just a sonig inii the wind
Seventy-eight years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan
I
The election of The King of Webster Lane
*
by Jimijheck MO
Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich.
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.
TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 1969
NIGHT EDITOR: JIM NEUBACHER
Miller and Rosenbaum:
The poltiics of power
STUDENT GOVERNMENT Council's de-
cision to go ahead with the three-
way run-off in the presidential election
is the .best possible action under the cir-
cumstances.
SGC was faced with a confused and
muddled situation, out of which there
was no way agreeable to all. David Gold-
stein, '69L, an informal legal advisor to
the Credential and Rules Committee said
that they could have made a decision fa-
voring any one of the three final con-
tenders-Howard Miller, Bob Nelson or
Marty McLaughlin.
But the legal precedents were insuf-
ficient, and they had no choice but to
make a "fair" rather than a "legal" de-
cision-and let all three major candi-
dates compete in a run-off election.
The legal problem was one of the in-
sufficient provisions in SGC's constitu-
tion covering the election. Not all pos-
sibilities are covered, including what to
do when no candidate has a majority
with only two left.
HOWARD MILLER, the front-runner,
would accept only one interpretation
-one which gave him the election im--
mediately. He was adamant in his re-
fusal to accept any other possible solu-
tion.
Part of the problem lies in the lack of
clearly defined precedent. There seems to
have been an assumption that a run-off
would be held when two candidates were
left. Miller challenged this-but only af-
ter there were clear indications that he
was in the lead and could only suffer by
that interpretation.
This widely-held assumption of a two-
way run-off was printed in The Daily
three times before the election and went
unchallenged. Therefore, because of a
lack of alternatives, it must be accepted
as binding. But Miller refused this and
all other reasonable accommodations.
Miller's position would be acceptable
except for his inconsistencies. Not only
did he not challenge the position pub-
lished in The Daily, but Thursday night
after the election decision was f i r s t
made, he did not challenge the tacit as-
sumption of the two-way run-off itself
but only the fact that it was tacit.
It wasn't until the next day that he
and his running mate, Mark Rosenbaum,
challenged the assumption itself.
WITH THE PROVISIONS unclear and'
the claims conflicting, SGC decid-
ed to take the route of least legal resist-
ance. By admitting all three candidates
into the run-off, the rules committee was
being fair to all.
"U' bylaws
The strangest part of Miller's and
Rosenbaum's vacillating position was
their stated concern with the legitimacy
of SGC. They first refused a run-off elec-
tion, they said, because it would de-
molish SGC's legitimacy.
The only reason they specified was
that the second election would be diffi-
cult to hold and would produce a small
voter turnout. But that was all, and con-
sidering all the other problems, these are
quite minor.
Rather, it is Miller and Rosenbaum
themselves who have personally made the
greatest challenge to SGC legitimacy.
THEY FIRST ACCEPTED the rules com-
mittee decision on holding a three-
way run-off and then challenged Coun-
cil itself when they bucked its approval
of the rules committee decision.
They refused to recognize SGC's
authority over its own elections and were
willing to seek sources of power outside
of SGC to force Council into following
their own plans.
They put SGC in a bad position. They
were the most powerful candidates by
virtue of the first election results which
had them ahead of their two closest com-
petitors. SGC could go ahead without
Miller and Rosenbaum only with great
difficulty.
Despite Rosenbaum's tepid claims that
their refusal to take part in the run-off
was not a power play, it can really be
nothing else.
Miller himself admitted this when he
told an advisor over the phone at SGC
offices, "We're the radicals now, not
them. We're playing confrontation poli-
tics."
BUT CONFRONTATION politics de-
pends on an attack on basic legiti-
macy, and that was the name of the
game they were playing with SGC. SGC
did not buckle under their threats.
They could conceivably still enter the
run-off election, but only at the expense
of solidifying their own foolishness. They
tried to play the strong hand a lost. If
they want to admit that defeat and enter
the run-off, fine.
But the arrogance and contempt for
SGC they have displayed should be suf-
ficient warning to most voters that these
two are not qualified to serve as repre-
sentatives of the entire student body.
-RON LANDSMAN
Managing Editor
-STEVE NISSEN
City Editor
DES PLAINES, ILL.
AFTER A FANTASTIC amount of bicker-
ing, the three of us decided that for the
time being we would work together to make
sure no one else but we three would be in
the running. Everyone wanted to get into
the race. It was a big thing: the election
of the King of Webster Lane.
It was a big thing because the King had
control over the 150 or so kids on the block.
(Or at least he thought he did.) And there
was the Plan for the Renovation of Bike
Races with the Heller Court Hoodlums to
be considered also.
