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. Truth Will Prevail 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. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1965 NIGHT EDITOR: ROBERT MOORE U.S. Goals, Outlook Cause Today's Student Alienation A GROWING SENSE of alienation from current American social values on the part of a large number of intelligent young men and women has been increas- ingly evident in recent months. The im- plications of this disaffection, which is definitely not limited to a small "beat- nik" fringe, may well have serious conse- quences for the nation's future. The signs of this quiet rebellion have been manifold and, at times, tinged with violence. Beginning with the lengthy demonstrations at the Berkeley campus of the sprawling, over-mechanized Uni- versity of California, continuing with the series of "teach-in" and protest meet- ings over American foreign policy last spring and during the summer, and ac- companied by the drastic increase in poli- tical and social activism on campuses throughout the nation, the suggestions of discontent are too loud, too widespread to dismiss or ignore. The protests against our Viet Nam policy and the demonstrations against segregation and discrimination are not solely political movements. Supporting the general awakening of college-age youth and their increased concern with important issues outside their often nar- rowly constricted campus preoccupations, has been a growing sense of disgust and abhorrence of the basic values upon which the highly touted "American way of life" is founded. IT IS NOT the admirable aspects of the collective American soul which are the 'U' Shows Concern For Students AT THE HEIGHT of the current con- troversy over the University's inade- quate off-campus housing policies, criti- cizers have failed to notice one important point: the University is finally beginnng to concern itself with the economic prob- lems of its students. When the University is able to ques- tion the effectiveness of its position on involvement in public economic affairs affecting its students, an important step has been taken. Not only was a report submitted to Student Government Coun- cil stating that policies protecting the standards of off-campus housing are in- adequate, but Council has recommended that a 1929 Regents bylaw forbidding the University to compete with private busi- ness be repealed, so that a University- sponsored bookstore can be established. These two moves could lead to Univer- sity low-cost housing and a considerable savings in the cost of textbooks and sup- plies. All of this is well and good, but the question still remains whether even the University always reflects student inter- est adequately. One might well argue that students do not want to be treated ac- cording to paternalistic policies, yet just this week a new, paternalistic policy was handed down concerning open-opens in the residence halls. THE IMPORTANT POINT is that stu- S dents should be the judges of how their problems are to be handled-and in most cases they are the best judges. It therefore becomes important that stu- dents have an effective voice in whatever University involvement in student af- fairs is established. This view has already been expressed by Vice-President for Student Affairs Richard L. Cutler. At the United States Student Press Association, he indicated that students should help to decide issues such as course content and tenure, and that they must also have the power to veto and make their decisions stick. Cutler's call at a recent SGC meeting for student support of the bookstore, and his defense of responsible student activ- ism clearly shows that the University has finally become aware of the value of stu- dent opinion in helping to combat student problems. ALL THIS is not to say that the Univer- sity has by any means solved the prob- lem of high rents and book prices in Ann cause of the festering sore of dissatisfac- tion-rather, the more visible, often more prevalent signs of crass materialism, corruption, "affluence" amid yawning chasms of poverty, and mass-media pre- occupation with trivia which are con- tributing to the demoralization of many American youth. The obvious imperfect nature of high- er education, which we need not dwell upon in detail here, is also a strong fac- tor leading to disillusionment and aim- lessness. College life is not a rose gar- den, as 90 per cent of high school seniors believe when they graduate. Neither is life, for that matter; but the peculiarly American characteristic of encouraging impossibly romantic, even idealistic day- dreams is responsible in large part for the resulting alienation and rootlessness which seems to be spreading through our large universities. Henry Steele Commager succinctly pointed out in a recent Saturday Review article that American life, including the conduct of its foreign policy, is based on strongly idealistic notions of equality, brotherhood and "the pursuit of hap- piness," all of which leads to a self- righteously moralistic tone in much of our behavior and national policies. Yet, the truth is, as Prof. Commager points out, that we, as a nation, are no better than most others; as a people, we have our strong and weak points, like most others; as individuals, we possess all the human frailties common to all mankind. There is no bitterness or disillusion- ment in these conclusions; Commager is merely "telling it the way it is." Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, and James Bald- win, among many others, also tell it the way it is, which is why they have obtain- ed the increasing respect and admiration of surprisingly large segments of Ameri- can college students. yET, IS IT ENOUGH to attribute unrest among students to false dreams, goals and hopes? Or has there been a definite change in our goals and outlook as a nation? The heady wines of idealism and hope surrounding the youthful administration of President Kennedy have undeniably given way to the more conventional, down-to-earth, uninspired leadership of the LBJ era. The nation has adopted a more militaristic pose in international af- fairs while increasing the strength of its armed forces. The civil rights revolution, having achieved its initial goals, is now pressing for an end to de facto discrimination among many former sympathizers. The long years of frustration suffered by the Negro in ghettoes across the nation have given way to explosions of well-justified rage, anger and hate (in the process, sur- prising many obtuse citizens who can't seem to discover even a single reason for the violence). The economic boom has continued un- abated for at least two-thirds of the na- tion's people, but along with it has come the dawning realization to many that wealth and comfort are not enough to justify life, that the nation is spiritual- ly empty, without any long-term purpose aside from the extension of economic prosperity to all its citizens, without any tangible goals except to "roll back the Communist menace." Likewise, many individuals find them- selves without personal goals, caught up in the ultimately fruitless search for hap- piness through wealth, or power, or a vague concept known as "self-fulfill- ment." THESE ARE SOME of the reasons why a significant minority of college youth is in revolt against the established values of our society. Undoubtedly, there are other reasons which may take precedence over these for some individuals; granted, some of the unrest is the product of in- dividual neurosis or "maladjustment." Yet, collective frustration and unhappi- ness seem to be growing by leaps and bounds, aiming toward an unknown peak of mass discontent. Is there a solution to this massive problem? Can society offer any solace to its affluent yet unhappy younger citi- zens? Some writers claim that only in- AT EDITOR'S NOTE: The author received high honors in the English Honors Program at the University and was, for the past two years, editor of Generation Magazine. His column, a com- mentary on books, the arts, things political and religious, will appear each Sunday. FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, Francis Otto Matthiessen, world-famed Harvard man-of-letters, leaped from the 12th floor of the Boston hotel Manger. The man who had written hundreds of articles and reviews; who had edited or authored 14 books in his 48 years of life; who had defended the Harvard tutorial system and Harry Bridges; who created the masterpiece of American criticism -The American Renaissance- wrote in a final note: "How much the state of the world has to do with my state of mind I do not know. But as a Christian and a socialist believing in international peace, I find myself terribly op- pressed by the present tensions." His death (which was reported in two columns in The New York Times) was not a rallying point in the moral chaos in which America wallowed in those days after the fall of Europe, at the beginning of the McCarthy era, before Korea. His willful death was far subtler in effect - it damned the society that had so Will 1 By NEIL SHISTER and ROBERT KLIVANS AN ENGLISH biologist, address- ing the rather prestigious sounding British Association for the Advancement of Science, has come up with some disconcerting conclusions about the behavior of both monkeys and men in relation to their living quarters. Dr. W. M. S. Russell has de- cided that deviant behavior, re- flected by a rising crime rate, is directly attributable to conges- tion. After prolonged experimenta- tion, Russell reported that "mon- keys, even when they have plenty of food, become aggressive in crowded conditions. Monkey so- cieties are found to be brutal dictatorships with constant out- breaks of violence." The eminent biologist added that "crowded monkeys, musk- rats, meadow mice and wild rats attack and even kill their young." frustrated a man, that he felt his only means of meaningful protest was to destroy the only thing it valued-his mind. AS A STUDENT and a human being I have come to F. O. Mat- thiessen late. Two years ago I first heard his name, mentioned in connection with an American literature course. Matthiessen's piece on a work was recommended to me as "honest and definitive." A year ago, I heard a moving sermon preached in which Mat- thiessen and three others who had died in April-Dietrich Bon- hoeffer, Teilhard de Chardin, Bruce Klunder-were eulogized as "April's Fools"; men who had re- sponded to life's call beyond the norms of reason and prudence, men who had given themselves to life. I have spent much of the past six months reading of and think- ing of, F. 0. Matthiessen. His life and death have been both stimulus and subject. Much of the time was spent in attempting to probe the meaning of his death and the reasons for the pure act, his clear self-destruction (as precise as any sentence he ever wrote). What I have come to, at least at present, is inversion: the meaning of his death is the meaning of his life. He contained, as does our coun- try, vast contradictions. A bril- liant scholar, he was an energetic In Parenthesis By GEORGE ABBOTT WHITE teacher, who asked penetrating questions and challenged his stu- dents to trenscend themselves to new excellences. A man of thought,, of intricate analysis, he was en- gaged in the dirt and sweat, of the politics of the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, the war against fascism, the war against McCarthy and McCarthyism. He fought for what he believed through the Harvard Teacher's Union, the Massachussets Civil Liberties Union, the Progressive Party, and a host of other