ol 4 lrtigan Daily 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 ARBOR, MICH. Truth Will Prevail - NEws PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1966 NIGHT EDITOR: MEREDITH EIKER ov. .23 By LEONARD PRATT tion invo Associate Managing Editor worst the THE FASTEST WAY to end a Just w love affair is to push it too pus is so; hard, just as the record says. The ba Somehow it's easy to confuse leadership loving someone with loving one- Student self. So everybodyt has friends might li who've broken up with people just 3000 oft because they weren't willing to and cone leave them aloneeand accept them of their U on their own terms. ThoseI The campus' current love af- cause ofi fair with "student power," "cam- nerve an pus democracy," et al, isn't any rectly fo different from these more con- to gain t ventional affairs. had-stu Though people's desires in this They a particular affair seem' to range of a vice from flirtation to fornication (one fairs wh wonders about the possibility of sary thin incest . . .) too few seem willing ly. It sho to accept it on its own terms. rebellions cals but FROM MODERATES to revolu- won't bu tionaries most are pushing things too hard into molds they weren't THESE meant to fit. At best there's a terest a: good deal of unnecessary aggrava- "movemf University Needs ,Campus Constitutional Convention You 're Pushl n' Too Hard lved in this attempt; at affair could break up. hat is it that the cam- hot about? se of it, and more of the p of it than Voice or Government Council ke tovadmit, is people, them at least, interested cerned about the future University. people are that way be- an SGC that had enough d imagination to bid di- r their support and so he first power it has ever dent power. are also that way because -president for student af- o not only did unneces- ngs, but timed them bad- ould be remembered that s are caused not by radi- by establishments that edge. E PEOPLE and their in- re at the heart of the ent," and they will deter- mine to a great degree what that movement is. Actions of the lead- ership which would alienate those 3000 are taboo; major decisions for the next several months will have to be referenda. This is a populist buildup in a very real way. It has been saved from fragmentation several times in the last week by the "leader's" knowledge that they are nowhere without the 3000. The "movement" is them, but no organization on campus except Young Democrats-and few indi- viduals on campus outside of Mi- chael Zweig, Douglas Ross and the executive council of SGC - seem to fully understand that. A SIZABLE faction of SGC, for example, somehow visualizes this affair as some sort of student or- ganization they have to sanction or otherwise define. Voice, for another, has a good percentage of members who some- how see this as the Revolution for which they've been waiting all these years and are perfectly ready to try and make it into one if it isn't obliging enough to come across by itself. The administration leadership has two beliefs about it. The first says this is the beginning of a Berkeley that has to be politick- ed out of at all costs. The sec- ond thinks the whole business is something that just couldn't be happening because it would spoil all our plans, and that if we ig- nore it, it will certainly go home when it gets hungry. NONE OF THIS makes any sense. Some of it is deliberate dis-, tortion, but most is just people making analogies before they've sat down and figured out what's going on here. When it doesn't fit their pre- dilections, they try and squeeze it into them. And they seem de- termined to do just that or kill the thing trying-which they can do. That would be a very sad thing. FOR THERE'S something won- derful in all of this. Almost by accident the campus has on its hands something charismatic, val- uable and delicate. Those people who have the pow- er should help it live, like all love affairs, by wondering at it and doing what's necessary to keep it going. Such things have lives of their own, lives which can be of great benefit if only people won't try and make them into something they cannot be. IT CAN BE influenced. It can be worked with and made a part of an individual's desires. But it cannot be run or controlled by anyone's personal interests. For like all love affairs, this one will continue to exist only if it justifies its existence to all its participants. Any group which tries to push it into justifying it- self to them alone will make it impossible for it to justify itself to anyone else. By pushing it too hard, they will have killed it. 1 A CONSTITUTIONAL convention should be called to reformulate the division of power in University decision making., All of the interest in meaningful par- ticipation will be wasted unless a new structured role for students is devised. , Rather than having such a role hand- ed down by the University administra- tion or by some faculty committee, it should be constructed -by a representa- tive body of the University community. There are three basic interest groups which should have a structured role in University affairs: the people of the state of Michigan, represented by the Re- gents; the students; and the faculty. IT WOULD THEREFORE seem logical that a constitutional convention on internal university decisipn - m a k i n g would involve representatives of all three groups. This convention would not only deal with the role of students, but also with that of the faculty and administration in all areas of policy. In many cases, the submission of the names of faculty mem- bers