Seventy-nine years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan Pushing blacks under in Mississippi 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Doily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 1970 NIGHT EDITOR: LYNN WEINER Students must participate in budgetary decisions ONE OF THE MOST significant effects of the dispute over increased minority enrollment at the University has been its emphasis of the need for a major over- haul of the University's budgeting pro- cess. For although the minority admissions question has considerable relevance for the entire University community, the basic financial decisions on how the de- mands of the Black Action Movement are to be met has been handled by no more than a dozen men - all University ad- ministrators., Moreover, the events of the past two weeks indicate clearly that these decis- ions were unacceptable to sizable seg- ments of both students and faculty. It is true that community sentiment on other budgetry decisions is r a r e 1 y ex- pressed in s u c h) a vociferous manner. However, events in the past 12 months show that the administration's views on how the University should spend its mon-. ey do not enjoy any semblance of a broad base of support. For example, reacting to the adminis- tration's proposed p 1 a n to construct a new intramural building through a tui- tion increase, students indicated in a ref- erendum last November that they wish to have the authority to determine w h e n their tuition should be raised for such purposes. But despite their dissatisfaction with many of the University's expenditures, the oligarchic control of the budgeting process is almost never contested by the faculty and the students. And even if they did, it is clear 'the power to spend some $120 million an- nually is one which the executive offic- ers would be particularly loathe to share. In addition, it could complicate the implementation of many of their pet pro- grams - such as the intramural building construction. "STUDENTS do not seem to be behind this project," observes Vice President for Academic Affairs Allan Smith, noting off-handedly that student views on the project will not be given much weight by the administration. Smith said recently that a final de- cision to implement the intramural con- struction plan would not be made during the summer - when most students are away from campus - partially to escape charges that the administration is at- tempting to avoid being the brunt of stu- dent dissent against the construction. But to make the decision when stu- dents are on campus does not mean that students will have the power to deter- mine whether or not their tuition should be increased to fund the construction. S0 GOES the University's budgeting process - a process whose inequities should take on a particular significance to all members of the University com- munity who recognize the need for an overall reordering of t h i s institution's priorities. For it must be understood that a reor- dering of priorities 'can be accomplished only through a reordering of the mech- anism by which these priorities are'set. THE MINORITY admissions issue, more than any development in recent Uni- versity history, has made it incumbent upon students to push for participation in the University budgeting process. For while- the University appears to be committed to funding a 10 per cent black enrollment by the 1973-74 academic year, the more appropriate figure of 18 p e r cent - t h e percentage of college-age blacks in the state - has been forgotten for the present. k So the question must be asked - will March, 1974 see the need for another full scale shut-down to bring about a further financial commitment from the Univer- sity? It would seem that such periodic dis- plays of militance may remain the only effective channel for the participation of these groups in University budget-mak- ing, unless steps are immediately taken to establish' a new budgetary mechanism which includes students, and faculty members, and has significant minority group representation. -ROBERT KRAFTOWITZ (EDITOR'S NOTE: The author was a graduate student in the history dept. at the University during 1967-69. She also worked with the Residential College.) By LORI HELMBOLD Daily Guest Writer A COUPLE OF years ago in West Point, Mississippi, the black principal of the black high school fired a black teacher for registering to vote. Two years ago at the small black college where I teach students were expelled for wearing afros. Now, teachers are fired for drinking beer with their students. I walk into the supermarket to buy groceries, and I see hatred on tvery face I pass. Perhaps, I have only just now become attuned to something that has always existed. Perhaps I will never walk through a grocery store anywhere without seeing hatred. My experiences in Mississippi have completely altered my perceptions; I do not know which stories to tell, which things my friends will understand, which things I will have to, explain in detail. I live in a 'different universe. Mary Holmes College, like most black colleges, at- tempts to imitate white, middle class American educa- tion. What it imitates is only the worst of this, how- ever. Authoritarianism and bureaucracy are rampant. Teachers refer to their students as "our colored child- ren"; students refer to themselves in the same way. The dean issues a memo at term's end to