organ- izations which were labeled "sub- versive." A homosexual, he was a man of the greatest love and de- votion to his work, his students, his friends. A man who was thought an island was in fact, a part of the maine-although he was an intellectual, a Harvard in- tellectual, a radical intellectual, he . suffered and died, for the whole. MATTHIESSEN in short, laid himself open by his very act of opening himself to the world-he gave his life for life. His life and death are brutal reminders of the ribute to F. O. Matthiessen enormous difficulties of integrity, of living a life of wholeness. The contradictions that harnessed, made for creative tension, were dissociated by a frightened and accusing society. To be scholar and teacher, thinker, and actor; to be a radical intellectual-be- came more and more difficult and dangerous. For if anything,, Matthiessen was radical. Orthodox analyses of the Ameri- can dilemma-the chasm between democratic ideals and capitalistic practice-and their accompanying "solutions" (the difficulty lies elsewhere, not in the system), were to him, inadequate and in- tolerable. He affirmed his faith in demo- cratic socialism again and again and was told as many times by friends and colleagues to stay out of politics, to stop spending so much time with students-to write and criticize. Yet his unity of vision would allow him nothing but unity of action. He held the contradictions by faith and will and made no such expunctions. As he wrote in 1947 after returning to America from Czechoslovakia: If you believe in a democratic socialism, you must act accord- ingly, and work for it. Many of the positions you take will be the same as those taken by Communists, and you will of coursebe vilified for that. But however bad the odds, the final stakes are international cooper- ation or a war that will, at the very least, complete the de- struction of Europe: the heart of our civilization. Contradictions evident to others were evident to Matthiessen, but he lived in spite of them. There the tragedy and there, the glory. ONE DOES NOT have to create a cult to appreciate Matthies- sen's credo that "the searching mind be balanced by the feeling heart." Nor similarly, deny reality for his attempt to 'see the obj ect as it really is, clearly, but in all its complexity, with all its am- biguities." Criticism for Matthies- sen was not a surrogate for re- ligionornfor "creativity,"-but nothing less, as he said here at The University of Michigan in a Hopwood Lecture in 1949, than a social duty. Teaching was not a facet of his work, but an integral part of his very existence. Commitment to his beliefs and a willingness to defend them, to face, in the open, any challenge no matter what the cost, was not a foolish idealism-but perhaps the very same heroic engagement radical intellectuals in our own era feel conscience-bound, life- bound, to do. 4 -4 7-, Drive Quaddies to Infanticide? IN CONNECTION with the Uni- versity's unrelenting objectivity and honesty in critically examin- ing itself and its problems, it might be advantageous to extend the erudite Dr. Russell an invi- tation to Ann Arbor. Here he could try on human be- ings the conditions under which he tortured and tormented his mindless monkeys and helpless field mice. For at the University Dr. Russell would find an exten- sive laboratory beyond his fond- est hopes, or even his wildest dreams. With scientific plan and pur- pose, the University has created, Dr. Russell's nightmare in fright- ening reality, freshmen substitut- ing for primates, quads for cages and IQC for dictatorial govern- ment. Imagine, if you will, the doc- tor's first day on campus, leis- urely strolling through the Diag dodging left and right to outma- neuver stampeding students or spending a relaxed evening in the UGLI amidst the husped air of sobriety, frantically searching for a seat. But the congested class- rooms, the overflowing fishbowl, and the perpetual waiting are sec- ondary to this scientist's purpose. It is in the Quads, those in- nocuous havens of University housing, that Russell's subjects are stored-much like sardines in the A&P. RUSSELL FOUND that over- crowding is sufficient to stimulate .aggression even when food is pres- ent. The brilliant planners and psychologists of the administra- tion have increased the harrow- ing experience of the quaddies by., substituting potatoes for protein and pond-water for soup. While some may find this menu a bit distasteful, it must be rec- ognized that the individual must sacrifice luxury for the advance- ment of science. The living quarters themselves are most in line with Dr. Rus- sell's overcrowding thesis. Univer- sity planners, consistently able to get the maximum numbers in the minimum space, have blazed the trail for future experimenters by crossing the sub-human thresh- old of endurance. Systematically increasing the capacity of the dorms while maintaining the same physical plant, the University has set up optimal conditions, to carry out Dr. Russell's experiment. Al- though the freshman enrollment has increased approximately 400 per year over the past several years, not a single new dormitory room has been built in the same period. Oh, the delight in Dr. Rus- sell's eyes as he witnesses four quaddies, living in an old broom closet, becoming perturbed, agi- tated and ultimately killing their young. Have the patterns of behavior at the University verified Russell's experimental thesis? One merely has to consider those hot, humid nights of September when, froth- ing at the mouth and seething within, congested, quaddies pour forth from the crowded dorms, rage across the once-fertile plains 'of the diag, and direct their catharsis of destruction against the nylon undergarmepts of the hill. In a , final act of disgust they hurl themselves to the pavement of State Street, defying traffic to destroy them. THE UNIVERSITY'S invitation to Dr. Russell would necessarily be a great contribution to scien- tific progress %nd might eventual- ly represent the bulwark for future research in this area. As Russell himself might say, in that most uncommonly English manner, "Never have so many done so much so long for so little so un- bearably. 