Oh, there had been some who claimed
the election was meaningless - that the
Lane was in moral decay, that our games
were turning into militaristic anarchy, but
we had confidence. We knew the King and
his Council could bring life back to Web-
ster Lane.
Rob Belson, Mouthy Hiller and Smarty
David Slaughlin were the prime contend-
ers. There were others, but most of them
hadn't a chance of winning. Most were un-
able to get the endorsements of important
Lane organizations like the Summer Scrim-
mage Group, the Bike Racing Red Barons
or the Treehouse Teahouse. The most im-
portant endorsement, of course, was by
the Webster Lane Times, and if you didn't
get that, you didn't win.
BELSON W A S RUNNING because he
hated Mouthy's guts and didn't want
Mouthy to get elected. Smarty was running
because he was the first radical to get any-
where in a long time, and he had the top
endorsement of the Webster Lane Times.
Smarty had pushed such unorthodox pro-
grams as attempts at rejuvenating the bike
races with the kids on Heller's Court -
Heller's Court was notorious for its jun-
ior high hoodlums who always t r i e d to
wreck the bikes.
Smarty had suggested that if t h e y
tried once more to mess up the races, all
of us should go and dump their garbage
cans onto their lawns.
Smarty realized, however, that even with
the important Times endorsement, his
chances of winning were slim. And he, like
Belson, couldn't stand Mouthy - a real
fascist.
THINGS GOT HAIRY when Mike Du-
dis decided he might enter the race. Now
Dudis had enough support that Belson and
Smarty were worried it might draw away
their votes and then assure Mouthy of the
victory. (What minds.) Because Mouthy
was not only popular but had been going
around offering his tricycle to anyone who
supported him. In fact, Mouthy was spend-
ing a lot of his licorice money on polishing
up his tricycle. I don't think anyone spent
as much money as Mouthy - maybe he
bought other things, too.
So Belson and Smarty decided to try to
convince Dudis to get out of the race.
"Dudis! Hey, Du-dis! Come here, would-
'ja? !"
Dudis was a little bit scared. Probably
thought they were going to take him in his
garage and beat him up.
"Yeah, what'j youse guys w a n t any-
ways?"
"Look, Dudis," Smarty said, putting his
arms around Dudis' beard, "See we is really
worried bout them bike races -"
"HEY, waits a darn minute guy - I don't
care 'bout no bike races with Heller -"
Belson began.
"Shut up, Belson! You wants I should
get Dudis outta da race?"
"I'm not getting outta no race!"
"Whew," Smarty began, wiping his face.
"Listen, Dudis, it's real 'portant that you
step aside."
He licked his tootsie roll lollipop.
"All right," Smarty said, turning to Bel-
son, "if we gotta do it, we gotta do it."
"Do what?" Belson whispered back too
loudly.
"You're a real dumbnut, Belson."
DUDIS FINALLY AGREED to drop out.
But little did Smarty and Belson know he
had planned all the while to drop out, just
so he could send a letter to the Webster
Lane Times informing them he had given
his full support to Belson.
That letter began a horrible episode. The
Times wasn't really a newspaper, though
everyone referred to it as the New York
Times of Lane Newspapers. It sold for 2
cents and came out whenever Abraham
Shapiro, the editor, put it out. Since Sha-
piro printed the one letter everyone else de-
manded their letters be printed.
To ensure that the election was fair, the
guys got Dale to handle the voting. Every-
one just called him the Jerk, but Dale was
out to "uphold the law and order" of fair
elections.
LIKE ALL PAST ELECTIONS, there
were certain rules; only nobody knew what
the rules were -- not even the Jerk. There
were three boxes for each candidate. Every
Lane kid could place a stone in the box of
his choice and the box that weighed the
most won. They didn't count the stones,
because Ted Poctor's dad had got a really
new machine, a wonderful scale - the up-
right kind, model 360 - and we wanted to
use it. Besides, the little kids the Jerk got
to man the boxes couldn't count past 10.
Well, Mouthy didn't think there'd be
any problems. Only somebody outsmarted
everyone. While all the candidates were
with their supporters hunting up the
heaviest stones in the garbage dump.
someone swiped some cast iron from the
steel mill down the street and weighted the
boxes.'
Naturally, the election was close. All the
boxes were very heavy.
UNFORTUNATELY, the scale broke
when Belson's box was. put on it. Avid
when we began to weigh Smarty's box,
the cardboard ripped and all the iron fell
into Mouth's box, which screwed up every-
thing.
Everyone was extremely mad. So we
fought and bickered. Shapiro was even
seen throwing mud at Mouthy's house.
Al the while, too, Shapiro was trying to
sell a specal edition of the Webster Lane
Times with the first editorial saying the
whole election should be run over.
