1~ 4 -igher Education: 'Across the Street' The View from An Interview with a Former University Vice-President, And Berkeley's New Chancellor On Sept. II The Dailgys Senior Edi- tors held an extended interview with RogerW W. Ieyns, echo ate tabort to (as- smne the position of chancellor at the Unirersity of California's Berkeley canapas after serring as the University's nice-president for acadentic affirs since 1962. Eleyns -answersh here qulestions about problems in higfher edicatioin id in administering a large university- problemies with studlents, faculty and state and federal governments. In addition, excerpts from his first major speech at Berkelet are included for his view of the sittation there. Roger W. Heyns Q-There have been several significant steps taken at the University recently aimed toward student involvement in policy-making and policy-influencing- particularly in the field of housing. Is this sort of invlovement a good thing, and would you go so far as to say that students ought to have real power-votes on the committees, say-as a logical next step? I am referring to the meetings be- tween administrators and students who have worked with and studied the hous- ing problem-meetings which have re- sulted in the formation of advisory groups for Vice-Presidents Cutler and Pierpont. A-I certainly think that the kind of discussion and interaction between ad- ministration and students that went on this week is very sound and good and gratifying and promising for the future. I think there are lots of areas in which meaningful student interaction can be extended. I think the point is very well taken that it isn't so much who makes the decisions but who influences them, and this applies also to your question about voting. There may be some places where you can't have a vote, or where that is not the way to do it. All of us are interested in high quality decisions, and then if there are areas where students can make a contribution that will increase either the quality of the decision, or its acceptability, then by all means students should participate. When we come to the question of stu- dent participation, we're talking about delegation of authority. Somebody has got to say: this was formerly our area or my area of decision making, I would like to involve in a responsible way these people, and even give them a vote. This has to be accepted as a way of operating. One individual can't say for the Uni- versity as a whole how far this ought to extend because the people involved are going to have to extend it. The vice-presi- dent for academic affairs isn't going to say, from now on the students are going to participate in the determination of graduation requirements of the literary college. If it is to be done, it must be done by the college. Q-Would you agree with the philoso- phy that students should be involved in non-housing issues such as academies? A-Oh, yes. No question about that. But I think that this is one of the areas where we must show more inventiveness than we have up to now. It is probably the most exciting area of university or- ganization. I hope that Berkeley can make a contribution in getting new modes of faculty-student interaction on aca- demic issues. Q-You are about to move from what has generally been a fairly inactive cam- pus politically to one quite famous in that respect. How would you assess the student movement here? Have you found students intelligent in their evaluation of problems in this University? A-I don't really know whether it is actually true that there is a lot more po- litical activity on the Berkeley campus than here. It has been more visible, and it was localized on a particular issue, but we've had a lot of interest in political activity on this campus, it seems to me, We've had a very active program bring- ing people here-the Challenge group for instance-and others have brought in controversial speakers. So on the basis of what I now know, I can't really ac- cept the notioin that the qualiy or the amount of political discussion is greater there than here. Student Contributions Q-Maybe you can focus your dis- cussion on Student Government Council -what the formalized structural organi- zations have done-and also talk a bit about the non-formalized units, such as Voice or SDS. A-Apparently they are less active here. It is hard to tell just how much of the intensity at Berkeley arose after the withdrawal of the famous piece of land. That activated a great many people. There was a large number of people who were not active before. This led to a lot of activism as a mode of influence on the Berkeley Campus, but there has been some of that here. The activities of the University of Mi- chigan Student Employees Union cer- tainly have been accelerating. Q-Do you really feel that the students here have something to contribute and have contributed something to you? I know you have been in touch with them, but the natural inclination of administra- tors is to make everything work as op- posed to really finding out what people are thinking and why. A-Ignoring problems is not terribly intelligent if you want things to work, and I do. Universities are complicated institutions and certainly when things get as out of hand as they did at Berke- ley, then they are not working. Nobody is happy and nothing is going right. So the goal of making the system func- tion smoothly is, I think, a laudable ob- jective. If the institution is functioning smoothly, then good teaching goes on, good