-~ ~j~g 1Aidligan ?BaiIy Seventy-Sixth Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS Where Opinions Are Free. 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. NEWS PHONE: 764-0552 T ir W Pre l, Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1965 NIGHT EDITOR: BRUCE WASSERSTEIN The University Should Give Its Students A Chance "YOU PEOPLE assembled here today True we must fulfill the University's are the cream of your high schools, requirements in academics to earn the you were chosen to come to the Univer- right to have a degree from here, but sity because you have the capabilities why must these requirements consume which this University deems necessary to my valuable time which I feel could be occupy one of its many sought after put to better use? seats. Good luck and enjoy your next four The major reasons I'm against these years at the University." assignments is the mental effect they The above is the basic context of the have on the students. Education is welcome all new entering students receive something that I feel should be held in at the University before the opening of awe. It should be sought after, not run classes. from. What intellectual person could After the address a whole new world truly enjoy doing these time consuming appears-the intellectual world, a world exercises? Rather than helping the stu- filled with questions, and hopefully peo- dents, this work stifles them. ple to answer those questions; a world In setting up the basic requirements for filled with the desire to learn and the graduation the University has thrown me drive, behind that learning, to accomplish --a person totally unscientific-into a something. class with premed students. I can see no reason under the sun for the University THEN COMES the first day of class, to think that it is necessary for me to From this point on that world becomes know chemistry as well as someone who stifled, submerged and in many instances is majoring in it. Why not give me some finally crushed. But why and how? sort of general science course, a course Why? Because the administrators have where I can learn about science and not not conveyed their confidence in the stu- be forced to compete with future scien- dent body to the faculty. Or, if they have, tists? due to reasons beyond me the faculty has failed to listen to them. LAST YEAR I took Psychology 100. I Why? Because in its desire to set up memorized some very important parts a standard for all University graduates of the brain and nerve cells. I did not (giving them a much needed well-rounded learn a thing about basic psychology be- education), they forget to take one of cause I was too busy memorizing all these the student's main characteristics into other facts. Today I don't know a thing consideration, that being that his spe- about psychology, have forgotten the cial interests and special abilities, and things I had rote memorized-but I do his ability to excel in a different area remember that I hated the subject. from other students. Why? Because some faculty are not I had a political science course last satisfied with having their students meet semester. We studied foreign govern- the standards of the University and set ments, how they work, etc. We were given up their own standards (which are often a lengthy list of required readings on the ridiculous) which they force on their subject, all very dull and boring to me. students. I read those books to pass the course, but On my first day of class this year I I had in the back of my mind while received what I would like to term busy reading all those books the thought that work from three of my five instructors. there must be some better or at least By busy work I mean tasks that anyone more interesting books written on the at any university could perform. Being same subject which I could have thor- just a tool of my instructors' desires, I oughly enjoyed and also learned from. I performed these assignments. But in the had no opportunity to read those books. back of my mind I could hear the words Freshmen are the most impressionable of my welcoming address. If these words people in the world. They have the most were true, and if I was given a seat at the drive, desire and ambition. But after be- University under the assumption that I ing submitted to the trifles of the Uni- am academically special, why were these versity's system, both by the adminis- assignments given? tration and the faculty, students lose this drive and ambition. In its place THE OBVIOUS PURPOSE of these as- grows a desire to finish their college edu- signments is to get the student to do cation in the quickest, and easiest way the required work. To this I answer why possible, forgetting all about previous should there be any required work? We exalted goals. are here of our own free choice, in fact we even pay to come here. We should WE ARE ALWAYS being told we must to a great degree be allowed to learn grow up, accept responsibilities, be- what we want when we want. come students. We will, if we're given a fair chance.-- Second class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Mich. -LYNN A. METZGER Published daily Tuesday through Sunday morning.- 'y " r5! xF 1/ ' 'q f rr r_- t L :t i .. .. trr; . ~" Y (y A _ t .r .' / J1Al J%:"+. . y :yif r . t,; a ';$ e"". t t't ! 