4e ir4tigzn BadI
Seventy-eight years of editorial f reedom
Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan
just a song uin the wind
To make sorghum syrup or build int(
1.
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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.
THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 1969
NIGHT EDITOR: MARTIN A. HIRSCHMAN
r
FBA policies:
Apathy And negligence
THE BOARD OF THE Fraternity Buyers
Association appears to be drifting into
the same apathy that affects its mem-
bers.
The board has been continually negli-
gent. Recently, it was presented with ser-
ious indications of malpractice in the Rio-
pelle meat company but it refused to no-
tify its members of the alleged malprac-
tice. But worse, it refused 'to investigate
the problems reported in m e a t quality
and pricing byRiopelle.
In January, C a r 1 Stevens, steward of
Sigma Nu, complained that the Riopelle
Packing Co. was shortweigl ing the fra-
ternity in its meat deliveries. Unfortu-
nately, the board felt there were enough
positive reactions to balance the nega-
tive reports, and did not investigate fur-
ther.
This forced Stevens to act independent-
ly, calling in county and state officials to
witness a meat delivery that was from
one to 84 ounces short of the listed
weights.!
THE EVIDENCE of short-weighting has
since been overwhelming and the
practice of short-weighting seems wide-
spread, but FBA manager Dave Moeller
was "not overly concerned" and the ma-
jority of board members agreed with him.
Though Stevens informed FBA imme-
diately of the shortweighting, Corwith
Hanson, chairmani of the board, said
members were not{ notified of the situa-
tion because some board members were
"afraid of a libel suit."
Only after an article appeared in The
Daily March 2 did Hanson send out an
informational letter to FBA members. It
is doubtful he would have assumed this
responsibility if The paily article had not
appeared.
But t h e FBA's negligence transcends
this individual problem. T h e board re-
fuses to revieW companies' prices and
quality throughout the year. As a result,
Sigma Nu, for example, believes it may
be losing $300 per year on meat deliver-
ies.
FBA's responsibility e x t e n d s beyond
summer authorization and winter bil-
ling. FBA has the ability to correlate facts
on prices and quality that individual
members do not have..
One possible rectification of the situa-
tion could be through the reviewing of
the 1967 report on FBA by Myron Hart-
wig, t h e n FBA chairman, in which he
strongly advocates the creation of a qual-
ity control board. The board -would be a
watchdog committee whose functions
would include "updating stewards with
changes in prices, new products, or other,
information, discussing buying habits
with cooks and stewards, and periodical-
ly'checking the quality of food being sold
individual houses by any supplier."
A lot of responsibility for FBA inaction
rests with stewards. Stewards have un-
fortunately refused, to take the initiative
in understanding good f o o d quality or
fair prices. Peter Keith, FBA chairman
for t h e International Council, has ar-
ranged an educational meeting for stew-
ards, which is a progressive step in eras-
ing steward apathy.
IT IS AN INTERESTING sidelight to-note
that almost $3,000 in rebates to FBA
members has been sitting in the FBA of-
fice for more than two months. Stewards
were notified of the money awaiting their
houses; why haven't they picked it up?
But for that matter, what is to stop the
FBA office from sending the checks
through the mail?
FBA DOES PROVIDE low prices and
good quality on staple items - can-
ned goods, fruit, vegetables, frozen foods
- giving its members savings of 13 to 15
per cent a year on bills.
But FBA should not rest on those lau-
rels. Thirty-five per cent of all house bills
are meat bills. FBA must assume its re-
sponsibility for quality control if it ex-
pects to continue its function of increas-
ing members' buying power.
-LANIE LIPPINCOTT
Sparks, Ga.
-MANY OF US who are sensitive to the
attrocities in our society find ourselves
on the verge of predicting this nation won't
last much longer.
With the blacks, the poor, the unem-
ployed, the diseased and disenfranchised, a
heartening prognosis would be ridiculous.
But terms such as "blacks" or "poor"
are textbook words. And unfortunately,
when we consider them we think in terms
of Myrdal's numbers, statistics and graphs.
They are impersonal socio-circumstances,
not groups of people. Our feelings of doom
are thus predicted on what we read, here-
say and our limited experiences.
AT 4 A.M. a week ago a past Daily editor
and I traveled south. We spent almost 60
hours in travel and a good amount of time
talking with people in the hinderlands of
the south. These few hours of being where
the problem is are certainly not sufficient
for any descriptive analysis of the south's
poor, nor can it bring into experience my
cynical perspective on the nation's poverty
problem. But nevertheless this brief inter-
lude of depressing reality redefined my
many blurred and ugly memories of the
south. And it brought to disgusting Ii f e
Myrdal's uphuman figures.
