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Esch grapples with campus unrest

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THURSDAY, JUNE 12, 1969,

NIGHT EDITOR: JOEL BLOCK

.,,. ._

The IM Committee

has to go

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/

MONDAY evening the Intramural Ad-
visory Committee closed its decisive
meeting to the public and press and de-
clined to release its report immediately.
This action can only be interpreted as an
effort by the committee to hoodwink the
student body in order to jam a tuition in-
crease through the, Regents in s p i t e of
student pposition to the proposal for
new IM facilities without a referendum.
The committee closed the meeting be-
cause it felt it could work better that way
and also took the stand that the Regents,
or at least the University Executive Offi-
cer, should have first peek at the clandes-
tine recommendation.
The majority of the committee in the
past has taken the position that recom-
mendation on matters such as referen-
dum is not their business. They claim to
have actively sought student opinion in
a series of open meetings at the end of
the winter term. They point to a recrea-
tion survey taken by a statistics class for
physical education majors as evidence of
those efforts.
HOWEVERh, THE COMMITTEE ignored
student opinion w h e n it questioned
the method of funding for the buildings.
They did not research such things as pos-
sible faculty, payroll deductions for the
buildings, a question raised by a student
at an open meeting. Not knowing how the
committee acted, it m u s t be concluded
they took no action concerning the ques-
tion of a referendum, when one takes in-
to consideration their past statements.
The survey they point to had no question
asking for opinion on referendum.
_The wise
IT IS DISHEARTENING to see how many
important political decisions are made
with scarcely a note of dissent. Unani-
mity is found on even the most foolish
decisions. For example, only Senators
Morse and Gruening had the good sense
to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin reso-
lution.
And so it is with the appointment of
Warren E. Burger as Chief Justice. Too
many liberal Senators overlooked Burg-
er's conservative record for the s a k e of
unanimity and non-partisan goodwill.'
But there were three Senators w h o
voted against confirmation of Burger. Let
these wise souls bet forever listed on the
record: Gaylord Nelson, 'Stephen Young,
and Eugene McCarthy.
-S.A.

However, students have m a d e known
their virulent opposition to the buildings
if built without a referendum. This has
been done through their various repre-
sentative organizations ranging from the
Tenants Union to Student Government
Council to Intrafraternity Council.
In the face of this opposition the com-
mittee has decided to bury its head in the
sand by closing the doors to its meeting
and. not releasing the report. It is clear,
though, the committee had its head some-
where else when it made this last decis-
ion.
However, Vice President f o r Student
Affairs Barbara Newell has told SGC
President Marty McLaughlin she would
release the report when she, receives it.
As of yesterday, none of the Executive
Officers had seen the report.
THE ACTION of the committee is clearly
not in the interest of the student
body. It is an attempt to obtain money
from the student without their know-
ledge or consent on a question uniquely
concerning them. There is little evidence
the students want the buildings con-
structed. Furthermore, in consideration
of some of the wider problems of the
University, it is doubtful the buildings
should get such high priority.
In acting contrary to student wishes,
the committee has thus declared itself il-
legitimate. In fact, it may never have
been legitimate. Only two of the fifteen
members of the committee have been
elected by students, with two others up
for grabs next spring. In total, there will
be four students elected to the commit-
tee.
The other eleven members are either
appointed or hold ex-officio permanent
seats. Four hold down positions either in
the, athletic department or directly con-
nected with athletics, another is an ad-
ministrator, four more are appointed by
the Faculty Senate, and two are students
-one is President of Women's Athletic
Association; the other heads the Michi-
gan Club Sports Association.
This lack of elected student repre-
sentation on a committee that had made
a decision concerning only students is
unacceptable.
THE SOLUTION is to recall and recon-
struct the committee. Unless the
faculty displays a willingness to share
some of the financial burden involved in
decisions made by the committee, t h e y
should be lopped from the group. Ad-
mihistrators - athletic or otherwise -
would only be welcome on a non-voting
basis. This would also apply to the two
student ex-officio seats.,
In cloaking its activities, the commit-
tee has put itself in direct confrontation
with students. The only possible resolu-
tion of the confrontation is for the com-
mittee to resign and rebuild itself and its
shattered credibility along more demo-
cratic lines.
-JIM FORRESTER
Summer Sports Editor

