Paris talks:
94C fiirgigan Dail
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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1968
NIGHT EDITOR: RICHARD WINTER
By TRAN VAN DINH
WASHINGTON - Four months
have passed since the Demo-
cratic Republican of Vietnam
(DRVN, North Vietnam) agreed
to send in May 1968 a delegation
headed by Minister Xuan Thuy to
begin official-talks in Paris with
representatives of t h e United
States. Yet no progress has been
made, although Secretary Rusk
often in the past (before May)
stated that what he needed was an
answer, a signal from Hanoi -
and the war would be over.
But since then Washington has
escalated its conditions, which in
fact amount to the surrender of
the DRVN and of the National
Liberation Front of South Viet-
nam (NLF), and the recognition
of the legitimacy of the U.S. in-
tervention in Vietnam. It is not
difficult for anyone who has read'
only one page in the long history
of Vietnam to predict that the an-
swer to such demands can only be
No. The patience of the DRVN
delegation, whose country is being
pounded daily by B 52's is indeed
amazing. And so is the persistence
of the U.S. delegation, whose cit-
ies are not touched by bombs, in
in their rhetoric. Chicago's peace
is' disturbed, not by the NLF mor-
tars, not by the students, but by
Mayor Daley's police troops and
their MACE.
THE PURPOSE of any meeting
or conference is to reason over
differences, and to reason requires
the admission of certain b a s i c
truths. It one side is deaf to those
truths, no conference can succeed
no matter how long it lasts. On
August 28 the Paris talks h a d
reached their 19th sessioh; even
at that late date, Minister Xuan
Thuy had to call the attention of
Averell Harriman to such obvious
truths as these:
"I have many a time made an
analysis of it (the origin of the
war). As fully demonstrated by
facts, the origin lies in the U.S.
government's aggression and its
sabotage of the 1954 Geneva
Agreements on Vietnam. Especial-
ly the introduction by the U.S. of
more than half a million troops
and m o r e than 60.000 satellite
troops into South Vietnam, and
the . unwarranted air and naval
attacks on the DRVN, have ex-
posed before the world and Ameri-
can public opinion the real nature
of the U.S. aggression.
"YOU (MR. HARRIMAN) have
besides t r i e d to mislead public
opinion by pretending that the
United States has only "limited
objectives" in Vietnam. It must
be clearly pointed out that the
United States has no right to have
any objectives - no matter how
limited - in Vietnam, for the sim-
ple reason that Vietnam belongs'
to the Vietnamese and not to the
United States - the cities as well
as all the plains, mountains, riv-
ers. forests and seacoasts in South-
Vietnam belong to the Vietnamese
people and not to the U n i t e d
States.
"So-called "limited objectives"
of the U.S. in Vietnam simply aim
at occupying the South in t h e
hope of imposing on it a neo-co-
lonialist domination. What an
irony and a fraud in President
Johnson's words about such "civil
efforts" as "expanding education."
splanting new rice fields," and so
on while U.S. aircraft have daily
been razing to the ground so many"
schools, hospitals, a n d villages,
and U.S. bombs a n d chemicals
have been destroying crops and
even forests in both zones.
"PRESIDENT JOHNSON h a s
said that a "genuine peace" in
Vietnam s h o u 1 d be in keeping
with the "vital interest" of the
United States and that a formula
which would get the United States
out of Vietnam would be "disas-
trous to the interests of the United
States." This is a plain confession
of t h e U.S. government design
which dismisses all your allegation
that you have "no ambition in
Vietnam."
Those who are frustrated at the
lack of progress in the Paris talks
can find reason in the persistence
of Mayor Daley in Chicago who
insisted that his police, his troops.
his security agents were right and
were doing a good job of keeping
law and o r d e r: and . that the
peaceful demonstrators (among
them some delegates to the Demo-
cratic National Convention) were
outside agitators and Communists.
Mr. Daley and Mr. Harriman, af-
ter all, represent the same inter-
ests, the same power structure.
They are different in age (Mr.
Harriman is older) but they are
n o t so different in motivations
and arrogance.
The death-wish of SGC:
Time for re-evaluation
AT ORGANIZATIONS tend to find
reasons for remaining in existence
even when their self-stated goals have
been fully achieved is a cliche that
wouldn't bear repeating had Student
Government Council not given it a new
twist Thursday evening.