and students for example, the ad- ministration has shown the same callous disregard for the faculty that it has displayed for the students. As a possible model for such a con- vention, one could have 20 elected stu- dents, 20 elected faculty members and 10 representatives of the Regents, presum- ably administrators, as delegates. IT IS IMPORTANT that the student and faculty delegates to the convention be elected directly. Although it would be easier to have Student Government and SACUA appoint delegates, such a plan would lack political legitimacy. . ,The precedent for directly-elected del- egates is a firmly established political prdcedure. For example, look at Michi- gan's constitutional convention, and New York's con-con this year. The basic rationale for direct elections is that a body elected under the outdated system such as the state legislature or student government council tends to per- petuate itself at the convention rather than reflecting the need ror change. It can be argued that there is a dif- ferent constituency for elections to an important student council or faculty committee than for elections to a body redefining structural roles. ONCE THE REPRESENTATIVES are elected, a committee system would have to be adopted. Each of these com- mittees would draft legislation to be re- ported on the floor of the convention. In order that the talents of valuable resource people not be wasted, each com- mittee of the constitutional convention should have consultants' and witnesses from divergent groups on campus who would present the various viewpoints. It is clear that this or some similar model is necessary if the restructuring of internal decision making within the University community is to have legiti- macy. If the recommendations of the convention are ratified by two-thirds of the University community, they must be accepted as binding. ALL OF THE CURRENT agitation is meaningless unless the students get a structured role. A constitutional conven- tion should be called. -BRXJCE WASSERSTEIN Executive Editor Letters: On Students, Power, Tactics Remember Long-Range Goals IY FOCUSING on the issues of making the draft referendum binding and the abrogation of the sit-in ban, there is a danger that students will lose track of the broader issues. Even if the administration accedes to both of the present demands, the basic problem is not really solved. The real crisis lies not with any one measure tak- en by the administration, but rather in the basic concepts underlying the old Of- fice of Student Affairs. Whether it be the HUAC issue, police on campus, the bookstore, the sit-in ban, or the draft referendum, the fundamen- tal problem is that students don't have real power in governing their own lives. And thus the real solution does not lie totally in achieving these two specific issues. To correct the basic problem it is required that: * The powers allocated to the Vice- President for Student Discipline Richard Cutler earlier this year must be rescind- ed. 0 The Office of Student Discipline should cease to function as a policy- making body, limiting itself to a service role. " Faculty, administration and students must formulate a constitution for a new University community government. *Student Government Council must maintain its independence until the new constitution is put into effect. If SGC puts itself again under the OSD, it is accepting the decision-making system as it currently exists. " The Regents must accept the new constitution for internal University de- cisioii-making as being in step with the needs of this academic community. They must realize that the University as a whole will be better off when students are given responsibility "in campus af- fairs. WE CANNOT FORGET that the two current pressing issues are merely battles, and that the philosophy behind those issues is the war. We shall only achieve victory with the implementation of a new structure for internal govern- ment of the University. -BRUCE WASSERSTEIN -HARVEY WASSERMAN To the Editor: QNE OBJECTION to student control of student life ("stu- dent power" or "self-determina- tion") is of this sort: "If an ad- ministrator makes a mistake, he can be 'held responsible' (that is, called to account by 'his superior or the Regents, censured, and fired). If student government or a student organization makes a mistake, it cannot be held respon- sible in the same way (that is, for example, by expelling those students involved)." There is, I think, nothing wrong with all this. What's wrong is that what's concluded is, "There- fore studentsudetermining for themselves would not be respon- sible." That doesn't follow. HOLDING, an administrator re- sponsible is a formal means of giving him a stake in his decisions, a stake compatible with that of those he is deciding for. It is an artificial stake. Students determining for them- selves do not need an artificial stake-they have a natural one: If they choose unwisely, they suf- fer. Consider the HUAC disclosure. Cutler made a bad choice. He had to account for it. He could have been fired. But, whether they made the decision or not, the stu- dents involved will have to suffer for it. Now, which is more likely to give the more responsible (that is, the more considered)decision having an artificial stake in the decision or having a natural one? I can't say with certainty now. (Certainty would require research as yet undone.) I can, however, suggest an answer. IT SEEMS to me that an artifi- cial stake is a poor substitute for a natural one: To escape censure, an administrator needs to