.l "Dealer Wins And Winner Deals" ,AT THE C M &1j~54Jiu& utb Wil Pr~evail" iOpinions Are Free Seventy-First Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNvEutsrrY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG. * ANN ARBOR, MIcH. * Phone NO 2-3241 a ; 1 - Potter's Primer Schools Scoundrels "SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS" is yet another in the long line of slick, sophisticated British comedies which have successfully been paraded into the Campus Theater in the past few years. like its predecessors the producers of "School For Scoundrels" (Or How To Win Without Actually Cheating) have pulled their players from the British comedy actors pool. From this group Terry-Thomas, Alstair Sims and Ian Carmichael have been paged to play parts long, orials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. DAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1960 NIGHT EDITOR: ANDREW HAWLEY Can An Artist's Violence Supersede Social Morality? LT'IOUGH SOCIETY is right in condemn- ing violence from the sociological point of w, It is sometimes hard to apply society's ndards to individual morality. Lhis difficulty has been reflected by Max mer's column on novelist Norman Mailer's aignment for wife-stabbing. 'arman Mailer, whether a great writer or , deserves to be punished for acting in a ,nner which undermines society but this a not say that he acted against the best erest of his needs as an artist. IMRNER SAYS THAT although Mailer pro- bably had feelings of both great strength d growing weakness as a writer he was ven to "exploitations of experience" by the :ninant feeling of waning talent. 3ecause of this feeling of decline, Mailer a driven to endorse violence-both creative d actual. The creative violence, which came wt, Was expressed in The White Negro and vertisements For Myself On The Way Out. 'he White Negro published in 1957, outlines thiking of Mailer which would lead to lence. The main concern of the essay is seek the sub-sub-cultures of America which still capable of giving rise to creativity. e sub-sub-culture Mailer uncovers is the. 4an group that has resulted from the meet- pf the disillusioned White with the Negro. TENEGRO, who lives a life much more violent' khan that of the White, has lived cording to Mailer the type of existence pessary for true creativity. An existence. ,ative because it is free-a life of violence d sexuality uninhibited by the White Man's, iltifying codes. Mailer says that one can his creative possibilities by violence. Advertisements For Myself is considered one the most revealing documents ever published out the mind of an American writer. One of ller's major ambitions given in this book £ to write a great novel-"a colossal eight- ume novel, complete with characters, time- eme, more blueprints, soliloquies, and all~ a paraphernalia not of a writer writing but 's writer telling himself how he must write," eordng to Lerner. t IS IMMEDIATELY obvious that given Mailer's sense of creative frustration and the t he is far too restless to turn out an eight- Lume novel, or anything else so impressively ge, that as a person he had to find an outlet. rerner's answer to Mailer's need for an outlet her than writing is: "When the fears gnaw arper at him, he may simply retreat into shell-or he may fer*ntly keep asking him- I what is happening, and where he can turn 4t for the connection that will set him off?" And if the "connection that will set him OM OTHER CAMPUSES: Trimester PlC ' ATTITUDES of students and instructors at the University of Pittsburgh are ix dicatve a national consensus, the accelerated 11- sth school year may soon replace the tra- lonal 9-month academic year. After testing e trimester plan, Pitt's students and instruc- s admit that advantages outweigh disad- ntages, that mney saved and more efficient e facilities are more important than suf- Ing summer's heat or missing the leisurely cation. Because'over fifty schools are con- ering the trimester plan, the program should defined, examined and evaluated in terms probable changes it will bring for students, tructors, and administrators. Jrnder the trimester system the school year uld include three 15-week semesters and e month of summer vacation. The first se- ster would start the first week of Septem- r and last until mid-December. The second nester, commencing immediately following w Year's, would extend to the beginning of nmer session about the third week in April. gust, the hottest month, would be the only cation of significant length. Full-time parti- iation would lead to a B.A. in three years' ie. The trimester year would comprise a Al of 135 weeks over three years instead of 8 weeks over the customary four year span. EALIZING that little can be done about summer heat and shortened vacations, more d more students participating in experi- ntal three-semester programs accept the ;tem because it saves money in the long run. e average net saving for three summers' work approximately $1,100. Since the median an- al starting salary for college graduates