By DANIEL ZWERDLING,
WASHINGTON
W HEN A group of 22 Republican
Congressmen made a secret.
privately financed tour of 50 col-
lege campuses recently to try to
see what student unrest is a 11
about, Ann Arbor's Marvin Esch
went with them. Esch has been a
gray face so far on the University
campus - probably even less well-
known than former Mayor Wen-
dell Hulcher - but his votes on
the austere House floor and in
the House education subcommittee
on student unrest have an effect
that students should be aware of.
I went to see Esch last week to
find out what he is doing to save
the nation's universities. Esch is
the "nice guy" type, outgoing but
not pushy, boyish with short,
cropped hair that bunches on his
forehead. His glasses and chubby
cheeks would probably invite a
cartoon caricature as a beaver..
One wall of his plush office is
festooned with famous smiles and
handshakes - Lyndon Johnson,
Jerry Ford and others. Only John
Lindsay looks grim. A citation
notes that during his term in
1965-66 on the Michigan House of
Representatives, Esch chaired a
subcommittee of the Committee
on Colleges and Universites. He
was the only minority member to
hold a chair.
"Our groups made the tour
without any publicity, without any
press coverage, because we want-
ed to seek an honest picture of
the campus and didn't want to
dissipate our moderating influ-
ence on the Congress," Esch told
me as he hurried through t h e
Capitol's interminable pipe tun-
nels to get to a quorum call.
I WAITED FOR Esch in the
mosaic hallways outside t h e
House chamber. Dripping with
chandeliers, suffused with t h e
splendor of Italian reliefs, t h e
House corridors are electric with
the smug bustle of teenage pages
transporting messages on high
politic among the nation's rulers.
The easy-going policemen smile
at the tour of an Iowa high school
senior class, the Duluth Senior
Citizens Home tour, and the fat
Tennessee men in bulging shorts

and tropicana Jantzen shirts.
They all look with some surprised
reservation at the jacket-and-tie
reporter with long hair and beard
stepping from a Members and
Press Only elevator; but no one
who makes it on t h a t elevator
can be all bad.
Esch doesn't think the nation is
down on students. One of t h e
Congressmen on the tour, in fact,
concluded that student frustra-
tion is 'more deeply rooted and
complex than some of us
thought."
In the Say Rayburn Room, a
mahogany room For Congressmen
Only that looks as though t h e
Treaty of Versaille could h a v e
been easily signed there; Esch told
me that the campus issue "has
been polarized into a sock-it-to-
students attitude" and a college
administration attitude saying
"we can handle the problem."
BUT ESCH recognizes that "the
problem is much more complicat-
ed and there are no easy answers.
The 'polarized' answers have be-
come almost cliches, and we have
to look for moderate solutions."
Because Esch is from Ann Ar-
bor, he has seen more college stu-
dents than most Congressmen and
his tour of such campuses as Wes-
tern Michigan and Chicago have
supplemented his experience. He
concludes that students have at
least two legitimate problems:
- Frustrations with the draft
and the war in Vietnam and Con-
gress' lack of response to the
needs of the nation's poor and its
cities:
-the failure on college camp-
uses to involve students with de-
cision-making.
Presumably, Esch's conclusions
should be well-formulated. He
claims to be the first Republican
in the House to speak out on
Vietnam, and he proposes an all-
volunteer army. Besides, a cita-
tion in his office claims he makest
"astute analyses" of problems.
ESCH SEEMS capable of mak-
ing accurate analyses but is less
capable of supplying real answers.
The answer to Esch's first asser-
tion, of course, is ending the war
in Vietnam, ending the draft and
making Congress more responsive

to the needs of the nation. This
could be accomplished by giving
moderates like Esch more influ-
ence in Congress. But his answer
to his second point is not so
clear.
"We have to reconsider student
involvement in the making of
curriculum," Esch said. Until now,
student involvement at most col-
leges has been non-existent. I
pressed him for a more specific
answer and Esch mentioned he
voted for putting a student on
the Howard University board of
trustees.
Does this mean he favors stu-
dents on the Board of Regents at
The University? Esch said yes,
and also said he favors giving stu-
dents votes - just a few, to be
sure - on university committees
that determine policy and curri-
culum.
"But," he cautioned. "the ulti-
mate authority must reside with
the faculty and administration.
That's what the universities are
all about."
WHAT IT ALL comes down to,
says Esch, is trying to get college
administrators who are sympathe-
tic to student demands for in-
volvement; otherwise, colleges will
breed "militants out to destroy
our democratic institutions. We
will never have dialogue with the
militants; but we must establish
dialogue with the disenheartened
silent mass of students whom the
universities have refused to listen
to.
"If the college is more respon-
sive, the disheartened students
will see they can work within the/
framework of the institutions and
the militants will lose their con-
stituency," Esch hopes.
To make universities more re-
sponsive, Esch's committee has
formulated a bill which would
deny federal aid or federal assist-
arice of any kind (except money
connected with military research)
to any college which does not es-
tablish "due process" in campus
disciplinary matters. The pream-
ble of the bill notes the main pur-
pose is simply "to assure reason-
able protection of the federal in-
vestment in higher educational
programs. Esch already has sup-
ported a bill, which would d e n y