ONE CAN GET INTO a $5,000 automo-
bile and travel from Ann Arbor to t h e
Florida keys seeing only burgeoning mod-
ern cities, rampant industrialization, beau-
tifully-trimmed oak trees and a comfort-
ing bit of nostalgic heritage. One can tra-
verse Georgia, Kentucky and Alabama re-
ceiving the impression that poverty has
been ierradicated and that freedom a n d
equality arp distinct characteristics of the
country.
The very arrogant claim that "we all
know such a rosy picture isn't the w a y
things are" falls absymally short of char-
acterizing the horrid situation that really
exists.
For America is not simply very poor in'
places, but it is deceptively poor. The coun-
try's elite are extremely- adept at hiding
poverty and disease.
"They were going to bring the highway
through these parts," Mrs. George Blais-
dell of Clarksville, Ga. told me. "But them
government men said it'd be best if Clarks-
ville wasn't seen, so th e highway never
came through here."
THE BLAISDELLS run a small S h e 11
service station on old highway 301 in
Georgia. Before the mighty interstate was
laid, 301 was the m a i n artery through
Georgia, but it was too close to the diseased
white trash on the south of Clarksville or
the darkie colonies outside Macon. So the
interstate curves a little now west of Blais-
dell, east of Macon, and travels across de-
serted marsh and farmfields.
"Helena makes spending money by can-
ning sorghum. We grow sorghum. Sorghum
and beans," Mr. Blaisdell explains. "The
station pays for itself. Maybe someday. .,
But he didn't know how to finish his sen-
tence.
The Blaisdells are ninety miles from At-
lanta, but none in the family had ever been
there. They are poor and their . children
gaunt, diseased with afflictions unheard of
in most twentieth century cities. Mrs.
Blaisdell has to read the gas pump as no
one else can read - even numbers.
TRAVELING THROUGH the back roads
of Kentucky it is nauseating to see the ob-
viousness of refuse dumped in the lowest
spots so that when'. the rain comes t h e
streams of garbage f 1 o w into the valley
and not over the town.
Only a few miles s o u t h of Lexington
children are barefoot in winter. It m a y
seem to some trite to say something we
may not feel is so unknown, but to see this
as the rule and not the exception is;cer-
tainly astounding.
The roads of Kentucky and lower Ten-
nessee are lined with huts around which
are draped home-spun blankets and mats.
"Oh, yes, they's all done rite heah. It's all
the women do," I was told. It is pitiful
that these women who wear summer blous-
es in the dead of winter must make their
living on the happenstance of a car stop-
ping during a wayside trip to buy a sou-
venir.
AND THE MARVELOUS ideals of inte-
gration and renovation seem distant hopes
in South Carolina and Georgia, Alabama
and even parts of Florida. The blacks live
on one side of town. They are never seen
in the core of the towns and villages -
they are a subculture hidden even from the
eyes-of those who want to seek them out.
Nor is it uncommon to see the plantation
in northern Florida and southern Alabama.
Near Mariana, northern Florida, small
farms of less than 300 acres supply one
well-built brick house ivith its rose beds,
and supply a dozen or so share-croppers
with rotted wooden shacks.
THE IMPRESSION that short trip left
with me hasn't made me single out the
southeast United States as something ut-
terly obscene. It has, though, reinforced
my cynical conviction that such a dastard-
ly condition exists in many places in this
country.i
And there is something extremely per-
verse about this poverty beyond the fact
it is sometimes so well-hidden.
THE GAP BETWEEN people like the
Blaisdells and people like myself is fright-
ening. Their knowledge of the world ex-'
tends only as far as the service station
maps carried to them by the oil trucker.
Their books are numbered and few.
When I asked them about television
they responded weary-eyed as though the
tube were a disneyland-a wonderment, a
fantasy like an antimated cartoon of slap-
stick reality that never really happens. In
Perry, Ala. and Oak Ridge, Tenn. I talked
with others who had never left their homes,
who like the Blaisdells knew very little.
The blacks were so far removed from
my culture it was impossibile to talk with
them. ,
erstates
y jim heck
I AM STILL illiterate enough I can iden-
tify with the Blaisdell. But I am literate
enough to envision the day when the dif-
ference between me and them is so great
it will be impossible to identify with them.
