"What's 'law and order' got that we haven't got...?" Seventy-eight years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan under authority of Board in Control of Student Publications 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily exp ress the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1968; NIGHT EDITOR: ROB BEATTIE UAC s crowning achievement: The fluff y white queen . ,- J , 1 dA'.k7 ( ' l f / .. Y. , , ' ;.:, i j , i t ', i '4 ' s t , ' ' f , sl ' Up' THAT STARRY-EYED SYMBOL of col- lege past, the Homecoming Queen, clearly-is irrelevant. Yet the smiling float- rider has become a political problem. Is the Homecoming Queen the beauty contest winner, the prettiest girl on; the campus? Or is she the "typical Mich- igan coed," Villager skirted and circle pinned, efficient, active, even if her pho-, tograph isn't going to stop the hearts of the boys in the trenches? In the first case, what subjective stan- dards are used to choose the Queen? The convenient criterion has been the white middle class image of the girl, more-or- less next door. George's nest eg GOV. GEORGE ROMNEY has found an extra $30 million above the expected surplus in the state coffers. The new fig- ure did not come as a surprise to Univer- sity officials, who would like to get their hands on some of the money to mitigate the tightness of their own budgets. But the chances are very slim that any of the $55.9 million surplus will find its way to higher education. It has been sug- gested that Romney will sit on the addi- tional funds that he found because he has been counting on the money to prevent a tax hike next year. A tax hike next year would be very un- popular with the people of Michigan, as Romney knows only too well. With this little fiscal nest egg in his treasure chest, Roinney now probably feels a little more secure. If he does not have to ask for a tax increase next year, Romney will, insure his position in the voters' minds as the financial wizard who led Michigan out of the fiscal quagmire created by preceding Democratic admin- istrations. This may be good business, but it is too bad that state programs, especially, higher education, are forced to operate near austerity while Governor Romney walks around with money in his pocket. -STEVE ANZALONE Second class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Michigan, 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Michigan.. 48104. Fall and winter subscription rate $5.00 per term by carrier ($5.50 by mail); $9.00 for regular academic school year ($10 by mail). Daily except Monday during regular academic school year. UNLESS THE GIRL next door is black. Unless she has chosen to wear severe, classic Afro hair. But she is, as her boy friend and the Black Student Union tell you, beautiful. Because her skin is not peaches and cream but midnight and tawny. Because her eyes are not blue but dark brown. Because her nose is not slim and long and straight but broad and softly shaped. Jane and R u b y cannot be compared fairly. THE SECOND OPTION is to choose a supposedly more objective standard and select the typical University coed. And that's exactly what you'll end up with,, black or white. An ordinary, un- thinking, automated acceptable represen- tative of the traditional female. The typ- ical Michigan coed is, typically, not worth the trouble. The irrelevant symbol of decorative feminine uselessness t h a t accompanied the hegemony of the superior man should be left to die with the theoryof male su- premacy. Diehard alumni speak proudly of our only real long-standing tradition, "The Men of Michigan," but male supremacy here, as in the rest of the world, has been lost in the drive for equality of the sexes. NoW that Homecoming- no longer signi- fies the return of hordes of misty-eyed alumni to the old Alma Mater but is in- stead an excuse for UniveIsity Activities Center fund-raising, the introduction of the Queen contest two years ago wasn't even an attempt to revive an old tradi- tion, but rather a try at creating a new, one - about 50 years too late. VEN THEN, a Homecoming Queen might not have gone over too well. The men-only sanctum of the Union pool hall, the prohibition against women on the football field, and the all-male cheer- leading squad have all fallen quietly to the forces of change only in the last fpw years. No one seems to mourn them particu- larly. These older, more venerable and equally irrelevant traditions have slipped quietly into the past, accompanying the de ise of the now outdated ,ideas that sustained them. Miss Fluffy White American Girl should be allowed the same graceful retirement. Neither the traditional standard of beau- ty nor the traditional feminine role means anything now. --MARCIA ABRAMSON £8tt f rom 1 -- !A MHRI REORIENT ATION Stiflingthe imagination? By FRANK BROWNING THE NEW DIRECTOR of the Mental Health Research Institute is not turning the social scientists out to pasture when he says he plans a shift in the MHRI program toward greater "clinical emphasis." Nor is new director Dr. Gardner Quarton sug- gesting that the only projects which MHRI will undertake must be directly keyed to the extension and improvement of psychiatric therapy. The changes which Quarton suggest are more subtle, aiming at the basic assumptions upon which MHRI's research has been founded since its in- ception in 1955. The essential assumption behind MHRI research has been that solving the problems of mental ill- ness requires an extremely imaginative study of the operation of the human mind-both from the van- tage point of its biological/neurological construc- tioi and from the social context in which human actions