Scventy-Sixth Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS I Fulfilmen t or Social on tr I concerned with )r need he might to himself or at lay off because nim struggle in ere Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MiCi. Truth WIP Prevail, 42 ANr)S.ANAROMIIt Nuws PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily ex press the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. Y, AUGUST 24, 1965 NIGHT EDITOR: JUDITH WARREN On Being a Freshman: One-to-One in the Multiversity HERE YOU ARE, admitted as a fresh- man to the University of Michigan, probably conscious of both your abilities, which are abundant, and your human shortcomings, which you never have wor- ied too much about until you found yourself face to face with a university. You see yourself, at any rate as an in- dividual human being-lost in an over- whelming society, perhaps, but still an individual. You're in for a surprise. The world prefers to think of you as a commodity, thanks in no small part to university sociologists. You have been mentally and emotionally measured, typ- ed, fitted and tested. There is, in fact, a price on your head. Your mind, your abilities and your skills will probably be worth, very rough- ly, $20,000-50,000 a year to the American (or maybe some other) economy 10 years from now. From $1500 to $5000 a year will be invested in you as you go through school. You are a human resource, far more valuable than mineral resources. GOOD NEWS? There's more. Society is beginning to recognize, in its own haphazard, going backwards, slow-to- achieve-consensus way, just how valu- able you really are. They'll pay, in other words. $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 a year. You name it. Cars, ranch homes, round- the-world vacations, even the sexual facade. Our market economy is an amazing mechanism. One of the greatest inven- tions in the world. It recognizes and re- wards value quickly and efficiently. (You'll learn about the market economy in Economics 12, by the way, as you will learn about that wonderful word "so- ciety" in sociology 100. Good luck.) If you are here in search of quick and efficient rewards-whether in the form of grades, self congratulation, or "lux- urious living"-you can get them all here and. more. But look at what you are do- ing all up and down the line: you'reac- cepting external definitions of what you ought to like, of what is good for you.> You accept the Coca-Cola ad as the model of the good life, the "A" (and not the work and thought that should go in- to it) as the great goal, Playboy as a way of life. For God's sake back up a minute and look at what you are committing yourself to. Are you going to let somebody else--- be it Standard Oil or Lyndon Johnson- tell you, either directly or indirectly, what your personal values are? Are you going to let General Motors' assumption that what's good for it is good for you go unchallenged? The fact is that all of us have to some extent. But four years in a university can serve as a period for-reevaluation and re- view, for careful construction of your own life on your own terms. WHAT I AM saying is simple: be both .aware and wary, be ready, to profit from every experience, balance ingen- uousness with careful thought. If you are cynical you end up in your own closed box; if you don't discriminate among the ideas, the theories and the philosophies urged upon you as gospel, you end up be- ing swept off in wrong, even harmful directions. Leave yourself open to eval- uate every new bit of fact or outlook that comes along,' but remember that there are at least four years more before you really have to commit yourself to any- thing.' The freshman, as he proceeds through. the University, soons begins to perceive, or ought to, that he would do well to toss out "A's", cars, color television and strip- ed ties as inherently desirable. An auto- mobile is nice, but it is external to the person who drives it or owns it and hard- ly embodies within itself any values or philosophies with which that person can identify himself. Editorial Staff ROBERT JO©fNSTON, Editor LAURENCE KIRSHBAUM JEFFREY GOODMAN Managing Editor Editorial Director JUDITH WARR~EN......Personnel Director TH~OMAS W EIL'ERG................ Sports Editor LAUREN BAHRE.........Associate Managing Editor SCOTT BLECH ...........Assistant Managing Editor It's the same thing with grades. Mem- orized reading lists or lecture notes ac- quired to fill blue books are external. No- body wants to commit himself or identify himself with memorized facts. The act of memorization is, by itself, of no great 'value. Neither is an "A", except insofar as a person is able to identify with a standard of excellence that he holds up for himself in both work and thought- a standard he has internalized. He must have a commitment, not to "A's", but to standards he believes in- which might result in "A's", but not necessarily. But how can you, as a freshman, know where to make !new commitments that must be made to lend stability and mean- ing to your life? Who or what can you believe? Where, in other words, do you put your poker chips? r Establish- some rough standards