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TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1969
NIGHT EDITOR: NADINE COHODAS
Giving students
real academic power
STUDENT GOVERNMENT Council's bat-
tle to hand advisory committees pol-
icy-making power may finally break ad-
ministrative resistance to giving students
real control over their academic lives.
T w o motions now before SGC would
transform all advisory committees in the
university - both in and outside the Of-
fice of Student Affairs - from milksop
illusions of power into policy-mandating
boards which report only to the Regents.
Students would win for the first time a
policy vote in university affairs - shuck-
ing the impotent "voice" championed by
the rhetoricians of academic reform.
Now student participation in university
decisions achieves close to nothing. Stu-
dents sit on committees, write reports, is-
sue a diarrhetic stream of recommenda-
tions - but to what end? Ultimate de-
cisions lie with administrators, who may
accept or reject such recommendations
as they please. Director of University
Housing John Feldkamp, for example, re-
cently flatly opposed a major recommen-
dation by his advisory board not to raise
married housing rents. Only an interven-
tion by President Fleming on, a technical
issue unrelated tto the political issues up-
held the board's advice.
No, college reform means nothing so
long as it showers on students like manna
from the administrative heavens. If the
administration retains the prerogative to
make policies it retains the prerogative to
retract them. Student power m e a n s a
vote. Never a "voice'" - so much begging
at the administration's paternal knee.
SGC'S tactics fit the struggle. By vow-
ing to withdraw student represpntation
from advisory committees w h i c h don't
comply with its demands, SGC will de-
stroy any modicum of legitimacy by de-
priving them of the major interest bloc
in the university. This is a problem the
administration will have to confront - it
can ignore marches and protests. Fur-
thermore, the move will give students the
first initiative in winning academic con-
trol - an important tactic of "student
power."
Some students oppose the SGC motions
on the grounds t h e y negate hard-won
student gains. Students, after all, have
fought for years to put representatives on
major university committees - now SGC
wants to pull them off. But student ef-
ficacy either way is just about the same:
nil. "We can either have a voice that's
ignored," says SGC President Marty Mc-
Laughlin, "or have no voice at all."
President Robben Fleming discards the
SGC demands as "impossible," citing the
overwhelming "chaos" which would re-
sult from numerous committees mandat-
ing policy in overlapping jurisdictions. If
this is the major problem, the university
can oblige him by overhauling the com-
mittee structure to make it more wieldy.
But the real resistance, of course, comes
from the vice-presidents and department
heads: they don't want students, or fac-
ulty, absorbing the policy-making pow-
ers they have traditionally enjoyed.
Tradition is fine f o r football games,
but not for education. The time has come
for administrators to stop making policy,
and to administer it. Education in t h e
university is, after all, the chief preoc-
cupation of 35,000 students who live and
learn here. It is their business to control
it - not t h e business of a handful of
vice-presidents and staff functionaries.
If the administration does not concede
student control over academic affairs
now, students will inevitably force a con-
frontation in which they'll try to take it.
With good cause.
-DANIEL ZWERDLING
On the pollui
By DAVID WEIR
SUDBURY, ONTARIO, is located north and east of Sault Saint
Marie and the famous "Soo" Locks. It is a bustling industrial
center, cut out of the rugged fishing and hunting country so popular
with American and Canadian sportsmen.
Yet the countryside immediately surrounding Sudbury is any-
thing but beautiful. For miles in any direction, it is barren and life-
less. There are no trees, no plants, no animals.
Sudbury's copper industry - the heartbeat of its existence -
has ruthlessly destroyed its environment. Hills and streams once lined
with lush green vegetation are now devoid of any life whatsoever.
Tons of . clouds of industrial waste-predominantly sulfur dioxide-
have steadily poured out of Sudbury smokestacks for years.
The result is a horrifying Silent Spring come real.
Roughly a thousand miles to the south, another cancerous sore-
spot is eating away at the North American land surface. Coppertown,
Tennessee - the U.S.'s most blatant answer to Sudbury - is set in
the middle of the greennmountains once roamed by folk heroes Davy
Crockett and Daniel Boone.
The area around Coppertown has been stripped of its greenery.
Clouds of sulfur dioxide billowing from a copper smelting plant have
completely ruined what was once a natural paradise.
