I
NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN
ie M'tdiigatn Daily
Seventy-nine years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan
The effete snobs vs.
the
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Editorial, printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
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-0552
CHER
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1969
NIGHT EDITOR: JIM NEUBA
- I
CSJ valid ehicle
for student power
THE PROCESS of meting out justice
has always been a delicate one. What
appears as a travesty to one party often
seems eminently reasonable to another.
But the decisions of duly-appointed
judiciaries have generally been respected.
The integrity of a judicial decision has
been questioned only under unusual cir-
cumstances. Courts have been, in fact,
virtually invulnerable, above the blasts of
opponents.
Unfortunately, the student judiciary
which recently completed its first major
investigation and handed down its first
verdict, is not invulnerable at all. Its
jurisdiction is now limited to those areas
the administration deems are within its
competence and thus the student court is
unable to guarantee students a trial by a
T ough luck
r'HERE IS SOME form of ironic justice
in the discovery of a Soviet nuclear
edge on the eve of the much touted arms
limitations talks. The shoe is on another
foot now and the foot is in another
mouth.
This country, self proclaimed mightiest
of the mighty, appears to have been sur-
passed. Reports issuing from Washing-
ton, only a few days after agreement was
reached to begin the arms talks, indicate
the Soviet Union has in place, or going
into place, about 1,350 intercontinental
ballistic missiles. That is about 300 more
than this country has.
And with this revelation comes pious
apprehension. Officials indicate they are
worried this new discovery make it dif-
ficult to work out arms control agree-
ments with the Russians.
BEYOND THE slight queasiness in the
stomach caused by the amazing prox-
imity of the announcement of talks and
the discovery of completely unsuspected
Soviet arms, one is tempted to examine
the arrogance of this country.
We have long vowed to negotiate from
strength rather than from weakness.
Each arms build up has been coupled with
cries of making the country strong so
that the prospects for negotiation would
be improved. Many senators justified the
ABM system as a way to give the Presi-
dent strength in possible arms limita-
tion talks.
HUT THE leaders of this country never
seemed to care whether the Soviets
were apprehensive about coming into
talks on the weak side. After all, they're
just a bunch of Reds.
-C. S.
jury of their peers for all non-academic
offenses committed on campus.
MOREOVER, CSJ may be under attack
from those above the law. Strong
criticism levelled at the judiciary by one
member of the administration may serve
as a warning signal that University of-
ficials frown on CSJ's proceedings and
doubt its competence.
This is not to say that actions taken
by the court should not be subject to
review. On the contrary, CSJ's verdict in
the cases of four students accused of pre-
venting a naval recruiter from interview-
ing engineering students last spring is
open to scrutiny by competent persons,
including Vice President for Academic
Affairs Smith, a former dean of the Law
School. But it is important that the crit-
icism of CSJ be directed at the tenability
of its legal stance and not at the char-
acters or competence of the jurists.
LIKE OTHER judiciaries, CSJ was at-
tempting to consider mitigating cir-
cumstances, which might demand the
court render a loose interpretation of
student conduct rules. By acquitting
three students and convicting the- fourth
and SDS, the court acted with restraint
because they felt the illegal acts in-
volved were conscientious ones.
But without further probing into the
merits of this action, one must consider,
the manner in which the judiciary acted.
Considering this was the first significant
action taken by the student judiciary, its
proceedings were commendable. It is im-
possible to doubt the conscientiousness
with which the members of the judiciary
approached their task.
They consulted University law profes-
sors, spent long hours deliberating as a
group and came up with a decision which
they felt was rational within the law.
Certainly, the conduct of the court was
as controversial as this final decision it
reached. From the first, the judiciary
made it clear it. would hold informal
hearings which could be understood with-
out difficulty by thoughtful observers.
That some observers felt this procedure
made a "circus" out of the court should
not discredit CSJ; there really is no rea-
son to believe that Anglo-Saxon formali-
ties guarantee the dispensation of jus-
tice.