for yourself. Standards first of excellence.j You know, for instance, when you are do- ing a good job and when you are not, what's really behind that "A," when you are making the effort and when you are letting yourself follow the smoothest path. With this standard of excellence in achievement set up, you will then be able to conceptualize standards of logic, of virtue, of' hope, of relevance and of per- sonal meaning. Just remember that standards must be for yourself, for what you want to do, to be and to commit your. self to. You should believe in and act upon whatsyou think, but be generous in allowing others the same privilege. BUT STANDARDS are only guideposts, there is still the problem of commit- ment here and now. Where do you start? Here I have a suggestion. Look through the rest of this newspaper. Pass over for a moment the many ads of the Ann Arbor merchants. You can begin to see the di- verse aspects of what we call the Uni- versity. The undergraduates, the faculty, the graduate students, sports, activities of every stripe, research, buildings, admin- istrators, classes, lectures and outside speakers. It all adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It adds up to a univer- sity, -not a wax museum. It's right here, and it's more than buildings and offices and books and homework. It's worth looking for. It's worth a lit- tle faith that there is something here in the way of values andideas and ways of thinking that is valuable to you as an 4individual, that can, with an investment of time, effort and thought on your part result in identity and commitment to things you can believe in, not things that Madison Avenue, or your roommates, or "society" want you to believe in or will believe in for you. It all reduces to a common denomin- ator, you, individually, on the one hand and the part of the world that you're willing and able to make your own, to commit yourself to, on the other. It comes down to a one-to-one correspon- dence, and the University is a partner that can be indulged in and relied upon to provide the best possible source of in- spiration for commitment.' The University has, or is supposed to have, a commitment to you as well. While many faculty and researchers here are interested primarily in power, profit and personal aggrandizement, there is still plenty of material left for the other half of that one-to-one corre- spondence. Don't let the University es- cape its most essential obligation: peo- ple-you. The University can teach, it cannot make you learn. And even learning isn't enough. After you have listened to lec- tures, studied books, taken notes and written papers, you have done no more than you might have done at any school or even at home (given educational tele- vision). You are halfway down the path, but by no means there. FOR THE LAST and most essential in- gredients of the educated man- alertness, sympathy and human identity and commitment can come only through close, personal interaction with other persons. The freshman, however many of him there are, has every right to demand that his professors, his graduate instructors, By JEFFREY GOODMAN Editoria Director LAST FALL, when things were exploding at Berkeley, there were a few abortive attempts to stir this University up too, and when school starts again there will be more. Students almost by definition have recurring emotional and aca- demic crises. Them will be overcrowded class- es and three men in many two- man rooms; some will feel dis- contented and some might even complain en masse. AND EVENTS in the outside world will continue to press in on those who let themselves be receptive. Despite it all, quite sufficient ways have been perfected to make life pleasant here; no one really has to put with any continuing or bothersome tensions. The student quickly enough learns that this is a smoothly functioning institution. FOR BY AND LARGE the peo- ple who set the tone of this place and determine its style of opera- tion are pretty shrewd. They know how-in their speeches and poli- cies and classrooms-to head off any important disruptions, how to explain away minor disturbances, how to settle questions and chal- lenges securely. More personally, there is a host of official arrangements - from faculty office hours to psycholog- ical and religious counseling serv- es-to ensure that not too many students need feel too much anx- iety for too long. And students can also count on less official aid - from friends, teachers and the inevitability of semesters ending and accounts be- ing settled-to bring closer to home a philosophy in which the resolution of doubts and anguish is both easy and primary. ALL OF THIS -is as it should be for people who want to get along, both in the University and in the "real world" they will enter (too soon) upon graduating, as well as for the University and the social system. Tension, anxiety, disorder in personality or in social institu- tions do not serve the need for preserving existing arrangements from an onslaught of liberated hu- man energies. It istvital that everyone be drawn into the Great Society, that none are left out- side to challenge and upset its structure