4
federal assistance to any stu-
dent involved in a college disrup-
tion. "Federal aid is a contract
with a student to get an educa-
tion, and if he breaks that con-
tract then it should be revoked,"
explains Esch.
WHAT KIND OF actions would
Esch support if The University,
so far the quiet anomaly of
American universities, e v e r
erupts? Well: as for the Haya-
kawa approach, Esch thinks he
"did as good a job as any man
could do under the circumstances
at San Francisco State; and there
is some merit to the argument
that whatever force is necessary

4

to keep a campus open is justified.
"You can have policemen who
are there to protect academic free-
dom as well as to destroy it, said
Esch.
Make no mistakes -it is better
to have Nixonian "moderates" like
Marv Esch trying to grapple with
the universities than notables like
Louisiana's Russell B. Long. Long
recently called college disrupters
the "scum of the earth" who
should be put in the army or sent
to jail, where "if they don't work
they'd get shot.'?
But Esch's efforts in the Capi-
tol hallways are not going to stop
the rioting in the universities, or
the injustices that cause them.

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,.. .You're not leaving ME out on any coalition limb!"

.JAMES WECHSLER.,... ....
The, Babbitt
in the White House
WATCHING PRESIDENT NIXON address the Air Force graduating
class, it was impossible for one viewer to avoid remembrance
of the tragic anniversary that would occur not many hours later, and
to dream that the speech would be at least parenthetically responsive
to the date.
This was not the worst oration ever delivered by gn American
President, but it will surely merit inclusion in any collection of political
banality. It might have been delivered by George F. Babbitt at a Rotary
Club luncheon in Zenith and recorded by Sinclair Lewis a long time
ago. Perhaps the only relief was the failure of much of the audience-
especially the young men in uniform-to respond with mindless frenzy
to the superpatriotic cliches.
There may be a certain unfairness in saying in print that the
speech was-among other things-an inadvertant affront to the
memory of Robert F. Kennedy.
AN INCURABLE POLITICAL romanticism drew me to. the TV
set that day; I was almost wholly convinced that Mr. Nixon would rise
to the occasion and offer some generous recognition of the accident
in time involved in this oration, and include some phrase of nonpartisan
memorial.
Instead there was the dreary recital of ancient cliches about the
majesty of military service, a vulgar political assault on those who
have questioned the wisdom of the military establishment, an affirma-
tion of the simplistic patriotic verities.
For too many moments the man saluted by the moving music-of
"Hail to the Chief" sounded like a high school orator competing in a
speech contest sponsored by the Sons and Daughters of the American
Revolution.
Robert Kennedy is gone and Richard Nixon is our President; these
are the facts of life, and I have tried-and will continue to try-to
believe that the Presidency will produce in Nixon, as it has in other
men, qualities of strength and initiative not previously visible.
For one who remained a supporter of Eugene McCarthy after Ken-
nedy entered the race, it would be especially presumptuous to proclaim
a special identification with Kennedy's pilgrimage.
BUT THE GAP between Mr. Nixon's Air Force oration and what
one imagines Robert Kennedy might have said in the same setting is
more than a matter of personal style. It rather projects a large ques-
tion about the condition of the nation.
He profoundly believed that great, dramatic social changes were
the moral imperative of our time; he had grown increasingly impatient
with the politics of palliatives and gamesmanship. Somehow those who
dwell in the ghettos of the universe detected how deeply he cared, and
this was his truest triumph on earth.
It is also why this melancholy anniversary invites seemingly harsh
comparisons with Mr. Nixon. For what emerged in the Air Force speech
was the inescapable intimation that Nixon's basic impulses remain
cautiously conservative; that he is still most comfortable pronouncing
safe right-wing ritual; and that his most authentic conviction is the
belief that he is ordained to calm the world rather than change it.
PERHAPS HISTORY will vindicate this concept of the Presidency.
But I doubt it. As Anthony Lewis remarked the other day, the Nixon
premise appears to be that the political "consensus" in our country
is that of the unpoor, the unblack, the unyoung.
They may indeed constitute a numerical majority at this moment.
But they can achieve no real serenity in a world in which the have-nots
are the true, overwhelming majority.
(C) New York Post

