Sixty-Ninth Ycar EDrrD AND M-ANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE1 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG. * ANN ARBOR, MIGcH. *Phone ,o 2-3241 "Lyndon, Are You Sure That's All You're Trying To Launch?" "When Opinions Are Free Trutb Will Prevail" GILBERT & SULLIVAN: Patience A Virtue - Patience A Success PATIENCE is commonly a irtue, but last night. "Patience" was a virtual success. Although lacking some of the slickness and energy apparent in former years, this current. Gilbert and Sullivan production is delightfully enjoyable and delightfully full of fun. The play itself is perhaps W. S. Gilbert's finest satire. Spoofing the Victorian rage for affectation, the author here aims specifically at "aestheticism" and lets go with a witty and wordy, a distinctly pointed, an enchantingly nasty attack against the devotees of Oscar Wilde, et al. The central character is Reginald Bunthorn (a Fleshly Poet) dressed in a velvet suit and wrapped around a flower.he entrances Editorials printed in The Michian Daily express the indiiidual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. AY, NOVEMBER 21, 1958 NIGHT EDITOR: ROBERT JUNKER Parent vs. Student Attitudes Remain Residence Hall Problem -rA THE NEW RESIDENCE halls application form approved this week by the Board of Governors deserves some measure of praise. The new form, which was to incorporate the new integration policy of last year, is a couple of giant steps in the right direction. The identification photograph is eliminated, at least until after roommate assignments are made, and the pointed questions aimed at background - i.e., racial and religious, are thrashed out and thrown away. In addition, the reference to desirable room- mate qualities were debated, defended, de- nounced, and finally, discarded. All that re- mains is a general question requesting a de- scription of a possible roommate without the parenthetical adjectives that requested racial and religious information as though these were among the most important. HOWEVER, the new form leaves at least one area for improvement in, practice. Dean of Men Walter Rea said, during the course of discussion, that if a parent's wishes on room- mate choice differed from that of the appli- cant the parent's wishes would be dominant, insofar as his office is concerned, over that of the student, THIS IS UNFORTUNATE especially since, as Robert Ashton, Interhouse Council presi- dent, pointed out, the Board's policy provides that the individual may indicate his choice of roommate, by name or type, and that this choice would be respected. If the parent's choice takes precedence over that of the stu- dent this policy will not be implemented. Often there is a cultural and social lag be- tween younger and older generations. If the applicant wishes, or at least does not object, to a roommate of a differing creed or color then it is better to promote integration and understanding than to maintain the status quo of segregation and prejudice more character- istic of the senior generation. AS WAS SO ABLY pointed out by several board members, it would be better to have this problem solved at home, before the stu- dent reaches the University. This would also serve to save the administration from facing the "multitudes" of irate parents (John Hale, senior director of men's residence halls says there are about two such incidents each fall) who suddenly discover that their son's de- sire to room with someone "different" has been actuated. It might be better however, to have a few such conflicts as the price for promoting un- derstanding among those willing to accept people as individuals. It is consoling anyway to see that some progress is being made in one area of human relations on campus. -RALPH LANGER (Sh SP t; s '- Il . ; s , ยข - ;. , ,- Pyz L< f P f AW <.r5i9' T1E WN4IM flwt TJ 'POcSr cs the ladies who see him, but is him- self in love with Patience, a simple Dairy Maid. Admitting that his osing is but a yearning for at- tention, he becomes distraught when Archibald G'rosvenor. a poet even more affected than he, steals Patience from him Bunthorne plans with Lady Jane, his sole remaining admirer, to prove Grosvenor's aesthetic "imperfection." To his great dis- may, however, the plot backfires. Aestheticism goes out. common- ness comes in, and Reginald. the sole remaining member of the Vic- torian beat generation, is left with only a tulip for a bride. * * * * DRAMATICALLY, the show is a cut below former productions. Ann Arbor audiences have been spoiled by the uncommon collec- tion of talent displayed by G&S in recent years. Although such people as David Newman, Lynn Tannel, and Marian Mercer are missed in "Patience," it is only fair to say that the best possible use was made of the talent avail- able and that that best