or values. Basically, modern men and in- stitutions arecneither capable nor desirous of coping with tension and ambiguity, and in any case we have become convinced by the subtle encroachments of power structures and vested interests that what is good for business- nearly-as-usual is ultimately good for our souls. UNIVERSITIES are simply func- tional and structural microcosms of the arrangements which obtain outside- their walls. They are ser- ant-arms of the broader system, and their assigned purpose is to socialize young people to be com- fortable with the existing arrange- ment by re-creating that arrange- ment at all levels of society. (This is not necessarily a con- demnation; in actuality, it is but one part of how "institution" and "socialization" are defined.) And so, in the universities as in the broader system, the domi- nant ethic is that one should not continually be in a state of doubt and search, a state of striving in which good effort itself is all that is needed for fulfillment. THIS KIND of tension is too creative! It increases too much one's sensitivity to the disjunc- tion between reality and ideal, be- tween reality and hope. Instead, emphasis is on the com- pleted task as an end in itself, on the resolved problem, the settled crisis, on closure and finiteness and definiteness. This would not be so damaging if only these vari- ous stabilizations were viewed as essentially unimportant to the process of renewed and continu- ous creative struggle, if only ac- cepted morality stressed that they were but irrelevant phenomena in an unending concern with action and process and striving as the only realistic ends (precisely be- cause they are not ends) of hu- man endeavor. But such is rarely the case. AS THE GREEKS tell this story -via Albert Camus' interpreta- tion of their famous myth - a hero, Sisyphus, is doomed to spend the rest of eternity pushing an extremely heavy boulder up an ex- tremely steep hill. Almost imme- diately Sisyphus realizes he can never reach, the top (perfection) for, after every gain upwards, he will be forced back down the hill by the weight of the boulder. He can give up altogether. Or he can always want to succeed and thus always be frustrated, The Love of Struggle for Its Own Sake Liberates Man from His Condition this is the only way for men really the energy and self-knowledge and physically constraining by their to live. love of struggle that has been own struggle, for this "war' 'is building up in him. little more than a (tokenistici IN THE MODERN AGE, how- And of course few, if any, of the handout, from superordinate, in- ever, one concentrates on the goal tasks real men might do in to- creasing, dependencies and the as an end point. In short time day's world are anywhere near as sense that one is not cwpable of one either becomes frustrated constraining. conceiving and implementing, on and then bitterly and confusedly his own, a better life for himself. neurotic (because the boal can- SO THINGS GO much more not be achieved and there is no smoothly and safely when the EVEN MORE revealing is the joy in trying) or, more likely, tone of what is handed down- way American -foreign' policy is one learns his lesson and gradually in media, in classrooms, in official conducted, as in Viet Nam and the lets die his capacity to conceive pronouncements, in one-to-one Dominitan Republic or with re- of ends that are at all difficult contacts-does not liberate the un- spect to China, Cuba and the rest to attain. controllable energies of enjoying of the "non-aligned" left-leaning He spends the rest of his life living, trying, striving, rebelling underdeveloped world. ignorantly satisfied with pushing per se. There is no attempt in our ef- his rock an inch at a time, at If social institutions were to al- forts to struggle with the multi- which rate he will never make the low the locus of satisfaction or dis- ple and complicated problems of top. satisfaction to fall upon the act revolution,, nationalism, peasants Actually, both these alterna- of attaining some goal, they would vs. urbanites, democratic socialism tives lead to neurosis, which is place the burden of fulfillment vs. c o n t i n u e d domination by simply the inability to function upon genuine human endeavor in- "friendly" foreign and native cap- in one's environment according to stead of the randomness with ital, the-socio-economic requisites one's peculiar desires and needs which phenomena occur in 'the of democratic functioning;the dif- for self-fulfillment. The person world, with which good is some- ferences in "Communisms." who seeks nothing less than per- times rewarded, sometimes perse- These are issues which go far fection continually fails, and he cuted, more often irrelevant. deeper, evoke far more anxiety is so hopelessly overwhelmed that One would be fulfilled or not and demand far more creativity he -mu't eventually retreat from fulfilled only on the basis of the than the one on which we cur-. all significant struggle. unavoidable knowledge of his rently base our foreign policy - style, energy and faithfulness to whether or not a government THE PERSON whose goals are, himself, his