In a heady, chaotic moment that pain-
fully illustrated the nihilistic death-wish
of most student politics, two Council
members introduced a motion calling for
the permanent dissolution of SGC.
Nor did the, sponsor, Executive Vice
President Robert Neff and at-large mem-
ber Gayle Rubin, make the motion for
entirely facetious reasons. Troubled by
a vague feeling that after a year's suc-
cesses Council is 'now beginning to drift
purposelessly, Miss Rubin and Neff hoped
that in their discussion of the motion
next week Council members would be
forced into a §erious re-evaluation of
SGC's raison d'etre.
LIKE THAT archtypical example of in-
stitutional self - perpetuation, the
March of Dimes, Student Government
Council finds itself in the position of hav-
ing achieved beyond its wildest dreams
many of the goals it has set itself for
the past two years.
It has succeeded in throwing out the
last vestiges of in loco parentis and in
moving tentatively toward improving the
economic position of students vis a vis
local landlords and merchants. Among
the successes it can rightfully consider
to be in large part its own are the aboli-
tion of women's hours, the liberalization
of parietal rules, the abandonment of
driving regulations, the undisputable es-
tablishment of dormitory legislatures and
judiciaries as the legal organs for mak-
ing and enforcing dormitory regulations.
Furthermore, such SGC-created com-
mittees as Consumer's Union, Student
Housing Association, Student Rental Un-
ion, have made significant steps toward
bringing about the day when Ann Arbor
commodity prices and> terms of rental
will be comparable to those in communi-
ties that do not have captive student
markets. '
THESE GENUINE victories have made
the University one of the most pro-
gressive institutions in the countr'y and
they are not to be underrated. Neverthe-
less, they are past accomplishments, and
if all that now remains to be done is to
protect them from erosion then surely
some more efficient and rational me-
chanism to that end can be conceived
than the-weekly ordeals that pass as SGC
meetings. If SGC is to work its way out
of this institutional self-preservation-
induced drift, it must find a cogent phi-
losophy to shape its future course.
That self-justifying philosophy lies in
September 1970
MINNEAPOLIS - SEPT. 15, 1970 -
Former Vice President Hubert H.
Humphrey yesterday successfully fought
off Senator Eugene McCarthy's attempt
to win the Democratic-Farmer-Labor,
Party's nomination for a third term in
the U.S. Senate. In a closely contested
primary election fight, Minnesota Demo-
crats chose Humphrey over McCarthy as
their candidate for the Senate in the up-
coming general election.
It was sweet revenge for Humphrey as
he turned out of office the man who had
done so much to disrupt the Vice Presi-
dent's unsuccessful bid for the Presidency
two years ago. The continuing Vietnam
war, the issue which had divided the two
in 1968, was the central focus of the cam-
paign. Minnesota Democrats, however,
showed their continuing loyalty to the
man who had united their party in 1948.
-ROB BEATTIE
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The Daily .is a member of the Associated Press and
the call for academic reform that SGC
has mouthed so often in the past few
months. For in spearheading the success-
ful drives of the past academic year,
Council viewed the student in his role as
dormitory resident or an apartment own-
er or a member of the Ann Arbor com-
munity. But SGC has made few concrete
moves viewing the student as student.
Only by making a firm commitment to
work for and with students to improve
and makemore relevant the day to day
education available at the University can
SGC avoid playing the meaningless small
games of the mock-parliaments student
governments in this country characteris-
tically have been. Council must formulate
goals and tactics for academic reform,
keeping in mind both the potentially
most effective measures and its own in-
herent limitations.
* It must commit itself in the first
place to the most difficult chore of aca-
demic reform-uplifting the content, the
relevance and the level of instruction of
the courses presently offered by the Uni-
versity. This is difficult precisely be-
cause one is'hard-pressed to find a start-
ing-point. A possible place to begin, al-
though one that will not be easily won,
is the inclusion of students on hiring,
curriculum, and tenure committees.
0 It must secondly continue to work
for academic innovations along the lines
of the newly-created Inner City Course.
Such suggested reforms as the course
mart, and the interdepartmental depart-
ment, although far from panaceas, rep-
resent worthwhile attempts to widen the
curriculum, as long as they are not em-
phasized at the expense of improving
.existing courses.
