5ipe Siian itijg Seventy-eight years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan Pausing On the way to the moon 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. 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 al reprints. AY, JULY 15, 1969 NIGHT EDITOR: NADINE COHODAS TUESD Poli e harassment MAYOR ROBERT HARRIS said, "we can't make war on our youth," but at least some of the police of Ann Arbor are out to prove him wrong. They have opened a war in this town against the young people they hate-a war which is far from over. On Friday nights in Ann Arbor some people go to the movies or to a TG. Some people go out to dinner and some sit on ,the Diag and wonder about the night. Whatever people do Friday nights they usually try to wear away the tedium of the week. The same is, true of the people who gathered at the Whistle Stop restaurant on South Forest Ave. last Fri- day night. It wasn't much different from a normal week night at the Whistle Stop, ju'st a few more people. The regular group of 20 or 30 was crowded into and around the restaurant's cramped quarters, read- ing newspapers and eating sandwiches. Some sat inside and some sat and stood outside around the table and three chairs which stand on a small cement patio, belonging to the restaurant,, between the front door and the sidewalk. As Whistle Stop manager Richard Gartee explains, "It's hot in here and people would rather sit outside." The people were typical of those who frequent the Whistle Stop-young, hir- sute, not at all the Brooks Brothers type and not too dissimilar from the people who gather in any number of coffee shops and restaurants around town. BUT THE PEOPLE in the Whistle Stop have one distinguishing characteristic. They are hated by many of the police. The police hold them to blame for the South University incidents of mid-June and on that Friday night last week they decided to wreak a little vengeance on them. Around 12:30 a.m. that night two of the police who had been patrolling South University, as has been their practice since the June "disturbances," walked slowly over to the people gathered near, the Whistle Stop and told them the table and chairs would have to be moved in- side along with the people Whom the police claimed were blocking the side- walk. 'The 'police then walked off saying they would return in a few minutes to see if their orders had been followed. Gartee, who had objected in vain to the police order on the grounds that the outdoor table had been maintained for several months without incident and that the table was on restaurant property, went inside and called the police depart- ment. The sergeant who answered his call told him he knew of no reason why the table could not remain outside unless a complaint about noise had been made. He was unaware of such a complaint (there was none). JUST AFTER Gartee hung up the first two policemen joined by a third re- turned to the Whistle Stop. They pushed people behind the line that marks -the edge of the Whistle Stop's property. By this time the taunting had begun, but there was nothing serious. People' were mostly asking for badge numbers. One of the people who finally managed to copy the numbers was Jackie .Evens, an employe of the restaurant. She had been instructed to do so by Gartee. Having copied down the numbers Miss Evans began walking back into the Whistle Stop and, according to m o r e than 20 witnesses, yelled to Gartee, "I've got the pigs' numbers." That did it. Through some magic, un- known to anyone but the minions of the law, the word "pigs" became obscenity and the pristine propriety of everyone's first grade reader was overthrown. The police plunged into the crowd brandish- ing riot sticks after Miss Evans, who was still unaware of the heinous nature of her deed. In their rush to apprehend Miss Evans, witnesses say, the police managed to knock down Grant Fischer, also an em- ploye 'of the restaurant. Both were then arrested. ACCORDING TO THE records of the court Miss Evans has been charged with violation of section 9:62 (9) of the municipal code which states that "no person shall use vile, profane or obscene language in any public place." The statute goes no further in defining just what word or words it covers. Grant was charged with violating section 9:62 (28). This states that "no person shall obstruct, resist, hinder, or oppose any policeman . . . in the dis- charge of-his duties, as such." But that wasn't the end of it. The police came back after depositing the two in a police van and continued to enforce their order that everyone must stand be- hind the line. Audrey Simmons made the mistake of taking one step outside the line in her attempt to compile a list of witnesses for the two just arrested. She was arrested and charged on section 9:62 (18) which says "no person shall loiter on any street or sidewalk or in any park or public building or conduct himself in any public place so as to ob- struct the free and uninterrupted pas- sage of the public." There can be no question that the charges brought against these people should be dropped immediately. ,BUT THERE IS more to