Seventy-Sixth Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS Failings of Our Educational System e OpinlonsAre Free. 420 MAYNARD ST,. ANN ARBOR, MICH. 'uth Will PrevaY NEws PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed iit The Michigan Dail-, express the inidividual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1966 NIGHT EDITOR: ROGER RAPOPORT FaXO Investigation Fulfils Pressing Need THE HEARINGS on private student housing at Michigan universities and colleges announced last week by Rep. Jack Faxon could prove to be an im- portant first step in the solution of one of the critical problems facing the Uni- versity. The House-Higher Education Appropri- ations subcommittee plans an investiga- tion into the availability and quality of student housing at state institutions of higher education. They will also be ex- amining the future housing needs of state colleges and universities. Earlier -this year, the subcommittee sponsored a bill' that Would have established a Michigan Higher Education Housing Authority. If established, the authority would be em- powered to issue bonds for the construc- tion of publically financed student hous- ing facilities. The housing built by the authority would be privately, administered by non- profit organizations such as cooperatives. THERE IS A CLEAR and pressing need at the University for some sort of imaginative action towards solution of the housing problems here. The University's attempts to find new solutions to old housing problems have not been notably successful. For exam- ple, the very limited number of apart- ments provided for married students are not significantly cheaper than privately owned facilities. The Cedar Bend experi- ment, while it is a new direction in hous- ing, fails to provide any economic advan- tage over other forms currently avail- able. SINCE THE UNIVERSITY has shown it- self to be unable or unwilling to take the initiative in providing more econom- ical housing and since students lack the financial means to act on their own, the time is obviously ripe for a state housing authority as proposed by the higher edu- cation appropriations subcommittee. The hearings will hopefully convince the legislators in Lansing of the need. for some sort of state aid in the field of student housing. ALTHOUGH THERE ARE many details in any such plan that must still be resolved, the bill introduced in the last session of the Legislature was a very promising beginning. The subcommittee's housing investigation o fthe private hous- ing situation in Ann Arbor will hope- fully speed passage of some form of comprehensive state aid for student hous- ing. -STEVE WILDSTROM By DAVID KNOKE Last of a Three-Part Series "PLEASE TURN down the light." "Did you know McLuhan says light is Pure Information?" "So turn out the light already; the pure information is over- whelming me." This conversation came as an aside in a serious discussion of the merits of Toronto communication scientist Marshall , McLuhan's theories of education and learn- ing environments. The unortho- dox professor's assertions about the role of mass media in reshap- ing modern society became a source of constant comment throughout the six weeks of the U.S. Student Press Association's summer seminar on "Issues in Higher Education." McLuhan's glib sentence-graph style is filled with the sorts of catch-phrases that college students like to ex- propriate for their own; yet his very topicality in a way symbolized the rapidly changing fabric of school and society with which we at the seminar were attempting to cope. WITH ACCESS to recently pub- lished work and visits by speakers working on the forefront of mod- ern educational change and re- form ,we began slowly to accumu- late the outlined picture of the current educational world. There is a stirring across the land. It is almost imperceptible at present, yet its evidence crop up here and there in the bleak, stag- nant fields of traditional educa- tion. One would be foolish to casually survey the state of the colleges and lower education and say, like Candide, "This is the best of all possible worlds," My gen- eration has witnessed and partici- pated in Berkeley and we can nev- er be that naive again. The change starts slowly; it is casual and almost entirely disor- ganized. There are manw critics of the state of education, and in- creasingly they belong to the very establishment which they are knocking. IN THE PAST year alone: the Muscatine Committee issued 42 recommendations for the humani- zation o fthe Berkeley multiver- sity; the Byrne committee report that subversive elements did not direct the 1964 riots was struck down by the board of regents be- cause these were not the findings they wanted Byrne to arrive at; David Bell's "General Education," a critique and recommendation for the experimental system at Colum- bia, was published; and the Stu- dent Committee on Undergradu- ate Education at Pennsylvania is- sued their SCUE report with a perceptive analysis of the short- comings of their university. Running almost as a unitary theme throughout these epoch- marking publications is a dawn- ing realization that education and learning must consist of more than