E 4dn Studensan D t
Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan
:.JAMES WECHSLER
Vietnam 's politics of imprisonment
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich.
News Phone:
764-0552
Editorials printed in The Michigan Doily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1969
NIGHT EDITOR: NADINE COHODASl
The faculty 35
THIRTY-FIVE MEMBERS of the faculty
here have decided to begin local organ-
ization for the mobilization of anti-war
sentiment at the 'U' this fall. The agita-
tion will, the group hopes, spread to
other campuses and mark the beginnings
,of yet another democratic insurrection to
force an end to "the chicanery and de-
ceit of Washington."
The student-faculty workshop of Sept.
10 will discuss tactics for further mobili-
zation and dramatic means by which
their opposition can be broadcast by
national .media and to make clear to
Washington policy-makers the risks they
run through a continuation of the war.
The activity represents a rebirth of a
McCarthy groundswell that will, provided
it attracts enough followers, force the
warmongerers to abandon the Thieu re-
gime and unilaterally withdraw from
Vietnam.
The movement will differ from the Mc-
Carthy crusade because of its non-elec-
toral, pressure group nature that urgently
seeks a fundamental change in direction
but not necessarily of directors. It will
differ from the teach-in campaign be-
cause of a wider, more respectable mem-
bership. Predominantly it will include the
"forgotten students and faculty," the,
moderate elepnent, who are not ideology-
spouting - radicals, draft resistors, or
freaks, but independent-thinking prag-
matists.
The ideals of this new movement em-
phasize the underlying justice of Ameri-
can democratic methods and intend to
further t h e i r viability and vitality
through a complete usage of every means
of acceptable protest available. What
their tactics resemble is a resurgence of
faith in the populist effect on "public"
policy. The university is. clearly defined
as the 'most valuable agent of society, and
the membership threatens to foster a
palace revolt against the national leader-
ship lest the sacred preserve of rational-
ity, free thought, and free speech be de-
stroyed by a domestic barbarity brought
on by the blunders of foreign policy.
AT FIRST GLANCE, the proposed action
seems very encouraging: an affirma-
tion of virtue by respectable elders of the
substance of controversial protest. Un-
fortunately for the faculty doves, how-
ever, the diverse activities of the student
movement have accelerated the thrust of
its grievances past a one-issue preoccu-
pation with the Vietnam War. The failure
of the McCarthy candidacy, the police
Summuler Staff
MARCIA ABRAMSON .... . ......... ......Co-Editor
CHRIS STEELE. .....Co-Editor
MARTIN HIRSCHMAN .. Summer Supplement Editor
JIM FORRESTER.............Summer Sports Editor
LEE KIRK.........Associate Summer Sports Editor
ERIC PERGEAUX............:..... . . Photo Editor
NIGHT EDITORS: Nadine Cohodasi Martin Hirsch-
man, Judy Sarasohn. Datniel Zwerdling.
riot in Chicago, and the ensuing non-
campaign brought on a wave of cynicism
and apathy toward American institutions
that will be difficult to erase,
Widespread faculty migration into the
ranks of activism upon the campus might
have been welcomed with open arms two
or three years back, but now many will
feel that it is far too late for faculty
members to utilize their steadily-deterio-
rating authority to channel student par-
ticipation in political struggles. As long
as faculty link the continuation of the
war with a future destruction of the
university, without concurrently pushing
for a greater democratization of the in-
stitution, their governing 'urge will only
appear to be asubconscious wish to shore
up their own power. Campuses across the
country have developed a skillful radical;
opposition to the existing regime that
will easily be able to capture such a
movement and push it toward any direc-
tion it wishes to go, if such a limited
orientation is adopted.
ALL OF THIS is not to deny that faculty
There and throughout the nation in
the recent past have been as passionately
against governmental policy as students.