'Si tji i Iq j r - x Why Not? Heyns and the Prospects for Berkeley By JEFFREY GOODMAN INDICATIONS ARE that Berke- ley's new chancellor, Roger W. Heyns, will do everything in his power to ward off recurrences of last year's student demonstrations. The impression one gets is that Heyns will be receptive and un- derstanding at the least and prob- ably often conciliatory with re- spect to "student problems" on the University of California's biggest campus. Probably, he will be will- ing to convince intransigent re- gents and administrators to give a little in areas where inflamed discontent s e e m s imminent. "Speech," at least, will be "Free." So it would seem Berkeley is in for a considerably better year, ex- cept that "free speech" was de- cidedly not the basic issue there. The people who led the Free Speech Movement are well aware of this-even though the press and most of the nation think the prob- lem has, very simply, been solved -and there is little reason to think they will not renew their ef- forts. The essential issue which spark- ed and fed last year's demonstra- tions was who controls the univer- sity-students and faculty who are interested in getting and giving an education or the particular moral, social and political needs which the dominant corporate in- terests, requiring a means of so- cial control, have translated into values and priorities and built into the structure, functions and purposes of educational adminis- tration. IN THIS RESPECT, the reason there have been successful disturb- ances at Berkeley and not here' is that the operation of Berke- ley's campus according to these corporate needs and values has been significantly less disguised, less well justified, more blatant. To the extent that it is possible to manipulate in such a manner, Heyns promises to be as valuable a man for the California regents as he was here. The unaccounted-for parameter is the perceptivity and degree of ideological sophistication of those whose interests are operated against-the students. The more capable they turn out to be at de- fining their recurrent discontents in terms of structure and author- ity, the less will Heyns or any other administrator be able to buy them off by granting concessions. For the existing relationship be- tween administration and stu- dents-faculty will necessitate that concessions be given, from the one source whose vested interest is in maintaining control of education and therefore of socialization to those who are to be educated (or those who actually do the educat- ing) and therefore to be socialized. The result of such a structural arrangement is unavoidably Cali- fornia President Clark Kerr's in- famous paradigm in which the ad- ministration manages a factory where faculty (plus buildings, textbooks, departments and the other institutional arrangements) are essentially tools for processing the industry's raw materials - students. MORE SPECIFICALLY, the con- sequence is that one conception of how education should proceed is institutionalized and a quite different conception is vaguely de- sired by those who really want to educate themselves and/or be edu- cated. The pattern which is im- posed is speeded-up and compact- ed where instead there is need for leisure and a lack of boundaries which are irrelevant to what is being learned and freedom from the pressures of grading and ter- minating courses and from the constraints of specified numbers of credit hours for work which var- ies vastly in its meaning to the students involved. The imposed pattern is disjoint- ed and is unnaturally subdivided into departments and subjects to facilitate easy accounting and record-keeping. Having divisions and terminations provides closure -or at least does not encourage the discovery and construction of far-ranging relationships. It ac- customs the young minds to an orderliness which becomes compul- sive and which militates against real social or individual imag- inativeness and a real capacity for understanding basic alternatives. If the phenomenological world has been neatly categorized, it is nat- ural also for the student to cate- gorize pei'sonal and social truth- and the truth which predominates inevitably has the edge for being categorized as good. Further, the imposed pattern makes learning vaguely irrelevant to the student's real concerns about himself and the world around him. It is rare that the ex- periences which make college-go- ing significant come from the aca- demic offerings of the university (yet countless faculty and admin- istrators implore students to post- pone their demonstrating and their extra-curricular activities and concentrate on what they are "really here for"). Where course material should somehow be related to the actual and whole world the student ex- periences, where it should be flex- ible with respect to his concerns, where it should comment on those concerns and open new possibili- ties-instead such material is pre- digested, fragmented, pre-planned for specific time limits and frus- tratingly "objective," impersonal and "academic." IT IS CLEAR that the student should develop his own sense of responsibility and formulate values and priorities on the basis of ex- ploration and experimentation, and the institution should at least bless his gropings if it does not actually provide opportunities. For these possibilities to be real- ized, however, those rules and agencies relating to student needs must be set up to follow the direc- tion of students. Instead, students are innocuously listened to only as "consultants," the rules are passed on by non-students to guide and limit behavior and certain activities are ruled out, a priori, as "inappropriate." The point is not that the uni- versities are run incompetently; rather, for the purposes of the eco- nomic, political and moral insti- tutions in whose interests the uni- versities are operated, for the pur- poses of maintaining social con- trol over the procedures by which the young are made to function well or poorly for the social sys- tem-for these purposes the uni- versities are run quite well. Es-. sentially, the freedom of students to explore ideas and values for themselves and their society is not conducive to the ability of others to predict and control what they will come up with. ROGER HEYNS has been offer- ed the chancellorship at Berkeley precisely because the California regents expect he will be able to do a far better job of preserving such a system than the old chan- cellor, Edward Strong, could. The essential thing here, for those who expect great liberalizations from Heyns, is that virtually what- ever reforms are introduced ito the system, when all is said and done the whole purpose is to pre- serve the system. The whole purpose is to en- hance the control of the institu- tion by those corporate interests which depend on the institution turning out a certain kind of product in a certain way, to en- hance that control by making it more subtle, more superficially re- sponsive, less open to revolution- ary challenge. In