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Editorials printed in The Michigan Doily express the individual opinions of staff writers
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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1969
NIGHT EDITOR: JUDY SARASOHNI
Unhappy annmiversary
for, student power
FfHREE YEARS OLD this week, the mas-
sive sit-ins and teach-ins of the Stu-
dent Power Movement of 1966 have had
a profound effect on the recent history
of the University.
It is difficult, of course, to establish di-
rect causal relationships between t h e
1966 actions and the reforms of Univer-
sity regulations and structures that have
followed; as much as anything, the
Student Power Movement represented a
rather blunt attack on the draft and,
more specifically, on the arbitrariness of
the University administration.
But in a very real sense, the achieve-
ments and failures of the past three years
constitute the legacy of the Student
Power Movement. For the 1966 demon-
strations were the first actions sufficient-
ly large and dramatic to force faculty
members and administrators to begin
taking student demands and interests
seriously.
And while much remains to be done in
the area of increasing the student role
in University decision-making, the
changes which have taken place over the
last three years have been significant.
The social freedoms new students now
take for granted are, in fact, only the
recent fruits of a prolonged struggle
against repressive restrictions on the lives
of students. For example, the abolition
of curfews for women living in the dormi-
tories and the establishment of the right
of underclass students to live outside the
dormitory system have taken place only
in the last two years.
In a more positive sense, meanwhile,
students have gained unprecedented in-
fluence in the governing of the Univer-
sity. While faculty members and admin-
istrators have yet to surrender their
stranglehold on the ultimate mechanisms
of University decision-making, inroads
have been made in a wide range of areas
curriculum, course evaluation, student
services and even University financing.
Students have even won their 40-year
struggle for a discount bookstore. Al-
though even more drastic action than
that taken in 1966 was necessary to gain
an acceptable bookstore set-up, the case
still proves that students can have their
way if they are right and demonstrate
some persistence.
DESPITE THESE gains, however, one of
the most important results of the
Student Power Movement remains in a
state of limbo. The institutionalization
of the role of students in certain decis-
ion-making areas continues, after three
years of debate and redrafting, to await
inclusing in the Regents bylaws. And,
ominously, a recent proposal by the Re-
gents themselves threatens the value of
the entire work.
Thus far, the task of writing student
powers and rights into the bylaws has
proven an arduous one. Appointed in the
wake of the Student Power Movement,
the President's Commission on the Role
of Students in University Decision-mak-
ing (the Hatcher Commission) took over
a year to write its lengthy, well consider-
ed report.
Unfortunately, areas of disagreement
still remained, and the commission's re-
commendations were not specifically de-
signed for inclusion In the bylaws. Hasty
attempts to draft bylaws on the commis-
sion report lead to a controversy between
students and the administration and
forced another year's delay as students
itlorial StanT
HENRY GRIX, Editor
STEVE NISSEN RON LANDSMAN
City Editor Managing Editor
"FVE ANZALONE Editorial Page Editor
t'.HRIS STEELE ..........Editorial Page Editor
.FNNY STILLER..............Editorial Page Editor
LARCIA ABRAMSON ...Asociate Managing Editor
LANIE I IPPINCOTT Asociate Managing Editor
LESL IE WAYNE ......................... Arts Editor
JOH-N GRAY........................ Literary Editor
PHIL BLOCK..........Contributing Editor
DREW BOGEMA................Contributing Editor
MARY RADTKE ... ...Contributing Editor
LAWRENCE ROBBINS ......Photo Editor
NIGHT EDITORS: Stuart Ganges, Martin Hirschman.
Jim Neubac'her, Judy Sarasohn. David Spurr, Dan-
ilZwerdlii
and faculty members sought to agree on
a specific proposal to submit to the Re-
gents.
Finally this summer, such agreement
was achieved. With very minor points of
disagreement duly noted, a student-fa-
culty approved draft of the bylaws was
submitted.
The Regents began considering the by-
laws in October, and last month issued
a proposed draft of some of the sections
under consideration. Unfortunately, the
new proposal includes changes which
would drastically alter the affect of the
bylaws, to the detriment of the Univer-
sity community as a whole.
