Seventy-Sixth Year EDrrED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS Tolerance Is Not Taking People Seriously Opinions Are Free. 420 MAYNARD7ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. wth 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. RSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23,1965 NIGHT EDITOR: LEONARD PRATT Proposed SGC Housing Action DPT Deservyes Passage Tornht TONIGHT, BOB BODKIN will present a motion to Student Government Coun- cil authorizing the formation by Council of a University of Michigan Off-Campus Housing Union. His motion shows a good deal of foresight, and should be passed by SGC. - As proposed; the "union" would con- sist of a two-part executive, an executive board and three subcommittees. The board, to be composed of two representa- tives appointed by SGC and two appoint- ed by Graduate Student Council, will be responsible for setting. union policy and appointing subcommittee chairmen. First on the list of those subcommit- tees will be a rent and leasing committee, to study proposals for eight-month leases. A second committee will be responsible for representing the union to the Uni- versity administration, with the last sub- committee being responsible for working within Ann Arbor proper to improve building codes and to organize a housing lobby among voting graduate students. The thoughtful division of, responsi- bility which this sort of organization, cre- ates gives such a union some very im- portant advantages. ONE OF THESE advantages- is that it will greatly widen the potential for, effective mass support of the housing movement. It has certainly been obvious that- a key factor -in the hesitancy of many persons to join the movement has been their reluctance to associate them- selves with the liberal organizations back- ing it. For these people, SGC sponsorship of, a housing union cannot help but illus- trate the fact that you don't have to be a liberal, in any of that word's many senses, to want better housing for students. SGC sponsorship will thus have a legitimizing effect on the movement, enabling it to gain members who would otherwise have been repulsed by its earlier political im- plications.. To this same end, the union's executive board would consist of both representa- tives from SGC and GSC, thus uniting two groups with the same interests and increasing their effective power. THE SECOND crucial step forward con- tained in the motion is the establish- ment of a subcommittee one of whose major purposes would be negotiation with the administration. One of the faults of many previous student movements has been the tendency of everyone in the group to consider himself perfectly rep- resentative of the membership's views. The inevitable result " was confusion within the administration about just what, in fact, the group was talking about. What's more, this subcommittee can go farther than just clarifying lines of com- munication. Vice-President for Student- Affairs Richard Cutler has already an- nounced a student advisory board for his newly-created housing office. It would certainly be ideal to, have SGC housing representatives dealing directly with OSA housing officials, and that is exactly what Bodkin's motion would allow. POSSIBLY ONE of the most important aspects of the proposal is Bodkin's in- tent that the union should eventually become independent of SGC. His motion states that SGC should establish only "an interim (his emphasis) structure for the . '. . union." He expands on this in Section Four, which states that SGC "ex- pects to grant permanent recognition to a more permanently structured UMOHU sometime during the spring of 1966." Union independence is important in or- der that the organization can be consid- ered more than a branch of SGC. Inde- pendent, unified action is the only real way to ensure that the union does not become tied to its parent by policy, cus- tom or default. These sections thus in- sure the union against manipulation from anyone other than its members. In keeping with this pragmatic ap- proach, Bodkin would further ask SGC to "begin an intensive publicity and recruit- ing campaign for the UMOHU . . . and appropriate $500 as initial expenses." This is the final test of the motion's ability to' face reality, andit passes it well. What the housing, movement most *needs now is widespread dissemination of the facts about housing in Ann Arbor. Many of those facts are so powerful in their impact that wide membership will certainly follow their publication. Pub- licity will thus serve the vital dual pur- poses of informing the campus about housiig facts and increasing the union's membership. ALL IN ALL, Bodkin's motion fills a lot of the gaps which have so far un- avoidably appeared in the housing move- ment's work. Moreover, it presents SGC with an opportunity to spawn an orga- nization' which can do the University's concerned students a great deal of good. On both counts, SGC must be strongly urged to pass this motion tonight. -LEONARD PRATT EDITOR'S NOTE: Peter McDon- ough, graduate student in political science, spent 1961-63 as a Peace Corps volunteer. Those who hung around the Fishbowl last week saw him as the tall fellow, repeatedly surrounded by fairly largernumbers of students, who defended the "war criminals" sign and argued against U.S. involvement in the Viet Nam war. By PETER McDONOUGH THE QUAKER across the