announce that he or a division chairman will attend each exam, to ensure that the teacher is indeed giving an exam, at the proper time, in the proper manner (half objective, half subjective, to count as one fourth of the term's grade). I frequently feel that I spend 99 per cent of my time wading through meaningless garbage. But there are bureaucracies and crud everywhere. At Mary Holmes the degree is just greater, approaching the infinite. MUCH WORSE THAN THE CRUD is the sytema- tic dehumanization and mental brutalization that is re- ferred to as education. Students come to Mary Holmes from twelve years of atrocities in the public schools. Af- ter another four years of torture, they become public school teachers; no other jobs are open to them because their "educations" have prepared. them for nothing else. They then become the implements of destruction, brutal- izing students, who eventually attend a college like Mary Holmes, But they are the successes in their society. The way they maintain this success is by playing the role that the white power structure expects, dominating other blacks in order to maintain their own positions, yet always bowing and scraping and shuffling in the presence of the man. My students can scarcely be described by adjectives I have used before. Their lives have not been like any I have ever known before. I can say that they read at a sixth grade level. Does this describe how painful reading it, how it is avoided, how much mentioning it is another mark of one's inferiority? Education, to me, is a matter of asking questions about one's assumptions, ceasing to take them for granted. Analysis or rationality or intellectuality-whatever word describes this process -is absent. My kids do not know that any of these matters are up for grabs. They have been taught to accept, not to question. The students' backgrounds include a fundamental- istic, Biblical faith. God created the world in seven days. It is still illegal to teach evolution as a fact in the schools of Mississippi. Adam and Eve were, of course, white. I cannot compare Biblical stories to - G r e e k mythology, for no one knows Greek mythology. When we discussed racial differences, one girl explained them by Cain's murder of Abel, and God's placing a mark of Cain to be his shame for all his days; his shame was to be black. And goddamn it, she believes that! She, and other students at Mary Holmes, are striv- ing to become members of good, midle class, white socie- ty. She straightens her hair and has had her mind straightened for the past eighteen years. She doesn't go to the library, because the thought of reading is pain- ful. And the school does not provide any remedial read- ing, because that would be to admit that the black man is inferior. MARY HOLMES, AND SIMILAR schools, are staff- ed by a faculty that is three-quarters black, Southern, middle-aged, and ultraconservative (for this is how one attains this prestige position-by doing the expected thing and thinking the expected thoughts) ; and one- quarter young, white, liberal/radicals from the North, who are doing some kind of penance by teaching here. There are few, if any, young, alive black teachers. The older black teachers expect students to play a certain role; "The Student as Nigger" applies more in Mississippi than in Michigan. The young white teachers are the only ones willing to be open to students, wanting to do things. Certainly, I cannot lead the black revolution. My very position teaching in a black college is highly question- able. So wither goes the school and the students? My relationships with students are different. I re- main, beyond all attempts to destroy the image, t h e teacher. It took three months for students to believe that attendance in my classes is optional. Now that they be- lieve it, an average of 50 per cent shows up. The kids tvho are not in class are not reading under a tree or making a film sitting around rapping with each other. People do not talk to each other. It is perhaps a mark of my resid- ual authoritarianism that I feel that my class is the most alive place to be. NOT ONLY AMl I WHITE. but I am an unattached woman, from some sort of middle class. from the urban North, with an academic background. My students are from the rural South, from small towns and farming communities, from the lower class. Mississippi cannot be compared to an urban ghetto. Ghetto kids I have worked with have grown up in a complex environment, have been the object of the media: they are aware of the world. 75 per cent of my students did not know who Eldridge Cleaver was before they came to college. Read- ing the Autobiography of Malcolm X was supposed to be a breakthrough. Ha! Malcolm X is a long book, full of many unknown words, relating experiences not within the students' repertoire; they were bored. But, damn it, these are people, human beings. The white liberal attitude of doing some good, helping some- one, is patronizing, dehumanizing,. demeaning. Only when people look at each other as humans, only when they are willing to admit and fight for the freedoms of the other person that they take for granted for them- selves, only then is there communication. People do not relate to each other as people. Some answers to Mary Holmes are obvious. "Burn the motherfucker down!" is the rallying cry of the campus radicals (i.e., about 5 or 6 teachers). But Mary Holmes does have the potential to