research is done, learning takes place, and so on. So I don't object to the description of the administrator as one who sees to it that the operation works smoothly. But this does not mean ignoring people or ignoring what they think. I think it is terribly short-sighted if a bunch of in- telligent people are unhappy with the quality of their edudcational life-or un- happy with someone-to ignore them, to pretend that they are not there, I don't really believe that anybody is skillful enough to take concerned students and softsoap them into thinking that you are going to take care of something which you are not going to take care of. Students are specialists on hypocrites. Q-Can you give examples of where students have given you counsel, and where you have taken specific measures because of that counsel? Some of the most important instances of student influence on me have not come about from face-to-face confronta- tion. Articles, letters, editorials in The Daily keep one in contact with some stu- dents. As a result of these observations, discussion with students and formal visits with student leaders, I have kept in touch with problems which I have reviewed in turn with my colleagues on the Academic Affairs Advisory Council. We have, for example, discussed several times the need for the colleges to look at their techniques of student involve- ment. This came as a result of SGC ac- tivity. Q-Do you think the students had an impact in the case of -the residential college? They had an i mpact, first of all through involvement in the residential college right from the start. As a result of student interest and concern, the peo- ple running that thing at the very outset encouraged students to participate. Q-Are there differences you can cite between the student bodies here and at Berkeley? My hunch is that they are very similar. Q-The Berkeley demonstrations clear- ly fostered a re-examination of the struc- ture of the University of California, one of the major universities of the world. Assuming that the re-examination was important, then wouldn't it be logical to say that the demonstrations were also a "good thing." I think there are a substantial number of people at Berkeley who feel that the demonstrations called attention to prob- lems that needed to be solved, and in that sense they had some good effects. You would like to think that there were less violent ways in which one could have gotten the same effect. This kind of reasoning is a little bit tricky, isn't it? If the Watts riots pro- duce something? Undoubtedly you could say that they had some good effect, but you would still wish they would never have had to occur, and you would rather strengthen other techniques for produc- ing social change. Q-But we hear a lot about student alienation in universities. You've been around here for 25 years, give or take a few, do you see any general trend here?: Is this really a growing problem? I suspect that this is a growing prob- lem. Just the fact that I have been around for 25 years doesn't really give me perspective, however, because I've kept changing all the time. I'm not sure that it is very different for "the beginning graduate student here now than it was for me when I came. I thought it was a terribly big and impersonal place and I was apprehensive about whether I could make It or not, and whether anybody cared whether I did or not. So I'm not sure really whether the incidence of ali- enation has increased, but I'm not sure that this is the issue. The question now is whether there are a lot of people who feel that way, and whether there is something we can do about it. The impression is that there are now a number of people who are less effective than they might be, and a substantial number who are affronted by. or unhappy about the depersonaliza- tion, and therefore it is a significant problem and we ought to work on it. University Growlh Q-Your office has come out with a major report on growth here. One of the major thrusts of this report was that the University is going to continue to expand rapidly. We can already see some prob- lems - registration, for example. What kind of specific steps are being taken beyond simply expanding existing de- partments and so on to move from 30,000 to 50,000?9 It is a very long and complicated topic, let me make what I hope will be a clari- fying point about that growth report. Prior to the report, we didn't have any- thing in the way of agreed-upon projec- tions. We were growing in response to pressures of a certain sort, and we were crowing in a kind of actuarial way. We didn't have any long range plans. Now we've got some numbers. The Pumbers have been examined in the course of the last year from the stand- point of feasibility in a rather general Tense. We have asked whether these plans are appropriate for the unit, and what the implications are for other units and *o on. We have a kind of general framework, 'Ihe projections can be modified, they are not goals. They are not something that you are going to feel a sense of failure about if you don't get there. Now, having said that we are going to grow at this rate, what are the implica- tions? What are the implications for housing? What are the implications for the registration process? Until one,;had this plan, we were never going to be able to tell what the problems were that we needed to tackle People used to say-look, we're going to have to spend more money on data processing equipment in the registration process, be- cause