INDEED there is no reason to believe
CSJ is incapable of acting fairly in
the future. It would be most unfortunate
if the Regents were now to dismiss the
student court and not accept the pend-
ing bylaw which would expand CSJ's
power to try all student non-academic
offenses. If the Regents and administra-
tion are to ignore CSJ after its first
case, it will be prematurely quashing a
valid vehicle of student power.
W HILE IT'S TRUE t.h a t our honored
Vice President only opens his mouth
to change feet, we can learn from listen-
ing to him. Much of what he says is coun-
try club locker room guff - the cracks
about the "Polacks" and the "Japs" are
just so much crabgrass bigotry - but he
treats of themes which should be pondered
as well as ridiculed.
"The effete corps of impudent snobs"
speech is interesting because it doesn't de-
pict the antiwar movement as subversive
in the old Joe McCarthy sense. Agnew
doesn't show himself as someone who sees
spies under the bed. He isn't witchhunting
and the people who liken these statements
to what happened twenty years ago make
the same kind of error others make when
they compare a withdrawal from Saigon
to an Asian Munich.
AGNEW DRAWS APICTURE of him-
self as a man surrounded by an irrational
mob. The members of this mob appear to
him to carry placards reading, "Fags for
Freedom," "Degenerates for Democracy,"
"Sissies for Social Justice," "Pantywaists
for Priorities," "Literates for License,"
"Pansies for People."
This must be a terrible experience for
him, this feeling he obviously has that not
Moscow, the capitol of an evil yet manly
ideology, but rather a horrible crowd of
perverts are sexing up the society and de-
stroying reason and order by the most re-
volting hedonism. You may shrug your
shoulders at this and say, "well, he's just
exchanging red baiting for fairy baiting."
But this is larger than the classic Ameri-
can male insecurity; it's more t h a n the
brutish pasttime of getting drunk and go-
ing out to beat up homosexuals in the Bo-
hemian section of town.
Agnew isn't doing that. He isn't leading
a mob. He's expressing a theme that hor-
rifies and angers many conservative peo-
ple who're threatened by the kinds of cur-
rents which are indisputably loose in our
society. The other night in Illinois, Gov.
Ronald Reagan gave a talk in which he
evinced even greater fright:
"WITH THE INCREASING affluence
and opulence the young men of Rome be-
gan avoiding military service. They found
excuses to remain in the soft and sordid
life of the city. They took to using cos-
metics, wearing feminine-like hairdos and
garments until it became difficult to tell
the sexes apart."
Ancient Rome is to the fundamentalist
in politics as Eden is to the fundamentalist
in religion. Man was expelled from Eden,
and Rome fell for the same reasons, the
difference being that in the latter case
it was a whole society that took a bit out of
the apple.
So the Governor says of Rome in another
speech delivered in Washington last week,
"We know it started with a kind of pioneer
heritage not unlike our own. Then it en-
tered into its two two centuries of great-
ness, reaching its height in the second of
those two centuries, going into its decline
and collapse in the third. However, signs of
decay were becoming apparent the end
of our second century. It has been pointed
out that the days of democracy are num-
bered once the belly takes command of the
head. When the less affluent feel the
urge to break a commandment and begin to
covet that which their more affluent
neighbors possess, they are tempted to use
their votes to obtain instant satisfaction."
FORGET THE FACT that his history is
hopelessly cockeyed. Treat what he has
to say about Rome as an edifying myth
which, like all such fairy tales, is supposed
to tell us how to act now. The good socie-
ty of good citizens is pious, manly in the
military sense of the word, frugal, feroc-
iously self-disciplined and harshly puri-
tan in its sexual behavior.
The internal man in such a society is
well ordered and positively certain in his
beliefs and his opinions; he is tight inside,
unplayful. drastically limited in the plea-
sures he'll permit himself, and above all, he
--and it is a he, for this is a very man-
dominated vision-wears a mask and a full
set of clothes. The citizen of Roman Eden,
the Regan-Agnew ideal American. has a
public face and personality which, as
businessman / father / husband / voter or
whatever, he wears over his private, per-
sonal often agonized self. He is, par ex-
cellence, un-together man.