" It must work to improve counseling,
making it a simpler process for those' with
clearly-defined academic goals of their
own while at the same time providing
lengthier, more sympathetic counseling
for those who have no idea whither they
are going.
A N AD HOC committee now working
closely with SGC is beginning to probe
some of these areas. Furthermore, many
of the colleges and some individual de-
partments have student steering com-
mittees and are working toward including
students on some faculty committees.
For these reasons, it is especially im-
portant that Council define its own role
in the sprawling, unwieldy effort of
achieving academic reform. Unless SGC
has its own masterplan dealing adequate-
ly with the three major aspects of the
problem already discussed, and providing
for a closely-defined SGC role in the pro-
cess, it will lose its opportunity to make a
valuable contribution.
In considering its role and drawing up
its masterplan, SGC should remember
that the University is composed of nu-
merous small largely autonomous de-
partments. Reform, therefore, is most
likely to be achieved at the departmental
level.
Furthermore, Council must be cogni-
zant of its own legitimacy problems. De-
spite its victories, SGC is not regarded by
many faculty members as the legitimate
representative of student interests. Direct
SGC proposals thus may not receive fair
and adequate faculty consideration.
Consequently, it may be both neces-
sary and expedient for Council to assign
itself an indirect but essential role in the
upcoming battles over academic reform.
While the actual work is being carried
out by student committees on the depart-
mental level or by large ad-hoc groups
of deeply concerned students, SGC can
organize the student body to support spe-
cific reform efforts; co-ordinate the ac-
tivities of the various committees, thus
serving a clearinghouse function; provide
financial aid for especially promising
ventures; advocate academic reform pub-
licly and attempt to instigate it in de-
partments where reform efforts are non-
existent or lagging.
STUDENT Government Council is at a
turning point. If it does not do some
hard thinking soon, it will continue to
drift, holding the line against adminis-
trative reaction, and wasting its time on
internal structural reforms that are of
relatively little importance.
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Letters:'Strenuous'discipine needed for protesters
To the Editor:
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following
is a letter sent to University Presi-
dent Robben W. Fleming.)
I WRITE YOU as a 1912 1 a w
alur-nus who met you and your
wife when you were here shortly
after your inauguration. ..
I am very disturbed with what
goes on in Ann Arbor. According
to the news dispatch in the Los
Angeles Times on last Saturday.
September 7, an estimated 1,000
students marched to the Wash-
tenaw County Building and some
200 of them were arrested because
they refused to leave the building
after having occupied it for two
straight days, the excuse being in
"support of demands for m o r e
money for mothers on welfare."
The Pasadena S t a r News of
Saturday, September 7 had a
longer news dispatch detailing the
"sit in" at the County Board of-
fices. In the Pasadena Star News
news dispatch a Ronna Magy, a
graduate from the University of
California at Berkley was quoted.
WHEN YOU were in Los Angel-
es you gave our alumni association
to understand that the students
were working closely with you in
order to prevent such disturbances
which bring disrepute to the
great name of the University of
Michigan.
I was shocked to learn that the
Students for a Democratic Socie-
ty, commonly referrea to as S.D.S.,
was inauguarated at Michigan un-
der President Hatcher.
It is obvious that S.D.S. and
these groups that are agitating
now at the University of Michigan
are subversive organizations. The
new chancellor at the University
of California at Los Angeles re-
cently suspended the right of
S.D.S. to operate at that institu-
tion.
I encourage you, Pthe faculty and
the Board of Regents to take some
strenuous disciplinary action at
once to get these "revolutionaries"
under control, or preferably ousted
from the university. I think the
chancellor at U.C.L.A. is prepared
to take that step as the next step
in his attempt to curb the situa-
tion at U.C.L.A.
Perhaps this letter, if nothing
else, will bring thestudents to a
realization that there. are thous-
ands of alumni who are standing
aghast at the going on in this so-
called 'Revolution of the Campus-
es."