this incident than the occasional vagaries of the law. It is, in fact, a flagrant example of police harassment. The problem won't disappear if the legal system finds, as it should, that these people committed no crimes. The harassment will still be there. That same Friday night, other people in Ann Arbor were having fun. T h e r e were parties that flowed into the street and people drinking in public. But the police weren't there. During the fall, as one astute council- man suggested last week, the police could make 5,000 arrests at any football game. But they don't. Everyone should be allowed the same treatment by the police. They should not be allowed to wink benevolently at some and lash out at others. The first step the city should take in alleviating the situa- tion is to fire the police involved in the Whistle Stop arrests. After that the city should establish an effective poliee re- view boardto curb the vindictiveness of the police, and make their /enforcement of the law follow patterns equitable and fair to all. WITH THE POLICE harassment that goes on in this town-of the people at Trans-Love, the people at the Whistle Stop, the black people, and most recently the members of a conference of under- ground newspaper editors-it is amazing that there has not been a violent re- action by those harassed. And it is small wonder that the police are known as pigs. -THE CO-EDITORS By DAVE CIIUDWIN and MARVIN RUBENSTEIN , CAPE KENNEDY FOR BETTER or for worse we are going' to the moon. The machines are ready. the men trained, the money spent. The countdown has begun for mankind's first attempt to reach another celestrial object. It is a voyage dreamed of for thousands of years. Tantalizingly close, at least in cosmic terms, the moon h a s fascinated mankind for as long as we can remember. Our language and literature are replete with references to the bright beacon of the night. As e a r 1y as 160 A.D. Lucian of Greece wrote of a flight to the m o o n. Hundreds of years later Dumas, Verne, Voltaire, and Poe told tales of lunar travel. But the stories were just that -- ima- ginary tales. It was not until early in the twentieth century that Robert Goddard. Hermann Oberth, and Konstantin Tsiol- kovsky independently laid the foundation for space travel. As is often the case, it took a war to get the young science of rocketry on 'its feet. With Hitler's blessings Wernher von Braun and his compatriots of the German Society for Space Travel set up shop in Peenemun- de and developed the V-2 rocket. The rockets' devastating effect on Lon- don made sure missiles would never be ig- nored again. After W o r I d War II Von Braun and his group surrendered to the Americans, coming here to form the nuc- leus of what is now our space effort. A different kind of war brought rocketry and space travel to big-time status. Cold war rivalries with Russia led to the de- velopment of larger missiles to carry new- ly developed nuclear warheads. T h e Eisenhower administration, how- ever, placed low priority on the u s e of these missiles for space travel. A small mil- itary program was given limited funds to rocket. More ambitious proposals such as a flight to the moon, were rejected. Soon after, J o h n F. Kennedy became President and almost immediately he was beset by crisis. The abortive Bay of Pigs invasion sent national prestige to a low point.' Then, on April 12, 1961, the Russians launched the late Yuri Gagarin into im- mortality as the first human to travel in outer space. In a series of conferences Ken- nedy decided the U.S. must challenge So- viet superiority in space. Accepting recommendations for an en- larged space program, Kennedy went be- fore Congress on May 25, 1961 and asked that America put men on the moon and return them safely before the end of the decade. "NO SINGLE space project in this per- iod will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range explor- ation of space," he explained. Now, eight years and $24 billion later,. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Col- lins, and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin are set to accomplish that goal. Work on the Apollo flight plan was be- gun years ago. Every one of the hundreds of details has been planned, tested, and revised countless times. Hopefully the re- sult will be a landing on the moon at 4:23 p.m. EDT next Sunday afternoon. Their Apollo spacecraft atop a three- stage Saturn V rocket, Astronauts Arm- strong, Collins, and Aldrin are scheduled to begin their odyssey Wednesday with blast-. off at 9:32 a.m. The monstrous Saturn V, gulping 15 tons of, fuel per second, puts the trio of vet- eran astronauts into a parking orbit around the earth. After thoroughly checking out their spacecraft, the moonmen relight the third stage engine for five minutes to put themselves on a path to the moon, SOON AFTER, the astronauts maneu- ver the mothership -- the command and service modules - to about fifty feet away from the third stage. The mothership then turns around and links up with the lunar landing module, still nestled in the rocket stage. Docked nose-to-nose, t h e