seventy-Sixth Year
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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1966
NIGHT EDITOR: CLARENCE FANTO
Academnics Committee:
Will it Offer Enough?
Feb. 23:
By LEONARD PRATT short to
Aeing Associate Managing Editor thought-
The Student Housing Associa- uates reg
tion, formed by Student Govern- SHA's
ment Council with high hopes in estead of
January, needs help. minans-d
SGC members who pushed the tabLes in
project originally intended it to was mad
provide coordination for the stu- was note
dents' diverse housing interest effectivei
groups and thus to bring concert- cf time1
ed pressure to bear on the Ann of whati
Arbor city council and local land- proach.
lords. For various reasons it has The se
been unable to do either. been tha
Moreover, unless some action is months o
taken soon to solve some of SHA's period fo
problems it stands a good chance tions-SB
of being twisted by an SGC elec- sentially
tion campaign in which it is cer- tioning f
tain to be a central issue. Monday
First on the list of SHA's prob- in about
lems has been a simple lack of that man
time. have bee
One of the association's major light.
ipstruments to bring pressure on It is n
the local housing interests was its er SHA's
voter registration drive: graduate ents hav
students are being urged to regis- because
ter and vote for only those council campush
members who will be favorable to becauset
students' housing interests. But their own
unfortunately registration is to- cominge
day and SHA's life has been too participa
allow it to plan a well-
out strategy to get grad-
gistered.
decision to encourage
on through the- mails in-
through more effective
door-to.door canvassing,
graduate departments-
de simply because there
enough time for the more
means to be set up. Lack
has forced the adoption
is basically a stopgap ap-
cond major problem has
at during the first two
f its life-a fairly crucial
or new campus organiza-
HA has existed in an es-
political context. Peti-
or SGC's elections opened
with elections to follow
a month; the result is
ny decision affecting SHA
n taken in a political
ot possible to say wheth-
proponents and oppon-
e taken particular actions-
of their beliefs about
housing issues or merely
they were concerned with
n success or failure in the
election. Certainly many
nts' motives were mixed
and even those who did not have
mixed motives felt unsure of oth-
ers who did. Decisions have been
made-who was to sign the voter
registration letters or how much
money to allow for the registra-
tion "campaign"-with as much
i egar d for their political conse-
quences as for their effects on
student housing issues.
The lack of any well-defincd
goals for SHA's work is the basic
problem underlying both too little
time and too much politics. This
deficiency can only be a function
of the failure of the various ad
hoc housing groups, Vice-Presi-
dent for Student Affairs Richard
Cutler's student housing advisory
committee and the SHA to sit
down with one another and decide
exactly where they want to go.
Everyone has his own ideas of
the ideal way to attack the prob-
lem and is working on it with no
great regard for other approaches.
Even SHA seems somewhat schizo-
phrenic with no idea of the areas
on which it ought to be concen-
trating.
This confusion has led all the
groups to avoid the real issue,
which is neither high rents nor
unfair landlords.
The real issue is the obvious
lack of housing for students in
Ann Arbor. It is impossible to
zone away a lack of beds, to in-
spec, high rents out of existence
or to get rid of temporary plumb-
ing with lease changes. It is pos-
siblc to solve all these problems
by the simple measure of re-
creating a working market in Ann
Arbor housing.
Housing organizations must con-
centrate on shaking the "gentle-
men's agreement" among local
landlords and financiers which
has kept housing at a level just
low enough to yearly inflate prices
and worsen conditions.
The only way to do this is for
students work very closely with
the Office of Student Affairs to
encourage large-scale out-of-town
builders to enter the local market
and ease some of the inflationary
price and quality pressures now
acting on it.
This strategy implies tactics
very different from those now em-
ployed by the SHA and its sister
organizations. Instead of making
demands on the builders and land-
lords, students and the OSA must
begin to illustrate the actvaitages
of building in Ann Arbor.