I am satisfied that if President
Kerr at Berkeley had acted stern-
ly in 1965 he would still be presi-
dent of the University of Californ-
ia; likewise if President Kirk of
of the American Civil Liberties
Union. We would like to commend
you and the Court for implement-
ing and following procedures
which assured that everyone in-
volved in the mass arrests which
took place at the County Building
on September 5 and 6 would be
guaranteed his legal rights. The
willingness of the Court to pro-
vide for immediate arraignment of
all those charged and to establish
a reasonable bond effectively
guaranteed t h e Constitutional
rightsnof the defendants.
You carefully explained the na-
ture of the charges to each person
brought before you and attempted
successfully; we feel, to ascertain
whether or not the accused was
fully aware of the implications of
'the charges. Furthermore, we feel
the courtesy shown by the Court
and its staff to all those brought
before it was most unusual 'rt light
of the circumstances and the
great pressures under which the
Court was working at the time.
-Lawrence S. Berlin
Chairman
Washtenaw County
American Civil Liberties
Union (Sept. 12)
Annoyed
To the Editor:
WAS ANNOYED that Thurs-
day's front page story "Stu-
dents jeer Humphrey at speech in
Flint" gave neither an accurate
indication of the size nor the tone
of the anti-war protest.
There were auto workers, busi-
ness me,-mothers, young children,
people of all shapes and' colors
and sizes as well as students pro-
testing in Flint as Humphrey ar-
rived to, speak. Quoting from
Thursday morning's Detroit Free
Press:
"Sparce crowds gathered along
the route of his (Humphrey's)
mnotorcade to the Dort Mall Shop-
ping Center. At the Mall, however,
several thousand anti-war pro-
testers, shoving and chanting
'Stop the War' and 'Dump the
Hump' nearly crushed the vice-
president.
"Secret Service men had to
battle a way open for him to the
speaker's stand in the covered
mnall.
"The cheers outnumbered the
boos" (we had agreed to short
anti-war slogans, booing was not
part of our plan) "but the hostile
turnout was the largest 'andnois-
iest the vice-president has en-
countered since his nomination in
Chicago two weeks ago."
THE TOTAL CROWD has been
variosulv estimated from a mini-
5000. From my experience there,
I would estimate that over half
of the other spectators (not in-
cluding the protesters) were not
enthusiastic about either Hum-
phrey or the war. For the first'
time in my experience of such
demonstrations in Michigan, the
ardent protesters outnumbered the
ardent supporters. It was En
exhilarating feeling.
After the, rally, in order to
avoid passing the protesters
again, Humphrey left by a back
door.
-David Gordon, Grad.
Propaganda
To the Editor:
I DO NOr understand what De-
borah\ Linderman was getting
at in her article on Leroi Jones
and his Black Arts Theatre (Daily,
Sept. 10). I do not know why she
stood and clapped or why' she
found value in the "purity" of
Jones' propaganda. erhaps "the
complications of real life" and
"the complexity of race relations
in this country today" are too
much with me; but since when is
there virtue in simplistic formula-
tions? I',
To applaud Leroi Jones for ig-
noring the subtleties of human ex-
perience - the difficult grey
shades; to admire his dramatiza-
tion of life as a great struggle be-
tween the forces of evil and -the
forces of goddness (see where
that's gotten us on the interna-
tional scene) ; to suggest that
'playfulness" and "in-jokism"
may have been mistaken for ra-
bidness and militancy: to do these
things is to submerge whatever
understanding and compassion we
are capable of. It is to deny all
reason and, to obliterate hope of
ever easing and eventually ending
our national agony.
MISS LINDERMAN began her
article by stating that Leroi
Jones "refuses the principle of
dialogue." Unfortunately, dialogue
-whether verbal or nonverbal-is
all we've got in the delicate busi-
ness of ordering our lives together.
To ignpre the humanity of "the
Man" and to condemn all "crack-
ers" and "most N/groes" to dam-
nation is .to sink'to the mentality
of a Hitler or a George Wallace.
No, unlike Miss Linderman I did
not glean any resonant truth from
the Black Arts Theatre-unless it
be that hatred and bigotry are
ugly in all guises. Certainly the
rage of the victimized and oppress-
ed is understandable and justified;
but I cannot applaud when it lash-
es out blindly and indiscriminately
in a reverse racism. No, I-did not
feel much like clapping Sunday
night' I did feel deeply distressed
and infinitely sad . . . for all of
us..
-Nancy Stein Sandweiss, Grad.
Se-t. 10
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Apt pupil
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