94e £ir4igan Dath Seventy-nine years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan ce~teris par ibus Trying times in Daley's Chicago ... ..... ........ ......,..,...'........ . .... . . . . . . . jenny stiller 420 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, SEPTEMBER 30, 1969 NIGHT EDITOR: STUART GANNES The bookstore and beyond THE SEIZURE of the LSA Bldg. last week, the 107 arrests which followed so swiftly, the events which led up to the takeover and the basic issues involved make this the most critical period in the history of the University. While the tactics involved in r e c e n t demonstrations are surely open to scrut- iny, there is, nonetheless, a compelling 'need to respect the moral position which led to such drastic action, to examine the issues involved and to re-dedicate the University community to their resolu- tion. The issues underlying the present crisis range far beyond the questions raised in the controversy over creation of a stu- dent-run discount bookstore. They in- volve the fundamental questions of the role students should play in University decision-making. These issues must be dealt with directly. IN THIS light, the action taken at yes- terday's special Senate Assembly meet- ing takes on added significance. The abil- ity of students to peacefully initiate meaningful structural changes in t h e University is extremely limited. The faculty must take the initiative and begin effecting a drastic overhaul of decision- making procedures. As yesterday's meeting, Assembly ap- proved a proposal to undertake a re- examination of this very problem. The intent of this resolution is laudable. But it must be followed by action, as quickly as possible, on specific proposals aimed at giving students significant institution- al control over the University decisions which affect their lives. For the past three years, of course, students and faculty members have been involved in intensive discussions and negotiations over this very problem. But even the imminent adoption of regental bylaw revisions resulting from these dis- cussions has failed to avert confronta- tion. THE FAILURE, however, is not with the bylaw discussions themselves. In fact, although the bylaws have not been rati- fied, some of the proposals they include have already been adopted to a great ex- tent. In the Office of Student Affairs, for example, student-faculty policy boards have been created and given control over at least the internal workings of the of- fice. The failure of dialogue over the past three years was not, then, a result of lack of cooperation or good faith. Rather, new questions arose while both students and faculty members continued to ad- dress themselves to the issues w h i c h emerged from the Student Power Movement of 1966, VHILE NO one can be sure of possess- ing answers to all the problems that have arisen, swift action in certain key areas appears essential: * Student Government Council's pro- posal for student-faculty control of the bookstore is both reasonable and work- ,ble. Now that Senate Assembly has urged faculty involvement in the issue, the Senate Advisory Committee on Univer- sity Affairs should work with students d administrators to insure immediate ental adoption of the SGC proposal. "I The right of stdents to tax them- es through a referendum, as in the case of last March's overwhelming vote for a bookstore levy, must be recognized. Despite the previous failings of student elections, they are far more democratic than the present power of the Regents over the assessment of student fees. In- deed, regental recognition of the validity of such referenda might be just the re- form needed to increase voter turnouts. 0 The Regents must be barred from providing general monies (state appro- priations and tuition) for budget items which do not involve instruction, aca- demic services, financial aids, adminis- tration or maintenance of the physical plant, without affirmative action by the students in a referendtim. Specifically, the following uses of tuition monies re- quire review.by the students: --The $5 per term assessment for the League and the Union; -The $5 per term assessment for the In 4 I rhi n nit athletic department, which is being used to pay of fthe cost of construction of the Special Events Bldg. -The use of accumulated tuition monies to pay off the cost of construc- tion of the Administration Bldg. -The proposed use of a recurring fee assessment of up to $15 for construction of two intramural buildings. * The controversy over the power of policy boards in the Office of Student Affairs has revealed at least one thing clearly: the line between policy-making and administration is virtually non-exist- ent. Yet the all-important weekly policy meeting by the president and the vice presidents is conducted behind closed doors. Immediate alternatives to investing such power in the executive officers are not available. But the secrecy of the process can be easily eliminated. Meet- ings of the executive officers should be open to the public, and designated repre- sentatives of SGC and Assembly should be allowed full speaking privileges. * Ultimately, the Regents must abdi- cate all but ceremonial control over Uni- versity policies to an assembly of stu- dent and faculty representatives. At present, however, this is neither politi- cally nor structurally feasible. In t h e interim, the president and vice presi- dent of SGC and the chairman and vice chairman of SACUA should be seated on the board with full voting rights. It is understood that this proposal cannot be formally implemented without an amendment to the state constitution. But as an indicaion of good faith, and as a practical