classroom technique. What is being looked for is a new ap- proach to education, a consisten- cy of the means o feducation with goals that student select, or would select if the full range of choices were made known to them. Somewhere in the development of the American university, the notion crept in that the primary purpose of education is prepara- tion for a career. The four to eight years within the ivy walls were seen as years spent in quar- antine from the "real" world. RALPH BOR$ODI, who is 88 years old and has been a critic of society's ills for much of his life, once told me that until the uni- versities will include in their cur- riculum a rational study of all the gravest problems-not just voca- tional, as is largely the case-edu- cation will remain generally in- adequate to aid people in han- dling the myriad ethical as well as trivial dilemmas that confront them. When one sees what blatant de- gree factories the universities have become, one wonders how any but the most resolute students can use the college experience to fully de- v e 1o p themselves. Unpopular thought and political action by students is discouraged or even suppressed. Students and their ed- ucation are given secondary con- sideration behind research pro- grams. The urban commuter col- lege reduces the interplay of stu- dents and the community of schol- ars to three lectures and a bus trip home. The conditions for change are also of the students' making. Our generation has marched in Selma, dug irrigation ditches in Nigeria, sat-in at Sproul Hall and led the protest against the injustices of American foreign policy. We can no longer, because of the audacity those ground-breaking visionaries among us, accept the proposition that our lives and educational ex- periences during college are to be managed by others. THE SALIENT shortcomings of modern education are its failure to make the college experience meaningful to a great number of students and its failure to help the student come to grips with any but the most obvious problems of modern life, One of these problems is the need for interpersonal relations on the large campuses. The Univer- sity's Residential College presents an excellent opportunity for in- novation in teacher-student rela- tionships. But the college planners must dare to attempt the unknown and risk possible set-backs and disappointments; only by trial and retrial will progress towards a richer education become reality. - WHAT FOLLOWS is the story of one man's vision which goes beyond specific location and spe- cific situation. Paul Lauter is a radical. He is a radical in the sense that he goes right to the "root" of the teach- ing concept. He has spent sever- al years teaching in the Missis- sippi Freedom Schools with chil- dren of vastly different back- grounds, Asi e watched and worked with the children of migrants and sharecroppers-the "culturally de- prived" who are the dispair of the middle-class public school teacher -he began to relate to them as real human beings with very real needs which they had difficulty expressing. In the ramshackle, overcrowd- ed room he began to experiment. He submerged his personality in- to the class; he refused to play an authoritarian role. He wanted the students to teach him and to teach each other. If they were stifled by one subject, they should agree together to move on to some- thing more interesting. GRADUALLY the suppressed personalities o fthe children began to emerge; from their viewpoint they showed Paul Lauter things in poems, stories, gestures and the web of life to which he had been previously blind. And from their personalities of the children began to develop a feeling of individual worth and dignity which they had not known. They grew. The mir- acle of Paul Lauter is one of the buried triumphs of a new outlook on the purposes of education. It can be repeated countless times by those who will see students as people and topics as living as well as lore. A 'V 4 BARRY GOLDWATER: GOP Conservatism Attack McDonald Campaign The Vivian Campaign: Using The Proper Perspective WITH NATIONAL ELECTIONS only months away, it seems natural that students concern themselves with the is- sus immediately effecting the Univer- city. Major issues of concern to many stu- dents are the draft and the equally im- portant question of HUAC. Governed by a democratic political sys- tem, voters rightly feel that the views held by their representative should al- ways be available to the public. With this idea in mind, a student representative recently approached Rep. Weston E. Viv- ian (D-Mich) in Washington rquesting a personal statement concerning the Au- gust subpoena of membership lists of Voice Political Party-SDS, the Ad Hoc Committee to Aid the Vietnamese, and the W. E. B. duBois Club from the Uni- versity. VIVIAN, DEFINITELY concerned with his own political future (and rightly so), avoided the issue and refused to com- ment. Naturally, the immediate reaction was to assume that either Vivian support- ed the University in its act of supplying membership lists or that Vivian's convic- tions were not strong enough to with- stand public scrutiny. Either way, Vivian seems to have abandoned the student. Vivian