as soon as we get to be 35,000 or 40,000 it is going to be chaos. But before the plan, other people would reply; Well., who says we're going to be that large? So we did a lot of flopping back and forth between projections and immediate prob- lems. Now, I think, the report proposed a rate of growth. Then questions raised by the rate are meaningful and are taken seri- ously. We are beginning to tackle them. Had there been really straightforward projections of the sort we're talking about, maybe some of the problems that THEA!4 They are influencing multimillion dol- lar corporations; they have in a sense set up a few of their own (Phil Spector); they have changed the nation's credit business . . . they are in the hills, the fields, the beaches, the landing-grounds . . . and they are, quite literally, cus- tomizing and restyling American culture. The immediate attitude of the tradi- tionalist to all the above will probably be one of horror and shock. To some extent this is justified. But to some extent, it is not. Almost everyone, occasionally, enjoys some rock 'n' roll group. The Beatles, most particu- larly for their irrellevance and irrever- ence, have gained deserved popularity. Stock car racing is exciting. Who has not been mildly interested and amused by reading of some of the exploits of, say, Cassius Clay or Baby Jane Holzer? And, as Wolfe notes in his story on Phil Spector, the record tycoon, it is even dangerous to maintain that the Nether-culture (and hence, by extrapola- tion, the new "In-culutre" of the Eseab- lishment) is not a culture He reports an enlightening discussion on "Open End" between Spector, David Susskind and William B. Williams (a very conventional disc jockey who relies primarily on Benny Goodman and such). It is fascinating: GET A little angry when people say it's bad music," Spector says 'they have both been attacking him for his music). "It has limited chord changes and peo- ple are always saying the words are banal and why doesn't anybody write lyrics like Cole Porter anymore, but we don't have any presidents like Lincoln any- more, either. You know? "Actually it's more like the blues. It's pop blues. I feel it's very American. It's very today. It's what people respond to today. It's not just the kids. I hear cab drivers, everybody, listening to it." Susskind, though, is not unconvinced, and starts to read the lyrics of one of Spector's songs, which simply keep re- peating, "He's a fine, fine boy." Spector says, "What you're missing is the beat," and begins to drum his hands on the table. His companions are still dubious. Then, however, Spector gets irritated, and confronts Williams: How many times does he play Verdi on his show? Monte- verdi? Domenico Scarlatti? Alessandro Scarlatti? Wolfe notes: "Spector tells Susskind he didn't come on the show to listen to somebody tell him he was corrupting the Youth of America - he could be home making money. Susskind - well, ah, all right, Phil." In other words, why get alarmed over the Nether- and In-cultures? Who, after all, is entitled to judge a culture? What is so reprehensible about the Rolling Stones or hotrods? Indeed, in Spector's words, "It's what :eople respond to today." Wolfe clearly igrees: although he at times finds var- ous manifestations of these cultures tmusing, evidently, he almost always 4pproves. ' HEGRAVE defect with such culture, however, is that it seems to be the only thing people respond to today. For these two cultures are the two components of a Schlock culture, the expressive name which Wolfe unwittingly suggests in his rhapsodizing, In this instance, about Richardson, the publisher of Confidential: "Yes! The aesthetique du schlock! Sch- lock, which is -Yiddish for 'a kind of 'ersatz' ..," .. for something false. Of course, Schlock culture is, if con- sumed in relatively small qualities, quite possibly a good thing. One would go in- sane, certainly, without an occasional, slight amount of mild insanity as an outlet. The Beatles, the "Stones," Baby Jane, Andy Warhol and all the rest pro- vide something of this outlet. But the shock of recognition of the reality of the Schlock culture-its funda- mental superficiality and its irrelevancy -comes when one realizes: My God, peo- ple are making a living producing this "culture"! The problem is one of proportion and nature. That the Schlock culture is "something" is probably natural and, to some extent, useful and necessary. But when it begins to play as important a role in our culture as it now seems to be, one wonders where our sense of propor- tion--and values-has gone. I AM STRONGLY reminded of the mod- ern dance concert in Ann Arbor at this year's Once Festival. During one number, after several athletic dancers had en- gaged in various activities bearing only a marginal resemblance to dance, about a dozen turtles with flashlights strapped to the tops of their shells were let loose to wander about. As the turtles' flashlights played about on the audience, which was seated on the stage itself, inasmuch as the stage was a parking structure, and as the turtles wandered towards the audience, an acquaintance of mine suggested, "They are searching for an honest man." As one of the turtles began moving to- wards my date, however, the acquaint- ance inexplicably changed his mind, and suggested the turtles were instead "seek- ing out the condemned among us." At the end of the number, the turtle was pointing his flashlight directly at my date, who, apparently, is either