is out $5,200, a three-year 'graduate may ex- et to gain over $4,000 by not working sum- rs and graduating a year earlier. However, idents who must meet immediate payment adlines may have little regard for estimates future savings. A recent increase in loan ailability brought about by the National De- ise Education Act of 1958 enables students at off" is violence, not only the act of violence but all the agonizing reflection that will pro- bably come after it, how can an artist deny his need? "BY BREAKING INTO reality thus one loses . touch with the real world," writes Lerner but the question is what should the arist's world be? The traditional reason for great creative energy, from Plato to Van Gogh, has been dissatisfaction with one's .present society of "the real world." The world for Mailer has to be outside of the real world of Max Lerner and the phycholo- gists of adjustment if he is to be capable of significant creation. And in the process of seeking new sources of creativity it was under- standable that he would be driven to violence- the most dramatic possible break with society and its "real world" . Lerner himself gives the excellent example of the contemporary French playwright Jean Genet as a man "whose life has been as his- trionic and code-breaking as his art." But who can read Genet's play The Balcony and deny that one of the factors that makes him a great writer is the experiences he went through by thievery, and by meeting people living in both a mentad and/or physical under- world. LERNER REFERS to Nietzsche and comments thatn when Nietszchetried to go beyond good and evil he discovered "It is dizzying stuff." Of course it is dizzying stuff, but how can an artist living in a Cold War society not be constantly curious about morality and es- pecially the morality of either individual or collective violence? And when the artist, as in Mailer's case, decides to explore this fascination with action and to engage in violence it is the responsibility of the more restrained members of society to establish a morality that will enable the artist to refrain from violence. But surely this moral- ity has to be based on something less childish than to say "It is dizzying stuff" or the ideal that an artist "if strong enough" . . . "manages to hold himself together as a person." ALBERT CAMUS' The Stranger posed a modern dilemma of great difficulty. The problem is this-in a world of fluid mobility and exposure to numerous value systems the independent man will not be bound by any one value system but will constantly be ex- ploring them all. A morality suited to the times that will allow for exploration but will make the essential restraints valid obviously has to be on a less childish level than that proposed by Max Lerner. -RALPH KAPLAN n Evaluated ticipation in all three semesters. The trimester plan will have to duplicate the current enroll- ment plan, since a program requiring enroll- ment for all three semesters would undoubtedly keep many capable students out of school. THE GREATEST ADVANTAGE of a nation- wide trimester plan would be the continued usage of facilities currently idle part of the time. Since property taxes remain fixed wheth- er the buildings are occupied or empty, in- creased use of facilities would cut average cost per student and control rising tuition rates in many private schools. In addition, more efficient use of facilities would solve the problem posed by the country's popula- tion explosion. Adoption of the trimester plan seems the most economical way to accommo- date the rising number of applicants. Surprisingly enough, students have not op- posed the trimester plan with as much de- termination as' faculty members who prefer their vacations as time for study and research. Obviously the teacher shortage wold neces- sitate more classroom hours per instructor and the teaching profession, once enhanced by pleasant vacations, could become a year- 'round job with more total pay but less satisfaction and intellectual mobility. Better salaries, how- ever, brought about by funds saved through continued use of buildings might draw more people into the profession. Perhaps an increase in the number of instructors would allow a teacher to work four semesters of every two years and have the two periods free for re- search. ADMINISTRATIVE tasks in adoption of the trimester plan would involve persuading various law-making agencies to revise rules concerning graduation requirements and eligi- bility for intercollegiate sports. Under the tri- mester system at the University of Pittsburgh, a graduate student in law can finish in two years, but the Pennsylvania State Board of 4.4 I C- :> 4C~ ,^ +U~art<~zG ? ' Ofr"+o THE SCIENTIFIC ORIENTATION: Non-Lab Courses Simplified (EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the se- cond article in a two-part series on the University's science require- Ments,) By FAITH WEINSTEiN Daily Staff Writer WITH the basic lab courses over, the non-science major tends to look forward to the third semester of the science