ONE OF THE major recommendations
of the Hatcher Commission report
was the elimination of rules relating to
the non-academic conduct of students
and faculty members. At present, f r
example, the schools and colleges main-
tain rules against the disruption of Uni-
versity functions, with suspension and
expulsion - normally the response to
academic deficiency - as possible penal-
ties.
Members of the Hatcher Commission
wisely believed that the disciplining of
students for offenses which were ' not
strictly academic (for example, cheating
on exams) should be left to the civil
authorities. Offenses like disruptions do
not, in any way, bear on the competence
of a student to continue in his academic
program. In addition, there is a serious
question of the ability of a University tri-
bunal to give a fair hearing to a student
whose actions were directed against the
University.
The primary disciplinary mechanism
outlined in the proposed bylaws is a stu-
dent-faculty-administration body which
would be called University Council. The
council would be empowered to deter-
mine, with the approval of Senate As-
sembly and Student Government Council,
conduct standards for all members of
the University community.
Thus, University Council could end
regulations governing non-academic con-
duct, or at least take authority over such
regulations away from the schools and
colleges.
Unfortunately, under the draft of the
bylaws put forth by the Regents, t h e
power of University Council would be
significantly impaired. The rules approv-
ed by the faculties of the schools and
colleges would remain supreme, with
council able to enact regulations only in
cases where lower-level rules do not ap-
ply. And with the destruction of the power
of University Council, hopes of ending
non-academic conduct rules would be
sigificantly dimmed.
A SECOND CHANGE made by the Re-
gents would have what appears to be
the unfortunate effect of giving undue
longevity to University Council regula-
tions. Standards of conduct in the Uni-
versity community, have, for at least the
last three years, undergone rapid change,
and this situation is likely to continue.
Yet under the Regents' new proposal, it
would be extremely difficult to effect a
change in existing conduct regulations.
Students and faculty members had pro-
posed a system under which either SGC
or Senate Assembly could "disaffirm" a
council regulation thus forcing immed-
iate re-drafting of the statute. This pro-
vision is unwisely eliminated in the re-
gental plan.
A third change in the bylaw draft is
more ominous for its indication of the
intent of the Regents than for its actual
substance. Under the student-faculty ver-
sion University Council rules would be
in effect unless the Regents vetoed them.
The Regents have turned this around by
including approval by them as a require-
ment for passage of a regulation.
Under the state constitution, of course,
there is no way to legally eliminate the
role of the Regents as the ultimate Uni-
versity decision-makers. But develop-
ments in recent years have demonstrated
that the internal stability of the Univer-
sity is best promoted by keeping regental
.. :,n:., S, w au
NIC TOLASVONHOFFMAN==
The fi
WASHINGTON
W ITH BETTER than 80 p e r
cent of its revenues in war
contracts, peace and universal dis-
armament would be disaster to
General Dynamics. Everybody
knows that; but peace would be
even more devastating to the
peace movement.
Peace and disarmament would
leave General Dynamics with 20
per cent of its business, but it
would leave the movement with
nothing. It would be stuck selling a
commodity whose value had been
destroyed by its abundance. The
same observation can be made in
almost every line of work.
Cops needs crooks: social work-
ers need poverty; teachers need
ignorance; trust lawyers need the
anti-trust division of the Justice
Department: civil rights leaders
need Spiro Agnew and the Klan:
newspaper writers need the pros-
pect of clamity; cancer research-
ers need cancer. Almost everybody
who's working on a problem h a s
some incentive for failing to solve
it.
The unspoken undertow drag-
ging us back toward failure works
with different force on different
people. By all rights it should have
a weak pull on the cancer re-
searcher; if he finds a cure or a
preventive, he can pick himself
another disease and go to work
again. The radical antiwar work-
er, if he's a professional giving his
life to the realization of social
change, will be much slower to
welcome the end of hostilities. He
knows the war' is making social
critics of us all; it's opening up
issue after issue, sensitizing mil-
lions of people to exploitations and
injustices they had been oblivious
to. He may have decidedly mixed
feelings on the day of the cease-
fire, if there is one.
THERE'S A STRAIN of wacki-
ness in these observations. They
violate our notions of social cas-
uality. We've been brought up to
believe that history, economics and
society operate in accordance with
set laws like the movements of
heavenly bodies and the idea of
an incentive to fail doesn't fit
in.
