C he At *an Bat yh Seventy-Second Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN . UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS "Where Opinions Are FreeS TUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG. * ANN ARBOR, MICH. * Phone NO 2-3241 Truth Will Prevail" Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. OSA IN TRANSITION: Prom ise and .77 Frustration } VEDNESDAY AUGUST 15. 1962 NIGHT EDITOR: PHILIP SUTIN Regents Stall on Changes In 'u' Speaker Policy YOU GO to a public Regents' meeting and at some point during the session someone will propose an amendment to, or other change In, one of the Regents' bylaws. The changes are usually minor, made with no trouble on the part of the Regents, who approve them with an almost joyous ease, with clean con- sciences and impeccable voting records. But sometimes issues arise which cannot be acted on with the usual smiling faces and lack of earnest debate. These are saved for the closed session and there discussed and hashed over until it is felt that some reason- able move can be approved. And when it can, all the fighting, the arguing, the dissent is chucked away and at their public meeting the Regents look happy and innocent and pass or reject the change. T HERE IS A COMMITTEE which has existed for nearly a year. Its purpose is, or was, to do research into and recommend necessary changes in a specific bylaw. The change was, or is, the kind discussed at the closed sessions for a very long while before it is, or will be, even mentioned in the public meeting, and the treatment it has received from the Regents illustrates why the University cannot progress as rapidly as it ought to. The committee, known informally as the Estep Committee after Samual Estep of the law school who chaired the group, was es- tablished by President Harlan Hatcher in September, 1961. Its study was of Regents' bylaw 8:11, the University's .speaker policy" rule. Bylaw 8:11 restricts the topics of lectures or addresses given by non-University personalities so that "no violation of the recognized rules of hospitality, nor advococy of the subversion of the government of the United States nor of the state" is permitted. Moreover, "no addresses shall be allowed which urge the destruction or modification of our form of government by violence or other unlawful methods, or which advocate or justify conduct which violates the fundamentals of our accepted code of morals." TOINSURE that this rule would be enforced, a faculty body was given the right to pre- censor suspect speeches. The vague and conservative working of the bylaw and the right of censorship has caused numerous faculty members and students to attempt to have it abolished or modified, and when Hatcher formed the committee, it ap- peared that their hopes would be met. But very slowly the optimism has faded. From september through December, the Estep Committee studied the bylaw, its effect on campus speakers and the feelings of Uni- versity personnel toward it. They looked into the moral and legal right or pre-censorship, and into the philosophy under which the bylaw was established. And they sought other means of controlling addresses advocating violent actions or illegal results. In January, they submitted their recom- mendations to President Hatcher who non- chalantly laid them aside for half a year. ONE COMMITTEE MEMBER explained Hatcher's delay in action by saying that "he was on a trip in South America during that time and simply had too much work to look into it." But Hatcher didn't leave for Venezuela until mid-March, a full two months after he re- ceived the report. And no one is able to give a tenable explanation as to why he lacked the time it would have taken to inspect the recommended changes and forward the pro- posals to the Regents in February. But at any rate, Hatcher came back from his excursion into Latin America and managed to find sufficient time to read through the recommendations. He did not issue any sort of public statement expressing his opinion on the suggested changes. THE REGENTS received the recommendation in April. But, a second committee member pointed out, they didn't put it on the agenda "because it was too crowded with the budget, the Office of Student Affairs changes and other important matters." The same crowded condition existed in May and June. Whether it was a matter of too many "other important matters," or whether it was a fear of the men in Lansing who in April, May and June were smiling Regental smiles and figuring out how much of an appropriation the Uni- versity would receive, which kept the Estep recommendations off the agenda is indeterm- inate. W ELL, the men in Lansing gave us our millions, and the OSA got its changes and tuition hikes were passed and President Hatcher was in town for the July Regents' meeting. Everything looked very pretty indeed -a perfect time for an examination and de- cision, on the bylaw revisions. But, the Friday afternoon