this respect, the work of liberal administrators like Roger Heyns is essentially dangerous, for if education (whether at Berkeley or at this University) is to be at all constructive and creative, there must be a pervasive and basic re- organization of institutional struc- tures and power relationships. That organization must follow from the necessary and basic req- uisites of the immediate educa- tional process itself: maximum freedom to create, to explore, to experiment, to follow one's ownl ideas and interests in an atmos- phere which is at once permissive and at the same time provides reasonable, intelligent, tolerant men to answer the questions which are asked. The only structures which can competently serve such processes must themselves be max- imally flexible with respect to authority, norms and functioning and must be decidedly in the con- trol of those who are undergoing the processes. As long as higher education is not organized, internally and with respect to the outside world, on the basic premise that students and faculty are the university, the social system as a whole will stagnate, for those classes which control the primary social mech- anisms for inculcating values and priorities also control and limit the future of the whole system. As long as the procdures es- tablished are directed toward mak- ing men responsible to the needs of distant (and monopolistic) agencies and do not afford oppor- tunities to establish new proced- ures and new arrangements ac- cording to the desires and needs of those who are immediately concerned, the whole system will not only stagnate but will also deny the possibilities of human creation and human expression. WHAT WOULD BE required of Heyns, therefore, is a willingness to use the power he has been granted to dismantle the whole structural arrangement which he serves and is served by-a willing- ness to remove his university from external control and place the power of making its decisions in the hands of the people for whom it ostensibly exists. Such a task is not limited in scope to a university-it unavoid- ably affects all other institu- tions and their relationships to each other-and unfortunately it cannot be accomplished by the methods in which Heyns and men like him (Clark Kerr, Lyndot Johnson, Harlan Hatcher) operate. Instead of an approach which seeks to ignore basic differences in needs and goals and establish a smoothly-working order on whatever superficial and immedi- ate agreements can be found, any meaningful change must be wrought through a fearless insist- ence that basic disagreements be faced and that the battle be en- gaged on the basis of those dif- ferences. Only when both antagonists face each other with full acceptance of their differences, only when mu- tual respect has been established because both are unashamedly standing for what they must, only then will the kind of confronta- tion begin which alone can pro- duce that creative tension from which real solutions flow. WHAT, THEN, for Berkeley in the coming year? Will Roger Heyns succeed in smothering the basic and real discontents of students there in a blanket of concessions which, despite their seeming pro- fundity, must be innocuous rela- tive to the fundamental differ- ences? Or do a sufficient number of those who led last year's dem- onstrations possess a sufficiently deep and sophisticated ideology, a sufficient commitment, a suffi- cient following to force a real confrontation upon Heyns and perhaps upon the rest of the na- tion? If my guess is right, Roger Heyns is in for more than he ex- pects. 4 4 The Student Activist: Means and End By CHARLOTTE WOLTER 1[NACCEPTABLE though it may . be to some, the thesis of our society is being challenged by a visionary and vigorous anti-thesis. This is not an anti-thesis in the classical, Marxiantsense, one which will resolve itself into the synthesis of a socialistic state. It is, rather, a difference of process and the nature of the human interactions that eventually form the structures and substance of so- ciety. It has been called radicalism, activism, the New Left, yet each of these is inadequate to describe a philosophy that emphasizes process, a specific process which must precede the formation of arv just social structure. A comparison of this philosophy with the liberalism of today, the ideology and the system toat it opioses, can most accurately de- sr'ribe it. F REEDOM for the liberal :s, in theory, the freedom to act in one's own interest, and the only con- straint is that one's actions do not impose on freedom for others. In practice, this becomes only a self- serving freedom, an ego-centered freedom. The absence of a moral imperative concerning the well- being of others makes this free- dom without responsibility. This concept of freedom divorces the liberal from any sense of re- spect for the assertions of others. While he may encourage all free expression, he is not satisfied un- less he can assure that his ex- pectations will be fulfilled. If he is not dominant, or a dominant force in society, he does not feel a part of that society or respon- sible to it. To dominate in this society, the individual must achieve, must be able to show some tangible evi- dence of success. A utilitarian ideal of efficiency, influence and power becomes important. The organization of society, as it has developed up to now, is therefore based largely on strictly economic (utilitarian) relation- ships-those processes by which goods and services are most effi- ciently produced and distributed. A community is defined, then, by the sum of the services and eco- nomic transactions that are its daily function. THE OBJECTIONS of the radi- cal philosophy to this system stem from the realization that this sort of freedom is self-defeating. It is freedom without responsibil- ity. It eventually imprisons the individual in patterns and insti- tutions which serve only the eco- nomic needs which encouraged their formation. The radical would say that the community must serve more than the basic economic needs. It must also provide, as Prof. William A. Williams would describe it, "hu- mane, human associations." The radical