matter, the Regents c o u1 d easily agree to be bound by a majority decision which included the votes of the student and faculty representatives. * In line with the formal and informal rulings of Atty. Gen. Frank Kelley last month, all meetings of the Regents should be open to the public. ALTHOUGH THE thrust of the current crisis centers on the relationship of students to policies set by the central administration of the University, it is clear that the principles involved extend as well to decision-making practices in the schools, colleges and academic de- partments. While examining possible alterations in the power of the administration and the Regents, faculty members also should think seriously about the problem of aca- demic decison-making. If only half the problem is attended to now, the Univer- sity community will only be leaving itself open to another tragic crisis of the kind all parties have provoked this past week. For the moment, the problem in the academic area is somewhat less pressing. In the not so distant future, however, changes similar to, but more far-reach- ing than, those recently proposed by Senate Assembly's Academic Affairs Committee must be adopted by the Uni- versity's units: " Students should be given at least parity representation with faculty mem- bers on all bodies which deal with and have final authority over requirements and course content. Curriculum decis- ions profoundly affect a student's educa- tional experience, and students should have an equal voice in setting academic standards. - * Students should be granted signifi- cant representation on groups with con- trol over selection, evaluation and pro- motion of professors. Although profes- sors have the undeniable advantage of expertise in their fields, students have an equally undeniable stake in evaluating ths teaching performance of faculty members. The quality of the faculty is of great importance to students and the use of student course evaluations in ten- ure decisions does not by itself adequate- ly reflect this interest. * Students' right to trial by their peers must be recognized for academic offens- es. Although questions of academic hon- esty can remain within the jurisdiction of the academic units, students should- be tried by students, professors by o t h e r professors. Due process must be main- tained and lines of appeal established. Of course, discipline for offenses which are not strictly academic in nature has no place in the judiciaries of the schools and colleges. "And when amid the plaintiff's shrieks, The ruffianly defendant speaks- Upon the other side; What he may say you needn't mind- From bias free of every kind, This trial must be tried!" -W. S. Gilbert CHICAGO rTHE TRIAL OF the Chicago Eight is a comedy, a parody, a circus, "with Judge Hoffman as the ringmaster," if we are to believe defendant Rennie Davis on the subject. The bias of the judge is too ob- dent, the unsuitability of the jury too ob- vious. One is tempted at one moment to rise to one's feet screaming in protest; at the next, to callapse helpless with laughter. The defendants have a tendency to do both, at times, and so do the reporters and spectators. It hardly seems like one of the most serious trials of the century, perhaps of the nation's history. But it is. What is at stake here is the very fate of dissent itself; the fate of the Constitution, and ultimately of us all, The eight defendants are charged with conspiring-chiefly with the aid of Ma Bell and the U.S. Mails-to cross state lines to incite riot. In addition, each is charged with a number of overt acts-usually at- tending meetings and addressing crowds, though in two cases, demonstrating how to make a Molotov cocktail. THEY ARE A MIXED bag, these de- fendants: David Dellinger, 53, a balding middle-aged Quaker who spent World Wax II in jail for refusing to register for the draft; Michigan's own Tom Hayden, for- mer Daily editor and drafter- of the Port Huron Statement for the original SDS, free lance organizer, a loner, no one's man but his own; Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, founders of the Yippies, and mad cap pranksters with an inscrutable gift for leadership; Rennie Davis, draft protester extraordinaire and organizer of the orig- inal Mobilization, quiet, pragmatic, a very together person; Bobbie Seale, co-founder and chairman of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, currently under arrest for murder, tense, powerful, incredibly mag- netic; Lee Weiner and John Froines, the firebugs whom no one ever heard of before the trial-Weiner laughing and cavorting with Abbie Hoffman before the TV cameras; Froines who didn't even cross a state line to come to Chicago, detached, intense and aloof. STRANGELY enough, the tensest mo- ments of the first few days of the trial have been provided not by the defend- ants but by the treatment of their law- yers. Four attorneys originally engaged to help prepare the pre-trial motions faced ar- rest late last week when Judge Julius Hoffman refused to accept their telegrams notifying the court of their withdrawal from the case. One, Michael E. Tigar, was arrested in Los Angeles and conveyed to the Cook County lockup in the custody of two U.S. marshals. Another, G e r a 1 d Lefcourt, came voluntarily to Chicago where he was also immediately incarcerat- ed, fingerprinted and photographed. Although both men were released from jail by a higher court and contempt charges against them were dropped by Judge Hoffman, considerable expense was incurred and their reputations will un- doubtedly suffer in some quarters from the experience. The two other pre-trial lawyers, Michael Kennedy and Dennis Ro- berts, would