The Reagans and the Agnews are now
being assaulted by together man - as in
the expression, "I'm getting myself to-
gether." By the old Roman understanding,
together man is a slob, and adangerous
one. He's a slob because he wears no mask
and no suit of clothes. He gets himself
together, both his public and private faces,
which means he recognized all his feel-
ings, his needs, his drives, his fantastical
ravings, his raveled and free form
thoughts, and none of this shames him.
THIS IS ONE of the reasons nudity is
so popular at the moment. This aspect of
it has nothing to do with shocking stuffed
shirts People take off their clothes to get
themselves together, to cast away t h e
mask. This is also why unbelievably large
numbers are into sensitivity training. Part
of getting themselves together is learning
how to feel and be felt, to come alive
by recognizing the body and its capacities.
Together man can live with disorder.
When he does order thought, he does it
differently from un-together man, who
confuses reason with a beaux-arts formal-
ity. His is the open-ended, free-form, play-
full reason with strange, new logics which
terrify people like Reagan, who say this
of education and teachers:
"Among the teachers and scholars (of
old Rome) there was a group called the
cynics who let their hair and beards grow,
were slovenly in their dress, professing an
indifference to worldly goods: and they
heaped scorn on what they called the
middle-class culture . . . to clearly raise
Romans
doubts and to ever seek and never find is
to be in opposition of education and pro-
gress. To discuss freely all sides of all ques-
tions without values is to ensure the cre-
aMon of a generation of uninformed and
talkative minds."
UN-TOGETHER MAN shrieks at doubt.
It is sloppy, it leads to beards, to the
nudity of the inner, passionate person and
who once he has his clothes off will wiggle
his pelvis, dance to West African rythn
and go wild in the streets. Un-together man
sees a straight line of casuality from mod-
ern mathematics to De Konning to Watts
and Columbia.
All of this is made more playful and
bitter because the Agnews and the Reagans
know that these playful people who show
off their bodies, do it in the road and un-
ashamedly delight in touching, smelling
and tasting, are increasingly the prime
creators and maintainers of our tech-
nology. Look who wears the bell bottom
pants in our national family.
Agnew and Reagan know who does and
so they struggle and hit out, but they're
unequipped. Together man is so free flow-
ing that he won't stand still and fight; he
won't stay in the political arena. Agnew
and all those guys try to get him back into
formal politics, but the line between politics
and art, sex, music and clothes has become
a porous membrane. The Romans draw
their swords and go through the membrane
curtain to attack the effete and the hir-
sute, to restore the old categories, put
them back on their pedestals like a row
of Corinthian columns.
The battle is joined everywhere but not
along class lines. Rich fight rich, poor fight
poor, the middle splits. The fight is for the
inner space of man, and it cannot be kept
in courts or legislatures. It is fought in
schools, barbershops, dress stores, movie
studios, suburbs. It will last a long time
and will only end when the modern Ro-
mans go the way of the old.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
Racial
To the Editor:
THIS IS WRITTEN, proverbial-
ly. more in sorrow than in ange',
for wvhat Alexa Canady wrote in
her editorial, "HRC jurisdiction
over the University," I prefer to
believe was a product more of ig-
norance than malice.
'hat racial discrimination exists
in our society is not a question. it's
a fact. It also is true that the Uni-
versity is Ann Arbor's largest
single employer. Therefore, loi -
cally, the University must be the
biggest discriminator.
It also is true that the Univer-
sity, as the largest employer, prob-
ably is doing the most to attempt
to change the social inequities in
our society. Has Miss Canady at-
tempted to learn about academic
and non-academic efforts in re-
cruiting, training, upgrading, com-
munity service, and education in
which the University is engaged?
Has she bothered to look at the
evidence, including statistics? Or
is she dealing in the broad gen-
eralities which express a dissatis-
faction al of us ought to feel with
how rapidly and well society--in-
cluding the University -is trying
to correct wrongs?