session came and went and the Regents toddled off to their respective villas and the Estep report was not touched. Two other bylaws were changed, one which effected the Institute of Science and Tech- nology Executive Committee and the other which liberalizes the University's policy on duplicate diplomas. But in public nothing was said of Estep. However, it seems that in the closed session, the recommendations were discussed at great length, and that the Regents did act on the proposal and that the recommendations will become policy some time next fall, according to a University vice-president. NO ONE has yet been able to offer a feasible explanation of the stalling or the con- tinued secrecy. But the reason is likely something incredible like preservation of the University's image, which the Regents do an awful lot of. The lack of fast or public action on the Estep recommendations is the fault of the Regents. For it is likely they had a copy of the proposals in January, when President Hatcher did. It is pretty certain they could have squeezed it into their meeting in April or May or June if they had wanted to. It is apparent that they could have acted upon them publicly last month. They chose not to. THE REGENTS are not a nebulous group, they are not powerless. They are not, or need not be, an innocuous collection of com- munity pillars meeting monthly to give a good and proper impression. They are not Student Government Council, which must aquiesce to higher powers, and which can act only with the knowledge and fear that they can be whacked to the ground by the ad- ministration if they try to do too much. They have in their hands the responsibility fortthe future of the University, and to this they should be morally committed. They an- swer only to the voters of the state and to their own consciences, and it is perhaps time their actions showed a little cognizance of ghat. -DENISE WACKER By GERALD STORCH Daily Staff Writer JUST as an assortment of groups and interests pressured for change (or no change) in the Of- fice of Student Affairs, the new structure for the office is design- ed to placate all of them. Vice-President for Student Af- fairs James A. Lewis will have four "line officers," which are as- sistants for general areas of work to be assigned by him, and will oversee three directorships, for housing, discipline, and financial aids, whose functions replace the dean of men and dean of women. A student-faculty group will serve as an advisory committee for him, as well as a channel for com- plaints and suggestions from the campus. Lewis also plans to pro- pose a new bylaw (certain to be approved by the Regents) placing definite responsibility for regula- tions governing the non-academic life of students upon the vice-pres- ident for student affairs. * * * THE DIRECTORSHIPS should satisfy long-standing student and faculty complaints about the un- fortunate and unnecessary es- trangement between the dean of men and dean of women's do- mains. Handling functions which cut across sexual lines, the director- ships should facilitate policy-mak- ing within their areas, and elimi- nate much of the overlapping and confusion incurred by the bisexual arrangement. The new bylaw for the vice-pres- idency should also soothe the stu- dent liberals and the University Senate Student Relations Commit- tee, who had correctly chafed at the difficulty in knowing which OSA administrators were respon- sible for what policies. ON THE OTHER SIDE of the coin, the administrators them- selves and the Victorian-minded alumni have some reason to be happy with the new OSA. Al- though Lewis hasn't said so pub- licly or privately yet, it's a safe bet that none of his subordinates is going to lose his job or receive a thinner pay envelope. And as a sop to the alumni, who harbor fears that the Univer- sity is a place where licentiousness and promiscuity are rampant Lewis is keeping former Acting Dean of Women Elizabeth Daven- port as a high-level advisor for women's affairs. "There will al- ways be people here to take care of the special needs of women," the vice-president explained. * * * AT THIS POINT, it should be made clear that the new struc- ture for the OSA is far superior to the old one. Although ne was pushed a little by the Regents, the SRC and student activists, never- theless most of the work in for- mulating the structure was by Lewis. It took some courage on his part to eliminate the deans, es- pecially the dean of women. The vice-president's decision to assume the final authority (subject of course to the President and the Regents) for all OSA actions and policies is another commendable move. Some of Lewis's other plans-to coordinate and consolidate coun- seling agencies, scholarships and loan departments, and student ju- dicial councils-are praiseworthy. * * * AS HAPPENS all too often at this University, however, a falter- ing, cautious half-way step was taken, instead of the fully vigor- ous, confident