1 -y ) Ul fie iri igttn Daily it Trimester s Academic Boat-Rocking Seventy-Sixth Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS RPM Where Opinions Are Free. 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. NEWS PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1965 NIGHT EDITOR: PETER SARASOHN Supportin the U.S. on Viet Nam: The Anti-Students Take Over WHAT FOLLOWS might be entitled (as per Dylan Thomas) "Adventures in the Intellectual Underground" or (as per Dostoevsky) "Crime and Brandishment." Thursday evening, I attended a meet- ing of a group which calls itself the "Com- mittee on Viet Nam." A number of people were, of course, familiar to me-they've been dropping the bomb (on everyone and anything), against equal rights (it infringes on the rights of homeowners or shopkeepers or whatever) and against Medicare, for Goldwater, etc.-for as long as anyone can imagine. IN LARGE MEASURE, they are what might be called the "anti-students"- they arose as a simple counterweight to the dominant tenor of their age. Others in the group were of a differ- ent sort-the simple-naive. Although it ought to be abundantly clear to anyone that being for President Johnson's policy ipso facto places one in close proximity to the ideological framework of the far right, this would seem to have eluded them. A classic interchange: (A rather conventionally dressed young lady, reacting to a proposal that a sign's large letters simply state the fact that the group "supports the President," with the small points relegated to the small type): "We can't just say we support the Presi- dent, we godda say how, I mean"...-. (The chairman, somewhat hastily): "We'll take that under advisement, and (One graduate-student-type in the back of the room with a glint in his eye): "Let's say, 'Fight Communism'." (A bit of uncomfortable stirring on the part of the "simple-naives.") OF COURSE, some members of the group were well-versed in the tactics of politics. (A young female with a quick and emo- tional turn of phrase-now almost City Couneil-' Students Los ANN ARBOR CITY COUNCIL has been playing games with students and their welfare for years. Usually, they make the rules. Currently, they are wrestling over motorcycle control. But many students are in a stranglehold, and as these stu- dents slowly suffocate, they cannot even cry "uncle." Motorcycles are hard to ignore, but City Council must somehow have been un- aware of the increase in their numbers which developed this summer. Apparent- ly, they didn't notice rows of cycles park- ed perpendicular to curbs throughout the city. They must have never seen streets congested with cycles during rush hours. Besides being blind to the cycle boom, they were deaf. From their homes and of- fices, councilmen must not have heard the roar of many cycles moving through local neighborhoods. Councilmen must not listen to radio. If Editorial Staff ROBERT JOHNSTON, Editor LAURENCE KIRSHBAUM JEFFREY GOODMAN Managing Editor Editorial Director JUDITH FIELDS .................. Personnel Director LAUREN BAHR........Associate Managing Editor JUDITH WARREN....... Assistant Managing Editor ROBERT HIPPLER ....... Associate Editorial Director GAIL BLUMBERG ................... Magazine Editor LLOYD GRAFF ................ Acting Sports Editor NIGHT EDITORS: Susan Collins, John Meredith, Leonard Pratt, Peter Sarasohn, Bruce Wasserstein. DAY EDITORS: Robert Carney, Clarence Fanto, Mark Kilingsworth, Robert Moore, Harvey Wasserman, Dick Wingfield. ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS : Alice Bloch, Mere- dith Eker, Merle Jacob, Carole Kaplan, Robert Klivans, Lynn Metzger, Roger Rapoport, Neil Shis- ter, Katherine Teich, Joyce Winslow, Charlotte Wolter. Business Staff CY WELLMAN, Business Manager ALAN GLUECKMAN ...... ..... Advertising Manager JOYCE FEINBERG...............Finance Manager SUSAN CRAWFORD ..... Associate Business Manager MANAGERS: Harry Bloch, Bruce Hillman, Marline Kuelthau, Jeffrey Leeds, Gail Levin, Susan Perl- e shrill): "Let's word this like it would ap- ply to students! Students like to seem revolutionary-they like to be against things. Let's face it," (in obvious sym- pathy with the saner course) "most of the' people in support of the war in Viet Nam are-well-50 years old." (Now tri- umphant) "They are people-to use an old fashioned phrase-who are ADULTS!" "Debate," of course, continued on - most of it directed towards how much the group ought to support the President. Consequently, there were some attempts at rallying the troops: (ONE IBM-TYPE, obviously feeling de- fensive about being told that a blan- ket endorsement of American policy might not do the trick): "I don't see why we godda be so diplomatic about it. WE GODDA goo pr-r-ogram here and we awta be proud, yes PROUD, of it." Some issues were of some potential embarrassment to the "Committee" - ones which had to be smoothed over by the leadership: (A FEMALE GROUP member, reacting against the group's proposed "adopt- an-orphan" plan): "That could be ex- ploited by the opposition an awful lot. I mean they're EMOTIONAL and all that. They might say WE MADE THEM or- phans-like we killed their fathers and mothers..." (The Chairman-almost sacerdotally): "MANY of them were killed by terrorists (She, again) : "Yeah, but they're EMO- TIONAL and..." (The Chairman, confidently): "We'll be able to handle anyone as ridiculous as that.." (Sh, unperturbed): "I think it's still, ya know, kinda ironic." (Another