IT DOES not really help to solve
anything to restate conventional
wisdom about discrimination in
society, implying that the problem
is one of deliberate bias. Those
instances can be handled. The
frustrating problem is unconscious
racism and, beyond that, achieving
an understanding of what af-
bias in
firmative action means. It does
not help to repeat an inaccurate
characterization of the so-called
"Green report." (You even have
an inaccurate paraphrase of the
Daily's original inaccuracy!) And
it does not help-really, it's vicious
---to have a member of the HRC
label black people working within
an institution to help change
things as Uncle Toms.
-Jack H. Hamilton
Assistant Director
university Relations
.loderauion
To the Editor:
STEVE NISSEN in his article
of Oct. 22 concludes by asking how
"sensitive and concerned people"
can call for moderation in the face
of the atrocities "synonymous with
the American way of life." As such
sensitive and concerned persons,
we hope to be able to answer his
question.
It should be made clear from the
beginning that the word "modera-
tion" has to many of us involved
in Students for Effective Action
(SEA) the same negative connota-
tion it holds for Mr. Nissen. It has
a sort of "Uncle Tom" air about
it. It implies that we feel we should
be nice and submissive in the face
of oppression.
But the problem is that the term
"moderate" is not one we in SEA
would willingly apply to ourselves:
it is rather the term others apply
to us, thereby attributing to SEA
University employment
passive acceptance of the often
unresponsive political system.
WE ARE NOT about passivity.
We want many of the vast changes
both within and without the U~ni-
versity sought by the more con-
frontation-oriented p o I i t i c a I
groups. And we realize, as Mr.
Nissen does, that "Students, as a
class, lack any real voting power
in the University decision-making
system," with rare exceptions.
We recognize that as long as
there is this lack of a meaningful
vote in the decision-making, con-
frontation can at times be an ef-
fectixe alternative. But we also
r'ealize the unfortunate natur'e of
this situation.
SEA WANTS a much greater
role for students and all people in
decisions affecting their lives. But
we refuse to throw out "rational
dialogue" and constructive pro-
posals as a means to such change:
Mr. Nissen refers to this as a "lack
of political sophistication." He
says that we are naive if xxe view
those governing the University and
the nation as reasonable, rational
men who can be peaceably dealt
with. The principles of democracy
may be naive, but it should be
made clear that lack of political
cynicism does not necessarily im-
ply lack of political sophistication.
WE STILL FEEL that, at least
in the University community, the
system can be made responsive to
the interests of the people. History
,
Af~EATIO IN~~~j~u~rFJ1
~4
I M
"Where do they get those crazy ideas ..?..
HENRY
STEVE NISSEN
City Editor
CHRIS STEELE ...
MARCIA ABRAMSON ..
GRIX, Editor
RON LANDSMAN
Managing Editor
.-Associate City Editor
Associate Managing Editor
-HENRY GRIX
Editor
Welfare mothers coopted
by white liberals
This year's d r i v e by the welfare
mothers for adequate funds to clothe
their school-age children was a com-
plete fiasco. This failure best exem-
plifies the ineffectuality of petitioning
a repressive government through the
"democratic" redress machinery pro-
vided by that oppressive agency.
Last year at the beginning of the
learning season, some 7500 Washte-
natw County welfare mothers won for
their approximately 15,000 children
$73.50 so their children could wear
new school clothes and not have to
feel ashamed of patched and ill-fit-
ting hand-me-downs.
But this year school has been in
session for one month and these same
welfare mothers find themselves try-
ing to clothe their children with one-
third of last year's allotment.
Have twelve months so altered the
mothers' temperament from aggres-
siveness to docility, from righteous in-
dignation to humble submission?
Hardly. The anger is there, but it
has been subdued; the mothers were
coopted by a group of liberal white
middle class professionals, who sought
to purge their guilt feelings formed
from years of armchair theorizing and
a reluctance to commit themselves to
successful actions. The white liberals
were determined to conduct a "prop-
er" demonstration in marked contrast
to the confrontation protest staged
by radicals last year.
But welfare mothers are aware that
even if they do protest in the socially
acceptable manner, their voices are
not heard and their requests are not
ognized the WRC as a representative
negotiating body for the mothers.
