States economic
control.
liberation grew as the revolu-
tion built a society that employed
its resources to serve the needs of
its people, not the profits of for-
eign corporations. That lIberation
manifested itself in very concrete
ways; full employment for t h e
Cuban people, free medical care
and education, adequate housing
and food for all Cubans. The Cu-
ban economy grew with the revo-
lution, the revolution grew with
the people.
LIBERATION 'manifests itself
in the consciousness of a people;
a consciousness that grows out of
a struggle. The Cuban people
know that their revolution is part
of a world wide movement that
reaches from Viet Nam to t h e
black colonies inside of the United
States.
The Cuban revolution is part of
the international struggle of op-
pressed people against exploita-
tion and misery. International
consciousness striking in Cuba.
The people there feel strong sol-
idarity with the Vietnamese peo-
ple, the black people inside the
United States, and the white rev-
olutionary youth movement. It is
this international. consciousness
that gives strength to liberation.
THE VENCEREMOS BRIGADE
is another manifsetation of this
international solidarity. People of
the United States will work with
the Cuban people and Vietnamese
to strengthen socialism in Cuba
and learn about building and
working in a society free of ex-
ploitation: a society based on ful-
fillment not immiseration.
The people of theBrigade will
need the help of people in this
country to make the trip to Cuba.
The Brigade must fly to Mexico
City before going to Cuba and
funds are badly needed to ,cover
the exenses. The Cuban govern-
ment has made a;ll provisions for
the Brigade once it gets to Mex-
ico City including transportation,
food. housing, and medical care.
The Brigade needs your support
to aet to Cuba and harvest the
sugar cane.
-Dave Schanoes
Ann Arbor SDS

d

V



4


,xI