is still far better than anything anyone else has managed to produce around here. Two new directors have, of course, produced changes in the ;how, some good and some bad. Che choruses sounded better than they have for several years, but they looked worse. The staging was often sloppy and imprecise. The stage at Lydia Mendelssohn is really too small to hold the number of people involved, yet in the past, careful arrangement of the choruses prevented chaos. This year, despite a smaller group of people, crowd scenes often turned into mob scenes: GERSHOM Morningstar, as Bunthorne, is the last of the ld stars. His voice and his acting, his timing and his gymnastics were incoedibly appropriate to his part, Among the ladies, only Althea Romaine, as the Lady Jane, was able to keep up with him. Her voice and manner are happily reminiscent of Miss Mercer's, al- though she is not quite so success- ful a comedienne. Vocally, she far outshone the other females. Patience and Archibald Gros- venor (Carla Cargill and John Vavroch) acted their parts well but were musically a bit unsatis- factory. Miss Cargill, especially, lacked control of her voice in the upper ranges but brought a proper pertness to her ingenue role. -Jean Willoughby AT THE CAMPUS: Two Great Documents OUT OF THE explosive rebirth of movie-making that was trig- gered by the downfall of Fascism in Italy. came the most telling in- fluence on modern cinema: neo- realism. In this bursting release of artistic talent the first person to receive both critical and com- mercial acclamation was Roberto Rossellini, whose first two films established neorealism as a new, dynamic method of screen presen- tation. These films. "Open City" and "Paisan," are not only biting- ly potent entertainment but of great historic import both as his- torical pictures of Italy late in the war, and as the first representa- tives of the aforementioned class of motion picture. "Open City," the first of the two 11945), will probably be re- membered as the best. It is a di- section of the degrading lives Ital- ians were forced to lead during the Nazi occupation. The sprawl- ing cross section of the wartime existence of such ordinary Italians as a Parish priest. a young boy, an underground leader, and a bride- to-be formed an extremely vitup- erative view of the Gestapo. All this Rossellini shows with a deeply passionate understanding of human beings, through his ever-probing sensitive camera ob- servation. * * * PAISAN is a six-part story., de- picting the northward drive of the American forces. In Sicily, Naples, Rome, Florence, a monastery, and the Po valley, Americans and Ital- ians worked side by side, became better acquainted, but still never understood each other. Although it faces the facts of life, Rossellini's story of the two cultures tumultuously locked in a common struggle but not per- ceptive enough to see their com- mon humanity is often too pat; it relies 'too much on circumstance and coincidence to make its point. ,Despite these faults, Rossellini has pictured both poignant hu. mor, and stark tragedy through his neorealistic eye. These two films remain among the most hu- man documents ever filmed, --Allan D. Schreiber SGC IN REVIEW: Council Challenged To Consider A ims Department Draws Fire CRITICISM when constructive, is of much value. In many instances, however, through lack of information or personal reasons, it can become very detrimental. The actions of the neighbors of the late Dr. Aaron Edwards in criticizing the Fire Department in the last City Council meeting is an example of the latter. They claimed the fire department, in the blaze that destroyed his house, killing him and two daughters, did nothing to save Dr. Ed- wards' family and that others escaped only through the actions of his neighbors. This type of criticism in no way can serve as an aid in correcting any problems in the fire- department. As it is in many cases, there was a lack of information on the part of the neighbors. For some reason they seem to feel that as soon as he fire department arrived they should have at once dashed into the burning building. As the Ann Arbor fire chief pointed out before anything else can be done, precautions must be first taken to prevent further loss of life. Even with all the cautions that were taken, seven were overcome in attempting to fight the fire. THE MAIN difficulty here as was mentioned by members of the Council is the lack of money for the fire department. More money is needed to increase the number of men who are now in the department. The general public only gets aroused at times such as the recent fire when people they know are killed. But citizens of Ann Arbor and oth- er cities refuse to pay the taxes necessary for more adequate protection, It is now that plans should be made to pro- vide