It suggests a trace of individual
perverseness that paradigms by
which we explain our collective
behavior won't account for. We
are most of us terrible predestina-
tionists who believe human socie-
ty is out of human control; com-
munist or capitalist, we don't be-
lieve any man can deviate from
the path the laws of the market
chalk out for him. Our pessimistic
social analyses predicate impot-
ence and the absence of effective
free will in the creatures w h o
manufacture conveyances to the
moon.
The exception we allow is some-
thing we call human nature, which
is always a bad, bestial remnant
working to reinforce the lugubr-
ious doom our social systems are
preparing for us. We say it's in-
herent in the workings of the
communist system that the Rus-
sians aspire to destroy our free-
dom; they say it's inherent in
the imperialist system that t h e
Americas want to steal their mon-
ey. Then we add that human na-
ture craves the war our societies
make inevitable. We sit around
and agree that deep inside our
nervous systems, in our gametes
and zygotes, down in our v e r y
DNA . territrin imnrntiv driv--
0
ght for failure
the week permanent, unbroken,
universal peace strikes us as a
crime against nature, an unna-
tural act. The oscillating tension
between war and peace is lilte the
succession of the seasons to us.
A world at peace is a universal
Switzerland; it's Sweden every-
where. There is a permafrost of
conviction under the conscious
surface that equates peace w i t h
declining birth rates, loss of hair
and virility, fertility and volup-
tiousness in women, the end of
wit and variety. Peace is perpe-
tually perfect southern California
weather, and we can't stand the
thought of it. With final peace
would be the end of competition,
of drama, of winners and losers.
Peace would rob us of our ener-
gies and our anxieties.
For us peace would be the peace
of the priest who prays, "requies-
cat in pace." Peace is death so we
struggle not only for nuclear bal-
ance, but a balance of peace and
war, because we silly things be-
lieve war is necessary to keep us
alive.
THE THREAT of the abolition
of poverty hits us in the same
way. "The poor you shall always
have with you," we quote to each
other, hoping it ever and anon
will be so. If peace will rob us
of sex and creativity, the demise
of poverty will ruin our society.
With the end of poverty t h e
whole system of organized charity
will collapse. People use charity,
that is they give other people
money, as an atonement for their
sins, as a way of asserting their
superiority over the recipients and
as a method of social control. All
of this would vanish or be greatly
impaired and it scares.
We can't imagine running a
society without a complicated sys-
tem of deprivations and scarcities
to control people. Even now the.
rich are moaning about the ser-
vant problem, how few there are
and how poorly they do their jobs.
Without poverty who will do the
crud work? We don't like to talk
about it --it's too unfashionable
- but the prospect bothers us so
much that we'd rather waste our
millions on programs that are de-
signed to fail than face the pos-
sibility of success.
These fears don't grow out of a
realistic assessment of our econ-
omic system but out ofrour heads.
Our fear of peace and prosperity is
more theological than pragmatic,
so imbued are we with the belief
that the natural social life of man
is a cycle of constraint, coercion
and punishment. We derive this
overview of the necessary human
condition from the remains of our
fathers' religious beliefs and the
rules and truths which were once
applicable and reasonable. They
aren't any more.
Our social theology is, difficult
to argue with because it's seldom
openly stated. When it is publicly
espoused, it's by people like Billy
Graham and Norman Vincent
Peale, who do it in such a noodle-
headed way we're ashamed to ad-
mit that any part of us responds
to the message. Yet these ghosts
from the age of scarcity, from the
pre-technological epochs, inter-
pose themselves between us and
reality. They scare us into con-
tinuing to see and listen, to think
and formulate questions and an-
swers in ways that grow more dis-
astrously risky by the hour.
WE MUST force ourselves to
concede that basically new social
arrangements do not blaspheme
the patriarchal gods. Solving our
problems is not spiritual suicide.
The end of war won't turn our
brains into tepid soup. When our
ancestors manumitted the slaves,
they thought they were solving
what we now are pleased to call
the race problem. They didn't.
They created a new set of prob-
lems which few of us foresaw.
The same will happen with us.
We will make new problems for
ourselves and that is what we
need-new problems. The old di-
lemmas have been sucked clean of
profit. We must erect new walls to
butt our heads against.