It is not to deny faculty a role in the fu-
ture guerrilla warfare that may very well
be fought in order to change the social,
political, and economic shape of Ameri-
can order. This is only to point out that
faculty initiative will, to many, reek too
much of paternalism designed to bolster
an institution - the university - many
have lost faith in. It will contain too little
empathy with the monentary cares and
contemporary thrusts to capture the van-
guard, or even the ranks, of populism.
Where were you, some will cry, when
we were at the Pentagon? Where were
you, others will add, when we burned our
draft cards? Where were you when the
police rioted in Chicago? Has not the fol-
lowing year convinced you that there is
no truth or beauty in American democ-
racy, that such a movement is a leader-
ship designed token to diminish-our ener-
gies and divert our dedication for wide-
spread change?
IF THE FACULTY thirty-five wishes its
workshop to have any chance of suc-
cess, they should make every effort to
purge their body of any elitist claims to
leadership that would quickly alienate
student involvement on this campus.
They must rest their leadership base up-
on a wide-ranging coalition that could
guarantee the fullest faculty and student
involvement possible. They must utilize
eVery contact with other campuses in
order to further the chances for success.
We have spent entirely too much time
telling each other how much we hate the
war.
-DREW BOGEMA
/JHE CASE of imprisoned Truong
Dinh Dzu, runner-up "peace
candidate" in South Vietnam's
1967 election, is steadily assuming
the dimension of a critical poli-
tical scandal. It may offer a deci-
sive clue to the seriousness-or
lack of it-of the Saigon regime
in the peace negotiations, and of
Washington's will or desire to deal
with the intransigence of the
Thieu-Ky junta.
The latest word on the affair
came yesterday from David
Truong, Dzu's 23-year-old Stan-
ford-educated son who has been
staging a valiant one-man fight-
for-freedomcampaign in his
father's behalf here.
Accordingtorinformation David
has obtained from what must be
described as "reliable sources" in
Saigon (I have reason to believe
they are wholly authoritative),
Dzu, suffering from a serious
heart ailment, was recently offer-
ed a transfer from prison to a
hospital. The bid followed wide-,
spread publicity accorded a news
conference David had held in this
city at which he described his
father's mistreatment in prison.
But just a few hours before the
transfer was proposed to him, Dzu
received smuggled information
warning him that the hospital
would be a death house. A grenade
would hit his room and the
government would promptly an-
nounce-as it has in similar slay-
ings of opposition leaders - that
the Viet Cong had commItted the
terrorism.
SO DZU LET it be known that
he would prefer the health haz-
ards of prison to the exposed hos-
pital terrain.
"My father is really concerned
now," young Truong said yester-
day. "He desperately needs to be
in a hospital. But the message he
got came from someone in a posi-
tion to know. In prison, at least,
he feels the government has to
assume complete responsibility for
his safety."
To comfortable Americans this
may have the sound of exagger-
ated melodrama. But in Saigon,
Dzu is very much a life-and-
itative, is keenly aware that his
dedicated efforts here-he is now
organizing a Vietnam Political
Freedom Committee - have en-
raged the Thieu-Ky cabal. He has
well-founded r e p o r t s indicating
that his mother was subjected to
intense harassment by Saigon of-
ficials after his voice was raised
here. But he is convinced that si-
lence and inactivity would be even
more perilous to his embattled
father -and all those associated
with him.
TRUONG DINH DZU, who got
900,000 officially recorded ballots
(no one is sure how many were
"lost") in the 1967 balloting, was
initially arrested in September of
that year for allegedly writing a
bad check five years earlier. Later
that month, such pretexts were
put aside; he was seized for
caustic comments he had voiced
about Saigon justice and subjected
to prolonged "house arrest."
Then, in May of last year, he
was rearrested; the key charge
against him was that he had ad-
vocated peace talks with the NLF
and suggested ultimate creation 'f
a coalition government. He was
sentenced to five years in prison
for "actions harmful to the anti-
Communist fighting spirit of the
South Vietnamese people and
armed forces." The "trial" lasted
85 minutes.
As previously reported here.
Sen. Fulbright took up the Dzu
case with Secretary of State Rog-
ers before the Midway conference
and received assurance that it
would be on the agenda there.