mothership, codename Columbia, and the lunar mod- ule, codename Eagle, abandon the third stage and continue the 73 hour coast to- wards the moon. Saturday afternoon the astronauts ap- proach the moon, swinging around its back side. If all systems are ".go" Armstrong fires the spacecraft engine at 1:36 p.m. to put Eagle and Columbia into lunar orbit. Then, after a day of rest, surface obser- vation, and equipment checks, Armstrong and Aldrin crawl from Columbia to Eagle through a tunnel. At 3:14 p.m. Sunday Eagle separates from Columbia, which re- mains in moon orbit, and heads for a land- ing, AN AUTOMATIC computer and radar system fires Eagle's engines to lower the spacecraft towards its landing site in the dry Sea of Tranquility. At an altitude of 200 feet Armstrong takes over manual con- trol, hovering over the surface looking for a smooth landing spot. Finding an appropriate area, he lowers Eagle at 3 miles per hour to the lunar sur- face. The engine shuts off 15 feet above the moon's soil and Eagle drops to the sur- face. So at 4:23 p.m. on July 20, 1969 two men land on the moon, fulfilling the schedule set eight years before. Back on e a r t h, though s o m e debate' the wisdom of the trip, mankind will never be the same again. For just as we have conquered the seas, the land, and the air we have now con- quered space. And the moon is the first of many new frontiers. eventually launch a grapefruit-size satel- lite into earth orbit. THE TURNING POINT came on Octo- ber 4, 1967 when IRussia launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, an event call- ed a "technological Pearl Harbor" by Sen. Stuart Symington. The result was public uproar, Cqngres- sional investigations, and a viable space program. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was established July 29, 1958 to peacefully explore space. Eisenhower, reluctantly moving under pgublic pressure, approved Project Mercury to orbit a man around the earth and the development of a 1.5 million pound thrust 4i AMES WECHSLER: IWiting for ext year THE WORD from Washington is that President Nixon h a s privately told five of his Republi- can Senatorial brethren that he is aiming for virtually total with- drawal of 'U.S. troops from Viet- nam before the Congressional elections of November, 1970. A dispatch from Robert J. Donovan, veteran correspondent of the Los Angeles Times-Wash- ington Post syndicate, discloses that the President informed the group that it would be disastrous for the GOP if large numbers of Americans were still in Vietnam when the 1970 contests took place. It was unclear to the visitors, with Mr. Nixon's emotional re- joinder to Clark Clifford. AND NOW' that the story is out, for perusal in Hanoi and other places. the question emerges more sharply than ever: is there any excuse for the continued ex- penditure of American life on that dead-end battlefield? Must thous- ands more endure death and dis- ability while Mr. Nixon seeks to mask our ultimate retreat by sanctioning such military follies as the Apbia Mountain expedi- tion and other tragic sideshows that will have no crucial bearing on the outcome? How long will The argument is an ancient tired one. It is reduced to absurd- ity by the spectacle of the Presi- dent himself confiding to five Senators his recognition that time is running out on him, and that he must somehow bring the boys home by autumn of next year. Surely he must have known that a "leak" was inevitable; he- has spent too much time around Washington to believe such a meeting could remain secret. Conceivably he wanted the news to get out in this fashion to pacify an increasingly impatient domestic opinion. The real result should be to inflame rather than sedate. For it' confirms what many of us have long believed and argued - that lives are b e i n g squandered in an interval when military action has lost all real meaning and when only the pro- cedural process of disengagement - and dissociation from the Sai- gon cabal--is the hang-up. But if next autumn, why not now? IT IS SAD enough that the new Administration did not move at once in January on a dramatic scale but chose instead to perpet- uate the fiction of continuity in our relations with Saigon. That was Mr. Nixon's first great decis- ion - or indecision. He is still floundering on his way to the exit, while young men perish and the nation's home front remains para- lyzed and explosive. It is highly unlikely that Hanoi first detected Mr. Nixon's time- table when it read the Donovan dispatch. What Nixon told the Senators ir private has long been accepted as politically axiomatic in public-that his Administra- tion would be in mortal peril if the war was still being fought a year from November. Actually, time may be much shorter; the prospect of major campus con- vulsions this fall is steadily grow- ing. In any case we are dealing with adversaries wiho have fought for 25 years. They have seen one American President driven into exile by this war. They know the essential vulnerability of the Sai- gon regime. Does anyone seriously believe they will be tempted to modify their terms - especially on