Blackened tree trunks and acres of useless land stand in lifeless
testimony to a mining mania which has nourished the North American
economy for centuries.
Sudbury and Coppertown are two of the more advanced tumors in
our immediate environment. Many other industrial centers are con-
tributing to the rapid breakdown of any semblance of an ecological
balance in this part of the world.
The Mahoning-Shenango Valley in eastern Ohio encompasses
some of the grimiest industrialism in America. The Mahoning River
turns orange from particle pollution out of the plants in Youngstown.
Air temperatures recorded at minus 14 degrees Fahrenheit have failed
to freeze the river in Warren, Ohio, where oil from steel plants com-
monly sends the water temperature soaring over 100 degrees.
ALSO IN WARREN, clouds of ferric waste from the huge Copper-
weld Steel products plant have permanently reddened the rooftops
of nearby $20,000-30,000 homes. Lower-income families, crowded into
the city's south side, live under a perennial gray cloud issuing from
the Republic Steel Company.
Also in the Valley is a pathetic little community which calls
itself Struthers, Ohio. Struthers is the home of an annual phenomenon
known to local residents as "The Black Rain".
This occurs whenever sulfur fumes from the Youngstown Steel
Company react with the moisture in the air and the lead base on
painted surfaces to turn the town's houses black.
People come from miles around to see it.
There are other examples. Any attempt at a list of polluted 'dis-
tricts' would stagger the imagination. One astounding problem area
close to home is the Delray district north of Zug Island near Detroit.
Experts in the University's School of Natural Resources estimate
that approximately 100 tons of particulate matter settle on each
square mile of the Delray area every month. This is what's "blowin'
in the wind" from the various coal, power, foundry, chemical and steel
plants in the Rouge industrial district.
THE EFFECT OF SUCH heavy air pollution on the average human
being can only be guessed at. But, it is a reasonable assumption
that an increase in cancer and other diseases would result from pro-
longed exposure to air of this kind.
Another frightening aspect of the environmental breakdown prob-
lem is the utter impotence of conservation-minded groups to do any-
thing about it. The tremendous economic (and therefore political) power
wielded by large industry precludes almost any possibility of stemming
the onrushing tide of widespread planet-pollution.
The only possible source for coercion of the giant polluters is an
aroused public outcry.
But the disillusioning spectra of unconcerned businessmen driving
along the Jersey turnpike under falsely-yellowed skies or of Warren
residents piling rat-breeding garbage in the corners of their yards
bespeaks of a fat-assed apathy on the part of most Americans.
AND EVEN IF people do become aware of the problem, all too often
they react in the way one Sudbury man did when he remarked:
"How can we attack the copper and steel companies? We feel that
they've given us our homes, our jobs and our education."
lion of North America
"If the oil doesn't get you, the DDT will ..."
.MURRAY KEMPTON
Stealing a patsy's shoelaces
MR. NIXON is starting to leak
most dreadfully. This process
started two weeks ago with his
surprising display of distemper
with Clark Clifford, Mr. John-
son's last Secretary of Defense.
No one seems quite able to ex-
plain why Clifford's article in
Foreign Affairs set the President
off the way it did. The answer
may simply be that Clifford wrote
a cool and very polite account
of his own education and that his
conclusions somehow insulted a
President whose survival and re-
covery are owed to his manful
resistance to every similar oppor-
tunity of education.
Clifford's account of how he
lost hope for the Vietnam war is
at bottom an explanationof how
he lost hope for Richard Nixon's
whole world. He first became un-
easy in 1967 when President
Johnson sent him to visit South
Vietnam and "some of our Pacific
allies:"
n pursuit of Dulles
TIHE WHITE HOUSE announced 1 a s t
week that President Nixon intends to
travel to the Philippines, Indonesia, Thai-
land, India, Pakistan, and Rumania after
observing the splashdown of Apollo XI
and congratulating its crew for their suc-
cessful journey.
White House sources say Nixon plans to
lay the foundation for post-Vietnam
Americanspolicy in Asia, one that will al-
legedly move towards the future preser-
vation of peace in the area. In Rumania,
Nixon w i11 replace the atmosphere of
East-West confrontation with a new mood
of negotiation. Or so the rhetoric goes.