When this day arives we will no longer
be squabbling over the capabilities or in-
tellects of men, nor even their equality,
but rather their humanness. As we separate
the ape from man because man can think,
someday we might separate the Blaisdells
from us because we can operate digital
computers and they can't' or because we
understand Keats and they don't know
even know who he is.
The rapidity by which we are extending
our knowledge is not astounding in itself.
What is frightening is the fact that we
are leaving others behind. And the gap of
knowledge and language is certain to be-
come insurmountable until there will be
at least two distinct and irreconciable
classes of society.
AND THE EXTENSIONS of our intel-
lect - our machines - will have more
identification with ourselves than the
Blaisdells so when the time arrives that
we need more space for memory banks or
moon terminals, the Blaisdells will have to
go. We will be unable to educate them
quickly enough, they will not have even
the basic understandings.
Thus, it is very difficult to it in a class-
room and discuss Hume or thermodynamics
knowing all the while such thoughts are
beyond the comprehension of the Blaisdells
and knowing also such thoughts are the
cornerstones of what appears to be the
conscious future erradication of the 'bar-
barian, inferior Blaisdells.
PERHAPS I AM too sentimental. Per-
haps it is the mind and even better the
thoughts that are'important and not the
men. But such a conclusion is tenuous at
best, based on the idea that progressive
intellectualism means more than the
process of making sorghum syrup - and
I'm just not sure it does..
1
s
Ugly words are in, the ears of the listener
*1
The ABM: Presidential indecisiveness
JT WAS PRESIDENT Richard Nixon who,
assuming the mantle of office, pleaded
with the nation to lower its voice.
Now at the end of his honeymoon, Nix-
on's stalling on the ABM decision causes
us to wonder if the new President is hard
of hearing and that perhaps we should
resume shouting.
Colonel tGriffin
NQRTH CAROLINA SENATOR Sam Er-
vin and a host of Southern and other
conservative Senators were beaten back
in their attempts to attach a crippling
rider to the nuclear non-proliferation
treaty. Many felt that the amendment
would have forced renegotiation of the
treaty.
Unfortunately, it must be noted that
voting with such forward looking Sena-
tors as Russell, Talmadge, Stennis, Thur-
mond and Goldwater was Michigan Sen-
ator Robert Griffin.'
Senator Griffin has again demonstrat-
ed that his presence in the"Senate-will re-
sult only in continued embarrassment for
the people of Michigan.
-S. A.
Agitator
AN ASSOCIATED PRESS story featured
in yesterday's Daily revealed that the
Justice Department plans to prosecute
"roving campus agitators" under a sec-
tion of the 1968 Civil Rights Act which
makes it illegal to cross state lines for the
purpose of inciting a riot.
One such agitator was so ubiquitous in
his rabble-rousing last year that it is the
Attorney-General's duty to make an ex-
ample of him by bringing him to trial im-
mediately. Wherever he spoke - Wash-
ington, New York, Los Angeles, and es-
pecially Chicago -civil disturbances fol-
lowed.
Surely the free sneech nrovisinns nf the
Nixon had announced that his decision
about proceeding with the highly contro-
versial ABM system would come early this
week. Now, the decision will not be an-
nounced until later in the week.
With such vociferous opposition to the
ABM being voiced by'scientists, journal-
ists, and key Senators why would Nixon
postpone making the long-awaited decis-
ion on the missile system?
PERHAPS NIXON JUST has not had the
time to come to a decision because of
the exhaustive amount of time that he is
spending on his legislative program. Af-
ter his first two months in office, he has
already sent an unprecedented two pieces
of legislation to Congress - one, a much-
needed mine safety bill and the other, his
watered-down proposal for electoral re-
form.
Or, equally possible, Nixon the enter-
tainer might be delaying to heighten sus-
pense. His g a 1 a cabinet announcement
television special a n d his well-choreo-
graphed press conferences show that Nix-
on certainly is not above rehearsing de-
cisions or timing them for theatrical ef-
fect.
Probably, Nixon really is, like he says,
waiting to explore the problem further
since he undoubtedly is aware of the im-
minence of his first political battle. And
like most frightened men 'going into bat-
tle he, does not want to go it alone. So
again he is probably telling the t r u t h
when he says that he is waiting for de-
fense chief Mel Laird to, r e t u r n from
Vietnam.
This is the most alarming excuse of all.
For, it is certain that Laird will urge Nix-
on to continue with deployment of the
ABM system. It is also likely that Laird's
voice will weigh heavier with the Presi-
dent than those of opposing Senators and
scientists.