Then mothers attempted to appeal di-
rectly to the Supervisors but w e r e
denied admittance to the meetings.
And their reasoning and pleading
were to no avail for their listeners
were heartless, well-fed men whose
families are m o r e than adequately
clothed, whose first attentions are di-
rected toward their businesses, and
who regard the welfare mothers as a
once-in-the-year thorn in their sides.
The Concerned Citizens Committee
for school clothing has vowed to press
their demand for increased welfare al-
lotments. But so what. Their efforts
will be largely unfruitful because they
are resolved to employ only the "dem-
ocratic" processes of redress.
Indeed t h e radical philosophy of
confrontation when all else fails is ex-
ecuted with considerably less finesse
than petitioning and resolutions. And,
at least in the case of the mothers.
it creates a melodramatic sensational-
ism, which tends to beclouds the is-
They claimed there were no additional
funds and drew up a resolution, sign-
ed and endorsed by four district judg-
es, which said that any disturbances
in the County Building would meet
with immediate prosecution. Yet af-
ter almost two months of negotiating,
demonstrating, picketing and peti-
tioning, and one incidental arrest, the
supervisors admitted a $124,000 sur-
plus but said it was earmarked f o r
1970 expenditures.
And now the mothers have no more
than $27.50, and the Supervisors have
not offered to do more in 1970 than
allocate $5,000 for a church s t o r e
front, which will act as a gratis Sal-
vation Army center, where the moth-
ers can get free clothing that other
families have discarded.
Even if the white liberals had won
an increased allotment for the moth-
ers it would not have resolved the
basic problem. Their appeals would
have been considered because t h e i r
pigmentation and economic status
were correct. Had their numbers been
up to this point may not bear us
out. But things are different now.
More people are aware of what's
going on and are unwilling to put
up with it.
WE DO NOT want a time to
come when peaceful change be-
comes impossible and violent
change becomes inevitable. We
urge others whose "lack of polit-
ical sophistication" leads them to
believe in rational dialogue and
constructive proposals to join SEA
in efforts to make this political
system a democratic one.
-Jeff Tirengel, '71
-Rick Curtis, '70
-Andy Weissman, "71
Dull lectures
To the Editor:
IT IS 8:45 of a fall evening, and
how comforting it is to know that
all over Ann Arbor professors are
doing their best to make sure that
their next day's lectures will be
as dull as possible. Although there
ar'e some potentially fascinating
courses offered at this Univ-rsity,
the professors in most depart-
fnents have managed to ignore all
the potentially interesting, useful
material, and to concentrate in-
stead on the obscure facts and
ridiculous jargon of their respec-
tive fields.
Perhaps the most successful at-
tempt in this school at making a
potentially enjoyable, interesting
course dull has been made by the
botany department. in the course
work of Botany 101. Botany 101
offers the student an unparal'led
TRASTRUCTURE, so that in later
life. as his student happens to take
a casual glance in a microscope he
may spot a Golgi body, and rec-
ognize it as such.
A rose is a rose is a rose. But a
Golgi body is a dictyosome, and
should be studied reverently. Sleep
well, oh troubled student of in-
troductory botany. And rest as-
sured-your Botany 101 midterm
of today is the Chem. 672 final
exam of tomorrowv.
-Kathy Peiffer, '7
Tatxint; storv
To the Editor:
LAURIE HARRIS summarized
the Wednesday night meeting of
the Graduate Assembly in the
Thursday, Oct. 23 edition of The
Daily. Two-thirds of her aticle
discussed a GA motion on ROTC,
although it was only one of four
items on the agenda.
At the pesent time ROTC is in
vogue on campus. This xt'as an im-
portant issue at the GA meeting
but so were others. Over an hour
was spent debating the substitu-
tion of a city income tax for the
present city property tax, yet one
could only surmise from the ar-
ticle that it was an issue of little
substance.
MISS HARRIS WROTE. "GA
also passed a motion supporting
the city income tax proposed by
City Council as a substitution for
the present property tax." In fact
the motion was carried ove' -
whelmingly and was intended to
ennourage stuidents to support and
cause they lack evolutionary analytic