occur. THROUGHOUT its 13-year history, MHRI has stood practically alone in this country in the development of those research goals and has be- come the most widely-ranging behavorial science research group in existence. The import of the Quarton shift in emphasis is not that the interdisciplinary nature of the In- stitute's work will be cut off, but that by attach- ing specific real world constraints-such as the improvement of psychiatric therapy-to the MHRI program, he would introduce needless restraints on the generation of new knowledge about mental illness. Using the criterion of clinical effectiveness, for example, it might be very difficult to justify one of MHRI's most exciting projects: Prof. David, Singer's attempt to collect and categorize the cor- relates for all international wars between 1815 and 1915. WHILE THIS STUDY is not likely to result in information directly relevant to advancing in- dividual psychiatric care, the result could con- tribute a great deal to understanding the social conditions which give rise to irrational actions on a mass scale. Thus the problem which MHRI faces is the, same one which has alway's been tossed back and forth between the advocates of basic and applied reseach: How much shall we be influenced by the demand to meet contemporary, needs?.. Obviously the, inequities which exist in pro- viding treatment for psychiatric disorders-a pro- fession based on personal referals and largely lim- ited to the suburban wealthy-plus the enormous amount of clinical research still left to be done, demand attention. ,YET, IT IS HIST RICAL 4Y true that when the pressure of contemporary needs forces the scientific generation of knowledge into the funnel of ap- plication, then the quality of that science has been seriously impaired. It is then that we are left with political science designed to show Americans how to modernize Asian peasantry into the Super- market of Life. For an organization like MHRI such a blatant abr6gation of scientific investigation is admit- . tedly unlikely. But the effect may. very well leave uninvestigated more remote areas of study which, while showing no clear correlation with mental illness at the present time, might later contribute a great deal to understanding how man comes to accept and justify irrational action. Curtailing the free run of the imagination in men's progress toward valuable new knowledge might seriously impair one of the University's more vital and ex- citing research institutions. EDITOR'S NOTE: Bruce Levine, 71, leads a double life as administrative ice President of Student Government Council and an active member of voice-SM. By BRUCE LEVINE Daily Guest Writer CALLED home last week to let my parents know just what the hell had happened in Ann Arbor. I told them about the welfare mothers, their demands, the picketing, the sit-ins, tle mass arrests, the arraign- ments, the possibility of jail terms. And having digested the what, my parents asked why. Why did I get arrested over a welfare hassle? It's a fair question. I never talked about welfare at home. Never really thought much about it either, My folks knew I was a war-protester, an SDS-member, a self- proclaimed radical. But welfare rights? Well, the point is (as a Daily Editor told his father), we did get ar- rested over Vietnam and black liberation. The particular welfare issue was important, but (like the Vietnam protest) principally as an im- mediate focus of a much broader issue - the fight of people to con- trol their lives, their institutions, their country, ultimately their world. It is of course possible to consider the war issue, the poverty and race issues, as unconnected protests organized around wildly different de- mands. The war: atrocities. The ghetto: police brutality. The factory: wages. Yes, these issues can be viewed in those terms. And doing so re- veals absolutely nothing about the real gut content of each. THE WAR PROTEST isn't a revulsion against bloodshed. If it were, we'd all consider a Vietnamese surrender as equally acceptable a solution as an American withdrawal . . . Just so long as tranquility followed. But bloodshed is not the issue. The Vietnamese know it; we know it. At stake is the right of the Vietnamese people to control their own lives and country. A Vietnamese capitulation will not serve that cause. If American blacks were suddenly to return to lives of "quiet des- peration," a comparative peace at least might return to the ghetto. And black control of black communities would be a dead cause. If American workers would only stop wildcatting for control of work- ing conditions, American industry would function much nore "smooth- ly" and "efficiently." And the fight for industrial democracy wo id shrivel and die. THE QUESTION QF CONTROL unites all these struggles - con- trol from below vrsus control from above. It is this issue which makes the welfare fight more than a scramble for scraps. We do not march and chant just to persuade some welfare bureaucrat to pretty-please modify his policy dictates. We assert the right of the people manipulated by the bureaucrat to -- instead - dictate to that bureaucrat what policy will be. We chal- lange regulation from above (the power of the county Board of Sup- ervisors to determine welfare procedures), and counterpose to it control from below, from the ranks of the welfare constituency. In this sense, then, a stand (or a sit) for the mothers is one made for the Vietnamese, blacks, and strikers as well. When and where - at which particular focus of this broader struggle - we happen to be ar- rested is relatively unimportant. WHEREVER WE ARE BUSTED, it will be for challenging the right of the entrenched. to control the lives of the rest. (And those who scorn involvement in so "obviously reformist" a struggle as one for welfare rights ought to consider the revolutionary nature of the broad- er struggle outlined here. If ever control from below replaces control from above, the revolution is made.) This, I think, will explain to my father why his radical son got in- volved in welfare. The next ques- tion is why an institution 1i k e Student Government C o u n c 1 . 