Seventy-seven years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan under authority of Board in Control of Student Publications 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily exp ress the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. Land of the Free... Home of the Brave to~w'Q ~BEAR RMS l cf .. r 1 . f ~ 7 r .; - ._ .. .. ipAo MARTIN LUTG.WN WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 1968 NIGHT EDITOR: MARCIA ABRAMSON The Children's Community School: Defending educational innovation 'HE POPULAR delusion that local rep- resentatives of the poor are the best spokesmen for the real interests of low income and black people is being rap- Idly eroded. The refusal Sunday of the Washtenaw County Citizens Committee for EconomiG Opportunity to serve as the legal inter- mediary for the transfer of federal funds to the experimental Children's Commun- ity School in Ann Arbor is a clearcut in- dication that representatives of Negroes and poor people are not without their own prejudices and their own drive for control over others. The CEO's unwillingness to be even remotely associated with the Community School - which they deem "too contro- versial" on the basis of exceedingly scant information - may cause the school to lose a federal grant of $11,250. THE FEDERAL grant would have pro- r vided medical and dental examina- tions and care, hot lunches, social serv- fees to the children and their families, enrichment programs, and could have allowed cutting class size. It would also have brought in federal education con- sultants to advise and evaluate. But the CEO, which was not con- vinced that the Children's Community substantially benefits poor people, chose to blindly believe ill-founded rumors about the school, and not inquire into the impact which this grant could have on the poor, whom the CEO supposedly serves. The CEO was not asked to sponsor the project, but merely to receive the fed- eral funds and transfer them to the school, because there is no legal channel through which the federal agency can give the money directly to a private school. The Children's Community was chosen by the federal agency because parents and other low income members of the community are integrally involved in the operation of the school. But the CEO, many of whose members suffered from the abuses of the prevail- ing educational system, has chosen to uphold the goals of that system, ignor- Ing efforts like the Community School to create a better one - a new system which could foster educational oppor- tunities for low income and black people. THE CEO seems to primarily value its own puny prerogatives. And its at- tempt to prevent the federal government from giving funds to the Community School can in no way benefit the poor. It will only tend to perpetuate some of the burdens which they already bear. -ANN MUNSTER ..f' { :> \' h-° 1 L V' j { ' _ ' + }. f . i" At _1,> Y .,- a , j fl , f . JOHN F IKENNEDYv > ~1968,'fhQ Re{ st and Trnbui'xsydkate A letter, to Washington Editor's note: During the past week, Washington has been flooded with letters urging the passage of strict gun control legislation, such as the bill proposed by President Johnson which would ban the sale of rifles and shotguns by mail. The following is one such letter sent by a University student to Sen. Philip A. Hart (D-Mich,) I AM WRITING you now to en- courage you to vote in favor of the gun control legislation re-, cently proposed by President Courtly behavior PERHAPS THE MOST engaging quality of the United States Supreme Court is their unparalleled ability as the mas- ters of the surprise. With no warning at all the Court found Monday that a long forgotten piece of Reconstruction legislation outlaws all discrimination in the sale and rental of all housing. The decision is especially therapeutic when one remembers the long and tor- turous discussions in Congress over the limited provisions on open housing con- tained in the 1968 Civil Rights Bill, not scheduled to take effect until Jan. 1, 1969. By indicating that discrimination in housing had always been illegal, the Court has effectively ridiculed the huge loopholes in the 1968 law. BUT ONE should not regard the diffi- culty of obtaining open housing legis- Keeping the faith A SURVEY of dormitory residents re- leased yesterday shows an overwhelm- ingly favorable response to the relaxa- tion of curfew and visitation restrictions initiated on a one semester trial basis last January. The general success of the new regu- lations is clear. To maintain good faith with the student body, the Regents should move immediately to make those regu- lations permanent. -M. H. lation as an indicator of the importance of such statutory guarantees. The time has long past when America's racial problems can be significantly amelior- ated through either legislative action or court decision. The singular lack of success of strin- gent open housing statutes in several Northern states indicates that it is fool- hardy to believe that Monday's Court decision will effectively modify the hyper- segregated housing patterns in this country. NVO COURT DECISION or legislative vote can destroy the American's pen- chant for living in relatively homogen- ous communities with members of his same economic class. Unless this nation's living patterns undergo a marked up- heaval or this country somehow achieves a massive redistribution of wealth, high property values will continue to exclude the poor from living in many areas of this country. And as few can forget these days, the "poor" are little more than an objective euphemism for the black community. Hopefully the major accomplishment of Monday's decision will be to remove the whole question of open-housing from the arena of public debate. By freeing the advocates of open-housing to focus on the far more substantial economic underpinnings of housing segregation, the Court has rendered the profound service of disposing of an outmoded po- litical football. -WALTER SHAPIRO Preparing for the march: Will it matter? 