awareness of how "supports" U.S. interests. objectively and subjectively, not much of him went into any at- especially worth pursuing (be- tainment. He would know himself INSTEAD of engaging whole- cause they are not difficult) may better and better, and there would heartedly in this struggle to sort well be happy, but in a subtler be supreme exhilaration in know- out conditions and imperatives way he is still neurotic: he has ing that he is doing or trying to and really to compete with the forfeited his essential nature by do what he must do. Eastern nations (instead of offer- world" and little auy latent desire have to adjust IL least to tell it to it will not let peace. And there is ti mester, the busi- ness and finance office's answer to the non-use of costly facilities during summer nd v a c a t i o n months. Essentia ly the stuffing of three full semes ters into a con- tinuous 12-month academic calen- dar, it generates damaging pres- sures to cram an cut corners and give back only w ia will assuredly get results (i.e., ' vhat the teacher wants). It is fast turning an expe- rience that can b e beneficially in- tense if given enugh slack into a ridiculously ove intense rat-race. There will be' peeches by "top" administrators and "noted scho- lars" and end s course lectures in which the tudent will be told subtly that ociety needs him and wants him o long as he for- gets the silly nd ion that he has a legitimate righx -to demand of it something it is rlot already willing to give). THERE WILL BE demands that the administra 'on liberalize this rule and elimi te that control and, alas, only compromises and assurances tha all is really well and you never ad it so good and the world reall does care (which is too much tru , and it'll all come out in the was (or the Great Society) especieu ly since we all agree- (isn't it onderul?) on the basic guideline for our actions and you shouldj appreciate a great nation in whic there is so much consensus abou Important things, how dare you oubt these con- clusions? And there wi1 be endless other compromises with the powers- that-be: t h e state legislature whose petty pol tics the University feels it must pl y along with since it must get stats money; irate par- ents wanting tc know why the University is eft her not guarding their sons and daughters or is turning them into Communists; starving local bursiness enterprises (on many of w lose boards of di- rectors top Uniyersity officials sit or in whose groiwing capital stock many administ jators have strong personal interests). Compromises, because they are the stuff of pe4.e. IF IN BALANCE the University like. the social, system it serves, actively or by significant omis- sions ends up ; utimidating indi- viduals' natural desires and poten- tially most fruful methods of op- eration,sthere are nevertheless numerous piltive--or at least non-negatve developments a n d attributes. A residentI college, where stu- dents will be n far smaller group- ings than is ormal and where learning will ber oth more stim- ulating and organically tied to liv- ing and socializing pursuits, is in slow but certain progress. It is possible; given enough de- sire, to find some very stimulating professors and even some very stimulating courses. ON THE MORE sedate side, if one is afraid to seek personal re- lationships with his often unap- proachable elders he can some- times even find understanding mentors, new fathers, confidants or Just good friends among the faculty. The library is free, of course, so there are always good books to read (though they will have to be read at home, for in- side their walls the libraries offer little but noisy, smoky chatter). There are a few good extra-curri- cular activities and groups of ex- pressive people to join, for their own merits or to escape studying or to find a "community" with whose attempts to find satisfac- tion in some kind of creative ef- fort one can identify. Once In a while there is a movie good enough that one can relax his anxieties about the pro- cesses of his life and enjoy him- self (if one has no such anxieties teeare many movies good enough). One can have good parties and carry on (+espectably always, so as not to create indignation) friend- ships. And if one is so inclined he can even get up on a stone bench on the center of campus.and make speeches, or he can read or even write flaming editorials in one of the freest college newspapers in the coun wy. AND OF COURSE there is still a sphere-someplace, in some sit- uations, at some times-untouch- able except by the student. It re- quires i - its- full exploitation only that the student recognize it and capitalize on it, only that he guard it and understand it will all the anguish that implies and then- slowly, courageously, anxiously, with nany troubles and setbacks but, hop efully, with always the satisfacion that pure striving brings--that he extend it. When all is said and done, this University is still the- greatest of THE CONDITIONS which liberate- human potential and thus allow genuine human fulfillment-ex- ploring directing and redirecting the ariiieties and deep self-awareness which come from, a love, for