require- ment as a welcome relief from the morass of meaningless detail which, he feels, has dominated his training before. He comes into his third semes- ter, usually not with a new ori- entation towards science, but with an old attitude, compounded of confusion and annoyance, which his two semesters of lab science have only intensified. The science departments are well aware of this attitude, and try to counter it by offering at least one upper-class course which is designed primarily for the non- science major. These courses, tricked out in humanistic titles like "Zoology in Human Affairs," or "Plants and Man Today," of- fer the student the scientific gen- eralizations without bothering him with any of the detail, del- ing in concepts rather than tech- nicalities. THE ZOOLOGY department's Zoo 38 is a typical example of this kind of course if somewhat better than most. Zoo 38 is taught by Prof. Marston Bates, whose attitude, as he puts it in his opening lecture, is one of "pro- selytizing the heathen." His course deals with the broad scientific concepts, attempting to eliminate specific detail, and with more a social than a scientific goal. "I'm scared about mankind," he said. "We are still part of the system of nature, and we have to have some understanding of what we are doing when we modi- fy it. His goal in his course is to communicate this fear to the fu- ture housewives and lawyers of I America, who, from the general makeup of the class, he seems like- ly to reach. But Zoo 38 is not a science course, it is rather a course in the sociology of science, with a good deal of philosophic Bates thrown in. If you like this kind of thing, it is an excellent course, but it doesn't do anything about giving the humanities major a new slat on science. * * * PROF. BATES is well aware of this, problem, and feels it could be solved if he could have some laboratory space-or at least some place where he could "bring the student into contact with the ma- terials." But it is probably not as easy as that, There is something wrong with the basic attitude in these courses. The teachers are trying hard to meet the needs of the non-science major, but they are doing this by attempting to reorient the course, to the humanist's point ofsview, rather than trying to recast the attitude of the student. Humanities students are defen- is necessary for the students who cannot really grasp the scientific essence itself. These courses tend to center on what Prof. Laurence Slobodkin calls "Reader's Digest science," or, at its best, New Yorker science. In the careful tiptoeing around the mass of detail, the course is made too tentative, too general, too so- cial science-oriented, to have any lasting effect. At best, it gives the student who has never under- stood science the chance to see that there is something there that he cannot reach, a side to science which is as more wonderful and fascinating than he ever thought possible. At worst-well, Prof. Slobodkin made a careful distinc-, tion between the inebriation of intellectual experience and the ecstasy of solid knowledge-Zoo 38 seems more the course for inebri- ation than for ecstasy, * * * PROBABLY THE BEST basic science course at the University, and almost certainly the only one which takes the intellectual capa- city of the humanities student ser'iously, is College Honors 33. This is a course for honors stu- dents in the evolution of the uni- verse, as Prof. Slobodkin, who teaches part of this course puts it, "from the pre-atomic globule to Harlan Hatcher." In this course, four major fields of science are covered, extracting from them the portions applicable to the general subject of evolution. "The teachers make a deliberate attempt to use the full intellectual capacity of the studerit. The net effect is a parid-paced but not superficial course." This is a highly experimental course, and an experiment which the teachers seem to feel is a success. Student reactions vary. "Some students love it, some rise like Alcibiades from the couch of Socrates - entirely untouched- some felt they had been swin- dled." ONE OF THE STUDENTS who felt she had been more or less swindled, damned the course as "science made hard, with all kinds of math thrown in besides. All the professors get together and try to cram you full of the first year of each of their courses. It's nothing like I thought it would be." Another student defended the course: "It's been a very good thing for me, and I've learned an incredible amount. I just wish I had a lot more background in everything." The main complaint about the course is that it is, in many cases, somewhat too technical for the background of the students. But if anything, this is an error of commission rather than omission, and perhaps a fault which will be ironed out later. It will be highly unfortunate if a course which has so much potential quality, be- comes over-involved in its own de- tail at the expense of the con- cepts and the patterns of evolu- tion, I, . greater emphasis on facts quite urgently. "Never over-rate the 