Needless to say, the King And his Coun-
cil lost legitimacy very quickly. (Not that
they had any to lose). But it was really a
farce then. The Heller Court junior high
hoodlums came over and laughed in our
faces. That night they dumped over our
garbage cans.
WAS I GLAD when dad got his two
weeks vacation and we left the place.
When I got back, everything was the same.
there were still 150 or so kids messing
around in the streets and everyone had
begun planning the Webster Lane Sum-
mer Carnival and the election of a girl
and boy chairman.
Stupid people, Dudis wanted to run
again.
A
01
f ".
r
JAMES WECHSLER.
Triminal insanity'
on the Senate floor
MANY OF THE ABLEST, most sensitive young people in contempor-
ary America are engaged in varying forms of rebellion because, to
oversimplify matters, they view the world as an asylum in which the
sick have stolen the keys and periodically lock up those who cry out for
reason.
In an address that has belatedly begun to achieve the notice it de-
serves, Dr. George Wald, professor of biology at Harvard, during the
recent one-day "research-halt" at MIT, put it another way:
"I think I know what is bothering the students. I think that what
we are up against is a generation that is by no means sure that it has
a future."
PROF. WALD RECALLED that several months ago Sen. Richard
Russell - traditionally described in the public prints as a distinguished
elder statesman - proclaimed in a Senate oration: "If we have to start
over again with another Adam and Eve, I want them to be Americans,
and I want them on this continent and not in Europe."
Amid tumultuous cheers from his campus audience, Wald comment-
ed: "Well, here is a Nobel laureate who thinks that those words are
criminally insane."
It was obviously not lost upon many of the young that Russell's
remark evoked no widespread outcry in the nation's press and did not
visibly diminish the reverence accorded him by his Senate colleagues.
He remains a voice to whom many seemingly rational men defer In
matters of both military and foreign policy.
BUT WHETHER SOME ELDERS like it or not, Sen. Russell's con-
cern about the national origins and identity of the 'next Adam and Eve
is an expression of the ultimate illness of a civilization that still seems
widely unresponsive to the meaning of the atomic age, and in which
public men seriously debate how to reduce the number of deaths in an
atomic holocaust from 60 million to 40 million.
It happens, unfortunately, that the young sometimes seem to feel
thtn one over 30 (or 25)can appreciate the idiocy of the era of
overkill; surely Norman Thomas
and A. J. Muste needed no lec-
tures from teenage rebels about
the new, calamitous dimensions of
the era of overkill.
But what is more important is
that too much of present protest,
on the campus and elsewhere, is
simply irrelevant to the awesome
anxiety that any rational m a n
should have begun to experience
from the day of Hiroshima. And in
some instances it is flagrantly
self-defeating.
Kids initially angered by their
wholly intelligent awareness that
there may be no world in which
to g r o w up perform out-of-this
world tantrums t h a t evoke the
disdainful epithet "kooks" f r o m
commuters to suburbia who blithe- Senate dean
ly speak of "dropping just one big Richard Russell
bomb" on Hanoi.
IN PART THE MINDLESS manifestations (invading and disrupt-
ing a college classroom, holding deans in captivity, demanding that
universities be transformed into student-ruled communes) are a pro-
duct of political frustration; the defeat of Eugent McCarthy's effort,
accompanied by the blood-bath staged by Mayor Daley's police, con-
firmed skepticism and invited blind assault on any institution that
could be somehow identified with the "system."
For left-wing ideologues such eruptions had a certain logic; chaos
was part of the process of discrediting the United States and giving
some real or imagined ammunition to the (divided) Communist world.
But many of those participating in the irrelevant inslwrections have
no doctrinaire commitments. They want to raise hell because they can-
not endure the smugness and sluggishness of conventional society in a
world drifting toward doom.
In the case of black students, the rage is intensified by special in-
equity; they have seen too many young Negroes drafted and slain in a
war that appears especially pointless to them - and whose cost carica-
4
4
A
Ten months of
endliess ,bickering
By JIM NEUBACHER
First of three parts
N EARLY TEN MONTHS ago, stu-
dents and1 faculty sat down as the
Ad Hoc Committee on Regents' Bylaws
to work out plans for implementing
new University structures for rule and
decision-making.
Today, they are still arguing. The
University's judicial process, student
claims for a large degree of control
over their non-academic lives, and the
rule-making autonomy of individual
schools and colleges are just a few of
the sensitive points in the long stand-
ing hassle.
Until something acceptable to all
parties is worked out, the University
remains without a legitimate, uniform
disciplinary code. To calm the alarm
of outsiders who fear for the Univer-
sity's safety in these lawless times and
to allow for the University's vulner-
abIlity in case of disruption, President
Robben Fleming had the individual
schools and colleges draw up their
own disciplinary codes last summer.