its own sake, of the struggle to express oneself-are essentially dangerous to our social system. So these conditions generate considerable tension, which can only be communicated and understood as men somehow isolate themselves from the prohibitive controls of the world around them. denying its existence, by denying the fully developing being he might be if what is basic to him could any longer asserts its claim upon his actions. The reliance upon achievement inevitably re- quires shrinking the scope of one's expectations or pushing sideways or obliquely instead of straight upward. (Needless to say, there is a great range of behavior in this category-all the way from the stereotypically anesthesized "orga- nization" or "mass" man to the administrator who has not learn- ed the pleasures of striving in good style or even, more fundamentally, of his work. (In order to preserve his psychic health, he can propose and do only the possible-i.e., only what has not already been labeled ri- diculous, undesirable or irrelevant -which means that his modes of fulfillment are no longer his own.) THE REASON, it seems, that present institutional arrangements (and the preachings of their prophets and managers and edu- cators, which those arrangements almost wholly determine) try so hard to socialize men in the pat- tern of deriving their pleasure from resolution is that this makes populations considerably more predictable and controllable. It is far safer to specify the con- tent of the ends, solutions and goals which are functionally de-' sirable than it is to develop the capacity for deriving fulfillment from effort itself. Moreover, whether goals are de- fined explicitly or by stressing at- tainments in general and more subtly limiting their variance, to define goals is to determine the procedures men will take to reach them (especially since means can also be directly specified, which is the function of law). TV , ,, t v.,, ,,-+"V" v SA X" +,- That exhila.ation is perhaps the most human and the most basic feeling which men ever feel, and because it is so basic and so powerfully intimate it taps far more of those desires, hopesrcapacities and visions which lie too deep to be dirtied by those social constraints which essentially destroy human life. Content and success would be unimportant, and thus they could not be limited and delimited; pro- cedure would be all-important, and thus one would seek those goals the struggle toward which would bring them the most self-realiza- tion., It would not be important if there were reactionary forces to keep one from what he really needs, and what is commanded and drilled in for the sake of "progress" could no longer reach the mind. Only the doing would be important, and anyone who knows this knows also that achievement' would then cease to be a real satisfaction since it would become merely the beginning to new and continuing efforts. ALL OF WHICH is far too dan- gerous socially to be entertained seriously as a theme of education, child-raising, religion or social communication. By and large the proclamations which one will hear of this theme are hypocritical, and in its actual practice and its state- ments of "philosophical" justifi- cation the social system contin- ues to seek only resolution and stability. On the national scale the ad- ministration is bent on bringing the poor into the middle class - which is all the war on poverty is really about. This would reduce the present tensions of having a third of the population ill-fed, etc. It would also reduce the equally ing them no competition at all, which is what our policies of alien- ation and suppression ultimately do), we feel compelled to reduce every problem to its most obfu- scating red and white terms and -aim at nothing more than the goal of containing/defeating Commu- nism. By almost any account such a method is bound to be continually frustrating and continually more productive of paranoia and sim- plism; if standing behind true progress, no matter what color or "ism" it represents, would produce at least as much anxiety (for the struggle will be exceedingly long and complex), it would neverthe- less liberate far more of our crea- tive, constructive and beneficent energies. IN THE UNIVERSITY, in this America-in-microcosm which is -the Ann 'Arbor campus, one meets the same stifling forces and em- phases. Women will have hours, for instance, so they do not have to run their lives completely by themselves -and so (quite apart from whether they are already "responsible" or not) they will have two year's "grace" before tl7ey must or can learn what' it means and requires to be respon- sible to themselves (which is ulti- mately all that counts). (The situation has improved slightly, I must admit.: due to the courage of the University's lib- eral vice-president for student af- fairs, junior women have been granted permission to be wholly themselves as midnight comes around). Exams will usually stress closure -the resolution of questions with- in the narrow confines of the course outline or the professor's particular prejudices - and their very existence means that educa- tion usually ends up fragmented 4