action needed. Lew- is made at least three bad mistakes in the structural arrangement, and may have committed errors in the retention of certain personnel. There are also glaring inconsis- tencies between the new-model OSA and the Reed Report's phil- osophy of administration (which is now official University policy, having been adopted by the Re- gents) and the seven changes rec- ommended by the Senate commit- tee when the whole mess started a little more than a year ago. The worst slip-up is in the area of counseling. One of Lewis's four assistants - Mark Noffsinger - is supposed to be "coordinator of counseling." * * * BUT WHY isn't this a director- ship, like the other three func- tional jobs? There appears little formal reason for having counsel- ing under more close supervision (the directorships will be more au- tonomous than the assistants) than the other duties, of a com- parable nature. It is also strange that two of the assistants (Mrs. Davenport and former Dean of Men Walter B. Rea) will also be doing a lot of counseling, primarily in touchy cases. There appears to be only one logical answer for both these oddi- ties in counseling: the vice-presi- dent haslittle confidence in Mr. Noffsinger. ship, and another part in a differ- ent area? If Bingley wouldn't have enough to do without the added housing tasks, then abolish the discipline directorship, and fit it in somewhere else. The director of housing, espe- cially at his salary (more than that of most full professors here), should be the director of all hous- ing. There is no reason why living unit policy should not emerge from a single source. If needed, an assistant for affiliate or pri- vate housing units could be added, but in any case the director should supervise all housing if any sort of coherent policy is to be expect- ed. * * * . THE THIRD structural fault is the retention of the Bureau of School Services under the author- ity of the vice-president of stu- dent affairs. The bureau is main- ly a service clearing house for schools outside the University, in- cluding secondary and elementary, public and private schools. Since it is hard to see what re- lation the bureau has to the non- academic lives of University stu- dents, it would have been prudent to transfer it to another area, preferably the vice-president for academic affairs. These are the sub-structure problems. There are some with per- sonnel, too, namely, the continued presence of the traditional targets of the SRC and a lot of students: Elizabeth Leslie, Karl Streiff and John Hale. MRS. LESLIE is the last remain- ing woman administrator who was part of the in-group of former Dean of Women Deborah Bacon, and in the minds of several people close to the OSA has not been ab- solved of practices carried on during that regime. Streiff's work in counseling stu- dents seeking loans and scholar- ships has drawn complaints from several students of alleged harsh and discriminatory treatment. The SRC has received cases of this na- ture, but took no action, referring the matters to Lewis. Under Hale's tenure as assistant to the dean of men for residence halls, the quadrangles stagnated. Everyone will acknowledge that the halls possess magnificent poten- tial to become a meaningful and pleasant segment of the educa- tional process, yet Hale made no attempt to develop this potential. Failures would have been much better than inaction. In addition, Hale's keeping se- cret for six months a resident di- rector's report criticizing the ad- ministration and living conditions of East Quadrangle added little luster to his record, * * * ADMITTEDLY, it is frightfully easy and sometimes cruel to criti- cize public personalities in print, and it is also easier to describe mis- takes than to outline good points. Lewis hasn't even announced the under-staff positions, yet. But the Office of Student Af- fairs exists as an aid to students, to help in their outside-the-class- room education. The personnel within this office must enjoy the confidence and respect of students. If they do not, they should not be retained. The structural and personnel problems are all the more disturb- ing because they violate Univer- sity policy: the philosophy of ad- ministration expressed in the Reed Report, approved by the Regents. AT ONE POINT, the report states: "... Workable adminis- trative arrangements are of prime importance. If badly designed, ad- ministrative structure can frus- trate and confuse. "Not only must the structure be designed to carry out the Univer- sity's educational aims, but also it must be constructed in the light of a clear understanding of the func- tions of its constituent parts." And although it doesn't say so specifically, the heavily education- oriented philosophy leaves no doubt that competence in admin- istration is an indispensable com- modity, if faculty, students and administrators are going to work together for a mutual goal. So it is both surprising and up- setting