hall is in many ways disarming. In his room there is a stuffed squir- rel, a reproduction of "The Peace- able K i n g d o m," Dostoyevski, "Playboy," esoterica and statisti- cal manuals. The room is both gothic and neat, and unless you like computers and jazz, or see that one may be like the other, you are lost there. He is a pacifist and so disap- proves of my wearing a National Liberation Front pin. But then it is not badlooking, and Mongolia, he would admit, prints beautiful stamps. During the week when I came back from the, fishbowl for lunch, we talked about the reactions to the sign placed by my friends and myself accusing American soldiers of committing war crimes in Viet Nam. Friday, after the fishbowl discussions had become particu- larly ugly-a student having rip- ped an NLF pin off one of our group because his argument "was not rational"-he was shaken. HE WAS SHAMED by the fa- miliar challenges: "You couldn't be standing here now if Americans hadn't died for freedom"; "If someone attacked your wife . .." On the radio, to background music supplied by an Army band, Walter Brennan was reading a statement by J. Edgar Hoover about respect for the law. We talked a while about Prince Myshkin's sanity. Organ and choir began a patriotic hymn, and the announcer said, "Today has been, for the most part, Citizen's Day." I said the burgundy he offered would only make me sleepier and returned to the Fishbowl. A girl from MSU who had spent the summer in Viet Nam was opposing our position. Atrocities are committed on both sides, she was saying. She disapproved of our use of napalm. But the Viet Cong were worse: disemboweling pregnant women, blowing the brains out of infants, decapitating headmen. She sounded very plausible. No one, after all, represents the hum- ble peasants; it is the urban ele- ments who cause most of the trouble ("disgruntled office-seek- ers?") while the bureaucracy carries on; who can speak for people who want simply to be left in peace? A PARTICIPANT in the alter- native policies conference asked me what I thought of her argu- ment. I gave a jumbled answer, trying out of frazzled charity and a desire to persuade men with whom I once agreed not to say what I really felt-that hers was a despair brought on by a case of crackpot realism. He turned to a friend, discouraged, and said you have to go to Viet Nam yourself and make up your mind. I remembered Pakistan, a kind of East Elsewhere so surreal that only hope is improbable, and how for a while I held her conclusions. You come, for all the shrewd pre- paration, in altruism; you leave chastened, a little. punchy and desperate. It is the mentality of the conscientious colonial officer. One of them, George Orwell, shot his elephant and quit. That morning, an ex-intelligence officer in Viet Nam, now a stu- dent, stopped by our table. He talked honestly and in anguish about military necessity and moral imponderables. A sympathetic lis- tener said, "All he means is that. you have to put moral and mili- tary considerations in proper per- spective." I said nothing, and the ex-officer nodded, almost satis- fied. MOST OF THE moderates and liberals hesitated to get into the debate, standing like a hapless parody of some third force on the fringes of the crowd. One of my professors had said, apropos of something forgotten, that you can't protect yourself from non- sense, and I wondered what fence there was to sit on. Thucydides, I had read, described the origins of the Athenian empire in motives of fear, honor and interest. A graduate student in political science said he thought the sign was in bad taste, that it emotion- alized the issues, that he would not want himself associated with it; that the situation was complex, that we all have to examine our premises. He didn't have much time, we didn't know each other; too well, and I said, rather melo- dramatically, that we might con- sider pressures as well. Another graduate student call- ed me over. He thought we were alienating rather than persuading people. Last year, he said, when he worked against Goldwater, he caught himself getting a peculiar thrill out of fighting for a good cause, without much regard to those who happened to disagree. Some of us might be guilty of the same- thing, I said, though people usually seemed more em- barrassed than elated when pick- eting or committing civil dis- obedience. Was it bad, anyway, I thought, to enjoy serious politics? Instead I mentioned the im- placable abolitionists, how their position was an existential duty. We agreed for different reasons that the Civil War might have been avoided, and talked of how Kipling had been in a sense mis- judged. I TRIED DEBATING a profes- sor, a good cross-examiner, who asked me, in that style, whether' I liked to kill. I called him rude and vulgar for asking such a ques- tion, even rhetorically. I inter- rupted one of his questions. He said I was rude. The debate con- tinued on this level. "Oh, so you, mean some Ameri- can soldiers in Viet Nam are com- mitting war crimes; why didn't you say so on the sign?" "Did we say all American soldiers?" He kept wagging his finger in my face. I ,wagged my finger in his face and said deliberately, "Nyaah, nyaah, nyaah!" The debate trailed off in a mix- ture of intense dislike adn curios- ity. Finally I said in half-hearted conciliation, "Well, there are ar- guzments on both sides, it comes down