'Today the march; tomorrow . ... TODAY'S Poor People's March on Washington is historic, its plan- ners tell us, but even the staunchest friends of Black Power are entering it with something less than forced enthusiasm. Since the late Rev. Martin Luther King first proposed the march as a massive last peaceful assault on Washington's conservative legis- lature (power structure), it has been a campaign devoid of any emo- tional appeal, whose only excuse for existing has been a shaky archaic intellectual conviction that a march is a good thing to have, and a nagging guilt that to abandon it would somehow have disappointed dreamer King. The Poor People's March cannot succeed. The campaign - which the march is ending much as disappointing fireworks on a boring Fourth of July - began bogged in organizational, ideological and political difficulties and never emerged to conquer them. Internal power plays pitting the Rev. Ralph Abernathy against sporadic leader Jesse Jackson and Jose Williams confused the goals of the march so no one was ever quite sure just what they officially wanted to ac- complish. And the Poor People's Campaign failed because while a sultry summer's rain melted Resurrection City into mud, dispirited partici- pants surrendered to impatience, aggravation and frustration. EFFECTIVE RADICALS must constantly weigh the need for mili- tancy against the need to moderate protest tactics in order to prevent alienating liberals and other potential supports. But, anxious to prove their potency to fellow blacks, campaign leaders staged a series of needless, ineffectually aggravating demon- strations - such as refusing to pay luncheon bills at government cafeterias. The action were too weak to arouse supporters, too un- sophisticated to impress legislators. Abernathy finally paid the bill. But the Poor People's March has failed not simply because of organizational ineffectiveness. No, the campaign has failed because any non-violent campaign had to fail. Congress is in no mood to grant liberal favors to the poor - to the black poor - and any legis- lation now would take a miraculous burst of energy just when Con- gressmen are itching to adjourn and begin their election campaigns. VIOLENT OUTBURSTS anything short of uprisings (such as the April riots) can only intensify reactionary sentiments throughout the country as a whole, and increase the likelihood Congress will take a tougher and anti-black stand. It is no accident the repressive anti- crime bill which authorizes sweeping wiretap and police privileges, has come in the wake of the riots. So any show of non-violent protest has to fail. And the Poor People's Campaign and today's march are nothing more than show. Mrs. Coretta King has defined them as "last chances to cure the country's ills without violence" - but in blunt political terms they are tactical levers anticipating the possible riots this summer when the blacks can tell the white community "We warned you. We asked peacefully and you refused us. Now you suffer the consequences." Johnson. As your constituent, I 'find your previous record on the question highly unsatisfactory. I hope very much that you will re- consider your position, especially in light of the two tragedies we have faced in the last two months, the assassinations of two of the most important liberal leaders of the country.- I cannot profess to represent a large organization, as opponenets of gun legislation, the lobby of the National Rifle Association can do. However, I can assure you that there is a very large proportion of our community-definitely a maj- ority-that agrees with my views on this subject. You have, no doubt, heard the following arguments before, and clearly they are not original, but they have considerable merit and should be seriously reconsidered before your final decision is made: " State laws in the area of gun control are clearly inadequate, not only in the case of interstate mail- ing of firearms, but as far as registration itself is concerned. The present gun laws in Michi- gan, for example, are almost com- pletely negated by the lack of registration in Ohio. * Even if the Second Amend- ment right to bear arms is inter- preted to apply to individual citi- zens, it is not in conflict with a strict gun registration require- ment. Other constitutionally guar- anteed rights-such as assembly and voting-today require licen- sing, not by way of restriction, but by way of maintaining order and safety. There is no reason the right to bear arms should be void- ed from such registration. * Requiring registration would in no way restrict any responsible member of the community from keeping arms. T h e s e people would have little more trouble, in fact, probably less, buying and registering a gun than they would an automobile. Registration would merely keep such weapons out of the hands of the insane, the youthful and the criminal. 