'should follow suit. After all, isn't SGC supposed to be a non- par- tisan service organization for stu- dents? What role - what right - has it in committing itself on off campus matters? The answer, it seems to me, must run alopg lines . " similar to the one I gave my par--. ents. The main reason so many indi- vidual students g o t involved in .. this issue is their recognition of the unity of all demands for con- trol from below. When SOC tem- porarily set a s i d e $1500 of its The issue: Control funds for bail loans for students and community people arrested that weekend, it announced its ree- ognition of that unity of purpose. WE ARE NO STRANGERS to manipulation by bureaucrats. Last 'year we organized on campus for the right to determine who as stu- dents could be in which dorm when, who would be punished .for violat- ing which rule =- in short, we organized around the right of students to regulate student conduct. We were informed by our administration that control of ouch things was invested, not in mere'students but in the administration itself. I will not take space here to rehash all the recent examples of Regental and administrative attempts to destroy the possibility of con- trol from below on this campus. One such example should suffice. When SGC demanded student control over the Vice President of Student Affairs, the Regents and President Fleming (in their reject- ion) shoved our noses in the universal nature of our strivings. "If we grant this right to students," they smirked and snickered, 'we will next be getting the same kind of demand from our employees!" AND THEY WERE RIGHT. If any ruling body ever once surrend- ers the principle of top-down control, it therein whets the appetite of all the groups over which it holds sway. Recognize the logic? Dominoes. There is, therefore, no such thing as a purely student movement for student rights. Such an organism is parochial, isolated, stillborn. A successful movement for student power will - must - be followed by similar struggles by other repressed constituencies, including Univer- sity employees. And against this, of course, the administration and Re- gents are fighting tooth and claw. At this point, I think, some remarks could profitably be addressed to the Daily columnist who sadly but firmly announced some time ago that the student left was."impotent." And that there would therefore , be no revolution. Period. In one sense he was correct. As long as the fight for 'change re- mains exclusively a student fight, it will indeed remain impotent. The educational, corpqrate, and governmental bureaucracies are far too en- trenched and interlocked to fall before the shouts of enraged scholar- Joshuas. VISIONARIES WHO PERSIST in such fantasies will continue to be disappointed. And having equated their fantasies with all possibilities of basic change, they will see in the impotence of the first the doom of the second, -However, abandoning childhood dreams can be just as easily en- lightening step as an embittering one. Student leaders in France had no illusions that their street fights with the gendarmerie alone would bring on the revolution they sought. But once aligned with other people on the move - especially with working people turning on their bureaucracies - they shook France to its foundations. How does all this theorizing relate to what is taking place in Ann Arbor? Are we on the threshold of a revolutionary "worker-student al- -4 Letters: Lmited options of Recorder 's Court To .the Editor: STEVE WILDSTROM'S scathing, editorial on Detroit's Record- er's Court (Sept. 24) was an. amazing mixture of Inaccurate re- porting, hasty and, misleading generalizations, and false analysis. I doubt very much if he has spent much time in actual obser- vation of the court's operations. Nor, apparently, has he talked in depth to attorneys (such as this writer) who practice there. For one thing, there is a De- fender's Office now operating in Detroit, sponsored by the Detroit Bar Association and financed by public and private foundation funds. It has a full-time staff of very experienced attorneys and a few young ones. It also has a staff. of very competent investigators1 to balance the prosecutor's office. which, of course, has the Detroit Police Dept. doing most of its in- vestigative work. MANY CASES of indigent de- fendants, formerly assigned to private counsel, are now given to this new office. Their investiga- tive staff also is available to pri- vate counsel when they take as- signed cases. (Also, a little re- search by Mr. Wildstrom would have revealed the fact that some of the the most brilliant defense work in the court has been per-, formed by private assigned coun- sel.) More important, Recorder's Court is a societal "dead end." The harsh brutality of a confus- ed and bitter society comes to a full rest there. And the judges, no matter how compassionate they may be, have a very limited set of options available to them. At times, one wishes that the of a type of infantile, authoritar- ian type thinking which does not befit The Daily. Judge Olsen, for one, has, des- pite his former reputation as pro- secutor, not been noted for