When Towne Realty Inc. began
to build University Towers they
were greetetd with local suspicion
and hostility that certainly would
have frightened off other com-
panies interested in following
their example, It is not that rea-
sonable building standards should
not be enforced. Far from it. But
until the campus' attitude toward
builders changes from a relative-
ly hostile one to a relatively en-
couraging one, the student hous-
ing problem at the University will
remain and grow.
SHA, then, needs work in sev-
eral areas. It needs a month in a
more relaxed atmosphere to en-
able it to coordinate its efforts
with other campus housing or-
ganizations, sort out its varied
goals and rationalize these goals
with economic realities.
But before it can have any ore
of these, it needs the unequivocal
guidance of a campus leader more
concerned with the housing situa-
tion itself that with either his per-
sonal views of that situation or
his participation in SGC politics'
Such people are on campus, but
none of them are currently in-
fluencing SHA's course.
The 3% Problems of SHA
THE PROPOSAL by Robert Bodkin of
Student Government Council to set
up a permanent student-faculty advisory
committee on academic affairs is basical-
Iy a good one.
However, the establishment of such a
committee will not be significant unless
it can break away from discussions on
such comparatively trivial things as mi-
nor alterations of graduation require-
ments.
But so far, indications are that Bod-
kin's proposed committee will follow the
trend of past curriculum advisory com-
mittees in not suggesting any. radical
changes. -The incipient formation of the
new committee had roots in a recent sem-
inar of faculty, administrators and stu-
dents on academic problems. The discus-
sion dealt with such token reforms as the
addition of plusses and minuses to final
grades and basing graduation require-
ments on the number of courses complet-
ed rather than the number of class hours.
Suggestions such as there are only at-
tempts at patching up the system of edu-
cation the University now offers. If Bod-
kin's proposed committee is to seek im-
provement of the quality of that educa-
tion, it must look into a reevaluation and
overhauling of the whole system.
DISCUSSIONS of the faults of distribu-
tion, concentration and graduation re-
quirements and the grading system are
certainly important, but these faults will
not be solved by merely altering the
amount of requirements or improving the
accuracy of the present grading system.
Register?
AT 8 A.M. THIS MORNING voter regis-
tration for the upcoming April 4th
election began. Unfortunately this two-
week period of registration has in the
past aroused little interest or participa-
tion on the part of the 40 per cent of the
University students who are age-wise, at
least, prospective voters. Because of apa-
thy, ignorance or pessimism toward reg-
istration procedures, the student turnout
has been far from what it could be.
We urge that this situation be reversed.
Along with the Student Housing Au-
thority which is presently conducting a
voter registration drive, we feel that the
students In particular and the University
community as a whole can only suffer
from further lack of participation by eli-
gible students.
Granted ,a near-perfect turnout by stu-
dents in 'the coming election isn't going
to move any of several Ann Arbor politi-
cal mountains---in fact, students prob-
ably differ on what mountains are to be
moved. But in two very significant ways,
a successful voter drive would be of tre-
mendous benefit to the student commu-
nity.
FIRST, the city officials' awareness of
student viewpoints on housing, plan-
ning, parking and transportation would
be greatly enhanced. Increased aware-
ness would be of benefit to the Univer-
sity and local communities alike, re-
gardless of political ideology and view-
point.
The future of the Ann Arbor metropoli-
tan area as well as the future of the stu-
dent in the University may depend to a
great degree on this information flow
between the town and the "Gown." And
we are not talking here about a quiet col-
lege town of 20,000. We're talking about a
city of 150,000 or more in the very near
future.
Secondly, a successful turnout will be
the first step in the examination of this
state's philosophy in the area of student
voting rights. Many of the present voting
requirement laws are, at best, question-
able. They can only be brought into open
discussion if students show interest and
involvement in their role as voting citi-
zens.
WE URGE, therefore, that all eligible
students examine --the information
that has been sent to them, that they
know their rights, and that they register
within the next two weeks.