0 To be effective, such regis- tration requirements need to be 'accompanied by legislation that prevents circumvention of the law. Prohibitons on the mail order sale of guns is one example of such necessary legislation. *Possession o f firearms by persons under a certain age limit, preferably 18, should also be res- tricted. Clearly, if a young per- son cannot drive an automobile, vote or drink alcoholic beverages, he is not responsible enough to handle a dangerous weapon. Par- ental permission may be a relevant factor, however. The United States is no longer a frontier society in which each man has legitimate need for a gun. The country is now a highly de- veloped, complex, technological so- ciety that depends for its smooth functioning on the maintenance of a constantly peaceful communi- ty. Though gun control legislation will probably not significantly re- duce the number of crimes in the nation, it will surely lower the tragically high number of crimes involving murder. If a person's insanse search for a weapon were held up a month, a day or even a few hours, his urge to kill might pass, and a life would be saved. It is possible that assassanations of both John and Robert Kennedy would never have occurred if gun reasonable control legislation were Howard U: 'A new beginning By CHARLES ALVERSON HAS ANY GOOD at all come out of the student disorders erupting on an international scale this year? Surveying some of the wreck- age at Columbia University and elsewhere, many observers might an- swer with a categorical no. But then there's the case of Howard Uni- versity. Critics have long been saying that the predominately Negro uni- versity has been in a state of stagnation. Now some are saying that this spring's tumult on the Howard campus-while far belov the level that brought Columbia to a halt-may have provided the impetus needed to get the university moving again. "The students have prodded our faculty and trustees into action and communication," says an official of the Howard chapter of the American Association of University Professors, "Now we have some hope for a change." For the first time in Howard's history students and faculty have met with the board of trustees. And out of student demands and fac- ulty proposals have come a series of recommendations that could mark new beginnings. Among other things, the trustees gave students some voice on curriculum matters and allowed the faculty consul- tation on the appointment of deans and department heads. At the very least, the trustees loosened what are described as the strong bonds of paternalism at Howard by recognizing the faculty and students as active partners. University president James N. Nabrit Jr. has requested that the faculty remain after the end of the school year to implement these and other reforms by this September's term. Although the faculty is paid until the end of June, it traditionally leaves after commence- ment exercises in early June. There are some close to Howard who say that these stirrngs of reform are not enough, that the university must undergo radical structural changes and not revision by bits and pieces. "Howard needs a blueprint for change right iow," says a trustee, "but I just don't see the machinery needed to produce one. I'm afraid the only hope Howard has of becoming educationally relevant would be for it to be put in academic receivership." EDUCATIONAL REVELANCE is a phrase much heard at Howard these days. To some it means raising the school's academic standards by creating a separate division for underqualified students rather than the present method of throwing unqualified undergraduates and even graduates into programs that include remedial education. To Preston Valien, an official of the Office of Education, who conducted a study of Howard's graduate schools last summer, the university would be most relevant as a national graduate-study oriented insti- tution. Militant students see Howard's only relevance as a black university concentrating on the Negro and the nonwhite world. No one can deny the vital role Howard has played in Negro edu- cation. Among its 27,000 graduates are half of the nation's Negro physicians, surgeons and dentists and one-fourth of its Negro law- yers, some of them instrumental in major civil rights gains. The Na- tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People used t rehearse some of its Supreme Court cases before the faculty and student body of the Howard Law School. BUT WITH THE END of World War II, Howard's "golden age" began to fade. The doors to integrated higher education elsewhere began to open to outstanding Negro teachers and students whom Howard was used to getting automatically. "Howard was no longer the pinnacle," says a professor. Howard continued to turn out professional men and women, but without the stimulating presence of a constant flow of top students and teachers. "Howard's biggest failure," maintains an observer, "was in not planning for the time when it would not automatically get the best students. It could have used the Federal desegregation rulings as a basis for restructuring Howard to really attract bright young people of both races. But the dead hand of the past precluded daring, imagination and needed innovation. Howard stagnated." Probably the strongest influence on Howard was Modecai W. Johnson, a strong-minded Baptist minister who became its first Negro president in 1926. Mr. Johnson built the university, securing accredi- tation for its 10 schools and colleges and persuading Congress