do something. But doing something would involve hiring young people who could teach, regardless of their academic backgrounds or lack of them. It would involve using the resources of the many OEO-sponsored programs for which Mary Holmes serves as coordinating agent-from Headstart to a catfish farming coop to community organizing to a rural legal services program. It would mean dealing with reality-both th problems of Mississippi society and the gaps in the students' academic backgrounds. But these things were not being done by white schools twenty years ago, and this is the model for Mary Holmes. And so the school goes on; more and more good niggers are produced. Systematic dehumanization is al- most perfected. Some lucky students escape to the North. But there, diplomas clutched in their hands, they write 'or" for "are", mispunctuate, and use incomplete sentenc- es on job applications. Their dialect is not immediately comprehensible. And society passes its judgment again: damn inferior niggers. When will we learn that we are the ones who have institutionalized.this inferiority, that we are to blame? w ot BAM demands: Meeting the needs of the people 1 t f ' J a +/ - u (EDITOR'S NOTE: 0. Jackson Cole is a Research Assistant in the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution, J. Frank Yates is the acting director of the University's Afro- American Studies Center. Both authors are members of the Black Action Movement.) By O. JACKSON COLE and J. FRANK YATES Daily Guest Writers WE FIRMLY BELIEVE t h at a better world is conceivable, designable, ar- guable, desirable - and above all achiev- able! If the events of the last few days are indicative, it may ultimately be dem- onstrated that it is far easier to change the world than a university. Indeed this is the inference to be drawn from a care- ful assessment of the response which the University administration accorded the twelve reasonable and just demands sub- mitted by t h e Black Action Movement (BAM). The BAM demands are just that - demands and not requests. Everything discussed in the demands represents rights that are ours and have been denied us. Because of the intensive campaign wag- ed against us by parties in the University, the press, and other sectors, the Black Action Movement feels it is essential that the facts behind the BAM strike be made public. Even more important, the real is- sues must be made crystal clear so that the justice of our position is obvious to all. As Martin Luther King -so eloquently phrased it: "White America needs to un- derstand that it is poisoned to its soul by racism and the understanding needs to be carefully documented and consequently more difficult to reject." IN SIMPLE TERMS, our movement is concerned with two things: First, access to the University by black people and sec- ond, the quality of the services which it renders to them. We see the purpose of an educational system as being two-fold. To start with, that system must provide an effective means of transmitting to the peo- ple the requisite skills for maintaining their physical existence. Moreover, that system must cultivate and transmit tra- ditions and concepts which meet the moral and psychological needs of the people. Even a casual observation of the living conditions forced upon black people makes it painfully obvious that such a system does not exist in Michigan. Contrary to its stated purposes, the state has not met its obligation to a well-defined segment of its constituency - black people. Essen- tially, what we are saying is that as man- ifested at the University, this situation must cease. Many have castigated us for not pur- suing our grievances through the "normal administrative channels." The truth of the matter is that for years this was tried. A considerable number of students, faculty members, and administrators long ago rec- ognized the plight of black students on the University's campus and attempted to achieve change in the conventional man- ner. These attempts were met with a not- able lack of success. As we reflect upon it, it seems almost foolish that we even made such an attempt. It became increasingly obvious that the conventional machinery and rules were inadequately structured to bring about the necessary changes. The question of how best to convince the ad- ministration and Regents of both the ne- cessity for change and new mechanisms to implement such change still remained. WHEN ON MARCH 19, 1970, it became clear that the Regents preferred to re- spond to proposals submitted by executive officers of the University rather than ad- dress themselves to the demands of BAM; when it became clear that the reluctance of University officials to asknowledge and veridically interpret the operation of the University as racist and exclusionary was due in part to the filtering of their per- ception of that operation through an atti- tudinal, belief, and value system which in itself was racist and exclusionary - BAM called for a University-wide strike.. It should be emphasized that from its inception the leadership of the Black Ac- tion Movement exhorted its membership, as well as members of the Support Coali- tion, to adhere to the principles of non- violent protest. Truly, it is unfortunate that there has been a failure on the part of certain public officials and various elements of the news media, particularly in their editorial com- ments, to discern the very