Ir A 46 Seventy-Sixth Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS Where Opinions Are Free. 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN AP.BOR, MICH. NEWS PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the inidividual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. FRIDAY, APRIL 1,1966 'NIGHT EDITOR: ROGER RAPOPORT City Council and Housing: A Question of Maneuvering Publickaonan currce Bbethable, Flago the Wa Occurrences .(. :.v.a:v.}t.};r.^:,rs .;rct~ypr, :h}",:1'4rv'{ by Bruce W assB eei THE NAME of the game is pa- ternalism. The Office of Student Affairs believes in student self determina- tion and is against the concept of in loco parentis-as long as the OSA agrees with what the students decide. But when the OSA disagrees with what the students decide, the philosophical utterances on stu- dent participation end and "re- view" procedures start. ON THE ONE HAND, Vice Pres- ident for Student Affairs Richard Cutler delivers eloquent speeches on the need to treat students like adults, and on the other he de- cides that the approval by Stu- dent Government Council of fall rush procedure for Panhel should be reviewed. The decision will be reviewed through the Committee on Re- ferral. This device was set up in 1959 after a similar vehicle called the Board in Review created a storm by overturning Student Government Council'sdecision to revoke recognition of Sigma Kap- pa sorority. The difference between the Board in Review and the Com- mittee on Referral is that the former had the power to directly overturn SGC's decisions, while the latter has only the power to advise the Vice President for Stu- dent Affairs. Since 1959 when the Committee on Referral was set up it has only reviewed one SGC decision, and recommended that the decision be sustained. Now for the second time since 1959 the committee composed of three faculty members, two students, two administrators and one nonvoting alumni member will consider recommending that the Vice President for Student Affairs exercise his veto over Student Council action. CUTLER REQUESTED that the Committee on Referral meet as he was considering vetoing the fall rush plans of Panhel because of the damaging effect they might have on the students. But as Panhel's President Martha Cook points out, this issue was thoroughly researched by Panhel with the aid of such people as Mrs. Mary Lamtour of the psy- chological counseling department of mental health, academic coun- selor Jack Manning and Duncan Sells of the OSA. Although cer- tainly the issue of fall rushing is controversial, the argument that the ramifications were superfi- cially investigated is not true. If Cutler had reservations about fall rushi he should have presented them to SGC or had a member of his staff argue against it. But his decision to have the decision "reviewed" without his having made any argument against the proposal to SGC amounts to pure paternalism. tempt to review SGC's decision is illegitimate. The people who advocate i win- ter rush or who are indifferent as to when rush is should realize that Cutler's decision has ramifications which extend far beyond Panhel's rush. The precedent being set by the review may lead to more admin- istration involvement in student activities and eventually the em- pirical negation of Cutler's philo- sophical idea of meaningful stu- dent participation. The wave of the future is more student participation, not less. It is evident from the fact that the Committee on Referral has only been summoned twice since its inception that SGC has acted re- sponsibly even in the administra- tion's eyes. ESSENTIALLY the Committee on Referral has become an anach- ronism which should be abolished before it does some harm. Al- though one can argue that SGC is not infallible, the review commit- tees records are not so resplendent themselves considering that the only time they overruled SGC the University community condemned the specific action. And as for the OSA there is an old adage about practicing what you preach. * * * LAST WEEK the New York Times reported, "About three- quarters of the undergraduates at Princeton University have elected to use the school's new pass-fail option-a system under which they take one course in which they are not graded but receive simply a 'pass' or 'fail.' The pass- fail options are concentrated in the arts and literature." Stanford and Berkeley are also hopping on the pass-fail option bandwagon. Although the concept has been tossed around at the University, nothing concrete has come out of the network of faculty committees. Why? THE ANN ARBOR NEWS called it a '"donnybrook"; the Democrats charged "political maneuvering"; the Republicans pleaded "caution." The "it" was the de- feat Monday night of a proposal to estab- lish a federally-funded study and even- tually to .construct low income housing in Ann Arbor. In a straight party split, the City Coun- cil's Republican members, defeated the Housing Commission's plan to obtain $35,- 000 from the Public Housing Authority to examine the need for low income housing here, and commit the city to the construc- tion of 200 units of federally-financed housing, if the study supported such con- struction. Instead, the Council postponed the con- struction motion and settled for a leasing plan, this time with the Republicans in the affirmative, 6-5. TO DESCRIBE Monday night's action as either as a donnybrook, or a cautious responsible move is erroneous. To call it' political maneuvering is an understate- ment. Sell-out is a little more to the point. The Republicans who defeated the pro- posal were not the Council's standby