'mereness' of facts," he .said. "I think if taught differently, stu- dents would emerge feeling thatj they had been somewhere - but that feeling would be fake. You can teach a course that is less. rigorous and more dramatic, more humanized-a course that will leave the student with a sense of euphoria. But euphoria leaves a hangover, while hard facts can produce a higher ecstasy, WHAT SCIENCE teachers do not seem to realize is that the non-science major often has a hard time getting beyond the hard facts. It is very much a question of attitude. While it is true, as he says, that there is a distinction between a "scientific theory and a blubbering generality," there is also as difference, equally semen- tic, between a "hard fact" and a morass of detail. Giving students scientific theory without any basis in factual de- tail, he justly damns as "black magic." But if you are to re-orient the non-science major to the sci-, entific point of view, you must do it through concepts. Just as a science student must, be. taught how to approach poetry in Eng- lish 31, the humanities student must be taught how to approach science. And the best way to do this would seem to be, at least in transition, through making the concepts behind the detail as ut- terly explicit as possible. * * * WITH THIS KIND of re-orien- tation, the humanities student would be as capable of learning the scientific method and all re- quired detail, as the science stu- dent is able to learn to read and even to enjoy poetry. A course which attempts td make the transition from the humanists point of, view to the scientists, a course which begins with teaching the students how to approach science, is necessary on the basic laboratory level. But it is even more necessary on the upper-class level, where the initial steps have already been taken, and where the non-science student may have his last chance to learn to see the scientific world, FRANCE: Policies Stated IN AN APPEAL at the beginning of the new school year, the National Union of French Students (UNEF) once more stated its policies in the Algerian problem, In the name of French youth, the UNEF regretted the possibilities of bringing about peace through negotiations remained unused; it oppossed strongly the fact that an anachronistic war is destroying France's future and shattering her since familiar to them and to American audiences. HOWEVER, the difference be- tween "School For Scoundrels" and its' virtually undistinguishabe' forerunnersis its material. As a base for its plot Stephen Potter's series of satiric essays (Lifeman ship; Gamesmanship;'Oneupman- ship) have been used. Potter's works are based on his theory of Lifesmanship. The world Potter says is divided into two great parts. These divisions are not, as you might think; men and women, but those people who are one up and those who are one down. And simply, Lifesmanship is the art of being continually one up on your opponent. WITH THIS as a basic premise the plot of "Shool for Scoundrels" is divisible into four distinct parts. The first concerns a one-down character, one Fred Palfrey (Car- michael), and the resultant prob- lems of continually being one- down. Palfrey is cowed by underlings at work; has his girl taken away by a lecher (Terry-Thomas); embar- rassed at tennis; caught in a plush restaurant with his pockets empty; and swindled by automobile deal- ers Dunsten and Dudley, the Win- some Welshmen. Alas, poor Palfrey, an admitted failure, enters Potter's (Sims) school of Lifesmanship vyhere he becomes versed in the arts of Gamesmanship, Woomanship, Par- tymanships, Carmanship, etc. The last half is then devoted to Palfrey's revenge, as a bona fide Lifesman, and finally to .a moral epilogue,, The combination of Potter's theory and the acting ability of the Messrs. Sims, Carmichael and Terry-Thomas, along with a host of equally familiar bit players, makes this one of the best imports yet. (Are these films ever shown in England?) See this one if you can, it runs through Saturday. -Harold Applebaum LETTERS I to the EDITOR Goldwater.. .. To the Editor: IF THE OPINIONS and views of the majority of our campus "leaders" are similar to those of Jon Trost, President of the IFC, and Howard Mueller, its vice-pres- ident, then it is no wonder that there is so much apathy on the part of the students as regards the SGC. When such a reactionary as Sen. Barry Goldwater states sol- emnly that the fraternity system deters Communism, and they con- cur with him, I wonder what has become of intelligent stpdent lead- ership. One statement which Mr. Trost made is quite remarkable: "Communists on campus make the least strides in the fraternity sys- tem because it is contrary to the principles of Communism. Where fraternities exist, there is little appreciation for what Communism offers' Since Mr. Trost p'resented no figures on subversives in frats vs. subversives not in frats, we can only assume that he is an excellent example of the dominating char- acteristic of the fraternity sys- tem as a whole; that is, the prin- ciple