AT THE VERY LEAST, it might h a v e
been hoped that Nixon would by now
have reacted to the opposition to the
ABM, made a decision sensitive to that
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following two-part
article was written by Prof. Leonard Green-
baum, Asst. Director of the Phoenix Project.
Tie'article, copyrighted by the National
Council of English Teachers, was written
last year when Prof. Greenbaum taught in
the engineering English department.)
By LEONARD GREENBAUM
RECENTLY, MY WIFE and I were in-
vited to a friend's home for dinner.
The hostess told us that a couple from
Vienna would be joining us. When they ar-
rived, they came into the living room,
smiled, introduced themselves, and shook
hands all around. We smiled back, straining
with great effort to understand their in-
comprehensible Viennese accent.
For about a minute it was very difficult,
almost imposible, to communicate. We
could not even understand their names
until suddenly a chance remark revealed
that the new guests were not from Vienna
at all. They were from London and their
accent, far from being Viennese, was Brit-
ish. From that moment on, there was no
difficult in understanding them or that
the;T names were John and Mary Roberts.
What this encounter illustrated was that
the difficulty posed by accent, and by
dialect, is not in the tongue of the speaker
but in the ear of the listener. That' night
our set, our fix, was to hear English with
a Viennese accent. We tuned out everything
else, including. English with a British ac-
cent.
SIMILARLY, WE-that is all of us-
have a set to hear an English that is a
standard, unaccented central dialect, and we
have difficulty understanding any varia-
tion, be it regional, cultural, or national.
We have a perceptual handicap and, ironic-
ally, instead of trying to overcome our
handicap, we propose to establish "normal"
standards, i.e., to bring the dialect speaker
to the level of the more powerful user of
English.-
Dialect has positive aspects-an expres-
siveness, a wit, a separateness of its own
making that are not part of standardized
English. Most of all whether a person is
from Korea, Israel, or, Mississippi, if he
possesses a strong dialect, he works with
language as an expressive tool-forming
new words,) new phrases, and giving new
meanings to old words. Dialect at its best
is style.
The desire to eliminate dialect is an
egocentric solution proposed out "of power
and out of traditional modes of education
that have always shunned the experimental
in favor of the pragmatic. This was how
the "system" dealt with immigrants at the
turn of the century and just prior to and
during World War II, and it is how, simi-
larly, some propose it should deal with
rural or inner-city dialects in the 1960's.
This desire, no doubt, will win out. I can
predict what lies in our future-a uniform
society, most likely in uniform. _
THOUGH WE ARE hastening to our
meeting with Orwell-on his terms-the
possibility of changing dialect arises out
of the good motives of some-where it
expresses a desire to allow people with
strona dialpetto + h'avP aerps* +o +henpr-
the white. The new assumption is gaining
credibilty. It is identified in the Kerner
Report at one end of its spectrum as
"white racism." It is identified at the
other end of its spectrum in the Coleman
Report,'a 700-page statisticalstudy by the
Department of Health, Education and Wel-
fare entitled, "Equality of Educational Op-
portunity."
"WE SUSPECT, without proof," write
the authors for the Coleman Report, "that
thox forces that decrease the proportion
of minority group members, especially
Negroes, in the collegiate population result
from practices and conditions, including
history and attitude, that have not the
intent but only the effect of discrimina-
tion."
This is a polite way of speaking. It is
certainly a safe way; it may prove to be
an accurate way. As I look at and listen
to my colleagues, who have no Negro
graduate students, who have-no Negro col-
leagues in their departments, I hear them
say: "There are so very few Negroes in my
field, and there seems to be no particular
avenues of reaching prospective students."
Or, "So far we have not succeeded in at-
tracting any new students of the minimum
standard required in my department." Or,
"We have and will continue to accept stu-
dents solely on the basis of merit, without
prejudice either way because of race." Or,
"Our recruitment efforts are aimed at all
promising students." Or, "I consider the
matter of color one to which no attention
should be paid.' I can only admire their
idealism and suspect their perceptual abili-
ty. What the Coleman Report says, without
rancor, is that the problemis with the
listener.
IT IS NOT THE BLACK who has been
operating a university-college system that
decreases the proportion of whites. It is
rather the white who runs a system
that decreases the proportion of Negroes, in
undergraduate schools, in graduate and
professional schools, and on faculties.
Within faculties, white atitudes toward
solving the white problem are poor. They
are not motivated to solve it.