-CHARLOTTE A. WOLTER
--ROBERT CARNEY
The task of any curriculum-study com-
mittee must be to increase students'
chance to participate in deciding what
they will learn and how their learning
will be graded or evaluated.
Suggesting a specified number of cours-
es in specified departments will guarantee
a good education is no less false than as-
suming a certain number of course hours
will. A student should be able to decide
for himself, after talking with professors,
what type of academic program will be
relevant for his purposes instead of hav-
ing a standardized degree program nicely
set up for him.
ALL MEMBERS of a class, along with
the instructor, should be able to sug-
gest reading material and whether they
want to demonstrate their intellectual
progress via tests, papers, participation
in seminars, individual conferences with
instructors or a combination of these, in-
stead of having a syllabus shoved at
them, requiring them to think on sched-
ule about specified topics.
And this alternate type of set-up isn't
impossible because of low faculty-student
ratio, as some claim. It is being done in
some Psychology 101 sections, which al-
ways have high enrollments.
The extra pressure that involving stu-
dents in curriculum and grading deci-
sions would put on faculty members is
alleviated by those students taking more
responsibility for independent fact-find-
ing and a revamping of the present lec-
ture-recitation schedule.
FACULTY MEMBERS can stop wasting
class time as mere purveyors of infor-
mation by letting students do more inde-
pendent1reading instead of relying on
canned lectures. The increased use of
programmed learning materials, which
provide a built-in testing system, can
also be a help.
With time freed from fact-giving, fac-
ulty can devote their efforts to helping
students analyze information for its use-
fulness, viability and relation to other
bodies of information.
MORE TIME could be conserved for both
teacher and student if classes would
meet bi-monthly for about three hours,
after students have had a change to do
in-depth reading and could participate in
more thoughtful, stimulating discus-
sions.'
It is ridiculous that a three-credit
course should require three, one-hour
class sessions per week just because it is
a three-credit course. With this system,
discussions are fragmented, uninform-
ed and hardly whole-hearted, with the
instructor relating what students should
have read if they had had time and had
not been forced to waste more time in
similar, meaningless recitation sessions.
BODKIN'S PROPOSED committee on
academics can be useful if it can con-
sider proposals similar to those discussed
above.
What must be sought are new ways for
increasing students' involvement in and
planning of their own learning experi-
ences and for changing the relationship
of teacher-student from one of fact-giver-
assimilator to that of mutual knowledge-
seekers.
JF THE COMMITTEE doesn't consider
these basic goals, it will be just an-~
other committee added to the bureaucrat-
ic mess, giving students at most a false
feeling of being "included in the decision-
making process."
-SHIRLEY ROSICK
WhySanity?
SOVIET WRITER Valery Tarsis, visiting
in London for a series of lectures, was
stripped of his citizenship yesterday by
Soviet edict and effectively denied a re-
turn to his home. The official reason for
this move, long expected by Tarsis him-
self, was "for actions discrediting to a
citizen of the U.S.S.R." Tarsis had written
several works of fiction critical of Com-
munist politics.
Tarsis, who had once been sent to an
insane asylum, theorized that the reason
he had been allowed to leave Russia for
Capital Punishment-Many Loopholes
By DAVID KNOKE
rHE UNITED STATES Justice
Department recently revealed
that only seven men were put to
death by legal authorities in the
United States in 1965. This was
the first year that legal execu-
tions fell below 10 per year since
the Federal Bureau of Prisons be-
gan keeping records in 1930. The
seven men were all convicted on
murder charges. Other crimes
which carry the death penalty in
the 37 states which still have
capital punishment are rape.
armed robbery, kidnapping, bur-
glary, espionage, aggravated as-
sault. and desecration of a grave
(in Georgia).
When so few of the thousands
of murders go unpunished by
execution each year, it seems to
me that the lawsIare ineffectual
and must be either strictly en-
forced or taken off the books
altogether.