must pull together his Demo- cratic backing; attract as many inde- pendents as possible, and draw, also, some Rpublican support. With this situation in mind, students should re-evaluate their reaction to Vivian's political hop- scotch. Perhaps, the desire to place a true liberal in office will outweigh the students' desire for political purity. VIVIAN HAS GONE on congressional record as voting repeatedly against appropriating funds to HUAC. What more could we ask of Weston Vivian? At a time such as this, what would be gained by a public statement by Vivian chastising HUAC? We should concern ourselves, in- stead, withiwhat would be lost. --CYNTHIA BOYER OUR REPUBLICAN Party's left- wing fringe is at it again. They are 'still publicly moaning and groaning overathe fact that even though they are a tiny minority in the party, everybody in the party is out of step except them. They are still trying to use the Republican Party as a base from which to launch political pro- grams that are little more than carbon copies of Democrat Party programs. Currently the case in point is a report put out by a group calling itself the Council of Republican Organizations. This group, of in- determinate membership, describes itself as representing 10 "progres- sive" Republican groups. , What they mean, of course, is 10 little welfare-state splinter groups, all dedicated in one way or another to using the federal government as an instrument to regiment, rule and reconstitute every in- dividual. This particular group is par- ticularly concerned by a remark I made recently in which I pointed to the perfectly obvious fact that the Republican Party basically is opposed to. collectivist programs, stands for the individual against state coercion and can be termed conservative in today's mixed-up political labeling. FROM THIS fact, I drew an- other perfectly obvious conclusion: that at least three-fourths of the delegates to the Republican Party's next Presidential nominating con- vention also would be conservative, just as they have been year after year (and just as Democrat dele- gateshave tended to be extremely liberal, despite the existence in their party of conservative splinter groups). Lo and behold, the Council of Republican Organizations h a s looked around the country and found that what I said was all true. Their report, which com- manded attention far beyond that warranted by the group's actual stature, makes particularly pain- ful noises about the fact that con- servatives h a v e "consolidated" power in the House of Represent- atives under Congresman. Melvin Laird, the Republican Conference Chairman. All they are saying, of course, is that Congressman Laird has con- sistently behaved like aRepubli- can in the House and has not strayed off to become, as the Council apparently wishes he would, a Democrat in Republican clothing. Actually, the Council could make the same charge against the ma- jority of Republican congressmen. There are actually just a few congressmen on the Republican side whose actions are calculated to give the Council any comfort. Comparing the record of one of them with such Republican leaders as Melvin Laird and Gerald Ford shows why. When John Lindsay, for in-. stance, was in the Congress, and during the years from 1961-1966, By NEAL BRUSS DR. LAWRENCE McDonald was last January's City Council candidate, ideologically hailing' from the Jeffersonian side of the Democratic Party. McDonald was the University urologist and teaching fellow, ready reservist, and John Birch Society section leader. "The present temporary leader- ship of the Democratic Party," McDonald said, "would like to be called progressive, but they in fact are retrogressive. To them prog- ress means moving into a planned society, cradle to grave, womb to tomb existence," McDonald, however, was a res- ident doctor at a federal hospital at roughly the same time he was campaigning for council. he was a leader among those: Re- publican congressmen whose votes provided the margin of victory for Democrat legislative programs time after time. In fact, 36 times a Lindsay vote provided crucial strength for the Democrats. Laird, on the other hand, only voted twice in such a way. Ford only voted eight times in such a way. REPUBLICANS, whether the noisy left-wing fringe likes it or not, are conservatives. They are proud of it. They think their phi- losophy and programs will ulti-; mately be best for the nation. And they are going to keep plugging away at - it in the face of all the internal sniping as well as the growing socialism of the current Democrat regime. Copyright, 1966, Los Angeles Times PAYROLL RECORDS at the University Hospital show that Dr. McDonald worked there until last November.. McDonald was on sal- ary' in Novembernand December at the Veterans Administration Hospital near North Campus, part of the Ann Arbor area medical center. Although the Council primary was in February, McDonald de- clared his candidacy on Decem- ber -24. For several weeks, then, it would appear that he was cam- paigning or preparing, a campaign while an employe of the federal government, a breach of the Hatch Political Activities Act. According to Veterans Hospital officials, McDonald