4 A Advice, Men--How To Wheel and Deal in the UGLI By JOYCE WINSLOW MEN, JUST AS there is a rou- tine procedure for registering for classes, so there is a routine method for picking up girls at the UGLI. It's easy to be successful. All that is required is a mastery of fundamental procedure and 20 cents. To begin with, pick a table in the back of either the basement or first floor on a rainy weekday evening. If it's raining nature will be on your side, because she'll be trapped inside with you. Have at least three books be- sides the one you are reading on the table in front of you to give the appearance that you really came to study. This will intrigue her as nothing is more fascinat- ing to a woman than a man who ignores her. Be sure that the book you are reading has a one-word title printed in bold capital let- ters all across the book, such as PSYCHOLOGY. This will give her an opening to ask something about you, such as, "Oh, are you studying psychology?" What you reply is entirely up to you. But that comes later. Right now just wait. SOON WILL come the trip, trip, scuffle, scuffle of worn-down Wee- juns. A girl-yes, wow-carrying three books will pull out a chair directly across from you, deposit her books on the table, sit down and start to study - all without the slightest glance in your direc- tion. She knows you are there. She knows because she had to weave around tables and forge through smoke to get to you. The keyword now is "noncha- lance." Try not to look at her. If you do, she will think you are trying to pick her up. She doesn't want to get picked up in the library, but she certainly wouldn't mind MEETING a nice boy. O.K. Onward. Soon, she gets the feeling that if she doesn't look at .you she will just die, so she pretends to be looking for a dear friend. She may even mumble something like "Where is that Sandy?" and in seeking Sandy she will look you right in the face about 10 or 12 times. Well, if she can look at you, you can look back at her, right? Right. But maintain your cool. Go back to studying. In a little while you'll discreetly notice that her face is tilted to- ward yours in an expression of intense concentration. She is pondering what she has just read and is looking right through you right? Wrong. She, is thinking, "I wonder how high a heel I can wear with him." NOW, AND only now can you grace her with your very small, non-commital superman smile. This starts things happening, baby. She will suddenly remember that she has to get a book on an- other floor. You can tell this be- cause she will whisper to herself, "Oh, I have to get a book on an- other floor." She will leave. When she is out of sight, casually swing over to her side of the table and open the cover of the top book in the pile. On the inside cover will be written her name; address, phone number and class schedule. Convenienlt, eh? Of course, She planned it that way. When you finish copying down this information, place her book in an obviously different position than the one she left it in. That way, she knows that you know. In about six minutes she will return with some furshlugginer book she swiped off the book cart near the ladles room. Immediate- ly she will notice that her top book has been moved. Of course. You planned it that way, and she will smile to herself kind of an ohboyohboyohboy smile. After an average of 10 more minutes of study your eyes just might happen to meet hers and the two of you might Just happen to smile at each other. THIS IS where your 20 cents comes in. "I'm tired of studying," you might say to her. "Would you like to take a break and have coffee with me downstairs?" This will appeal to her because there are enough people down-' stairs to make it safe and you seem like a nice guy. If everything goes well in the coffee shop, you will take her out Saturday night. You may, have a great time and go out again. You may have a miserable time and part company. But don't sweat it. You can always pick up some other girl in the UGLI. I4 4 a- ... ' y far, _ ..., ~r a -t4 'U' Policies Unfair To Heterosexuals A To the Editor: AMERICAN morality demands, sexual privacy and condemns homosexuality. So how come, un- der University rules, quaddies can have intercourse with their room- mates in private but can have intercourse with their girls only with the door open? -Robert Farrell, Grad -Edward Herstein, '66Ed -Kenneth Winter, '66 Exalted? To the Editor: YOU ARE certainly the captain of an exalted crew! Self- styled "sophisticate" Jeff Good- man, honed on Herbert Aptheker, mimicking Mario Savio, slavish disciple 'ofthe Berkeley line. Dull, didactic Charlotte Wolter. Child- ish, primitive Lynn A. Metzger ... all on one witless page. These self-appointed spokes- men for the students are talking board-and a damn dull noise it is giving off. Spare us these wheezy jere- miads. Stop trying to whip up a revolution without a cause. If life here is so intolerable then leave the structured world of the campus, be as laissez faire as you please, and we'll just have to manage to blunder along in our stinking, stygian academic dark- ness without your stinging gadfly goads. In -the name of suffering stu- dent humanity I ask that you print this as a public service. --E. J. Smith Jr, '67 EDITOR'S NOTE: "Editorials printed in The Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors." The Daily doesn't speak FOR students, it speaks AS students. Unstable? I A J