to a moral choice." I thought of the student who wanted to wring my neck because his brother had been killed in Viet Nam, and of the mother, agreeing with us, whose son had died there. Many of the faculty, it seemed, felt we had identity problems. I WAS looking forward to hav- ing dinner with an Indian friend Friday night instead of going to the conference. We wanted to talk of anything but politics. But I arrived late and hardly touched the curry she had taken so much time to prepare. I was more tired than I realized, distracted and conjuring up dilemmas and per- secutions about the loyalty oath on my National Defense fellow- ship, and frightened, as you can be in retrospect after going through something uncertain, of the more physical antagonists and of my own willingness to use them occasionally as patsies in debate. Didn't I find it difficult, she asked, adjusting to East Bengal? "Well, we had to boil our water and learn the language," I said, "and the rest was just as hard or easy, more or less, as getting to know people anywhere." Maybe, she said, I didn't know Orientals so well; and we quarreled a little and laughed at ourselves. Over the weekend the Quaker and I had more of the burgundy and talked about the past week. "Nowadays," he said, "tolerance means not having to take people seriously." We saved some of the wine. 4V Free Speech Clamor over Sign Mistaken 'The Colleetor' and Foreign Policy To the Editor: ALTHOUGH the decision to post the "war criminals" sign and the official reaction that followed are by themselves causes for con- cern, I would like to comment here on the manner in which the Daily handled these events. In the middle of P. 1 of the Sept. 16 issue, in a report signed by Michael Badamo, the second caption reads: "Not Offensive." In the paragraphs below, however, nobody is quoted who holds this view. What we have is a quota- tion ascribed to Dean Haber ac- cording to which he finds the sign offensive. What is the rea- son and motive for the misleading caption? Furthermore, Mr. Cutler's deci- sion to leave the sign untouched is featured in the headlines while his statement that the OSA con- siders the sign in poor taste, high- ly subjective, etc. is printed with small print at the end of Miss Wolter's report. Why this lack of balance in emphasis? PERHAPS A CLUE is given by your editorial which views the in- - cident as an issue of "free speech," and criticizes" the administration for considering an order to re- move the sign, even on the as- sumption that its posting was le- gal. All of this is based appar- ently on the assumption that "the University does not limit the stu- dent's freedom of political speech." In reply may I point out that the principle of unlimited free- dom of political speech is un- sound both morally and pruden- tially. In a democracy the privi- lege to express one's views is brought into harmony with provi- sions for protecting people and institutions from slander and def- amation, and provisions for pro- tecting the public against expos- ure to material which serves no useful purpose and is offensive or demented in its nature. The offen- siveness of a sign does not de- pend solely on whether it is "written in conventional English," as your editorial implies.. THE ISSUE concerning the pos- sible removal of the sign is: does the sign exceed the limits of good taste and propriety to such an extent as to warrant official in- tervention? On this issue there can be, and obviously is, a legitimate difference of opinion. But it is wrong to assimilate this issue to larger questions concerning free- dom of speech, it is wrong to claim that students or anyone else have, or should have, unlimited freedom of political speech, and finally it is wrong to report events such as these in a misleading manner. --Prof. J. M. E. Moravesik Philosophy Department The Draft To the Editor: 'M SORRY to see that such a fool as Graham M. Le Stour- geon has had a voice in your pa- per (Sunday, Sept. 12). I would like to answer his letter. Mr. Le Stourgeon says that American college students should be glad to do their own fighting. But he is blind to the fact that some students want an end to fighting. It is the single soldier boys and Indians. They cannot help us. We must refuse to kill, refuse to invent bigger and better weapons with which to murder our neigh- bors. We iust, in other words, disobey our government, or bet- ter, disavow it. We must refuse to be part of the mass insanity which is America. AND THAT, Mr. Le Stourgeon, is why the draft is slave labor, and why some of us will never be soldiers. --Dale Murray, '69 Proof? Reason? To the Editor: THE RATHER OBVIOUS rhe- torical devices of name-calling and transfer used by Mr. Berko- witz in his editorial would have touched the heart of any Southern segregationist who ever called his opponents "Yankee nigger lovers." It is much easier to label people in support of the war in Viet Nam as "anti-students" or the "simple-naives" than to prove the lack of merit of their ideas. It is much easier to dismiss opponents as a "counterweight to the dom- inant tenor of their age" than for Mr. Berkowitz to prove his own 1 arguments. For Mr. Berkowitz to say that "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 right" does not make it true, nor does it make, it wrong. Proof, logic, reason-have they no place in discussion on Viet Nam? HE STATES, "A rather