community, which is organized on non-economic premises, gives its citizens the ability'to experiment and exper- ience as they wish; , ather than necessitating sublimation and vi- carious involvement. THIS FREEDOM should extend through and beyond the years of education, to be applied to the society as a whole. It necessitates that the individual have econom- ic freedom, tolerance and con- cern from the society, and contin- uing opportunities to develop his capacities. The . socialization to which the.individual must be sub- jected in order to function prop- erly within the utilitarian ethic reflected by present social insti- tutions would not only be neces- sary-it would be antithetical to the basic premises on which the radical society were organized. The key concept is that only through the formation of an "equitable, ethical, creative com- munity" can man be truly free. A community organized on this bas- ic assumption'results naturally in the desire to participate, be con- cerned with, become involved in the affairs of others. When men have had opportunities to fully realize themselves, to develop self- knowledge, their inclination to- wards sociableness is far more spontaneous and meaningful than when a "groupness" has been im- posed on them, without the oppor- tunities for personal development and therefore with the individuals involved having no significant bas- is upon which to relate to others. Specific structures and institu- tions are only implied in this philosophy. The society envisioned as an end product would be basically an- archic. Structures and institutions would be informal and could be altered or destroyed to fulfill the wishes and needs of their constit- uents instead of eventually be-, coming self-perpetuating. Their functions would be to serve those needs of their constituents rather than to direct or control, and they would be governed democrat- ically instead of hierarchically by inaccessible managers. THIS is the ideology held by those who participate in the dem- onstrations of dissatisfaction with society which have characterized the last five years. Beginning with the civil rights movement and extending to criticism of Ameri- can foreign policy or the multiver- sity, demonstration has become a legitimate, if still discouraged, means of expressing dissatisfac- tion. The student activist of today is the representative of this ideology who attracts the most attention and creates the most confusion. His reaction to society is particu- larly violent, because he is at a point in life when he expects ex- perimentation and doubt and gets, instead, attempts to destroy his capacity to conceive of "inappro- priate" values or ways of life as possibly rewarding for himself. He is revolted by the values and arrangements of society and by, the influence they have on his life. He is free, in the liberals' sense, to join any of the institu- tions of society, but he does not feel they have anything satisfy- ing to offer, and he does not have a voice in their operation or even their existence. For these reasons he suffers the malady of aliena- tion, and he reacts to it by re- jecting the society. IN ITS STRICTEST terms, ideology is both means and end. Therefore, activism for the stu- dent involves much more than the picket line. Though many would attribute activism to mere "adoles- cent rebellion" or "mischief," it must be emphasized that there is a definite end, a more ideal and egalitarian concept of society, however incomplete and unreal- ized it may seem, which the stu- dent wishes to transform into a reality. South Carolina at Work a SENATOR Stephen Young (D- Ohio) professes shock and amazement after reading certain deliverances of Rep.. L. Mendel Rivers, of South Carolina, who advocates instant escalation of the war in Viet Nam to any ex- tent necessary to impose the will of the United States on all Asia. The Senator is amazed by the willingness to bomb not only Hanoi, but Peking also if that is necessary to bring to heel "god- less Communism." The Senator is shocked that the proponent of this course should be the chairman of an important House committee, that of Armed Services. It is enough to shake the Senator's faith in the principle of chairmanship by seniority. While Senator Young's shock may be justified, his amazement is not; for there is nothing novel here. The production of chevaliers mounted upon galloping night- mares has been a specialty of South Carolina since her earliest days. The archetype of the group is unquestionably Robert Barn- well, forgotten now, but who flourished prodigiously between Nullification and Secession. IS IT SOME miasma from the cypress swamps that makes South Carolina consistently fecund of this type? Whatever the reason, it has been her curious fate for nearly two hundred years to place before the country, along with- often coupled with-such appari- tions as Pitchfork Ben Tillman and Cole Blease. Normally, they are even less ef- fective than a James Byrnes or a Strom Thurmond, but in mo- ments of severe stress, when the whole country veers toward hys- teria, they may be as deadly as Barnwell was. What Senator Young observes is nothing unprecedented. It is just South Carolina on the ram- page again. -THE NEW REPUBLIC Population Explosion And Anti-Population Explosion Is the 'U' Going To Skip Town? To the Editor: ROBERT JOHNSTON wrote in Friday's Daily that, "since the University is the faculty, students and administrators that are here, they ought to be concerned about the fact that were this confron- tation with the University that supposedly exists to occur, they would find nothing there to con- a nonviolent protest against the nonexistence of the fraudulent university) I telephoned the cash- ier's window in the Administration Bldg. I informed the voice on the other end that I wanted my tui- tion back immediately before the University cut out. I warned the voice that I would not endure any slippery press releases or bureau- the State Police if they ever alienated me this way again. Then I sank into my chair, clutched my Teddy Bear to my heart, and thought how great it would be to be back in prep school. -James Schutze, '68 ,, __ _r".~Y.