for a larger fire department. This is''the foremost problem faced by most cities in the United States; citizens' unwillingness to pay for the protection they deem necessary. -KENNETH McELDOWNEY By THOMAS TURNER Daily Stal Writer, A MOTION to dissolve Student Government Council was in- troduced Wednesday night, cli- maxing a meeting which showed only too well why the proposal might- have merit. Daily Editor Richard Taub, author of the motion, explained afterward he was only trying to get Council members to discuss what they thought they were there for, and what they thought was the value of student govern- ment. The reaction was disap- pointing. * * * AT LEAST two Council mem- bers chose to attack Taub's mo- tion on a personal basis, asking why he did not confine his "grandstanding" to The Daily's editorial columns. The answer should have been obvious, that after trying for some months to provoke thought by the written word he was getting desperate. The attempt missed by miles, of course, which was partially Taub's fault - his approach a little too shocking. Another common interpretation of Taub's motion was in terms of defeatism, that he just wanted to pick up his marbles and go home following the Board in Review's reversal of the Councils decision on Sigma Kappa. A member who had openly es- poused reversal of the decision by the Board in Review went so far as to try to "move objection to consideration" of the motion, in what is surely a fine example of defensive thinking. Fortunately for the intent of Taub's motion, this member was not too familiar with parliamen- tary procedure, not realizing that consideration of the motion had begun when debate began. . * SEVERAL others, including the member who seconded the mo- tion, favored it but still thought of it only in terms of the Board in Review action a week ago. But Roger Seasonwein put his finger on the issue, to d certain extent at least, when he said he would object to discussion unless it in- volved student government as a TODAY AND TOMORROW: The Passing Generation By WALTER LIPPMANN whole, not just Student Govern- ment Council. This "debate" would have all seemed rather funny, had it not been so serious. It is hard to im- agine more people who didn't un- derstand one another in such im- mediate juxtaposition. But several times in the course of that meeting alone they had been presented with the problem of what student government should be. In opposing Maynard Goldman's re-election as Presi- dent, Scott Chrysler had said that SGC had come to "a fork in the road" after the Board in Review action, and that this fork in fact represented SGC's original orien- tation. The Council should cooperate with the administration and fac- ulty, Chrysler said. Had this been done consistently, he maintained, SGC would have the respect of the student body and the confi- lence of the administration. Goldman, on the other hand, stressed the role of SGC as a "gov- ,ernment by students for stu- dents." It is possible to cooperate a body right out of existence," he declared. SGC members voted by secret ballot, and elected Goldman over Chrysler. DID THE members then think that was enough philosophy for a while, that it was time to stop messing around and to get back to the important matters at hand, like exam files and the Student Book Exchange? Perhaps they did, for the newly elected president told SGC that he could not imagine how any one could chair a meeting at which the value and aims of stu- dent government were being dis- cussed, and that he could not see how the conclusions of such a meeting would have significance "when the cards were on the table." -Allan D. Schreiber UHER E IS NOT much doubt that the election returns announced the passing of one oltical generation and the arrival of another. For the most part the men who rose to oltical power as the result of the second orld War have been defeated or they are tiring. The elections played havoc with the epublicans who were elected in 1946, in the rst popular reaction to the miseries and the ustrations of the war. The class of 1946, nowland, Bricker, Jenner, Malone, the class hich included the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy Wisconsin, has been pushed aside. Among e Democrats a similar thing happened in the feat of Gov. Harriman in New York and of ov. McFarland in Arizona. By and large the w men elected have made their way up since e war and they are only now ready for the ading places, POLITICS IS a very inexact science. But there is a rule which usually works. It is at about fifteen years after the end of a big ar, there occurs a big politicalIchange marked ' the passing of the war generation and the Lvent of the generation which had no re- onsibility for, even though it participated in, e war. Thus fifteen years after the first