Numerous other Senators -rang-
ing all the way from liberal
George McGovern to conservative
Dick Russell and, most recently,
Senate whip Hugh Scott (R-Pa.)
Thien
Ky
death issue-with the regime ob-
viously debating whether his sur-
vival constitutes a larger threat
than would the repercussions of
his elimination. In those circum-
stances a grenade exploded in a
hospital, and promptly attributed
to the VC, would contain clear
elements of a "final solution."
David Truong, a thoughtful, ap-
pealing youth whose past infor-
mation has proved grimly author-
-have responded warmly and af-
firmatively to David Truong's per-
sonal pleas.
BUT SAIGON tenaciously "e-
fuses to liberate the ailing dis-
senter. When David obtained an'
audience with a State Dept. offi-
cial not long ago, he received a
friendly hearing but was finally
told: "This government ican only
get so far with Saigon."
The Dzu matter is much bigger
than an isolated injustice. (Many
U.S. Senators and editors could be
jailed for advocating positions
comparable to Dzu's, and Thieu
himself is now engaged in the ne-
gotiations branded criminal when
Dzu urged them.) It has become a
deeply symbolic issue-inside and
outside Vietnam. It caricatures all
high-flown talk of "free elec-
tions." If Saigon dare not risk
freeing Dzu, it is surely unpre-
pared to tolerate any real broad-
ening of its base and any authen-
tic climate of freedom - and is
seemingly unable to arrange the
minimal goal of independent med-
ical aid and sanctuary for him-it
is still as mucP the prisoner of
the Thieu-Ky oligarchy as Lyndon
Johnson tragically became.
Not until and unless Dzu-and
others like him-are liberated can
there be any authentic hope of a
meaningful turn toward peace.
(c) New York Post
The dea('th,:
of the bookstore
(Editor's Note; The following statement was prepared for The Daily by
Student Government Council 'rsident Marty McLaughlin in response to the
Regents' rejection of the University bookstre proposal yesterday.)
By MARTY McLAUGHLIN
THE ACTION of the Regents at their meeting yesterday only it1
lustrates once again the necessity of making the decision-making
authorities responsible to those whom their decisions affect. In the
face of overwhelming student support for the idea of a bookstore and
willingness to bears substantial share of the costs, the Regents refused
to give their consent. The only publicly voiced opposition to the book-
store proposal came from the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, which
does not even belong to the University community.
Unanimously, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conser-
vatives, the Regents refused to cooperate with a genuine student
initiative because they were afraid: afraid that the legislature might
react unfavorably; afraid that the private merchants might take of-
fense; afraid that the store might not succeed, although they could
offer no evidence to support that fear; most of all, they were afraid
that the Regents, who serve as a loyal rubber stamp for the routine
administration proposals, might act on a proposal where the initiative
and direction lay with students, thus opening up a 'Pandora's box,' to
reveal the hideous specter that students could obtain just a little deci-
sion-making power within the University.
Several specious arguments were used against the SGC proposal.
The Regents questioned whether the store would be able to give students
a discount, citing the fact that most university bookstores in the state
do not give discounts.
However, they ignored the fact that all these stores make sub-
stantial profits, in the same way that private bookstores do. The other
universities have decided to use the profits for scholarships, expansion,
or paying off debts. The profits could just as easily be returned directly
to the student body in the form of a discount. If Ulrich's makes a large
profit selling at list price, and no one thinks that Fred Ulrich is going
bankrupt, a University bookstore which needed only to break even
could sell below the list price. This seems a fairly trivial economic pro-
position and yet one which neither the Regents nor the bookstore
owners they consulted have dealt with squarely,.
vi'
N
""Well there goes Cairo' . . '*
ik
Landing men on the moon: A propaganda farce
By DANIEL ZWERDLING
WHILE THE APOLLO 11 hurt-
les toward the moon, the
United States with characteristic
bravado is already decking out the
banners, popping the corks, show-
ering the confetti and starting the
hometown parades in optimistic
celebration of the first moon land-
ing - ignoring the very real pos-
sibilities that the astronauts may
crash to cosmic bits, or be strand-
ed forever and ruin all our plans.