*

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Editorial Staff
MARCIA ABRAMSON ... ..... ....... o-Editor
STEVE ANZALONE Co-Editor
MARTIN HIRSCHMAN .. Summer Supplement Editor
JIM FORRESTER ........... Summer Sports Editor
PHIL HERTZ. ..... Associate Summer Sports Editor
ERIC PERGEAUX, JAY CASSIDY ...... Photo Editor
Sports Staff
JOEL BLOCK, Sports Editor
ANDY BARBAS, Executive Sports Editor
BILL CIJSUMANO ..........Associate Sports Editor
JIM FORRE TER .... ..... .. Associate Sports Editor
ROBIN WRIGHT ...........Associate Sports Editor
JOE MARKER ................. Contributing Editor


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Getting your diploma

now and paying later

By BARD MONTGOMERY
State Representative Richard Allen,
a Republican from Ithaca, has intro-
duced a bill which would require each
graduate of a state supported school
to contribute at least $100 annually
to the old alma mater. At first glance
students might feel that the inspira-
tion for this measure is of the kind
that created Sen. Hubert's ,mini-
HUAC.
Presumably, some people like the
idea' that an additional post-gradu-
ate financial strain will sober up the
naked poets, and bearded leftists who
seem to have taken over our college
system. Allen himself has offered Ro-
tary clubs the argument that those
who hold degrees are ,,indebted to so-
ciety and (like" prisoners perhaps)
should be made to pay.
But this is not precisely Allen's idea
of the law he is trying to enact. Allen
has called education "the most im-
portant function of government," and
confessed that he "is in favor of
spending money for education."

versity - in profits from sponsored
research. Last year, the sponsored re-
search conducted by the University
cost it $4.2 million dollars less than
the $57.5 million (including $16 million
from the Defense Department) receiv-
ed for it.
As it stands, the University receives
somewhat more than a quarter of its
revenues from the state and less than
an eighth from its students,
Most of the rest of the University's
income is received for specific services,
such as research contracts, 'hospital
fees, athletic tickets, and sales by the
U-M Press. The need for additional
discretionary funds that might be ap-
plied toward teaching scholarships,
libraries, uncontracted scholarly re-
search, and faculty salaries can only
be met by charging students and oth-
er people, such as football spectators
and hospital patients more than they
pay now.
Allen's bill would put the burden on
students, narrowing the difference be-

erate students will see a full repay-
ment of the social debt in the years
of absorbing cultural achievements
preserved in distribution requirements,
of performing scholastic tasks desig-
nated by other people, and of meeting
standards of competent management
acceptable to the businesses which an-
nually harvest the new crop of BA's.
Many of those who so believe will
choose to live a life outside the dimen-
sions of a degree-certified education,
and Allen's p1 a n will not apply to
those who leave before receiving a de-
gree.
For the rest, Allen has a 10-year
schedule of payments which would
take $100 annually from BA's an d
BS's, $130 from MA's and MS's, and
$230 from Ph. Ds and holders of pro-
fessional degrees - as long as a rec-
ipient earns at least $8,500 a year and
did all his undergraduate w o r k at
state schools,
AS FORMULATED, the law would

1980 if every class takes the s a m e
number and kind of degrees as were
awarded last year. Then it would level
off as the class of '55 leads an annual
procession of withdrawals from the
payment plan.
It is this retroactive feature of the
bill which has raised fears that it may
be unconstitutional, and which has left
it stalled in committee until next fall.
THERE ARE ALSO more immediate
reasons to be concerned about the bill.
The feeling of paying an unwelcome
tax (and these mandatory contribu-
tions would be reported and paid along
with income tax) might well dampen
the generosity of those who would vol-
untarily contribute; more than requir-
ed. Last year's alumni donations
reached a record $2.4 million.
Allen initially planned to exempt
from the provisions of his ,bill all do-
nors who offer the old school at least
the mandatory minimum. But he was
dissuaded by the fact that donors

pay a heavy proportion of what it costs
to educate them.
BUT FOR BOTH in-state and out-
state students, the plan is still pre-
ferable to a tuition-hike, which Allen
sees as "hurting both those who can't
afford it and those who have their de-
pendence on parents increased."
For the class of '70, in-state students
who expected to pay for four years the
$348 annual tuition rate current at the
date of their admission will find that
by graduation they have paid nearly
$400 more than anticipated. Out-of-
state disillusionment will amount to
about $1500 per individual, It would
have been much less painful to have
such fees replaced by a ten-year "easy
payment plan." But further raises of
the sort can still be made unnecessary
by passage of the bill.
Realistically speaking, student mon-
ey is going to have to provide the Uni-
versity the m a r g i n for ediucational
progress. Allen's plan appears to, be the

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