to give statutory authority to Howard's annual Federal appropriation. He saw this appropriation grow from $200,000 to $8 million before he retired in 1960 at the age of 70. For the 1968-69 school year the ap- propriation is $18.3 million, 54% of the total budget of $33.7 million. But along with the credit, some observers give Mr. Johnson much of the blame for Howard'spresent dilemma. Says one critic: "Johnson built the university physically at the expense of educational growth and solidity." A stout and imperious man, Mr. Johnson has been ac- cused of using the trustees as a rubber stamp and holding the faculty and student body in check with the knowledge that they have no place else to go. A professor with 30 years at Howard declares, "Mordecal saw himself as the head of the family, and Howard was the family." Even today, Howard's faculty senate, not founded until 1956, is virtually powerless. Department heads serve at the pleasure of the deans, and until this year teachers could be peremptorily fired without stated cause. In general, faculty members have been encouraged to teach their classes and keep their noses out-of university affairs. AS A RESULT, the Howard faculty falls into two basic camps: Rather elderly, tenured professors with little inclination to seek change; and many young, dissatisfied instructors who mill about for a couple of years and then leave. Says an Office of Education official: "Young faculty members don't stay to form a solid middle-range faculty group because they just can't see a ladder to the top." In the last five years Howard has had a 75% turnover in as- sistant professors. In addition, only 250 tenured faculty members be- long to the university senate. This, critics note, leaves 75% of the faculty without even that voice in academic affairs and deprives that body of youthful ideas and vigor. Prior to the recent rebellion, more militant students were simply considered troublemakers and were disciplined or expelled without recourse. The vast majority of students kept their eye on the accept- table middle-class American dream and kept out of trouble. In the early 1960s, Stokely Carmichael wasn't able to develop much of a following. But then in the mid-1960s, came the dual rise of student power and black nationalism. Last March, some 1,200 students moved into the administration building and refused to come out until they had won promises of reform from the trustees. They got the promises after a split among the trustees and so far have gotten reforms, in- cluding a major voice in student discipline, considerably more free- dom on campus, autonomy of student affairs and machinery for the creation of experimental courses and programs. One goal the students didn't get was the resignation of President Nabrit, a 68-year-old former law dean. During the student rebellion, a minority of the trustees wanted to oust Mr. Nabrit; but he got word of the attempted coup and squelched it. Says one of the dissi- dent trustees: "You see who has the power at Howard University. The trustees folded up without a fight.' TO HIS CRITICS, Mr. Nabrit is a major obstacle to change at Howard. Some of them contend that although he inherited almost complete power from Mr. Johnson, he has neither the will to effect change nor a willingness to surrender power to others. For his part, Mr. Nabrit maintains that the trustees have all the power at Howard and that he would like to see more of this power transferred to the faculty. The reason it has not been, he says, is be- cause "the faculty is conditioned to weakness. It's difficult to move when you've stood still so long. My job is to get the faculty to be-/ lieve it can exercise power and to act." Even if President Nabrit gets the changes endorsed by the trustees into effect by the beginning of the next school year, some in- it ,wn'+ maka nea ld ifferencet tn he fuitur of Howard. "If 4 i 4i of Blaming it on U' WHEN STUDENT Government Council abolished driving regulations in De- cember, the Regents began investigating the problem by soliciting opinions, hold- Ing an open hearing and debating among themselves. They have been told by several groups, including Faculty Assembly's Student Relations Committee, that the Univer- sity has no moral right to restrict the driving privileges of only a segment of the community - freshmen and sopho- mores - to benefit the rest. Nonetheless, the Regents have ignored the moral issue and insisted that as a requirement of acceptance to the Univer- sity, a student may be legally barred from driving in Ann Arbor until he is a junior. This is a questionable legal jus- tification at best. Rejecting the moral issues, the Re- ,yanfc am onwprI the eitytorp,.ps elimination of restrictions, except for freshmen and predicts that only 600 cars would be added to the streets of Ann Arbor by such a move. There is, there- fore, not even any justifiable fear of over- crowding the streets from this small number of additional vehicles. Most importantly, however, the Re- gents should recognize that the traffic problems of Ann Arbor are only to a small extent attributable to the students -the city must accept most responsibil- ity in this area. 'THE BEST example of the city's negli- gence is in the area of mass public transportation. The city has continually failed to create an efficient, useful, pub- lically supported bus system. With such a bus system, the city would not be concerned about University driv- ing regulations because the problem A6