member, brightly): "Maybe we could say we are FOR THE WAR, BUT AGAINST KILLING." -STEPHEN BERKOWITZ U' Relations: E very Time they did, they would have heard con- stant advertising designed to stimulate cycle sales. They also must never read newspapers, or they would have noticed frequent advertisements. BUT IF COUNCILMEN were not imper- ceptive, they must have been totally unthinking on the motorcycle issue. As more and more cycles came to campus, they should have easily spotted a clear trend and planned thorough legislation. If there are increased cycles in Ann Arbor, there should be increased park- ing. Regulation of cycle operation and quality standards should have been en- acted before the fall semester. But Council did not act. Now, it is sud- denly repulsed by crowded conditions in parking. A new nuisance has arisen in Ann Arbor, and so the police are sent out to cleanse the city of its blot. ANN ARBOR POLICE are ticketing stu- dents for crimes committed against now-archaic laws. University police are ticketing, too, on campus, and it is really too bad when the University begins to hurt students because they have prob- lems. All summer, students parked their mo- torcycles in the rectangular bicycle rack bounded by West Physics, the back of the General Library and the court in front of the Undergraduate Library. This week, University police gave tickets to students parking their cycles in this zone. A rack of illegally-parked angled cycles, each with a ticket hanging from its handlebars, showed that the Ann Arbor police were there this week. ANN ARBOR can unleash vengeance on student overcrowding by hovering around campus and using its outdated laws. On the other hand, if Council had any sympathy for students, they could relax the pressure. And if they had a THE UNIVERSITY completed its first full summer term un- der the often controversial tri- mester system last month with hardly a whimper of either relief or complaint. The chorus of ear- lier dissent has vanished with the onrush of fall. Trimester, it would seem, is here to stay. What we've got now is the re- sult of a broad range of inter- secting forces: pressures for growth and cries of "inefficiency" from Lansing, balanced against faculty intransigence toward the quarter system and their general reluctance to make any changes in the well-worn patterns of their lives. Predictably the equations for change didn't include students and, predictably, neither did the solution. By a complex system of "nonteaching" time accrual and by the division of the summer into two half-terms, the faculty have ended up better off than before, and, rather than tinker with the system for further improvements, the new ruts are forming in record time. THE STUDENTS, meanwhile, are faced with the following: -About a week less of classes and professors who find it un- thinkable to tailor their courses accordingly or (horror of horrors!) to restructure them a little to make more efficient and profit- able use of the time available; -Halving of the exam period while most professors continue to consider it a comprehensive ex- pression of what the student has learned, resulting in increasing end-of-the-semester pressures and heightened grade-point phobia; and -Drastic curtailment of vaca- tion periods which, while few students used them profitably, at least provided some respite from academic pressures and time for unhurried thought (and time for Daily staff to do their semester's work). These problems have actually turned out to be much less severe than many expected, but that doesn't mean they should be ig- nored on the grounds that noth- ing that terrible will happen if they are. One has the feeling that fac- ulty are only too happy to let the issue die, for discussion of it would likely lead to a confronta- tion (long overdue but still in- evitable sometime) with the prob- lems of the increasingly anti- quated course and curriculum structure. Rather than postpone and delay, the problems might as well be faced and the adaptation period for trimester used as a time to try out some new ideas and ap- proaches aimed at smoothing out some of the peaks and valleys, frustrations and tensions and con- tradictions of undergraduate life. SOME SIMPLE, easy-to-admin- ister possibilities: First, there is the calendar it- self. The biggest problems are the general structuring out of any time for relaxation within a term Michigan MAD By ROBERT JOHNSTON and the crowding up of papers and exams and assorted problems in the last few weeks of each semester. Easy first step to a solution: abolish final exams. To borrow a phrase from a colleague, Why Not? Two-hour finals can't begin to cover the information from a fourteen-week course comprehen- sively, and finals are, after all, tests of one's knowledge. No one has yet devised a way to make them do any other job at all well in spite of all you hear about exams as a learning experience or as stimulation to think or whatever. In any case, only introductory courses have as their main goal the imparting to the student of a given body of information (and most equivocate on that as a goal). So, with the possible ex- ception of introductory courses, what are finals good for? In a three-hour final there was some chance that your ability to work with and think about things your course had been covering would show through. In a two- hour final (added on top of other end-of-semester pressures) the chances are nil. I've been