con- servatives. You can depend on council- men Paul Johnson and William Habel to hold the conservative line. They make no bones about it. That's why they were elected; that's why they've been re-elect- ed. But for the remainder of the Republi- can bloc, it is a different story. They voted for the Ann Arbor Housing Commis- Acting Editorial Staff MARK R. KILLINGSWORTH, Editor BRUCE WASSERSTEIN, Executive Editor sion last fall. They supported its estab- lishment when the commission was put before the people in a referendum. Their mayor had a free hand in appointing the members of the commission-with the knowledge all the time that he had the six votes necessary to approve those appointments. And despite opposition from many of the citizens who had worked with him to gain an affirmative vote on the referen- dum, he appointed what he thought was best for the commission: a "mainstream, middle-of-the-road" group, excluding "activists from either of the extremes of political action." IT WAS THE MAYOR'S commission. The only reservation any of these Re- publicans made at the time was that the problem of low-income housing need, in the words of one councilman, "must be examined objectively"-not at a cost to the taxpayers, of course. Now that same commission has pro- posed that the city use federal funds to conduct such a survey, and agree to build 200 units if supported by the study. No cost to Ann Arbor. No buildings unless needed. And 200 units--already a compro- mise compared with the 460 ,figure that the Public Housing Authority came up with after a review of the 1960, census, which listed 2000 substandard dwellings in the city. BUT THE VOTE was NO. For one or two of these men, the vote might have represented philosophical mis- givings-disguised of course as a need for more facts. But for the other two or three members of the bloc-more than enough to pass the proposal-it represent- ed a compromise bf their personal com- mitment in the cause of "party unity." The word was: Avoid the party split; wait until after the election and the ques- tion will probably disappear. The Re- publican candidates running against the incumbent Democrats are faring well, and most of them are opposed to federally- financed housing. If they're elected, the issue will be dead. So "party unity" won out. The four Re- publicans joined the old reliables and vot- ed No. The plan is now postponed. Meanwhile those families who would have benefited by ,the proposal lose out. They continue to occupy substandard housing, and are forced to contribute up to 50 per cent of their income for housing -when the federal government states that no one should be forced to pay over 21 per cent. They are treated to a half- solution. MANEUVERING? That's too good a word for it. --ROBERT CARNEY Acting Associate Editorial Director PERSONALLY strong argument against fall rush, I feel that a can be made but Cutler's at- Censorship: Confusion and Danger By DAVID KNOKE Last of a two-part series THE SUPREME COURT, in its perennial search for a defini- tion of obscenity other than a book-by-book judgment, has re- cently come up with an extension of its former "prurient interest to the contemporary community" by stating that the nature of a book's advertisements would be sufficient grounds for determining the ob- scenity of the work advertised. The court's decision is an un- satisfactory answer to the question of the censorship of written and pictorial publications. Dissenting Justice Potter Stewart said that the new definition ig an abroga- tion of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and that "censorship . . . is the hallmark of an authoritarian re- gime." On one hand, the court's defi- nition of obscenity is unfortunate for it ignores basic realities of the publications by looking at the peripheral contexts of the work. Secondly, the attempt to impose uniform standards of taste and sexually-oriented behavior is a denial of the polymorphous char- acter of the American populace. Further, it plays into the hands of self-appointed guardians of public morals who might conceiv- ably go so far as to censor pub- lications of a nonpornographic nature (i.e. political or religious), because of the subjective nature of the court's guidelines. JUSTICE JOHN HARLAN, rul- ing that a book "Fanny Hill" could be legally sold, noted that "no stable approach to the obscenity problem has yet been devised by this court." Part of the problem arises from an unscientific, prej- udice-ridden approach to the sub- ject under question. - Persons who take upon them- selves the crusade against porno- graphic material often maintain that their only reason for doing so is not because the material offends them-they would read the junk themselves-but because it would be psychologically harmful if the material fell into the hands of children. However, a Brown University study indicates that "there is no reliable evidence that reading or other fantasy activities lead to antisocial behavior." Drs. Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen, in "Pornography and the Law," make a distinction be- tween types of pornography. ("Pornography" originally meant "the writings of harlots"; "ob- scenity" on the other hand, means "repulsive"). THE KRONHAUSENS define "erotic realism" as distinct from "hard-core obscenity" in that the former may "momentarily have an erotically stimulating effect. How- ever, this effect is not long sus- tained, nor adequately reinforced by a progression of more and more sexually provoking scenes, as in the case with genuinely 'obscene' books." The authors also qualify their definitions by looking at the content of the book, rather than its effect on the reader. Justice Stewart held that the di- vision between types of porno- graphic material is a valid one and the government could legally suppress "hard-core pornography." Unfortunately, the criteria sepa- rating the hard-core from the erotic realism is so nebulous, that in the past many now-legal works have been banned, among them books by Henry Miller, Frank Har- ris, D. H. Lawrence, and James Joyce. In order for Judge Woolsey (1933) to give James Joyce's "Ulysses," an acknowledged Eng- lish classic, legal entry into this country, he declared its effects to be more "emetic" (producing vomitting) than titilating-a pa- tent absurdity for anyone with anr understanding of Joyce's inten- tions. Henry Miller's works ("Tropic of Cancer," "Sexus") are avowedly obscene in parts, but have the redeeming literary grace of hon- esty; yet they had to be smuggled into the country, for thirty years before over-the-counter sale was permitted. If the Kinsey reports on sexual behavior showed anything, it was that the country as a whole has no uniform "community stan- dards" in sexual matters which can be applied to literature cen- sorship. However, in view of the lack of evidence that any writing has ever caused harm in any signi- ficant way, and the dangers im- plicit in censorship based upon the arbitrary feelings of a board of censors, one must protest that the question of societal approval of any printed material is ab- surd. To allow any control of printed material is to endanger the Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and press. Playboy magazine ran nude photographs of Jane Mansfield in the June, 1963, issue. The editor, Hugh Hefner, was subsequently arrested in Chicago on obscenity charges, although the magazine had been publishing similar "cheesecake" pictures for ten years and previous attempts at proving Playboy obscene had failed. Hefner later theorized, and of- fered substantial supportive evi- dence, that the prosecution under obscenity charges had been a cover-up for an attack on an editorial appearing in the same issue on church and state separa- tion. If one is to allow arbitrary cen- sorship of any material, society's power factions will attempt to in- stitute censorship of other ma- terials as the Nazis did. The "obscenity problem" would not exist if a rational approach were taken by persons from the Supreme Court on down. As D. H. Lawrence said, "What is porno- graphy to one man is the laughter of genius to another." 10 CLARENCE FANTO Managing Editor HARVEY WASSERMAN Editorial Director LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Send Petition on DuBoisClub JOHN MEREDITH:........ Associate Managing Editor LEONARD PRATT........Associate Managing Editor BABETTE COHN . ........Personnel Director CHARLOTTE WOLTER .... Associate Editoral Director ROBERT CARNEY......... Associate Editorial Director ROBERT MOORE ...........Magazine Editor CHARLES V NER...................Sports Editor JAMES LaSOVAGE ..........Associate Sports Editor JAMES TINDALL ....,......Associate Sports Editot GIL SAMBERG............. Assistant Sports Editor Acting Business Staf} SUSAN PERLSTADT, Business Manager JEFFREY LEEDS ........ Associate Business Manager HARRY BLOCH............. Advertising Manager STEVEN LOEWENTHAL....... Circulation Manager ELIZABETH RHEIN ............. Personnel Director VICTOR PTASZNIK..............Finance -Manage ASSISTANT MANAGERS: Anne Bachiman, Ken Kraus Mike Steckelis, Amy Glasser, Gene Farber, Jeff Maryann Vanderwerp, Bill Hunt, Steve Simmons, Brown, Carol Niemira, Beth Linscheid, Judy Blau: Sue Benschop, Cathie Mackin, Rita Jo Rankin, Joan Vanderwerp, Randy Rissman. Subscription rate: $4.50 semester ny carrier ($5 by mail); $8 yearly by carrier ($9 by mail). Second class postage paid at Ann Arbor, Mich. To the Editor: A NUMBER of faculty members, who are concerned that stu- dents notrbe constrained from exercising their rights to a free intellectual life, have agreed to act as cosponsors for a University of Michigan chapter of the W.E.B. DuBois Club. We have acted in response to a local and immediate concern, but we also recognize that there may be more effective ways of re- sponding to the national and long- range issues raised by the At- torney General's powers under the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, and we would welcome the initiative and energies of other faculty members in meeting this larger problem. Our statement of sponsorship appears below. Since our oppor- tunities to contact faculty have been limited, other faculty mem- bers who wish to add their names may do so by notifying Prof. Robert Sklar, Department of His- tory, 3613 Haven Hall. The state- ment: "WE THE UNDERSIGNED, be- lieving that it is our responsibility as educators to encourage and assist students freely to associate for the free investigation of politi- cal and social ideas, whether or not we agree with their opinions, agree to serve as co-advisors for the University of Michigan W.E.B. DuBois Club." EDITOR'S NOTE: For reasons of space the names of the pres- ent signees could not be printed, They include thirteen faculty members from six departments, Mental Health Research Insti- tute, and the Office of Religious Affairs. China Teach-In To the Editor: IN RESPONSE to Mr. H. Bryant Avery's letter to the Daily (March 25) inwhich he accused the organizers of Sunday's Emer- gency Conference on China of tim- ing the event so that it would conflict with the annual meeting of the Association of Asian Studies and therefore leave the student hn1Vfnhp ,r-C-nar wtha "dia- relations who will come together, much