How Mr. Nixon, will go about achieving
these goals remains another question. His
hopes for peace, security, and stability in
Southeast Asia (another way to s a y a
continuation of the present distribution
of power) rest upon the formation of new
multilateral collective security instru-
ments along with the gradual withdrawal,
of American troops from South Vietnam,
and the subsequent shift in the fighting .
to the shoulders of the South Vietnamese
forces.-
In fact, the proposals Nixon will make
to Southeast Asia rulers show how firmly
he has tied American prestige to the
Thieu government. He will not accept the
formation of neutralist government in
South Vietnam, for he w i s h e s to use
Thieu's membership in a new multilateral
security pact in order to push Thailand
and Cambodia into a Western alignment.
THE NEW ORGANIZATION would not,-
high-ranking sources told the N e w
York Times, be as blatantly anti-Com-
munist as SEATO,. but still, would pin-
point the aggressive and belligerent na-
ture of China as the primary obstacle to
peace and security in Southeast Asia. In
reward for participation in regional self-
defense, the Nixon administration would
guarantee large allocations of foreign
aid toward economic development, and,
conceivably offer a discount on surplus
American weaponry left over from Viet-
nam.
Further, if community defense against
an aggressor proved inadequate, and if a
collective invitation was made for t h e
United States to intervene, the Nixon ad-
ministration would also guarantee limit-
The pawns of international rivalry would
be able, Nixon hopes, to secure American
power in the Orient without the States
paying the costly price of another Viet-
nam.
Mr. Nixon's pretext for such a ridicu-
lous venture is not Chinese hostility but
rather the opportunism of the Soviet Un-
ion. On June 7 Soviet chieftain Brezhnev
articulated a new Soviet foreign policy
emphasis toward beginning a "system of
collective security in Asia." Considering
the extent of present Soviet-Chinese en-
mity and of American impotence in as-
serting its power in Asia, Brezhnev ap-
parently feels that the objective condi-
tions are ripe for an enhancement of So-
viet influence and prestige in Asia. Soviet
plans, however, remain unclear as to
their military or political nature.
FORTUNATELY, Nixon's dreams of re-
viving John Foster Dulles in Southeast
Asia seem doomed to failure. Given the
high priority placed upon neutrality and
independence by Thailand, Cambodia, In-
donesia, and India, given the fact that
Soviet and Chinese competition for their
power also seems to be in the offing, and
given past experiences of nations aligning
with the United States, there appears to
be little possibility that a collective se-
curity instrument will come into being.
One requisite for the development of
such an organization would be an early
conclusion of hostilities in Vietnam, a
radip American troop withdrawal, and a
clear South Vietnamese manifestation of
power o v e r "its" own territory. All of
these, too, seem unlikely as Nixon will not
sell Thieu and Ky down the river, and the
North possesses an incredible ability to
persevere. As long as a clear-cut Ameri-
can compromise solution remains unlike-
ly, no Asian nation will wish to ally itself
with aggression. Not even Allied nations
in the East, Clark Clifford asserts in For-
eign Affairs, would join a security pact
that promised to pull American chestnuts
out of the fire.
AS NIXON PARADES across the world
in an ego-trip boasting of American
technological and scientific brilliance
most Asian leaders w i 11 forego serious
discussion and wait either for h i g h e r
What he failed to add is that
mature death and insured him a
earth.
they've also provided for his pre-
burial in a rotten, contaminated
A picnic with the boys in blue
By CHRIS STEELE'
Sunday's foray in the Arb with
the cops was a study in boredom
for most of those present. But an
air ofyunpleasant expectancy was
lent by the minions of the law and
their ubiquitous cameramen.
Although by sometime in the
early afternoon the 30 some police
in the Arb were outnumbered by
the picnickers and spectators
their presence was -a little t o o
pointed to be easily ignored. Vni-
formed police with riot helmets,
visors raised in peaceful gesture,
bearing long nightsticks and gas
masks at the ready, stood in
groups of two and three on the
hills and in the valley that forms
the center of the Arb.
They smoked and talked with
each other walking leisurely about
taking only a passing interest in
the activities of the day. Some
of them even looked a little em-
barrassed by their own presence,
while othes appeared to be try-
ing futilely and a bit too hard to
look as though it was quite na-
tural for them to be at picnics in
full battle costume.