show only that his decision was "rea- sonable." To escape harm, those deciding for themselves need to be right. An administrator then, is prop- erly satisfied once he has found a reasonable decision; and so he'll tend not to look for others. Those deciding for themselves cannot be satisfied by what seems merely reasonable; and so they'll tend not to stop at the first "reasonable decision." I should here at least point out that I have assumed the adminis- trator's artificial stake and the student's natural stake to be com- patible. Of course, they need not be. There may well be universities (this one among them) where those holding administrators re- sponsible have interests incom- patible with those of students. In such universities, a responsible ad ministrator would be the enemy of students. I CONCLUDE THEN, that while students may not be held re- sponsible for their decisions in the way administrators may be for theirs, students are not, there - fore, less likely (when determin- ing for themselves) to make re- sponsible decisions. -Michael Davis, Grad To the Editor: THE STUDENT ultimatum dic- tated the terms of peace to the administration. WOWIE, that is real communication! The ultimatum also promised "sanctions" in case the admin- istration is unwilling to accede to the demands. ZOWIE, that is real student power; they flexed their sittin' muscles. The effect of the ultimatum and promised "sanctions" will probably be to make further com- munication between students and the administration even more dif- ficult than it is presently. The administration has no room to maneuver; it has no choice but to reject the ultimatum. Nor do the activists have any room to i i { 1 Lu J~,~/ 44' YE AB,4 sage, "we give up," to the Indian pow wow at high noon on Tues- day? Doubtful. One can only hope they enjoy a two hour lunch break instead of the usual hour. Conciliation between the admin- istration and the student activists will require concessions, not ulti- matums. Perhaps a starting con- cession is for SGC to reintegrate itself under OAS. -Alfred Mudge, '69L To the Editor: rfH E BASIC contention of a large number of students is that the administration is forc- ing decisions on the student body while disregarding student opin- ion. Furthermore, it is felt that stu- dents should demand that the ad- ministration listen to them and if such demands are not met some drastic action must be taken. These ideas are in total dis- cord with the facts of life. The administration does not have to listen to the students and there is no way to support any demands that they do. Life could be made miserable for the administration for a while, To the Editor: T HE SGC decision to break with the Office of Student Affairs (OAS) leaves many questions in our minds. Whether students realize it or not, SGC is a student-elected body which serves to organize student activities. We repeat organize stu- dent activities. Nowhere in the Regents' bylaws is any mention given to the power of SGC to control student conduct, which it now seeks. AS HECTORIANS, affiliated senior men's honor society, theo- retically a group supervised by SGC, we now find ourselves tech- nically in the position of having been divorced from the OSA, through an SGC vote. This was done without our con- sent, and in the name of a power which SGC does not possess. We still feel a part of the OSA, and resent this unsolicited man- agement of our affairs. If SGC members wish to speak for them- selves as individuals, that's fine. But, gentlemen, don't impose your feelings on your subgroups. For when you do, you are only To the Editor: A GREAT DEAL has already been said about ranking; none- theless, there still remain some fair-minded people who feel that the University should continue its policy of sending, on the stu- dent's request, the student's rank to the local draft board. It is argued that a democracy is a balance between the conflict- ing claims of majority rule and minority rights, and thus the mere fact that most students do not want the University to compile rankings is not a sufficient rea- son for the University's not com- piling and transmitting the rank of the minority that so requests. ONE OF THE THINGS that is wrong with this argument is that it misinterprets the situation. If it is true that there is a conflict between the will of the majority and the rights of some individuals, it is also true that there is a second conflict, one be- tween the rights of a large num- ber of individuals not to have in- formation about their grades sent in or used in the compilation of rankings, and the rights of a or use information about them in compiling rankings. IT IS NOT possible to have a ranking system which does not violate the rights of some people. One alternative would be to al- low all people who wish to have their grades compared to those of their fellow students to submit their names and be compared with each other. In a system of this sort, the University could write, "out of the 200 students we rank- ed, he was the 135th." If there were no reasons to oppose all forms of ranking, I would be in ,favor of this alter- native. But this is not the case. --Jerome Segal, Grad To the Editor: ON THE EVENING of Nov. 21, 1966 at 9:30 p.m. a vital and historic meeting was called to or- der under the auspices of the lo- cal chapter of othe Association of Learned Chemists Opposing the Harrassment of Our Leaders (AL- COHOL). The purpose of this meeting was to debate, the current issues re- garding student voice in admin- As no member of the organiza- tion voted in the