have been arrested Friday night. had not Hoffman's warrants been quashed by another court. ALL FOUR WERE in Chicago yesterday morning to protest their treatment, and they were joined by concerned lawyers from New York and Boston, Washington and San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami. There were even a few from Chicago. "We just dropped everything and came," one of them explained. "The trial has been mark- ed by judicial attacks upon lawyers un- precedented in American history." The lawyers are justly concerned over the judges attempts to chastise the defend- ants through their lawyers and to bribe the defense counsel to waive their clients' rights to keep themselves out of jail. Even though this kind of attack on the lawyers is hardly surprising in a city (dare we say nation?) which would even attempt to jail men for dissenting, it is somehow still shocking. FOR THE MOMENT the higher courts have come through like the U.S. Cavalry to save the day-as they are expected to do, should the middle aged, lower middle class jury decide to convict. The nightmare, of course, is that they might not; these eight men might go to jail. Then the snark would indeed be a boojum; and our free- dom to speak out will "softly and suddenly vanish away" as if it had never pien. For now, the trial is a circus, a parody, a comedy. But the line between high comedy and high tragedy is a thin one; one we may step over yet in this court- room -- in Mayor Daley's Chicago. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Liberal conscience and the To the Editor: IT IS TRUE that the student bookstore is a pretext or, if you will, a symbol. It is true also that the students who would realize it by occupation of university build- ings (force) and by strike (dis- ruption) are violating humane and democratic values of the Univer- sity; while professors who would oppose these tactics so uphold these values-and not only, it must seem, in defense of the uni- versity but of the society. Yet if two such evident truths torture conscience, they must somehow violate intelligence. They are at a deeper level inconsistent. Liberal professors are main vic- tims of the contradiction, just as they are the main victims of con- science. One has to analyze the students' attack in its meaning and form, and from that context, the con- tradictions of the professorial de- fense. The bookstore is both symbol and pretext. Symbol, as in its largest sense the issue is direct control by the people concerned of the economic and political con- ditions of their existence. Symbol of a democratic socialism. Pretext, on one hand, because it combines and disguises a variety of disparate protests against con- ditions of the campus: ROTC, student rents, course requirements. war research. Pretext, then, be- caiuse in uniting these issues of the campus, it obviously aims at the society: at the high-handed rights of capital in general and the military-industrial complex in particular, at the oppression of blacks, at all those malaises of American democracy whose high- est current expression is the slaughter of Vietnamesepeasants. Symbol and pretext, the book- store really means a political struggle .Which explains its forms. They are forms of political pres- sure-of which force and disrup- tion are the historically normal continua tion. OPPOSING FORCE and disrup- tion, the liberal professors stand up against fascism. They defend freedom within the enclosure of the university, on pain of its des- truction throughout the society, They will uphold their respon- sibilities-on the campus thus to the world. The reflexive and mistaken as- sumption in this stand is imme- diately clear: that if "fascist tac- ticts" are not opposed here, in this one important area the taint will spread like a spot of oil on water until it covers us all, everywhere. But the fascist tactics already are everywhere: in the structure of the society and the 'brutality of its police, foreign and domestic. Defending thus democratic values on the campus, the liberal pro- fessors counterpose themselves to the struggle against the fascization of the society. This is their basic contradiction. In taking more seriously their narrow responsibilities of acade- mic freedom, they must neglect their larger responsibility to free- dom as such. In the end, if they succeed in repressing the force and disruption, they can only by an inverse proof invalidate their own political axiom: the spot of oil does not spread. A peaceful, law-abiding university can live "freely" within a totalitarian so- ciety, without menace to that so- ciety. As in the Soviet Union. -Frithjof H. Bergmann -Robert Hefner r _ i~~~~~','J ._._. _ --'- . i4y m" w1. r4 r I. r, WE BAVE MORE OMACI YII * r1 ,bttSydM bookstore Later that, afternoon, these same students entered the LSA -- building. In the course of their occupation my office was forcibly I. entered, one window broken after entry w a s gained, my personal files rifled, mundane supplies and ten dollars in cash taken from my desk, one expensive slide projec- torestolen, and an office wall de- faced with a "thank you" note written in permanent ink. SUCH BEHAVIOR is exceed- ingly difficult to reconcile with these students' pronouncements and my own) regarding their mature capacities. -James C. Moore, Jr. Prof. Sociology dept. Sept. 29 Voice of 'reaction' - To the Editor: THE CURRENT bookstore up- rising makes it apparent that an unfortunately large number of students suffer from gross mis- conceptions concerning the na- ture and purpose of a university. Therefore, using simple terms so that simple minds might under- stand, I will explain themi We are not here so that we may enjoy four