Under the interim rules, student rights
are few, endowed by beneficent-and
not so beneficent faculties.
In the literary college, for example,
the outmoded college code was installed
as the official legal system and faculty
members are given almost absolute
authority over student conduct in the
classroom and on campus.
versity students staged a sit-in of 1500
in the old Administration Bldg.
Harlan Hatcher, then University
President, reacted to the turmoil by
proposing three student-faculty-ad-
ministration commissions to investi-
gate certain sections of the student
grievances. One of these "Hatcher
commissions," later to become known
as the Presidential Commission on the
Role of Students in Decision Making,
began to discuss conflict resolution
within the University community.
The disturbance had made clear one
thing in particular: the University had
no real, uniform, well-accepted proce-
dures of discipline. Further, com-
munications between different inter-
ests on campus were hopelessly fouled,
and students had no viable control
over administration policy that af-
fected their non-academic lives.
Solutions to these problems had to
be found.
EARLIER IN that Fall '66, semes-
ter, the Knauss Report had been re-
leased. The report recommended more
student participation in decisions af-
fecting academic matters, and more
say for students on other policy boards
in the University community.
In the spirit of this report, the "De-
cision-Making" committee went to
work.
A year later, it came up with an
outline of proposed University legis-
lative and judicial procedures. This
A STORM OF PROTEST was raised
by the student leaders when they
found out that Cutler had made some
changes they had been unaware of.
The Regents postponed consideration
of the bylaws, and an ad hoc commit-
tee of students and faculty members,
and even a few administrators, went
to work to draft the section them-
selves.
As was pointed out earlier, they are
still arguing. But after 10 months of
work, a substantial amount has been
accomplished.
Both students and faculty members
on the committee agree that it is time
to wrap things up, if that can be
done. Prof. Robert Knauss of the Law
School, who is the major represent-
ative of the faculty at ad hoc commit-
tee meetings, has begun to push the
committee toward completion, jarring
it out of the stalemate which had been
reached.
Students had submitted a draft last
December which, while containing
certain provisions offensive to most
of the faculty, was built around con-
cepts agreed upon by both sides.
"We left last December for the
Christmas vacatioh with an agreement
to disagree over that draft," says one
committee member.
HOWEVER, LITTLE was accom-
plished as far as resolving the dis-
agreements. Finally, sections drafted
by students were introduced to the
"NO, NO NO NO NO!" said Tom
Westerdale, a graduate student com-
mittee member. "We've said 'no' to
this sort of thing for 10 months and
we're going to keep on saying it,
Goddamnit, no!"
But Knauss explained that the
"Knauss draft" did not even neces-
sarily represent his own thinking on
some issues, It was written strictly
for the purpose of knocking the ne-
gotiations "off of dead center," he
says.
Students are responding with renew-
ed energy. The Senate Assembly re-
viewed section of the "Knauss draft"
at its meeting last week, and officially
approved some of the less controversial
parts.
THUS, A MEETING LAST WEEK of
the ad hoc committee, (after the As-
sembly action), saw increased inter-
est from faculty, and more construc-
tive comments from all sides.
Both sides are hoping to finish a
bylaw draft- acceptable to both stu-
dents and faculty members so that it
might be submitted to the Regents be-
fore the end of the academic year.
Meanwhile the Regents wait. They
hope the faculty and students will be
able to settle it among themselves.
They have no desire to impose a solu-
tion, and thereby take the chance of
alienating both groups.
Because of the prolonged negotia-
now has no official status, or con-
stant membership.
"We're letting history move faster
than we are," Greenbaum added. He
noted that strict, often repressive rules
of conduct were beginning to become
vogue around the country. "We don't
want the Regents to decide they should
do this themselves," he said.
Students, in general, have objected
to formalization of the ad hoc com-
mittee. Knauss agrees.
He emphasized thatha formal com-
mittee might have the tendency to
want to start from the beginning, a
potentially disastrous time-consuming
move in an area where real progress
is zero after two years.
HE ALSO EXPRESSED the fear,
voiced by students, that a formal com-
mittee would break down; it might
end up in two factions, each send-
ing its own report to the Regents.
"If we end up sending two separ-
ate reports to the Regents," s a y s
Michael Davis, grad member of the
ad hoc committee, "the students will
refuse to recognize the validity of the
faculty draft, even if it is accepted by
the Regents. Most likely, the faculty
would refuse to, accept a student
draft."
Thus, the ad hoc committee contin-
ues to look for an answer, a comprom-
ise. But it must be a compromise that
protects the rights of the students