The number of reported mur-
ders each year in the United States
varies from 8,000 to 10,000. One
essayist surmises that there may
be four times as many murders
than are annually reported. In-
travenous injections of air bubbles,
poisonings which leave no trace,
heart attacks brought on by vio-
lent scares, and framed highway
accidents can be arranged so that
the circumstances of death appear
to be accidental.
YET AT any one time there are
usually only 300 to 500 men and
women in the Death Rows of
state and federal penitentiaries.
There is a movement afoot in
this country to abolish execution
as a criminal penalty. The pro-
ponents of such movements are
to be commended for their at-
tempts to apply reason to the,
problem, yet so far relatively little
progress has been made in de-
stroying the legal barriers con-
fronting them.
Certain practices f r o m a
strong argument for immediate
abolition of laws which are not
uniformly enforced. Many gov-
ernors are wary of taking final
responsibility for failing to re-
prieve or commute the sentences
of prisoners. The very small per-
centage of prisoners who are
executed each year are thus vic-
tims of one type of discrimination
or another.
The fact that most cases do
drag out in court and appeals over
several months or years knocks a
hole in the theory of capital pun-
ishment as deterrence.
One can hardly believe that the
death penalty is meant to serve
as an example to other would-be
criminals. If this were so, why
aren't all cases rushed through
court immediately after the ap-
prehension of the suspected crim-
inal and the sentence carried out
at high noon, with public attend-
ance required?
The death penalty is an archaic
form of retaliatory justice legaliz-
ed and institutionalized by the
state. Perhaps it is 'not stretqhing
a point to say that legalized execu-
tion is a violation of the Con-
stitutional injunction a g a i n s t
"cruel and unusual punishments."
Modern methods of electrocution
and gassing have not made the
criminal's waiting any easier. And
what can be said about the equan-
imity of the penalty in Utah where
the condemned man may pick his
modus morendi from a choice of
shooting or hanging?
The system of capital and cor-
poral punishment in the United
States is in need of drastic re-
form and standardization. The
logical first step is with the aboli-
tion of capital punishment, for it
is a barbaric, and unsatisfactory
way to deal with criminals.
Abolition, however, is only an
intermediate step in the treatment
of murderers and other criminals.
The concept that all criminals
must be punished for their crimes
is also giving way to the more
enlightened concept that the re-
sult of incarceration and isolation
of the criminal should be to re-
form and rehabilitate him so he
can take a useful place in society.
After abolishing the death pen-
alty in America, the ultimate aim
of penal reform must be a re-
direction of efforts at preventing
criminals from developing, rather
than curing them after they have
committed their crimes.
TOMORROW: Suggestions
for Penal Reform
Dueling Nations Need
Joint Scientific Effort
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By WALLACE IMMEN
THAT THE ONLY efficient
method for increasing our
scientific knowledge is through
formation of a world scientific co-
operation community can no long-
er be ignored.
The United States and Russia
are competing in a technology
race-and are doing little but du-
plicating efforts. The Russians are
generally known to shroud their
space shots in secrecy. This has
been a constant source of annoy-
ance to many American scientists
who argue that the information
from such missions is vital to all.
The entire magnitude of the
question as it now stands stems
from the tremendous advance
made in technology over the last
twenty years. In the past, the
communication was slow, and re-
search moved at a leisurely pace
as a sideline of scientists so that
a central organization was not
necessary. But today research is
big business and the developments
of one day could vitally affect
many other studies being carried
on at the same time. So it becomes
more important to the world to
have a peaceful scientific unit to
organize discoveries being made.
IN ANSWER to this need, Rus-
sia and the United States yester-
day announced that they will be-
gin talks March 2 on a scientific
exchange program. It may be
hoped that thosewho attend these
talks will do more than just talk.
Russia and America, being the
two giants in research, should
agree to form an organization
with representatives from varied
branches of science established
with funds appropriated from each
participating nation-a central
clearing house of scientific knowl-
edge.