years of idleness, but to be trained to fulfill useful func- tions in society. The fact that we are in college is an admission by us that we do not have the abil- ity to take our place in the ranks of productive citizens. To run the university, we have been provided with an adminis- tration comprised of men exper- ienced in the field of educatio& The combined wisdom of 35,000 ignorant students does n o t ap- such force. proach that of even one member. nay disagree Therefore, the entire concept of method and student demands is ludicrous. all express leadership. ANY LEGITIMATE requests ar to be taken to the proper author- en ities where they will be considerel len on their merits, but under no cir- ishop, Jr. cumstances are students to usurp' er the adinistration's prerogatives. ngton Being on a higher plane, the pres- ard ident of the University needs not errider answer to the students any more mton than d o e s a prison warden to ningham criminal inmates. hue, Jr. The forceful seizure of a uni- tep versity building by dissidents ay shows the bankruptcy of their el cause. Unable through 1 a c k of son reason to convince the Regents, in they chose a m o r e animal-like ahn methodein anattempt to impose r their demands. A more honorable er course of action would have been nedy for them to resign, making space auss for those m o r e appreciative of IcCauley what Michigan has to offer. iler I DO NOT expect this letter to mer be printed, since it contains ob- erce viously "reactionary" overtones lnt tactually Confucian). However, it sky would be a pleasant surprise. oley -Lai Ta-wei t Sept. 29 gan t. Antoine Concerned GOP idalow da1 To the Editor: ith THE EDITORIAL about the Concerned Citizens recall cam- er paign which appeared in the Sep- atson tember 23 edition of The Daily 7ellman states by innuendo that the Re- te publican Party is involved in that ht recall. That statement is untrue. ourd On August 28, 1969, I released the following statement to the press: The Ann Arbor Republican 1;11",r n 9 City Committe iso nnnnna t LSA Student Assembly To the Editor: THE EVENTS of the past week have demonstrated the inadequacy of student involvement in Univer - sity affairs. This applies for the problems within the colleges and departments as well as for Uni- versity-wide issues like the book- store. In the literary college, efforts to promote student participation have culminated in the develop- ment of Student Assembly. Its purpose is to provide an open or- ganized caucus to discuss anything relevant to LSA curricula and ad- ministration. Whilesthe Student Assembly maintains its identity as an auto- nomous student organization, it also functions with the most crit- ical bodies of the colleges' deci- sion-making process, the curricu- lum committee, and administrative board, and the admission commit- tee. IT IS NOW time for the devel- opment of a student organization that is devoted to raising and ex- amining problems in the curricula and the administration of literary college. Obviously there are areas that warrant close attention. The movement to abolish ROTC grew out of efforts in the cur- riculum committee to strip it of its academic credit. In addition, the discussions resulting in the elimi- nation of needless distribution re- quirements and the formation of the bachelors of general studies degree were also held in the cur- riculum committee. There are still problems, how- ever, that haven't been acted upon by students. The administrative board, for example, cannot decide ..hnf fn ri n A ..rs. - ninn rc es close too soon and too frequent- ly, etc. THE STUDENT Assemblybem- phasizes accessibility to a broad base of students. Accordingly, it has incorporated students from the partmental committee as well as an increase in number of in- terested LSA students. With its diversity and initiative, the As- sembly is approaching the kind of structure that can effectively deal with the numerous problems in- herent in a College of this size. The first policy statement con- cerning disciplinary action in the administrative board will be dis- cussed on Tuesday, Sept. 30, in Room 1017 Angell Hall. All LSA students 'are encouraged to join the Assembly then. -Ken Lasser Sept. 29 LawI faculty statentent To the Editor: THE UNDERSIGNED a'e mei- bers of the University of Michigan law faculty. We speak here as in- dividual members of the Univer- sity community. Although we are of divergent minds on most public issues of the day, we unite in de- ploring the recent efforts of some student government leaders to provoke a forceful confrontation with the University. Many of us are dissatisfied with the structure of the ROTC pro- gram and some of us would prefer its abolition. Many of us are dis- satisfied with existing modes of student participation in university government and some support the idea of a student-run bookstore. But none of us perceives a justi- fication for the use of force to ad- -a-rr #hpe nnl.i nartvi nmvs has a duty to resist While some of us m with the particularr timing employed, we our support for his i -Francis A. All -Layman E. Al -William W. B -Olin L.- Browd -Paul D. Carri -Alfred F. Con -Luke K. Coop -Roger C. Cran -Roger A. Cun -Charles Dona -Samuel D. Est -Whitmore Gr -Jerold H. Isra -John H. Jacks -Joseph R. Jul -Douglas A. Ka -Yale Kamisar -Paul G. Kaup -Frank R. Ken -Robert L. Kna -Matthew P. M -Arthur R. Mill -Grant Nelson -George E. Pal -William J. Pi -Marcus L. Pla -Alan N. Polasl -Beverley J. Po -Roy F. Proffit -John W. Reed -Donald H. Re -Theodore J. S -Terrance San -Stanley Siegel -Russell A. Smi -Eric Stein -Peter 0. Stein -Andrew S. W -Richard. V. W( -James J. Whi -L. Hart Wrigh -Kenneth L. Y Sept. 29 l)