("Los Angeles Times Syndicate
A case for abortion
By KATHY JEFFREY
Daily Guest Writer
ICHIGAN RESIDENTS are still debating when and if a woman
should be legally permitted to have an abortion. Abortion on
demand, with protection for the recalcitrant physician or mother,
is the most liberal proposal being discussed; its supporters press for
having abortion removed from the criminal code, and regulated
only by medical standards.
An abortion reform bill which did no more than to define specific
situations and establish expensive and lengthy bureaucratic procedures
was defeated last June, along with a bill that would take abortion
completely out of the penl code. State Senator N. Lorraine Beebe has
announced a new round of hearings, to begin in Detroit on December
6, by the subcommittee which considers the bills.
The scheduled subcommittee hearings are open to persons who wish
to express their opinions on the proposed bills. Mrs. Mary Yourd, of the
Michigan Women for Medical Control of Abortion, is coordinating local
efforts to get supporters, particularly women who have had an abortion,
to the hearings. Such testimony in Jackson on December 12' and in
Plymouth on January 19 is especially important.
UNDER THE present law in Michigan a woman may not legally
have an abortion unless she has the luck to convince a psychiatrist and
doctors to stretch the law.
A woman who is sick, raped, unmarried, unable to provide for
a (nother) child, fearful of delivering a deformed baby, pregnant be-
cause of contraceptive failure, or who simply doesn't want a child may
want an abortion.
An estimated 15,000 women in Michigan-one out of every ten
pregnant-ask doctors for abortion in one year; possibly 330 women
at the University seek abortion each year, as extrapolated from surveys
doneat Michigan and at Oberlin College.
Those who can afford it get illegal abortions, many from quacks;
less affluent women, who are desperate enough, try to induce mis-
carriage with everything from coathangers to caustic, tissue destroying
agents. And many die-at least 10,000 women a year die in the U.S.
as a result of aseptic abortion.
Polemic about liberalized abortion deals with morality, pri-
marily the right of the unborn fetus to live and the reasons why
women seek abortion. Up until this last century, theological and legal
codes distinguished between the fetus before quickening (4 to
5 months) and after, when infants begin to have a change of sur-
vival after birth.
A common retort to the reformers is that a woman's pregnancy
is her own fault, and that she deserves what she's got. The assump-
tion that the woman alone is responsible for avoiding pregnancy derives
from the popular conceptions of woman as evil seductress, as sex-
object, and as domineering mother; it ties a woman inextricably
to a child-bearing role.
Many pregnancies result from variables beyond a woman's control,
such as contraceptive failures. But more institutionalized causes of
unwanted pregnancies are the unavailability of contraceptive informa-
tion to many females, especially to girls "under age," and the more
subtle effects of socialization, which teach a girl to be passive. She is
the object to be seduced; she's not supposed to know what's going on,
much less be prepared; and talking about intercourse is taboo.
MICHIGAN'S FORMER governor, Romney, vetoed the section of
the bill on sex education in the public schools which called for teaching
birth control, because of the corrupting influence of thefacts. People
aren't taught in schools, and a survey administered to University
students last year showed that we are still poorly informed.
Of those respondants who have had sexual intercourse, only 26
per cent of the men always used contraception and only 48 per cent
of the women. A great majority did not know what is available to them
through the Health Service, including a "morning-after" pill which
will prevent conception if taken within three days after unprotected
intercourse. As sex becomes demystified, so must contraception.
From the refusal of society to adequately meet women's needs
result the tragic consequences of risky and guilt-ridden abortions or
unwanted children, who are too often victims of the "battered child
syndrome."
The U.S. District Court ruling on November 10, 1969 which
declared the Washington, D.C. abortion statute unconstitutional is only
a step toward justice. The decision held that the law, which allowed
legal abortion only when the pregnant woman's life or health are
jeopardized by the pregnancy, is too vague, and wrongfully restricts a
woman's control over her reproductive life.
WOMEN WHO want this medical care must still pay fees-$200
a day plus at University Hospital-which are not covered by insurance
companies. They must contend with the resistance of doctors who are
bored by the abortion procedure, and of conservative hospital admin-
istrators who disapprove of liberalized abortion.