The system in operation could
work as a United Nations of
science whose job it would be to
promote research work and com-
pile data on research being com-
pleted and make it available to
those who are doing research.
The organization would consist
of representatives of various
branches of science from each
country involved in the venture,
who would form a number of
committees on research in each
one's own particular field. A steer-
ing committee and a tribunal to
design by-laws of Conduct of in-
ternational scientific r e s e a r c h,
should also be formed. General
meetings would be held only to
sider the question of the "space
race," but also a uniform code of
ethics must be established.
The problems of space ethics re-
ceived special emphasis two weeks
ago in the events which occurred
when the Soviet Luna 9 capsule
soft landed on the moon. Scien-
tists at the Jodrell Bank observa-
tory in England pirated the sig-
nals sent from the Russians' ship
and released a picture of the
moon's surface to the free world
before the Russians had even an-
nounced their achievement.
This sensationalism should not
accompany an event of such mag-
nitude. A rule of general common
courtesy should have been estab-
lished to see that the country
which makes the achievement gets
the credit.
The situation can be seen very
clearly in the words of Peter Mill-
man, director of the National Re-
search Council of Canada. He
commented in the New York
Times recently, "It's just as if
somebody gave somebody else a
manuscript to look over and the
second person had the book pub-
lished under his name."
OF COURSE, the establishment
of a world organization may re-
quire a concentrated effort to con-
vince the heads of the nations
that the competition in space is
not the answer. But this can be
overcome with enough support.
Hopefully, the men in key posi-
tions will soon see that science
can work independently of politics.
It indeed may take a while before
they see, but when they do, it will
be a great day for science.
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Professor Carr Lauds Generation Poets
By ARTHUR J. CARR
EDITOR'S NOTE: Dr. Carr is
a professor in the English De-
partment.
C'ERTAINLY no renaissance, not
even an established achieve-
ment, still the new issue of "Gen-
eration" is justified chiefly by its
poetry-especially if the realm of
poetry may include the very ap-
pealing portfolio of Peter Mc-
Donough's photographs. The poets
-all of them-Alys Chabot, Mer-
rill Gilfillan, Richard Widerkehr,
Martha MacNeal Zweig, Christine
Hoyt, and Barbara A. K. Adams-
evince an impressive authority of
than the prose, and answer Ezra
Pound's imperative that poetry
should be at least as well-written
as prose. Hence, Megan Biesele's
beautifully, elaborated fantasy-a
prose Liebestod-seems not so
finely wrought, so thoroughly self-
understood, as Richard Wider-
kehr's poem, "Bridge Tremblings."
Hence, the interview with
Brother David Steindl-Rast, glit-
tering with theological paradox
(almost at times to the edge of
self parody) is really rather less
profound, as it is certainly less
witty, than Mrs. Zweig's sentence
in "Irrelevance of Angels":
Yet,,ue--God know,.
issue, however, is not by any of
the contributors mentioned, but
by one of the finest-and most
troubling and troubled-writers
that this University has in any
way fostered-Theodore Roethke.
A long, loving essay, though a bit
over-weighted with notes and ex-
tended bibliography, is the work
of some people's nonfavorite
author,;George Abbott White. The
result of devoted study, his essay
achieves both eloquence and truth
and should enlarge, at least local-
ly, the rumor of Roethke's fame.
White makes a high claim for
him, that his poems "are the ful-
fillment of the poet's highest task:
had set his foot upon the path
of the mystics-a thesis put for-
ward last year in a lecture here
by Ralph Mills-is not so cer-
tain. For Roethke the mystic's
path may have been what the
writing of "A Vision" was for
Yeats, the source of poetc dis-
cipline and metaphors.
To find that the other poets in
"Generation" justify this issue is
not to attribute to them high
originality and force. Nor is this
a fault. Frank Kermode has re-
cently remarked, in speaking of
the achievement of T. S. Eliot,
upon the "ruinous and exhausting"
expenditure of spirit entailed in
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