the key issue of coalition - if we sustain this madness until next year? In Theodore White's forthcom- ing volume on the 1968 Presiden- tial race, he confirms - on the basis of what must have been ac- cess to key sources - a report first published last fall that the Saigon regime sabotaged a major turn toward peace in Paris on the eve of our elections. It appar- ently did so at the urging of Anna Chan Chennault; Chinese-b o r n widow of Gen. Chennault; in her one-woman campaign she con- vinced Saigon that a Nixon vic- tory would insure a "hard line's and that any accord' in P a r i s would imperil his chances. Saigon sabotaged the peace move. White's inquiry convinced h i m that Nixon had no hand in Mrs. Chennault's intrigues. But the rel- 'I 4C JE }a r* "No, those ore rocks Goy. Rockefeller brought back from South America !" I. Letters to the Editor f Y Donovan said, whether the sweep- we go through the motions of ing disengagement was "a settled "solidarity" with the Thieu-Ky plan" or a "deep hope." But one regime when, in the end, that Senator said he was "depressed" cabal will have to be dissolved and when the meeting began a n d replaced by one form of coalition "elated" when it was over. or another to achieve the peace By the time this comment an- admittedly vital to GOP Congres- pears, the White House may have signal fortunes m 1970 and the issued' a variety of clarifying com- fate of Mr. Nixon's Administra- nin~i ri n p t blnk, tion two years later? U21umques ues.gneu)to o lan eL an blur the disclosure. But it has an unmistakable tone of authentic- ity (and virtually the same story appears in the current issue of Time magazine). It is consistent Not many days ago Vice Presi- dent Agnew was shrilly assailing critics of the Vietnam war f o r prolonging the conflict by rais- ing the enemy's hopes. S'C demands To the Editor: IN A DAILY editorial Tuesday (8 July), Daniel Zwerdling argued. 1) that SGC is right in demand- bg a) votes on all University committees where SGC appointees sit without vote, b) parity in membership on all faculty and ad- ministration committees dealing with matters significantly affect- ing students, and Ec) power to in- struct administrators within the Office of Student Affairs (OSA) ; and 2) that SGC's tactic fits its demands. Like Zwerdling, I think SGC's d e m a n d s make sense. Unlike Zwerdling, I think the tactic poor- ly fitted to the demands. Because I don't want to be an after-the- disaster commentator, I'll offer an alternative now, before the disaster. To win its demands, SGC has declared that any committee not constituted as demanded will have its SGC appointees withdrawn. MY ALTERNATIVE is: a) Where students are members but cannot vote, SGC should instruct its appointees to vote, to demand their votes be counted, and to make business impossible where they are not granted the vote. b) Where parity in membership is desired, SGC should appoint the number of students necessary to achieve parity, instruct them all to act as full participants, and make it clear that they will at- tend and participate as if they were full members until they have been officially recognized to be so. c) Where an administrator is to be made subject to an ad- visory or policy board, SGC should find clear issues (like a tuition increase or increase in dorm rates) and force the administra- tor to go along on each 'such siue until obedience bencomes the other side. To get more power, SGC gives up what it has, leaving Fleming and those under him the opportunity to make all sorts Df telling propaganda. (For ex- ample : "How can we talk about giving students votes when they don't even come to meetings .of those committees?" or "If they want to participate, they can. We haven't closed any doors. If they don't, that's their right. We're not going to force them.") THOSE WHO'D rather not have students on committees need do ,nothing' to have their ,way. After the first- shock of with- drawal, even those faculty and administrators who think they like having students around will begin to get used to their ab- sence. Business will not stop. Unless SGC then goes on to adopt a tactic like the oneI recommend ror ones far more radical), time will actually work against SGC's demands, habit always being an impressive argument to those left in comfort. The alternative does not give up seats just won, involves acting out what is being demanded (by far the best way to dramatize de- mands), and forces faculty and administrators to say no over and over again in all sorts of awkward and unpleasant circumstances, making it likely that the longer they say no, the more they will want to say yes. They cannot for- get the demands because they will have to face them again with each meeting. SOC wants to get what it has demanded. SGC has enough stu- dents to cover all committees where it warnts parity, votes, or more power. (If not, then the administration has a point when it says students don't really take an interest.) There can be no excuse- then for choosing the tactic SGC has chosen. There t~v 4- I k 4L- -M[5 MOM TRATIM& AND U5 oM - . AMVtN K cu- ! 1 ' .. C f"' l1 I