If the uniformed police appear-
ed out of their element during the
outing, the plainclothes cops were
amazing. In groups of three they
sat and tried to look like neutral
observers. Andton a few occasions,
they did their best at mixing with
the crowd. But somehow portly
middle aged men, with b a g g y
pants and knit sports shirts dis-
playing beer bellies and crew cuts,
did not blend in with the pre-
dominantly young and hirsuit pic-
nic group.
Further adding to the unreality
Of the "People's Picnic" was the
presence of the police photograph-
ers and the buzzing omnipotence
of the control helicopter that
made regular sweeps over the Arb.
Decked out with telephoto lenses
movie cameras and a Sony video-
tape maker (a rather costly item
in itself), the photographers kept
busy recording forever the faces of
those in attendance. Although no
one was too upset by the official
picture taking (lots of people wav-
ed or made other appropriate ges-
tures when the camera turned in
their direction) it did seem a little
Big Brother-like. And the heli-
copter, while also expensive and
oppressive, was utterly silly.
What was the effect of putting
police in the Arb, keeping some
350 more in staging areas and
using all the sophisticated c o p
equipment?
On the positive side it made for
a pretty nice day in the great
outdoors for a lot of hard work-
ing guys. A profitable day too, ac-
cording to one Ann Arbor police-
man (badge number 34) who said
they were all making seven dollars
per hour.
It was probably a good day for
the straight people's picnics too.
The VFW guys didn't have to
worry about their drinking in
public although they probably
don't have to worry muchrabout
that anyway.
On the negative side the police
managed to keep three girls from
drinking a bottle of wine, cost the
city of Ann Arbor a hell of a
lot of money and provide a bor-
ing and slightly unpleasant after-
noon for a lot of people. Surpris-
ingly few people can have much
fun, even of an entirely legal var-
iety, in the shadow of all those
blue suits.
"The President of the Philip-
pines advised President Johnson
that he preferred we not s t o p
there because of possible adverse
public reaction." The Philippines,
which ought to feel more vulner-
able than anyone else "if they
accepted the domino theory,"
made it clear to Mr. ,Johnson
that they would send no combat
troops. Australia's Prime Minister
Holt explained that the present
7000-man ,force was "its maxi-
mum effort." Singapore's Prime
Minister Lee Kuam Yew said he
couldn't send any troops "because
of the adverse political effect."
NOW THESE are all the allies
whom Mr. Nixon was floating
at that very time selling his soda
pop and comforting himself with
the Southeast Asian resistance.
He always came back from those
trips intoning: "An Asian Prime
Minister said to me, 'Mr. Nixon,
don't make the Pacific a Red
Sea.' " So then, Clifford, while
thinking about something else,
had explained how Mr. Nixon had
been fooled.
Then there is the matter of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, who, like
Asian Prime Ministers, remain
sacred objects tohMr. Nixon long
past the time when they enjoyed
even the respect of their citizens.
Here is Clifford reporting on his
exhaustive examination of the
best minds in the military:
"After days of this type of
analysis, my concern was greatly
deepened. I could not find out
when the war was going to end;
I could not find out the manner
in which it was going to end; I
could not find out whether the re-
quests for men and equipment
were going to be enough or whe-
ther it would take more, and, if
more, when and how much; I
could not find out how soon the
South Vietnamese forces would be
ready to take over. All I had was
the statement, given with too little
self-assurance to be comforting,
that if we persisted for an in-
determinate length of time the
enemy would choose not to go on."
THE JOINT CHIEFS, then, had
even lost confidence in them-
selves. They will, of course, get it
back all too soon thanks to the
flattery of the President's rever-
ence; but, in the meanwhile, Mr.
Nixon reacted to Clifford as
dreamers will to men about real-
ity. To instruct the President is
to insult him.
His invitation to visit Romania
distressingly suggests that word
about him is going around the
capitals of the world. The Com-
munist world may fall apart, but
the international of hustlers en-
dure. Everett Dirksen is our major
Romanian statesman. Whatever it
is called, the Romanian form of
government is corruption temper-
ed with despotism.
.A
If Zsa Zsa Gabor ever married
a Communist, you can be sure he'd
be a Romanian. When Mr. Nixon
came in, the, Romanians did not
read his speeches or study his
appointments; they just watched
how Dirksen did with him; he
qualified so superbly as a patsy
that he had not been in office six
months and already he could be
invited to Romania. They'll steal
his shoelaces.
(c) -New York Post
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