World War, 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany and >osevelt in this country. Two years earlier pan inaugurated in Manchuria that series of ilitary aggressions which marked the end of e settlement of the first World War and led to the second World War. The fifteen-year le can be seen at work after our Civil War id after the Napoleonic wars at the beginning the 19th century. There is no mystery or magic about the fif- e-year rule. It is founded in the fact that out fifteen years after a war ends the leaders S0- and commanders are no longer in their prime while the young men who did the fighting, when they were in their 20's, have matured. IT IS NOW thirteen years since the end of the second World War, and in the Presiden- tial election of 1960 it will be fifteen years. It is plain that we are living in the transition between the political generations. It is plain also that with this change of men there is a change in the political climate. All the analyses I have seen agree that as between the two parties there was no outstand- ing and clear-cut national issue. But in both parties the winners were men who gave the effect of looking forward into the future, of looking beyond the era of the World War and its aftermath, and of being alert to the needs of the day which have been put off and ne- glected. I suspect that this is true even of Sen. Goldwater of Arizona, who is not a conserva- tive but a reactionary. He may well be a vig- orous portent of some of the things to come. AGAINST this background - that of a gen- eration which is passing and of a political climate that is changing - one must, I think, read what the President said at his press con- ference on the Wednesday morning after elec- tion day. He made no attempt to hide the fact that he was a sad and bewildered man. "The United States did give me, after all, a majority of I think well over 9,000,000 votes, Now here, only two years later, there is a complete re- versal: and yet I do not see where there is anything that these people consciously want the Administration to do differently." The answer, as it appeared in the election returns, is that a decisive majority of the people want the government, not merely ad- ministration, but all government, national and state, to come alive and to be alert and to show vigor. and not to keep mouthing the same old slogans, and not to dawdle along in the same old ruts. When they are told by the Pres- ident himself on the day after election that the paramount task before the country is to spend less money, rather than to master its great problems, the people know that the Pres- ident has lost touch with them, and with their problems, and is living in the past. VICE-PRESIDENT NIXON is in a difficult iosition In hef To The Editor AT HILL AUDITORIUM: Seeger Terry Exciting THE PETE SEEGER-SONNY TERRY concert at Hill Auditorium last night 'was certainly one of the most exciting musical events of the season. The grand young man of contemporary folksingers was in top form last night, picking five-string banjo, the twelve-string guitar, and blowing beautiful selections on the chalil-an Israeli flute-like instru- ment., It is his versatility that has made Seeger one of the leading exponents of American folk music. Spirit . * . To the Editor: THERE has been much-talk and speculation of late about Michigan spirit and the alleged current lack of it among the stu- dent body. Any doubts or misgivings that the writer may have entertained on that score were dispelled by Si Coleman's column, "Inside Chat- ter," in The Daily, November 12th, and "An Editorial" over the sig- nature, the Senior Editors, in the issue of November 14th. Bennie Oosterbaan does indeed embody all that is fine in the Michigan tradition and all of us, students and alumni alike, owe him a debt of heartfelt gratitude. -Clark M. Woolley, '30 Contempt . . To the Editor: THE DAILY editorial, printed beneath that "brilliant" mis- nomer "The Right To Work," was a masterful example of contempt. Indeed, Mr. Winer displayed his contempt for the public in general, which, he said, could be "manipu- lated" by an interest group. He showed even less respect for Labor. His statement, "They (labor offi- cials) are a raid only of a slightly depressed pocketbook shows a sur-. prising degree of ignorance in the objectives of the Labor Union movement. Mr. Winer followed by saying that "the rank and file were in- timidated to vote against the issue or else be reduced to a state of slave bondage by the oppressive management." Hogwash! As a close follower of the Right to Work issue in the 1958 elections, at no in showing the weaknesses of La- bor's side, Mr. Winer would have attempted to explain why the RTW bill is an easy way out for that minority of workers who would like to accept union-spon- sored