conven- tionally dressed young lady." By whose conventions? His? So- ciety's? Who the hell is he to make that judgement? Later in the editorial, Mr. Berk- owitz quotes a "young female" as saying, "most of the people in support of the war in Viet Nam. are-well-50 years old," implying this assumption is correct by call- ing it in "sympathy with the saner course." Possibly these "adults" know a hell of a lot more about Viet Nam than Mr. Berkowitz. Personal opinions and sarcasm cannot be substituted for intel- ligent arguments, which have been absent on both sides of the Viet Nam question. --D. Jeakle, '67 The Real World? To the Editor: I SHOULD like to comment on Mr. Berkowitz's self-righteous, quasi-satirical editorial entitled, "Supporting the U.S. on Viet Nam: The Anti-Students Take Over." Even accepting his thesis that the individual attending the meet- ing described are not capable of judging the merits or demerits of any program, Mr. Berkowitz makes two serious errors: First, his phrase "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 . . ." shows a grave lack of knowledge, both of the advocated policy of the extreme right and of the present policy of the Johnson administration. (There is, after all, some difference between bombing Peking and attempting-hwever unsuccessfully-to force Hanoi 'to unconditional negotiations.), SECONDLY, Mr. Berkowitz, who glibly calls anyone for the policy an anti-student, might consider the true nature of the group of so-called students who so violently oppose, the war. They disagree with Johnson's policy-fine, so do I; but I have seen nothing from them to show, anything but the most appalling ignorance of the political world as it is-not as they would have it. Is it the mark of a true "tu- dent" to spend his efforts demon- strating for" an end to a policy without offering an alternative which recognizes the political realities of the world? I think not. AGREED: the war in Viet Nam. is immoral. All wars are. Agreed:- we should show our discontent with escalation of the war. But is demonstrating, with the poten- tial danger of rioting, the way to do it? And to advance policies of "get- ting out" or accepting the ri- diculous "conditions" of the Hanoi regime, while setting up a dual standard of morality (where the Americans and Viet Cong are guilty of the same "crimes" and only the Americans are criticized for them)-this is hardly an en- dorsement for the "world Intel- lectual community" that was sup- posed to be represented here at the conference. Nor is it a sign that true "stu- dents" area the body of the anti- war factions in campuses through- out the world. If students wish not only, to be' heard, but to be listened to, they must offer alternatives for the real world, not their own phantom- world of all noble ideals and over- simplifications. -Joel Hencken, '69' Adults? To the Editor: THE SEPT. 21 editorial com- menting on a meeting of the "Committee on Viet Nam" is only one of a series of rather naive editorials in the Daily. While I was not present at 'this meeting, and am not particularly sympathetic with the objects of this committee, a cursory knowl- edge of recent history makes this, kind of writing particularly of- fensive to me., First of all, the identification of the people present at the meet- ing with anti-civil rights, anti- Medicare and pro-Goldwater groups: does it not remind one of the identification of people- at other meetings with pro-Commun- ist groups? Perhaps the writer also takes pictures with a hidden camera to prove his point? SECOND, the statement that "being for President Johnson's policy ipso facto places one in close proximity to the ideological framework of the far right": Is it not reminiscent of statements by the John Birch Society, calling President Eisenhower a Commun- ist? Third, the quotations out of context of some of the' comments 'made at the meeting: how similar to the methods used by the late Senator McCarthy! A recent editorial writer in the Daily wrote: "We must remember that we are still students and not yet adults." Your writers had bet- ter start to consider themselves adults, as well as students, before they start writing editorials. -Herbert Winter, Grad Conference To the Editor:I ATTEMPTING to take an objec- tive, well-informed look at U.S. Vietnamese policy as intelligent citizens aware of the world poli- tical situation is a goal that few people would argue with. But on examining last week's "Alternative Perspectiyes on Viet Nam" Conference Program one notices an interesting fact: of the more than 800 persons listed as sponsors of the conference, com- posed for the most part of "in- tellectuals from the various parts of the world," to quote a part of the "Statement of Purpose" of the program, we find that only 36 of the sponsors-less than 5 per cent of the total--are political sci- ntists or persons specially trained in international relations. THIS CONSPICUOUS absence of political scientists sponsoring the conference can lead us per- haps to two' conclusions: First, that the teach-ins as "a: viable method of changing policy are' failing' because they are too bog- ged down by academic theory and are not dealing with the every- day realities of international re- lations and policy as the President and his advisors must see them, and second, that perhaps the gov- ernment, as it claims, and despite the academic-theoretically