averaging about two courses a semester that haven't had finals. Quite consistently, they're my most valuable courses. So, when the faculty member says that taking out the final would destroy his course, one needn't worry, it probably deserves it. As for the introductory course, testing can be incorporated into the regular term and efficiency raised by several times on the side. A teacher in an introductory social science course for seniors and graduate students is running the students through the text at a two chapters and two exams a week rate. The material is covered well (he expects, and gets, a perfect exam every time from everyone), and two-thirds of the semester is left for more meaningful pursuits and the development in the students' minds of some concepts of what to do with the information. WITH FINALS out of the way, other calendaring problems fall into place. Generous Thanksgiv- ing, Christmas and spring vaca- tions can be scheduled, with leis- urely reading encouraged. The en- tire calendar can be skewed back a little closer to normal, since one of two weeks of class in Jan- uary before finishing the first term can be considered a wide- ranging discussion and wrap-up period rather than a "My God, I've got to learn it all over again for the final!" period. With a more leisurely schedule, big, well-constructed reading lists can be brought back into vogue, and professors can schedule their own reading periods when appro- priate. (There must be times Arguments and Dissents on Viet Nam To the Editor: TNE SERIES of editorials on Viet Nam and on the Fishbowl sign printed in Saturday's Daily all deserve rebuttal. However, I will leave the editorial on the Conference to the conference or- ganizers, and deal only with those relevant to the sign and the dis- cussion related to it. Starting with Mr. Beal's con- tention that the sign was put up under false pretenses, the rule that posters must be cleared by the Alphi Phi Omega executive board applies only to posters that APO is to place on University bulletin boards (this is also true of the size limitation). and not to signs going along with approved Fishbowl tables. The form handed in by Friends of SNCC included the words, "To publicize the Conference ." and the sign certainly helped to do that by drawing attention to the Viet Nam issue, thus falling within the permission granted. Mr. Beal also claims (along withrothers) that the sign is in bad taste and so shouldn't be al- lowed up. I won't argue about the obscenity part of his definition of bad taste, but slander, libel and character assassination are all cases for civil suit and should therefore be decided in the courts and not by the University ad- ministration or APO. In fact, none of these adjectives could possibly apply if it were true that some American soldiers have committed certain acts which are designated as war crimes by the International Criminal Code. Even if we had no other source of documentation of war crimes, we have the word of a professor at this university (who was doing re- search in Viet Nam with Ameri- can paratroopers this summer), that he witnessed the murder of bound prisoners of war by Ameri- can soldiers. The statement on the sign is true, and truth can not be in bad taste. AS FOR Mr. Schutze (who had the discourtesy to call me at 2 a.m. so he could ask me some questions), I only want to remark that some of his "far meeker ex- ponents of continued American involvement" were the very people who threatened violence and bodily harm and made it necessary for Mr. Sells of the Office of Student Affairs to ask the Ann Arbor police to keep plainclothes detec- tives in the Fishbowl. Mr. Killingsworth deserves commendation because he isthe only one who makes an effort to deal with the serious issues in- volved in the question of what should be done about the Viet Nam situation. I am nevertheless forc- ed to say that he is not entirely objective. First, he claims that five to six thousand Viet Minh "hard-core guerrillas" (i.e. regular soldiers) went underground in 1954 in- stead of going north. I've talked to one such person and heard a rather different interpretation of their "going underground." The Viet Minh had completely defeated the French and felt that the Geneva Accords recognized and guaranteed this victory. That the Americans seemed not to have felt the same way at the time (though now President Johnson talks of defending the Geneva Accords) is. supported by under- imprison and kill all opposition elements. MR. KILLINGSWORTH. then says that American foreign policy is a quest for diversity, i.e., does not attempt to control the des- tiny of other nations. If this is true, why did- we a) overthrow the democratic Arbenez regime in Guatemala; b) support the un- successful revolt against Sukarno in Indonesia (CIA); c) attempt to overthrow the Castro regime at the Bay of Pigs; d) quickly come to the support of the military coup against President Goulart in Brazil, which led to the present dictatorship (and did the CIA start this one, too?); e) send 40,- 000 troops into the Dominican Re- public? This is not to say that our policy is always to be repressive, but to say that repression is a major line in our policy and that it is possibley the most consistent one (even if not the most visible one). In attempting to undermine the concept of the war in Viet Nam being a civil war, Mr. Killings- worth's article starts by quoting David Halberstam to the effect that