advantages without footing a fair share of the bill. It seems to me that in this instance the editorial staff of the Daily has used the freedom of the press as a means of slandering whole segments of the American population. -Kenneth Montlack, '62 GENERATION: An Airy Autumn Issue FROM TIME TO TIME we may grieve that the grand vistas of the San Francisco Renaissance seem to be having no effect upon sullen, medieval Ann Arbor. Still, we do have the Autumn Issue of Generation before us, installed suddenly like a picture window in a-I was going to say "in a monas- tery" when I decided to take the whole metaphor back and simply say that the issue is on the whole remarkably airy and well-lighted. The two stories "I Understand You, Dino" by Sarah Drasin and "A Home in the Basement" by Louis Megyesi both worry about middle-aged Americans trapped in lives of quiet desperation; that is to say, trapped in jobs, circum- stances. Both stories make their points. Of the two, Megyesi's is the more carefully composed, yet it sometimes lags, while Miss Drasin's, despite an incredibly ir- relevant beginning and a very loco arrangement, is assuredly never The poem certainly looks like necrophilia but is really as inno- cent as a three-leaf clover-and, at heart, as beautiful. Between these extremes are Burton Beerman's sturdy sonnet "To a Young Man," Nelson Howe's nicely relaxed "Korea" and Robert Warner's tangled but no doubt all-knowing "Agnostic." In particular I liked Jay Meek's controlled "Something in the Rain," reminiscent, to be sure, of Cummings on a crying jag but not as silly as the master dares to be. And I should like to con- gratulate Bernard Keith for the health, the balanced clarity of his sonnet "Mystic." Regretably, this issue of Genera- tion offers no serious essay, but David Kessel's "Hector Berlioz in America" presents us with a pleas- ant spoof which is almost as funny as some serious musicology I've read. Last and (I think) least is Sadashiv D. Rawoot's play labeled, with cruel understatement, a fan- But Seeger does not limit himse the motherland all the way aroun hears the plaintive cry of the oppre the joyous yell of the jubilant. When the huge audience joined him in song, it was with an en- thusiasm that is rewarding to hear. Sonny Terry is a first-rate folk musician. His rhythms and his melodies remind us of the many faces of a music. Always present in his harmonica-playing is the blues, but his skillful manipulation of this element shows us that all blues are not sad. There are happy blues, and angry blues, and even funny blues. Terry's renditions of "My Baby Done Changed the Lock on the Door," and "The Fox Chase" were high points of the evening. * * * A DELIGHTFUL surprise was the appearance of Sonny Terry's nephew, J. C. Burris, a very talent- ed musician in his own right. Bur- ris' contributions on harmonica, bones, and the old "hambone" (a rhythmic device effected by slap- ping the hands against the thighs) added enjoyment to the concert. "One thing about playing rhythm," said Burris. "You're al- ways in tune." Seeger claims that he is "still learning to play the twelve-string guitar," and, indeed, his playing improves with every performance. One of the selections he has been playing for the past year is a Welsh folksong, "Bells of Remney" which, after the first two choruses, soars through the air like a mass of chimes on a winter afternoon. His version of the Israeli shepherd song, "Mayafim Chaelot" (How Beautiful the Nights) was also elf to Americana; he takes us from d the world, and in his music one essed, the sweet laughter of lovers. AT THE MICHIGAN: Fantasyl FOR SOME reason which has yet to be satisfactorily explained, the writers for "From the Earth to the Moon" have just about completely disarranged the Jules Verne story, so that a somewhat ridiculous residue is left. Unlike Verne's other story, "Around the World in 80 Days," this one does not easily lend it- self to the cinema. Viewers who saw "Around the World" may remember a brief ex- cerpt shown from an early film- ing of "From the Earth to the Moon." Somehow, this 50-year-old silent film, full of frenzied gestur- ing of scientists and moon-crea- tures managed to capture a great deal of Verne's fantasy. The modern version just about fails completely and is not even a good adventure story. Needless to say, it completely departs from the original fantasy; this is not in itself necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it is not a particu- larly good thing either. IN AN 1860 ROCKET, heading for the moon, there sit four people: Joseph Cotton, marvelous inven- tor who dreamed up atomic energy one afternoon; Debra Paget. an I Editorial Staff RICHARD TAUB, Editor LEL KRAFT Jo ,rlal Director DHN WEICHER City Editor DAVID TARR Associate Editor Business Slaff