bound voices.crying to the contrary, real- ly is doing its best in coping with the political realities of the Viet- namese conflict in its search for a peaceful settlement. -Michael D. Jakesy, '67 1* 10 IN LINE with recent campus activity concerning Viet Nam and United States foreign policy in general, it is significant that the Campus Theatre has held over' "The Collector." This movie, which seemingly has no connection with foreign policy, may actually be a vehicle for subtle political analogies between in- dividuals and nations. The collector himself represents the U.S in its world position today-he has come upon a huge, unmanagable fortune and is basically misusing it. The butter- flies he collects can be likened to poli- tical and military alliances-very pretty when put on display but ultimately of little but visual value. Miranda, the art, student, is like Red China. The collector would truly like to un- derstand and be friends with Miranda and her friends (the "emerging" nations), but, because of different backgrounds and his timidity (fear of social revolution), he finds that his only possibility for a relationship is through the use of force. WITH HIS TRUCK (a long-range nu- clear delivery system) and chloroform Editorial Staff ROBERT JOHNSTON, Editor LAURENCE KIRSHBAUM JEFFREY GOODMAN Managing Editor Editorial Director JUDITH FIELDS....... Personnel Director LAUREN BAHR......Associate Managing Editor (chemical warfare), he captures her and imprisons her in his cellar (the unpleas- ant world realities from which neither can escape). He agrees to release her after a defi- nite time, hoping that in the interim they can become true friends, not merely re- tain the guise of friendship (peaceful co- existence). Despite her friendly front, Miranda maintains an intense desire for freedom and consistently works toward it. She makes her big blunder when she disputes his interpretation of "The Catcher in the Rye" (she argues for the Marxist inter- pretation of history), whereupon he dis- covers that there is no real basis for un- derstanding between them, and thus no basis for friendship. IN THE END, she seeks an opportunity to escape by attacking him with the only weapon available-a shovel (China's "superfluous" millions). He repulses her, and then abandons her while he recovers. When he returns, he finds she has be- come very ill (deteriorated internally), so he immediately seeks a doctor (the Unit- ed Nations). The doctor proves irrelevant, because her illness is too far along its fatal course for any but divine interven- tion. She dies, and he seeks a nurse (the U.S.S.R.) for his next conquest, ,feeling he has more in common with her. MIDWAY through the movie, after the Refusal To Automate Puts Times 'Of f Record' By ROGER RAPOPORT THE NEW YORK TIMES went off record last week after being struck by its newspaper guild. Careful analysis by astute Daily observers has revealed the follow- ing behind-the-scenes story on the strike: Strike negotiations didn't ac- tually get underway until two days after the work stoppage began. Negotiators needed this time to decipher the Times stories that had been written earlier in the week defining the issues. There has been a lot of curios- ity about how the strike started. One story has it that the strike began when a guild employee su- stained a hernia lifting a copy of Sunday's Times. The Times al- legedly refused to pay hospitaliza- tion expenses for the injured em- ployee. THIS IS not true. The real is- sue in the strike is automation. Most people, however, have the mistaken impression that this means the Guild objects to Times plans to automate various opera- tions, putting employees out of their jobs. Nothing could be further from the truth. THE FACT IS that the Guild new piece of headline type since 1894. THE GUILD also is demanding a change in the entrenched layout methods of the Times. For years 'the Times has been laid out by a moonlighting em- ployee of the Bell Telephone Cor- pany who actualy makes up the Bronx Telephone Directory for a living. The Times' printers are demanding the right to make up their own newspaper: In adition, the guild is demand- ing improved equipment for the Times photographer. Currently the photographer w o r k s with a Brownie Starflash which he must share with a son who takes pic- tures of weekend football games for the Scarsdale High School newspaper. MOREOVER, the Times' repor- ters are demanding release from a previous contract clause which requires them to write their stories out directly onto, a linotype. The writers complain that this process not only eliminates jobs for edi- tors but has also put a number of printers out of work. There is a widespread belief that the Times may give in to the guild on this point, since the personnel office has been having Schutze's Corner: In the. Beginning By JAMES SCHUTZE IN THE BEGINNING Barry Blue-' stone created UMSEU. UMSEU was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the rank and vile; and the spirit of Bluestone was moving over the face of the masses. And Bluestone rose on the sweating back of his creation and his tribe languished in Egypt, the Great Serf'drank tea with Phar- oah's wife. NOW, ONE DAY, the enslaved tribe must turn from the path of Barry Bluestone and must elect as its king an ordinary mortal, whose eyes will stray less to a throne in the heavens than to $1.35 an hour. t 3