Since facilities and doctors are scarce, and fees are incredibly
high for legal therapeutic abortion, it will still be available only to the
affluent, not to the poor. Expenses, red tape, invasion of privacy, and
restrictions requiring residency of women in the area where they seek
abortion may still force women to seek backstreet abortionists.
Abortion reform which keeps the law in the criminal code does
recognize abortion as acceptable, but it restricts the practice of medi-
cine by bureaucratic procedures, and maintains the jurisdiction of
police over women's biological function.
Women can effectively pressure legislators and agencies to provide
the needed health facilities and services by organizing or speaking
as individuals.
Of the three bills in committee, the most liberal is Senate Bill No.
374, which takes abortion performed by a physician out of the criminal
code and rests the decision upon the pregnant woman and her phy-
sician.
But its specification of a "licensed hospital" as the necessary place
of operation is unrealistic; certain methods are safe enough to be
performed in the doctor's office, and medications capable of safely
inducing abortion may shortly be available to the medical profession.
The law must be flexible enough to allow for safe medical procedures.
Letters:* A mob of another color
To the Editor:
I WRITE with respect to the
percipient letter addressed to you
by Professor Rhoads Murphey ap-
pearing in your edition of Nov. 26.
The events of Nov. 22 to which
he refers were indeed, as he points
out, another brazen show of de-
fiance on the part of a tiny minor-
ity (103,000 out of 200,000,000).
But I fear that Professor Mur-
phey has not told even half the
true story. Despite President Flem-
ing's perfectly proper warning
about a tough University reaction
to mob violence destroying Univer-
sity property, it appears that he
sat idly by while $2,500 worth of
goal posts were wantonly destroy-
ed by a crazed mob.
Further, it is clear that this
mob was not simply composed of
students, but also of outside agi-
tators, acting in concert, and
clearly enjoying the indulgence of
University authorities who appar-
ently made no effort to restrain
or apprehend them.
Further if the Ann Arbor News
ently making no effort to enforce
the law?
Why should we tolerate a situ-
ation in which the streets of our
once peaceful and serene city
are, for a whole afternoon and
evening, taken over by a rabid
mass of drunken degenerates,
whose only purpose in coming to
Ann Arbor seems to be to mix,
under the indulgent eye of spine-
less law enforcement officers, with
those unwanted denizens of this
city who have in the past so al-
armingly and convincingly shown
that Ann Arbor is a city in which
"anything goes"?
I hope that President Fleming
shares the resolution of President
Nixon in that he will not be sway-
ed by the rowdyisn and ill-con-
cealed violence of any group which
manages to get a hundred thou-
sand or so demonstrators together
for some purpose or other. The
ringleaders of this movement,
many of whom are known to be
on campus, (some of them, regret-
tably, in positions of high author-
itv) should be sought out, given a
The Vietnam war seems to be
making us more rich and more re-
strained but our consciences are
rubbed sorely because the ritual
of war asks that the young and
the innocent taste the sour grapes
which the fathers have eaten.
Yet we see a new legacy emer-
ging from all these protests and
moratoriums. The new hope is
this: If there can be a peoples' war
there can also be a peoples' peace.
Now the real test of your sin-
cerity and effectiveness will not be
the Vietnam war. That challenge
was muffed-up long ago and the
present Nixon administration is
trying to get out some place on
the better side of a surrender.
While you might have very little
influence upon this generation and
the statesmen who are running the
present government but you are
speaking loudly to your own peers
that there has to be means other
than war to solve disputes between
nations.
BUT THE challenge for the
brave for the next decades is the
erises in the Middle ast You
library and reading this one short
paragraph of history that is bound
to affect your lives in the future.
A YEAR ago my family and I
were caught in the cross fire of
Balfour Day riots in Amman, Jor-
dan. High school students had
massed for a march on the Brit-
ish Embassay and the Jordan Le-
gion had set up a small detach-
ment of troops to guard this em-
bassy where everyone expected
trouble.
But the tide of shouting stu-
dents made a sudden right hand
turn and stormed the American
Embassy across the mountain from
our home.
I consider the right turn sym-
bolic. Out of the collisions which
followed, the Fidai'iin guerrillas
became the new peoples' army and
America became the new enemy
of the people.
It is a tragic inheritance for
you and I hope and pray once
again that you handle this better
than your elders who have been
innocently led to supporting Is-
raeli sovereigntv over the Arah