of no-think. Contrary to what Sen. Goldwater says, fraternities do no encourage brotherhood and the importance of the individual. About "brotherhood," -all that needs be done is refer to the bias clauses which appear in many fra- ternity constitutions. Fraternity men are only concerned with brotherhood in regard to "wine, women, and song." I did not see any of them picketing Cousins or Woolworths last year, and the fra- ternity men whom I have talked to seem to have little or no knowledge of these things or what they stand for. What is, really ludicrous is the claim that fraternities encourage the importance of the individual. To the contrary, in a fraternity it is not the individual hember that counts but the Fraternity it- self. All effort is "for the good of The House." Better marks must be gotten by all so that The House has a high overall average, You must not do anything to dis- credit The House. Everyone has to pitch in and work for The House, Every "individual" must wear his pin. THIS IS INDIVID- UALITY? * * 4 AS I SAID, Mr. Trost's claim tho fh A4r... Rocks FROM A BAR brawl beginning to a roaring, singing finale that looks as if it were lifted from a Broadway stage, "North To Alaska" rocks its way through two hours of the gayest slapstick to hit the screen since the Keystone Kops. Complete with barrels and bottles, mud, broken windows and pratt falls, this situation comedy based on the Alaskan gold rush days goes a long way to prove that there. is still a place for this type of humor in the entertain- ment world. THE PLOT itself has little chal- lenge from the time that John Wayne faces female lead Capu- cine in a John Alden-meets-Pris- cilla situation, thus fating them for an eventual pairing after the proper time and trials elapse. Capucine does a sensitive job of portraying the unlikely figure of a call girl gone straight, while Wayne plays his usual straight role, seemingly untouched by the unaccustomed hilarity around him, until he pledges his troth to the fair damsel in the middle of a muddy Nome street with the populace cheering him on. THE ONLY DISCORD struck was the intrusion of one, of the least likely people to grace the gold rush scene-a ducktailed, sidebsurned prospector named Fa- bian. The youthful singing star was dropped into a harbor'and a creek on separate occasions and a few more feet of water in either case would have saved the viewer a few moments of nausea. Fabian's rise as a singer start- ed when his voice was doctored by voice technicians. The magicians of the silver screen working with the same subject showed them- selves somewhat less adept. But this was a minor distrac- tion in the array of characters paraded into the film. They rang- ed from a Swedish logger's wife that could have been the female counterpart of one of Shaw's ir- rascible old men to a furry white dog that might have been bor- rowed from a recent Walt Disney movie. Throw them all together into a barroom fight in the Alaska of 1900, add Ernie Kovacs (as a vil- lain yet!), stir well and you have a highly digestible evening. '-Mike Gillman AT THE MICHIGAN: Alaska I OFFICIAL BULLETIN I Tne Daily officral Bulletin is an official publication of TheUniv 1 - sity of Michigan for which .The Michigan Daily assumes no editorial responsibility. Notices should be sent in TYPEWRITTEN form to Room 3519 Administration Building, before 2 p.m. two days preceding publication. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 30 General Notices Regents' Meeting: Fri., Dec. 16. Com- munications for consideration at this meeting must be in the Presidenrts' hands not later than December 6. Foreign student scholarships: Appli- cations are now being accepted for second semester, 1960-61. Forms are at the scholarship office at the grad- uate school, Glen Alt, College of En- gineering; and Prof. Thomas G. ries, School of Business Administration. ?Marcel Marceau here Monday night. The great French pantomimist, Marcel Marceau, will be presented in Hill Aud. Mon., 8:30 p.m. by the Platform Attractions. Tickets are now on sale at the Aud. box office 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. All students are given a 30%, reduction on tickets. Events Thursday Tomorrow at 4:10 p.m., the Depart- ment of speech will present ARIA DA CAPO by Edna St. Vincent Millay in Trueblood Aud., Frieze Bldg. Admission will be free. University Lecture: "The Seven Against Thebes of Aeschylus," by G. R. Manton, University of Otago. Thurs., Dec. 1, 4.10 p.m. Aud. A, Angell Hall. Radiation Laboratory Lecture: "Ra- diation Laboratory's Studies of the Surface of the Moon" will be given by W, E. Fensier and T.B.A. Eenfor of the Radiation Laboratory, on Thurs., 'Dec. 1, at 3:15 p.m. in E. Engineering, 2084. M. 301 Analysis Seminar: Prof. J. L. Ulman will speak on "Functionals As- sociated with Norm Asymptotgcs" in 243 West Engineering, Thurs., Dec. 1 at 2:00 p.m. Doctoral Examination for Theodore Nichols Ferdinand, Social Psychology; thesis: 'Sexual Identity and Political Ideology," Thurs., Dec. 1, 5609 Haven