that Mr. Lewis is putting together a structure that contra- dicts, in part, University policy. * * * THE MOST CRIMINAL decision of all, however, was to limit fac- ulty and student participation in OSA policy-making to an advisory role. Lewis's administrative structure, despite its difficulties, will prob- ably work. And he did a good job in setting up the advisory com- mittee.i It will be composed of represen- tatives from Student Government Council and the SRC. It is power-3 less to make policy decisions, but will receive suggestions and griev-z ances about the OSA from inside and outside the University, and can consider any matter within Lewis's jurisdiction. The possibil-l ity of its being used by the vice-F president is lessened by the com-+ mittee's authority to make publicJ on its own free will any matter itc is considering. * * * BUT, there's a big difference between an advisory group and a policy-making group. The argu- ments have been gone over too+ many times to repeat at length here, but there can be a good jus- tification made on moral and prac- tical grounds, for having a demo- cratically chosen committee, nav-a ing equal representation from stu- dents and faculty, plus one less administrator (i.e., a 4-4-3 basis) to govern the OSA, being respon- sible to the Regents. The official University philoso- phy of administration says that in order to make maximum use of his abilities and maximum contribu- tion to society, the student "must be considered a participating mem- ber of a 'community of scholars,' with responsibilities and opportu- nities commensurate with his ca- pacities. "He should be expected to par- ticipate fully in decisions affect- ing his welfare. He should help to formulate, uphold and enforce the rules by which he is to live in the University community." And on a practical basis, some students are just as qualified to formulate policy as are adminis- trators. Granted, they haven't had the experience, but an industrious, intelligent student, having an ade- quate knowledge of the campus, would be a marvelous asset to any policy-making, as well as policy- advising, apparatus. It is not un- realistic to expect this sort of stu- dent to run and be elected if a democratic system of authority were set up for the OSA. * * * BUT, INSTEAD, the leaders of this University insist on paying idealistic lip service while broach- ing a concept which underlies American life in every community except the academic one. In the final analysis, is there really any reason to justify the perpetuation of an autocratic, un- democratic system of government on a supposedly enlightened cam- pus? Can we hold any moral or intellectual respect for mediocre men, afraid of change, afraid of doing something different and new? The answer, clearly, is that we cannot, no matter how respectable an image our administrators can muster of their leadership prowess. DIMINISHING the worth of the new OSA even further is a com- parison of the changes that have actually been made, and the seven major changes asked by the SRC last year: 1) "The general educational re- sponsibility of the University rests ultimately with the faculty ..:. the committee said. Incorporation of this responsibility into struc- tural terms has hardly been done. 2) "The vice-president for stu- dent affairs must exercise a singu- lar responsibility in the enuncia- tion of the educative purposes of the Office of Student Affairs, and must furnish leadership to the en- tire structure of the office." Lewis has promised to bear the full re- sponsibility, all right, but one-won- ders to what extent the "educa- tive purposes," will be served, due to the afore-mentioned conflicts with the University's philosophy of administration. 3) "A positive, explicit program for the implementation of the Re- gents Bylaw on discrimination" should be established. Lewis scores on this point, having made an adequate if not zealous effort to discourage racial bias in private housing within Ann Arbor. 4) "Relationship of the Office of Student Affairs to other Uni- versity units or agencies" should be clearly specified. With the new bylaw, and the transferral of the offices of admissions and regis- tration and records to the vice- president for academic affairs. this recommendation has been fol- lowed well. 5) "A thorough review of the University's housing arrangements for students, including attention to the questions of size, the kind and quality of supervision, and other related items" must be made. An exhaustive study of living units has not been done yet, but is ex- pected to be a major obligation of the director of housing. 6) "Recommendations concern- ing the re-assignment of present personnel in the Office of Student Affairs. Much of the re-assignment suggested would be relevant to any, reorganizaiton of the office, but some, in the committee's view, should be accomplished without delay." Well, with the restructuring personnel have been re-assigned, 1--