the whole war was instigated from Hanoi. That is well and good. but to claim that he is quoting a critic of the war is somewhat unfair, as Halberstam is basically in support of the present policy. PERHAPS Mr. Killingsworth hasn't read the Kennedy admin- istration Bluebook on Viet Nam. That document clearly states that the conflict in South Viet Nam is a civil war. While the Defense Department states that three-quarters of the infiltrators of the north are North Vietnamese, examination of the biographies of infiltrees from the North in the State Department White Paper indicates that this is not true. Fourteen of the nine- teen men listed as coming from the North are clearly recorded as having been born and raised in the South. In addition, a good part of the rest record no home province, so only a couple are demonstrated to be from the North. Of course, it is now said that there is a North Vietnamese division in South Viet Nam, but this is how many months since we started bombing attacks on North Viet Nam (with no declaration of war, ie.s, like Pearl Harbor)? NOBODY DENIES that North Viet Nam has some influence with the NLF; in fact, it was a call broadcast on Hanoi radio that led to the transformation of the guer- rilla movement from the number of isolated guerrilla bands into a united political front with at least three political parties and many other organizations. But advice and arms don't make for control, and the quotes refer- ring to the wonderful support and direction given by the North have a rather defensive ring when one considers all the bitter complaints that emanated from NLF officials about inadequate support from the North, I'm particularly glad that Mr. Killingsworth brought up the Spanish Civil War, because I think we should remember that while France and Russia aided the Re- publican side with weapons (in- adequately, I might add), Italy American officials that we have to gain the support of the peas- ants. We are defending a small, elite group which controls the Saigon government only because the United States has been supplying the necessary money and guns ever since we put Diem into power. WHEN BERNARD FALL was here last spring he was asked to contrast what he thought would be the result of free elections to- day in South Viet Nam to the estimated (by President Eisen- hower) 80 per cent of the vote that would have gone to Ho Chi Minh in 1956. He replied "about the same." -Stan Nadel, '66 Chairman, Committee to Aid the Viet- namese Poor Taste To the Editor: I THOUGHT the paragraph in the Wiretap column of last Friday's Daily would clear up the controversy of SNCC and the Fishbowl sign. Jeffrey Beal's edi- torial in Saturday's Daily leaves me wondering. First of all, neither SNCC nor the Ann Arbor Friends of SNCC is part of any "get-out-of-Viet- Nam - no - matter - what - the- consequences" movement. Nor did the sign say anything about such a movement. Character assassi- nation, Mr. Beal? Good taste? SNCC is a predominantly south- ern civil rights group and Friends of SNCC is solely a financial and educational support group for SNCC. SECONDLY, Mr. Beal is correct when he says that permission, for the sign was not. requested by Friends of SNCC, nor by SNCC it- self, contrary to the Daily lead story of September 16. That story was written and published without ever contacting anyone from SNCC or Friends of SNCC. Re- sponsibility? Conscientious report- ing? The truth of the matter is that the sign was posted by an indi- vidual student, and Friends of SNCC became involved only be- cause it had a Fishbowl table that day. When permission for the sign was finally requested and granted, it was granted to Voice, not Friends of SNCC, Mr. Beal's edi- torial to the contrary. This was pointed out as clearly as might be expected in the Wiretap column of Friday's Daily. Simply stated, SNCC and Friends of SNCC had nothing to do with that sign. Friends of SNCC was asked to request per- mission for the sign and agreed to sponsor it only because that was the only way it could remain posted. This was agreed upon not because of what the sign said but because we feel the University had no right to remove it. The next day, when Voice received per- mission for the sign, Friends of SNCC was no longer even peri- pherally involved. TWO factual matters. Thurs- day's Daily reported that SNCC did this and SNCC did that. They should have said Friends of SNCC and even that would have been an error, for the reasons outlined above. Nor was Friends of SNCC. of American boys who have given their lives in defense of their country in the jungles of Viet Nam: "Neither APO nor the Uni- versity nor Mr. Beal is qualified to rule on what is or isn't good taste. Nor do such allegations in any way answer the sign's accusation. Arguments involving "taste" and "the hundreds of American boys ." are in any case extremely emotional and certainly irrelevant. Mr. Bea l's editorial serves more than adequately as its own rebut- tal. I MUST ADD that Mr. Beal speaks for himself and not for me when he claims he is only a stu- dent and not yet an adult. I can feel only pity for someone who grants to APO or to the Univer- sity or even to his own parents. the right to dictate how one should act or think. Since Mr. Beal puts himself in this position, I trust he clears every editorial and every action he contemplates with APO or the Office of Student Affairs. -Barry Goldstein Fishbowl Sign To the Editor: REGARDLESS of