campus elec- tion of November 16, we were forced to conclude that we ade- quately represent the 20,000 stu- istrative affairs., dents who likewise did not par- ticipate in the balloting. In order to fairly represent the feelings of these 20,000 non-voters, each mem: ber of the organization was ask- ed to cast 4000 votes. AT- 9:31 the chairman enter- tained a moion to draught the following resolution: Whereas we feel that it is the function of the adminis- trators to administrate, the stu- dents, to study, the deans to dean, the cops to cop, and the Selective Service to select, we do hereby resolve to lend our wholehearted support to main- taining the separation and per- petuation of these functions by their respective operators. After a long and heated debate the resolution was carried by a vote of 16,000 to 4000 at 9:35 p.m Due to the lack of any other equal- ly significant problems in the world today, the meeting was adjourned at 9:36 p.m. -Norman A. Carlson, Grad -Paul B. Condit, Grad -Terry G. Crandall, Grad -Gary E. Krejcarek, Grad -Douglas J. Raber, Grad (Ethyl Chapter, ALCOHOL) Arab-Israeli To the Editor: 1 AM STILL waiting for someone to see this whole Israeli-Arab conflict for what it really is-a tragedy of fratricide, a shameless waste of human and natural p- tential, a criminal irresponsibility. Innocent people on both sides are " getting killed, losing their homes and possessions, suffering religious and national discrimina- tion, so that their leaders can hand them cheap rhetoric instead of tangible reforms. Mr. Khadduri (Letters, Nov. 18) has shed no light at all on this heartbreaking situation. -Patia M. Y. Rosenberg, Grad Un Chant D'Amour To the Editor: Y GRAND NEPHEW escorted me to the showing of Un Chant d'Amour, at the Cinema Guild, which seems to have arous- ed some complaints from the au- dience. I thought it a frank statement of an important problem in pris- on administration, and the objec- tions advanced by people who were shocked seem very trivial in view of the unsavory situation which does exist. 4-I 0 Politicking in Germany CLOUDED OVER by the gains of the ul- tra-conservative National Democrats in Sunday's Bavarian elections is a re- sult which seems to point the way to an end to the current German government crisis. Despite predictions of a thumping loss for Ludwig Erhard's Christian Democrat- ic party, that party actually gained two seats in the Bavarian legislature. This indicates a surge in nationalist senti- ment and refutes claims that the new coalition would exclude the Christian Democrats. In fact, one of the most startling facts about the elections is the fact that the Free Democratic party was completely shut out in the voting, losing all 17 of its seats. This is another good indication of lack of faith in a renewal of the old coalition between the Christian Demo- crats and the Free Democrats which broke up last month over increased taxes. THE NEW COALITION, then will be com- posed of Social Democrats and Chris tian Democrats. What is not so obvious, though, is who will be selected as the new chancellor to head the coalition when Erhard steps down. The only thing, then, which appears to be in the way of a quick solution to the crisis and a return of confidence in the government is an election for chan- cellor between Kiesinger and Berlin So- cialist Democratic Mayor Willie Brandt. But in the meantime, Germany's na- tional legislature cannot conduct normal business. It must wait for Kiesinger and Brandt to form a coalition before the Bundestag convenes to choose one of them for chancellor. THE BALANCE is clearly in iKesinger's favor."Hopefully, the choice will come quickly, so the Bundestag may return to normal business. -WALLACE IMMEN Traffic Jam IF THE UNIVERSITY acts consistently, Tuesday will be a good day for bank TN- s J Y [1oSE 1S TEAK? but soon the troublemakers would be arrested and/or expelled. THE ONLY REASON that the administration will listen to stu- dent opinion is if they want to do so. The way to make them want to listen is by proving that stu- dents have responsible views on administrative issues and rational plans for the solution of problems. The way to convince them of these facts is by supporting the work of the now-being-formed ad- visory boards and of other orga- nizations like them which are al- ready in existence (e.g., the LSA Steering Committee and the En- gineering Council). imitating the actions of the ad- ministration which you criticize. LET'S CLARIFY the issues, so that we know where we're going, and stop this phantom game. We definitely feel that a stu-, dent government should be a rep- resentative voice of the student body. However, to effect such a change in policy, adequate con- sideration must be given to all the possible alternatives. Therefore:Be it resolved that: SGC recommend that there be a duly authorized Regental com- mission composed of students, faculty and administrators to draw up a plan for a truly rep- resentative and responsible stu- fAnf a n 4. r ri n . smaller number of individuals to have information about their rank sent in. Consider the difference between the present situation and one in which the majority votes that the University should not, even on a student's request, inform the local board that he is a full time stu- dent registered at the University. In this latter case, the infor- mation is entirely about the indi- vidual student, in our present sit- uation, it is not! IF THE UNIVERSITY tells the draft board that I am first in a class of one thousand, it tells them that my grades were compared r