as in the Viet Nam teach- ins of last year, and attempt to increase the general level of knowledge and interest in our re- lations with the Peoples Republic of China. We hope also to provide an informed milieu so that those with serious questions about the current direction of our foreign policy will have the opportunity to ask those questions and stimu- late informed discussion about them. * We regret the unfortunate timing conflict. Our original date for the Conference was March 20. However, most of the participants from off campus whom we invited were unable to attend on that day. The earliest many of the partici- pants could come to campus was April 3. To hold the conference later would seriously conflict with final exams, and thus we were forced, in the light of the pressing urgency of a reexamination of our China policy as exemplified by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on China, to hold the event on the third. 0 That there is a timing con- flict does not mean that there will not be an appreciable number of experts on China and foreign relations. Prof. Alexander Eck- stein of the economics department, a leading national expert on the Chinese economy and recent wit- ness before the Senate Foreign Re- lations Committee; Prof. Owen Lattimore, a noted China scholar, and the country's foremost China expert and China policy adviser before the McCarthy period; Felix Greene, one of the few people available who has traveled ex- tensively through China, and a noted author and producer of the film "China"; Prof. Morton Fried, Columbia anthropologist and ex- pert on the Chinese peasantry; Prof. Rhoads Murphey of the geography deptment, a specialist on East Asian geography; Prof. Norma Diamond of the anthro- pology department, a specialist on Chinese village life; Prof. Anatol Rapoport, a leading expert on in- ternational conflict resolution; Prof. AFK Organski of the politi- cal science department, a specialist in international relations; Prof. Richard Solomon of the political science department, a specialist to participate in the program. As yet we have encountered only flat rejections. * Finally, while we have made what we feel to be a successful attempt to present the campus with a learned and noted assembly of experts, we cannot agree with Mr. Avery in his scorn for "pro- fessors of chemistry, philosophy, sociology, et al." To the contrary, we feel that "professors of chemistry, philos- ophy, sociology, et al"have as great a stake in an informed China policy'as any of us; we also feel very strongly that students of chemistry, philosophy, sociology, et al have a very basic and legiti- mate desire for increased knowl- edge and analysis of China and China policy-some of these do not have the scheduling opportun- ity to take advantage of the ex- cellent facilities offered here at the Center for Chinese studies. IT IS FOR THESE, and for con- cerned faculty, and community residents that we have organized this event. -Peter A. DiLorenzi, Jr. '64 -Rev. J. Edgar Edwards Campus Minister and Direc- tor of Guild House, United Campus Ministry -Rev. Robert H. Hauert Office of Religious Affairs Architecture and Design To the Editor: [ AM GRATIFIED that the Mich- igan Daily has shown an in- terest in communicating the re- cent affairs within the Depart- ment of Architecture to the cam- pus at large. However, the presen- tation of such vital issues demands accuracy, despite the complexity of these issues. Several aspects of the article (March 25, page one) describing the events of the Student-Faculty Meeting were misleading. Your subheadline stated that "Only Slight Chance for Change (of the scope of the present cur- riculum) Seen." This is not true. Faculty, students and administra- tion alike agree that reform of the present curriculum is neces- student charges." The statement was made to indicate faculty agreement with the student com- plaints. It stands as an example of their willingness to act in the behalf of the students, and to rectify problems illuminated by constructive criticism by the stu- dent body. Your headline emphasizes what was only a peripheral concern of most people attending the meeting. It implies that the primary issue was existing conditions within the department. However, I feel that the future course of the depart- ment was the central concern. Student attitudes concerning the future goals of the department were clear. There was overwhelm- ing support for the greatest pos- sible diversity of approachtowards architecture and the greatest pos- sible freedom in structuring the educational process to adapt to the interests and abilities of each individual student. It should be understood that the fundamental issue is not the validity of any specific philosophy of architecture, but the depart- ment's commitment to the policy of the broadest possible inquiry-a policy which has characterized the growth of this great University. I WISH to make it clear that I am speaking here only for myself, and snot in my official capacity as Secretary of the Student- Faculty Committee. However, I feel my views are representative of those of many of my fellow stu- dents. -Roger Lang, '66A&D Vietniks, To the Editor: 'THE BELIEF that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion." The words are W ins t on Churchill's. The occasion: the abandonment of Czechoslovakia in 1938. The Vietniks, who seem appal- lingly stupid at times, might do well to ponder those words and their consequences. -W. Bender 41 "It's Not Quite The Slogan I'm Looking For" * -. ,. n. 2 y~l.T' {yy " t t; ..fX1. * o " ~~'cm~ ~oo!NOUS .- .,~ ~*f I r i ; . : ! - I "**+MM