its offensive character or the inexactness of the analogy implied by the "war crimes" sign in the Fishbowl, it must be admitted that the sign sparked a rather lively discussion of Viet Nam issues. Some may argue that the claim of American violence against the civilian population is not valid be- cause,- in a war of this type, civil- ian casualties are unavoidable. This, of course, presupposes the validity of the objectives of the war. Most people, I am sure, have never questioned these objectives; they reluctantly accepted the war as necessary to "stop Commu- nism." The Fishbowl sign, with the ac- companying photographs, has per- haps shocked some students enough so that they raised the vi- tal question: is it worth it either to us or to the Vietnamese to save the latter from a Communist gov- ernment by ravaging' their coun- try and by butchering many thou- sands of them and ourselves? -Carl Goldberg 'The Collector' To the Editor: J AM WRITING to protest the unperceptive and unconstruc- tive review of William Wyler's "The Collector," appearing in the September 14 Daily by Michael Juliar, lest that reviewer should prevent a good many people from seeing this film, about as good as any movie ever made by an Amer- ican production company. "The Collector" is a film com- bining highly sensitive acting and directing with wonderfully effec-. tive color and musical effect. It is the first recent American-made film to treat a serious and philo- sophically pressing topic, the co- existence of good and evil, in a mature and dramatically effec- tive manner. Both.Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar give excel- lent portrayals, particularly Miss Eggar. The fault is not in the film so much as in your reviewer's ob- tuseness and artistic immaturity. MAY I SAY that I first saw "The Collector" when it opened in New York City at an art thea- tre attracting a fairly artistically sophisticated group of young peo- ple. I can report that I heard not a guffaw, not even a chuckle. Rather, the audience was deeply drawn into the unfolding of the plot and its violently dramatic high points. When the art student, for ex- ample, finally grasps that her captor means to keep her until her death, it is hardly an occa- sion for humor, but is instead as stark a presentation of the hu- man being when faced with an inescapable but abhorrent reality (a common enough situation in human experience) as this writer has seen on the screen. Mr. Juliar reveals his own weak- nesses as a reviewer when he in- dicates his prejudices against the film because it received favorable comment in Life magazine and "the magazine stalls of New York." Mr. Juliar should be made aware that comment in Life and similar publications is simply irrelevant one way or the other. The creator of a work of art is not responsible for the praise or blame people may see fit to give him. Wyler is not to be criticized because Life liked his movie, any more than Hem- ingway or Salinger could be dis- counted because the popular mid- dle-brow press made much of them. I FEAR I must concur with Mr. Juliar's friends who criticized his "lack of perception" vis-a-vis "The Collector." This is a beauti- ful, delicate, and sensitive movie, conceived and produced with much intelligence, and Mr. Juliar's at- tempts to be patronizing toward it only reflect poorly on him as a reviewer. If he and others found it unin- tentionally funny, perhaps their artistic palates have been dulled by too much television and Life magazine to the point where they can no longer distinguish between cinematic art and a James Bond movie. -Randy Rosenblatt, '61 when the professor knows as well as his students that he hasn't really got anthing very important to say in his lectures.) Without the final looming at the end of the term, a little more variety in course structure is pos- sible. Hour exams can be sched- uled at logical periods rather than at traditional half-way points. Reading periods can be put in most any time when the professor feels it would be useful and val- uable. One other problem will have to be tackled. Under the present credit hour system, the upper- classman is often stuck with five three-credit courses, which is a ridiculous load if any education is going to get done in any of them. The system was probably put together a hundred or so years ago when half the courses were gut courses and a C was sufficient for the rest. For students to have to kill themselves doing a good job in five difficult courses is much too much to ask. THERE ARE a series of things that can be done with trimester to make it livable and productive. It requires a little academic boat- rocking, something that faculty have an inbred horror of, but the institution of trimester has shown that changes can be made, that no one is going to be ruined by it, and that there might even be some better ways to conduct the educational process than the ones we've been using for hundreds of years. Sc huize's Corner: Of fens ire-Man' By JAMES SCHUTZE ILL-MANNERED undergraduate Manley Naval, dashed unnotic- ed from the crowded sidewalk into a nearby telephone booth. He emerged only a moment later in the uniform of the notorious Of- fensive-Man! Offensive-Man," an angry profes- sor warned. "Have you no taste?" "You've gone too far this time, Offensive-Man! He's done it again!" Offensive-Man turned two steely eyes on the red-faced professor and broke into a blood-curdling giggle. The Offender had struck