being' harsh and vindictive onsthe bench. And, the same for Judge Poin- dexter, despite his former role as leader of "Homeowners" groups, in Detroit. His constitutional in- terpretations are somewhat un- predictable, but they have oni oc- casion (as in the case of Gov. Romney's curfew proclamation during the 1967 Detroit riot) in- uredto the benefit of the de- fendant. Judge Colombo has been unfair- ly condemned, both earlier in The Daily and in the national press, as a former counsel for the De- troit Police Officers Association (DPOA). Are we now to deny cops (whatever we may think of them) the right to counsel? In the area of Michigan's over- strict narcotic laws, the Detroit Recorder's Court has been note- worthy for its relatively reason- able (compared to most state courts, including Washtenaw County) approach, in light of the slight danger, if any, that most of these "offenders" present to our society. QUITE REALISTICALLY, most defendants do not just stumble "accidentally" into Recorder's Court, as a result of police vindic- tiveness and bigotry. (The pre- judiced behavior of some mem- bers of the Detroit Police Dept. is basically another matter and cannot be proven, upon- careful analysis - much to the dismay of Mr. Wildstrom - to have much in,-, +nnL~f inn wIith, thennprn, - 1 xestigation; but not on the basis of inaccurate, emotional, and "self-fulfilling" accusations. -Sol Plafkin, Sept. 23 The model school To the Editor: CONSTRUCTING AN ANSWER to Jill' Crabtree's editorial on The Children's Community (Sept. 20) is a difficult thing to do. It is difficult, not so much be- cause of the particular stories she tells of the specific points she makes, but primarily because she makes totally /falseassumptions about education, kids and us. Rather than answering her point, I would like to deal openly with a few of the assumptions held by those of us who are com- mitted to the school. This should begin to illuminate some of our critical differences. THE EDUCATION SYSTEM is inextricably wed to the social, economic and political system ; and radical, humane changes in the educational system will only come about when the social sys- tem is significantly altered. The educational system has been set up to serve, and does successfully serve, the needs of this broader system. Even the most humane and lib- eral school systems, through methods such as tracking, (ex- plicit or subtle), grades, and nar- row standards of achievement, participate in channeling people into predetermined positions. It has been shown that family social class has more to do with income after school than level of education. The school system has the mechanisms to prepare-or, teachers. They are the result of institutionalized goals and pur- poses, which make excellent teachers ineffective and helpless. Because the'school system can- not significantly, change without broader changes, and because re- forms in the schools do not alter its fundamental nature and func- tion, The Children's Community has chosenaidifferent strategy. that of a model, A model school has at least two purposes. One purpose is to pro- vide an ongoing, working model, of many ideas which are given lip-service or partial implementa- tion in other schools. Another purpose is to try to make real such' ideas as discovery learning. two way integration, experimen- tial learning, parent involvement, non-authoritarian relationships between adults and children. TO CALL THIS THEN a "lab- oratory" makes false assumptions that the public schools are work- ing with tested, proven, trust- worthy methods and ideas and ig- nores critics who have said that the school systematically destroys kids intellectually and psycholo- gically. It is important that people deal with these ideas, struggle with their implementation, and not ignore their problems.. There are no "correct answers," no blueprints for how to teach or how to work. There is only the professional pretense of know- ledge, The best of good educators and writers are recognizing t h a t previous assumptions about learn- ing about language, about child development, are simply wrong. Racism is an institutional prob- lem and must be attacked institu- tionally. The public schools, like other institutions, are systema- This problem can only be dealt with by the creation of a whole new environment. The Children's Community creates an environ- ment which is accepting, which; makes no single standard of suc-. cess applicable to all, which re- quires no one set of behaviors or skills' in order to gain respect. Clearly there are differences, and those differences create con-, flict. Kids should have the chance to relate to each other honestly, to share experiences and inter- ests in a context which does not judge one better thal the other. THERE IS NO NEED for "ex- pert supervision" in the sense that an adult should be present to con- stantly judge, manipulate and control an interaction which no adult who has grown up in this culture even understands. Kids of course should be continually supported, helped, talked with, in their interactions with other peo- ple. The Children's. Community is not difficult to criticize. But the criticisms to be helpful must take place within the context of these few basic assumptions about the purpose of the schools. -DIANA OUGHTON Staff, The Children's Community Sept. 26 Republicans To the Editor: A NUMBER of people on the campus of the University of Michigan have complained to me about the bias you have in favor of the Democrats. Republican edit- orials never appear, . Republican publicity releases do not get in to print, and you sgem to regard all' Republicans as political troglo- 11