was advised by the administrative department of the hospital that he could face suspension and other penalties for continuing political activities while working there. The Veterans' Administration takes precautions to inform its employes of restrictions on their political activities prescribed by federal statutes. When new employes are orient- ed to the hospital, they receive a packet of informational material, in which is a cartoon-illustrated pamphlet entitled "Federal Em- ploye Facts" and a' copy of "VA Employe Letter 00-64-2" which informs them: "Generally speaking, you may not be a candidate for nomina- tion or election to a community (county or municipal) office to be filled in an election involving par- tisan candidates. You may not even engage in the preliminaries leading to formal announcement of such candidacy." In addition to distributing ori- entation material, hospital admin- istrators must 'post political reg- ulations on hospital bulletin boards. IT WOULD SEEM unlikely that McDonald would have been un- aware of the restrictions prescrib- ed by the Hatch Act, just as it would seem unusual' that a John Birch Society section leader would work in a federally-financed hos- pital job, But as one member of the Law School faculty mused, it is almost unrealistic to put political restric- tions on a medical school resi- dent, who may shuttle between local hospitals several times a year -as McDonald did-and who may coincidentally be working at Vet- erans' at the time of a political campaign. If only in the case of a resident doctor likeMcDonald, considera- tion by federal authorities would have b'een proper. McDONALD'S breach of the statutes, officially a week, was not significant time in his cam- paign. While they cautioned him, Veterans Hospital authorities nev- er disciplined him. And he did leave his federally-financed job before. the more intensive weeks of his campaign. But nine months later, McDon- ald's previously unknown activi- ties show how much more his campaign was marked by conflict and contradiction. 4 SGC Goals: Adopting More Realistic Ojectives ...; " ?:.r 'X 4? ..: :. : . :::: ..... . ... ... .. ... .....r< ..:: . .... r. . . . .. . .. .. . :.. .r.. . #" : . }:, . .:; s: : :.: : . . . . . . . . . f... .r. .. .. r: >... . ...., r. .. ... .. ... ..::. :::.. r..! .. ..v. .,...,. ... : .. ... .... . ..... . . . . . . ... ....:. .k. . . . , ' , r? i. . . Why, John? Why? h~y 4' After AT SGC'S FIRST MEETING, President Ed Robinson indicated that he wishes to see that body become more vocal and more effective in issues both on and off campus. He wishes to see the Council involve itself more fully in issues' such as the draft, the submission of member-, ship lists of 'ce'tain campus political or- ganizations' to the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the 18-year-old vote. The idealism expressed is admir- able, however the efficacy of any action, remains to be seen. The draft is a major issue, on Robin- son's agenda, He has suggested a refer- endum which will sample student opin- ion with regard to the draft, and deter- mine whether students feel that the Uni- versity should cooperate with draft boards by compiling class ranks. Such a referendum would indeed draw a great deal of attention to SGC, yet the mag- nitude of its ultimate effect is very doubt- ful. The percentage of students that can be expected to vote is small: only about one-third of the student body, judging from past elections. With this small amount nothing conclusive can be claim- ed. Even if the vote is overwhelmingly against the University's cooperation with the draft. (This is in itself a dubious out- come.) Those "on high" can always claim that it was only those students who felt strongly against the draft who voted, and the great majority either agree with the status quo, or are ambivalent. Before... those who will be most affected when they rewrite the draft law next year. However, as past experience has indicat- ed, it is very doubtful that this can oc- cur. ANOTHER IMPORTANT project which Robinson ranks highly is SGC involve- ment in the statewide committee to eli- cit support for the 18-year-old vote in this November's elections. Once more, many questions arise. low many people can SGC muster to campaign? How pressing is the issue to the University community? How great wouldthe effect of any SGC activity be? Would any effect extend solely to the University, or would it include Ann Ar- bor and possibly much of Southern Mich- igan? Reality may tend to impose pessimism on idealism, as in the draft issue. But, in this case, it may also transfer the ideal to the real. If SGC can run a large, well-coordinated campaign, it should be able to gain support from students and faculty. It may even have some effect on Ann Arbor voting. However, it cer- tainly would not have any great effect. Other organizations would have to ex- tend the campaign past Ann Arbor. The ultimate effect of SGC action would therefore be small, but combined with a statewide campaign, it could be very important. If the 18-year-old vote is pass- ed and Michigan becomes an example, then similar moves in other states may . . . 4 it ;: .........:r.:::."