real difference between "violence" and "non-violence." It is even more tragic that these same agents have been so callous and imprudent as to characterize as violent a movement de- scribed by two members of the State House of Representatives as ". . . one of the'most - if not the m o s t - peaceful student strike ever conducted in the history of the state." It is particularly disturbing when one considers the very real violence visited upon the University campus during the re- cent ROTC and job-recruiter protests, A MAJOR POINT of contention h a s been compromised as a consequence of the student strike. Even if one subscribed to this premise, the strike would still be Justi- fiable on the grounds that/it delineates the conflict between two rights: the right to attend class and the right to be admitted to the University. What has been consis- tently overlooked is the fact that the stu- dent pickets were made necessary by the exclusionary admissions policies practiced by the University. Considered in the bal- ance, which is the greater evil, the missing of class for a few days or complete, de- nial of the opportunity to attain a college education; we would argue the latter. Some whites have been indignant that their children have been excluded from a few classes supported by their "hard-earn- ed tax dollars." Are not the equally heav- ily-burdened black taxpayers entitled to the right of having their children attend universities which their tax monies sup- port? Certainly, when calculated in terms of the ,sheer lack of numbers of blacks on the University's campus, it is obvious that a disproportionate amount of the income of blacks goes toward the support of state universities. Besides, we too ascribe to the validity of the position that, for blacksr the shortest road to equality will come through education; but, a short road -that is effectively barricaded may appear as the longest in the world. Let us now quite candidly address our- selves to the pervasive notion that the in- creased admission of significant numbers of black students will lower the current quality of education. This is not true! On the contrary, the quality of education at the University will be measurably increas- ed by the ethnic'and culturally diverse in- p u ts provided by a previously excluded segment of the population. Indeed, the rather general assumption that "quality education" is that w h i c h is currently taught at the University will be brought into question by the University's capacity to meet the challenge issued by W. E. B. DuBois: "But of great, broad plans to train .4 beautiful - where in this wide world is such an education program?" Certainly not at the University! IN THE FACE of mounting support for our strike the response of the administra- tion and Regents remained one of Intran- sigence. .They insisted that the University had done as much as it could - more correctly, would - do. Only when the strike had effectively closed the Univer- sity did the Regents authorize any change in the University's position. Finally, at the prompting of its various faculties, the University conceded that it could, in fact, finance the very meager, relative to the need, programs set forth in our demands. Indeed, this movement from a position of intransigence was an ack- nowledgment of both the morality of our demands and the necessity for reordering priorities in order t h a t these demands might be achieved. 4 iI all men for all things verse intelligent, busy, - to make a uni- good, creative and LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Committing the University to a better world To the Editor: FOR A WEEK there has been a strike on this campus, to which my department, Linguistics, has paid very little concern. The main issue concerns the demand for a firm commitment to a 10 per cent increase in black enrollment by 1973-74, which the Regents of this University view as a laudable goal, but one to which they are not will- m to definitely commit them- tential detriment to the "life of the mind" that could conceivably come from the admission of even a small percentage of people whose educational background might be inferior to the high standard of education that we ourselves were lucky enough to receive, whether we received it because we were from a moneyed background, or from one with a tradition of learn- ing, or simply because we hap- ,plight of the Africans in South Africa, of the Jews in Russia, of the American Indians on distant reservations, of the Indian and West Indian immigrants in Great Britain, and how outraged about the war in Vietnam-but yet how unwilling we are to give one mo- ment of our time and energies to help people who are desperate here nearby instead of conveni- ently thousands of miles away. advantage in this society, we can- not refuse to act without either living a contradiction, or admit- ting to ourselves that we really don't care what happens to them. Action in this case happens to be a strike because it is a visible, tactical, fairly effective and non- violent means of expressing the fact that there are certain mo- ments when life cannot just go on with "business as ususal." actions for change or progress whenever these may impinge on our personal needs and desires, which they most surely will. Is this the kind of "realistic," cynical world that we wish to pre- pare for ourselves? -Rachel Costa, Grad Linguistics Dept. March 25 4 1 '"