More often, they do not see that they
have a problem. At best, they see society
as having a problem, and for reasons nat-
ural to universities, they are not inclined:
to solve society's problems. Even when their
attitudes change and they agree to seek
solutions, their skills are often inadequate.
They are, to put it bluntly, culturally de-
prived. And this deprivation, like most
long-term deprivations, has damaged their
perceptual system in very real ways.
AT A PTA MEETING of our neighbor-
hood school, a school where approximately
22 per cent of the students, like the neigh-
borhood in which they live, are Negro,
white parents and white teachers, in com-
ments throughout the evening, pictured the
Negro students at the school as poor, un-
dernourished, ill-clothed, rowdy, the source
of obscenities, and as having poor intel-
lectual potential.
But the fact iq that tha aavn rninie At
THEODORE SIZER, Dean of Harvard's
Graduate School of Education in a recent
reference to that host of books by Jonathan
Kozol, John Holt, Herbert Kohl, Edgar
Friedenberg and Robert Coles, the new
critics of'education, said: ,
The complaints of' the Non-Estab-
lishment and the urban communities
are often justified . . . Racial and class
prejudices is no less pronounced in our
school systems than elsewhere in our
society, but it is doulIy vicious there
as young children are its victims.
Bureaucratic rigidity and political
timidity abound. Most critically, much
of what many schools do is irrelevant
to any particular need of most chil-
dren.
What I think he is saying, and what I
believe is true in universities as well as in
elementary schools, is that the educational
establishment is often irrelevant to the life
In the physical and biological sciences,
the mission-oriented needs have been rec-
ognized and institutionally served by unI-
versities since World War II. The social
needs are not as well recognized. We are,
in limited ways, beginning to serve them,
but withgreat reluctance and uncertainty,
afraid for some strange reason of losing
an intellectual identity' we did not lose
in weapons development or even in the
development of less controversial but more
pervasive computer technology.
And when the universities are confronted
with human problems the natural inclina-
tion of the university is to solve them in
a laboratory away from, rather than as an
integral part of, the university cqmmunity.
THE MISSION-ORIENTED needs of so-
ciety. where race is concerned are gross. I
know no other word to describe the fears
and anticipations that are articulated ev-
ery day. The narrowest, and what ought
to be the simplest, need to satisfy is to de-
segrate the higher education.
In 1965 there were 4,491,269 college stu-
dents in America. Only 207,316 were Ne-
gro. By most estimates, more than half the
Negro students attend Negro colleges. This
leaves 100,000 Negro students scattered
among nearly four and a h a I f million
whites or a ratio of one to 43 in a country
where every tenth man is a Negro. These
100,000 Negrb students who got in inte-
grated schools are not faring as they
should. The Coleman Report shows that in
every ,region of the country, Negroes are
more likely to enter the state college sys-
tems rather than the state university sys-
tems. Negroes are a smaller part of the
student body in universities than in any
other type of public institution. The im
portance of this is that the state univer-
sity is expected to be the best public in-
stitution of higher learning within t he
state."r
The Coleman Report poses the propo-
sition this way:
If Negroes are less common in the
state's best educational unit, it is irrel-
evant whether choice, academic readi-
ness, finances, recruitment practices,
or, blind prejudice kept them away;,
the pertinent observation is t h a t a
larger proportion of Negroes than of,
whites receive their college training In
institutions that are inferior, i.e., that
are less than the best the area intends
to offer.
T h e Coleman Report statistically an-
swers that Negroes are 1 e s s common in
state universities. Certainly this is true at
this University where in the 1967-68 aca-
demic year there were approximately, we
think, 800 students who were Negro out of
a student body of approximately 35,000.
That figure may be as low as 500; it is no
higher than 900. Three years ago its ceil-
ing was 300.
In 1966, out of 10,894 reported students
in graduate and professional schools at the
University, 105 were Negro. In 1968, -out of
approximately 2,200 faculty, approximately
19 were Negrnoe T Iuse my own sehool be-
*1
pi
of its. students. Rather, it is responsive to
itself. In 'higher education, it is possible
to identify the source of this irrelevance as
a conscious policy 'stemming from self'-
definition.
Alvin- Weinberg, Director of the Atomic
Energy Commission's Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, viewing higher education as a
scientist and an administrator, defines the
conflict as one that arises because the uni-
versity is "discipline-oriented" and exists
in a soceity that is "mission-oriented."
The discipline-oriented university has as
its purpose the creation and encourage-
ment f +ha intllwtia1lif a a .nnrnm' that
1.