honest, doomed or both (one, perhaps, due to the other). The reason this sort of nonsense, which attempts to pass itself off on gulible aud- iences as culture, is indeed nonsense is not because it is excessively avant-garde, however, or because it strains the view- er's conceptions. It is, and does, nothing of the kind. In- deed, this Schlock art is nonsense pre- cisely because it is not in the least avant- garde, and because it does nothing to stimulate the viewer; it does not go far "The shock of recog- nit ion of the reality of the Schlock culture, its fundamental superfici- ality and its irrele- ranc , comes 'when one realizes: Myg God, peo- pe are making a living producing- this cul- ture'!" enough. This nonsense is Schlock art because it is not meaning, but mindless- ness. [HE SCHLOCK culture itself is basic- ally a mindless one. It is a culture in which one's acquaintances are impressed by one's record collection not because it represents culture or curiosity or taste. or lack thereof, but simply wealth. It is a culture which, as Wolfe notes (apparently without regret), feels it must make world news "exciting" by calling it "Action Checkpoint News" and must herald it by a diverse collection of incomprehensible electronic b 1 e e p s, whurps and boinks. It is a culture in which, at a dinner of the Detroit Economic Club, a speech by the Vice President of the United States is greeted at one dinner-table by deep 'slumber from four of its occupants, the wakefulness of three others being induced primarily by the low decolletage of its eighth and last occupant. It is a culture which has spawned a sort of "pop" radicalism, one which re- places trivia such as buttons and body odor for social concern; which believes great words are substitutes for good deeds; which confuses militancy with political effectiveness. It is, above all, a culture of rather mindless materialism in which novelty, "ACTION!", fads and noise dominate; which, as Wolfe notes, is seemingly pos- sessed by "a communal fear that some- one, somewhere . . . (is) going to be left with a totally vacant minute on his hands," presumably to reflect on the drivel surrounding him. T IS THIS loss of values which, again from Wolfe's book, this charming little vignette symbolizes so well: "On the East Side IRT subway line, for example, at 86th Street, the train stops and everyone comes squeezing out of the cars in clots and there on a bench in the gray-green gloom, un- der the girders and 1905 tiles, is an old man slouched back fast asleep, wearing a cotton windbreaker with the sleeves pulled off. That is all he is wearing. His skin is the color of congealed Wheatena I a c e d with pocket lint. His legs are crossed in a gentlemanly fashion and his kindly juice-head face is slopped over on the back of the bench. Apparently, other winos, who are notorious thieves among one another, had stripped him of all his clothes except his wind- breaker, which they had tried to pull off him, but only managed to rip the sleeves off, and left him there passed out on the bench and naked, but in a gentlemanly posture. Every- one stares at him briefly, at his con- gealed Wheatena - and - lint carcass, but no one breaks stride; and who knows how long it will be before finally two policemen have to come in and hold their breath and scrape him up out of the gloom and into the bosom of the law, from which he will emerge with a set of green fa- tigues, at least, and an honorable seat at night on the subway bench. "The unfortunate thing is that a naked old wino on a subway bench is not even a colorful sight, or magical. It is something worth missing alto- gether, and in fact much of the status symbolism of New York grows out of the ways the rich and the striving manage to insulate them- selves, physically, from the lower depths. They live up high to escape the dirt and the noise. They live on the corners to get the air. And on Monday nights they go to the Metro- politan Opera in limousines." In sum, this loss of values, this dis- torted sense of perspective, has resulted in the final triumph, in the cultural sense, of the efficiency of the market system of our much - vaunted free - enterprise economy. The market now caters to the boorish demands of a tasteless multitude whose vulgar proclivities it ha, through adver- tising, gladly helped create and which it is only too pleased to satisfy. It now caters, in brief, to the Schlock culture. THE SIGNIFICANCE of the Schlock culture-it cannot be stressed enough -lies in its lack of perspective. This in- herent lack of proportion leads our econo- my, for example to devote great efforts towards the production of gleaming auto- mobiles while giving only minimal atten- tion to the traffic congestion and air pollution which spring inevitably from their use, As a result, our cities and their streets are generally crowded,. noisy, noxious, filthy and unliveable. The critics of the automobile industry, who complain that ~CHLOCK CUL Detroit prices 1 its, woi of thei greater In th far mo enterta hicular it does particu have 1 entry t Such is in a of pror a time our eco such a to con of Neg youths substan youths that t high s white frustra popula of the cities b The such I energie suits e cotic withor unbear the all, it I of the them. menta today: econon But ing el those cultur It w. 1961," for yo county nation nation But sentim- most o rialize has ch which, therar such & So much sumpt Gross AND cu Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1965