Americans have a penchant for
throwing caution to t h e winds,
chewing cigars before its babies
are born with the back-slapping
bravado of a man who never
dreams one of his efforts can go
wrong. If it's American it has to
work. The government had rocket-
side grandstands stuffed with
world dignitaries at the launch
to prove it; the corporate public
had moon day color television
sales in support.
And now that President Nixon
has proclaimed Monday a nation-
al holiday we are buying American
flags and packing picnic lunches
in prepature patrotic salute to the
moon landing.
EnThe publicity of the voyage, in
fact, has eclipsed t h e scientific
achievement. America has sucked
the mission for its prestige and
apparently has forgotten to con-
sider its technological implica-
tions and purpose.
So the moon-landing attempt
why. Moon shots, like movie stars
and Sir Chesterton's lone sailing
voyage around the world, give us
ready-packaged human heroics,
plastic opiates for the drudgeries
and catastrophies of real life.
When the Apollo'goes up, Amer-,
icans can lift their eyes to the
moon, and quite literally t u r n
them from the stench right here
at home.
Good salve it is - for o n c e
newspapers splash stirring copy
which pre-empts Vietnam death
counts, a n d Nixon sends silver
peace plaques to a planet where
there are no Vietcong to refuse
them.
American sell has turned t h e
Apollo rocket into a giant Briggs
hot dog with seven million pounds
of thrust.
Well, why not? A moon landing,
after all, is exciting. The moon:
man has poesized it, worshipped it
and made love to it for thousands
of years. Now finally he is grasp-
tng the moon, destroying the in-
cense and mystery, and replacing
them with a museum vial of moon
dirt.
GRANTED, landing men on the
moon may be aesthetically rous-
ing. But does it serve a useful pur-
pose? Will the moon shot dra-
matically increase man's knowl-
edge of himself, help solve his des-
perate problems of survival tear-
ing him apart here at home?
ture worthwhile. Vietnam and the
military is where the real money
is destructively wasted, money
which could'support both human
rehabilitation on earth and ex-
ploration on the moon.
However, we still have the space
program to contend with. And so
far, its best products have been
some national propaganda a n d
pomp and full-color pages in Life
of exquiste .Hasselblad photos.
THE SOVIET UNION has ap-
parently concentrated on straight
forward, sober space exploration
with largely unmanned capsules-
consequently, they expend less and
risk less. There is no reason why
the United States cannot follow
the same approach, and turn to
unmanned missions for science's
sake.
We really do not need men in
our capsules. The experiments
they perform are largely busy-
work designed to relieve boredom;
serious tasks can be completely
computerized; and even NASA: ad-
mits the space photos are prettier
than they are useful. Scientifical-
ly, manned and unmanned shots
accomplish the s a mn e thing -
contrary to the testimony of one
top NASA official, who sneered re-
cently that even if the Soviet craft
does scoop up- some moon dirt, the
American samples will be m o r e
valuable.
Inanimate capsules, of course,
THE REGENTS. also argued 'that it would be uinf air to impose
on all the students a $1.75 levy for the bookstore, even though tihe stu-
dent body agreed to this in referendum. The reason given is that this
levy would* by undemocratic, without the consent of the governed,
unless voluntary. The real reason is a fear that students will in the
future be trying to gain more say over the University's financial plans.
Allowing students to determine what their own fee money should be
used for, even so trivial an amount as $1.75, would in the eyes of those
who now exercise total control over fees be a dimimution of their
authority, something to be fought at all costs.
AFTER REJECTING SGC's proposal, the Regents did a very in-
teresting thing. They considered a 'compromise' proposal prepared by
President Fleming and the administration backing creation of a book-
store if SGC could raise the money through voluntary contributions.
And they rejected it. In other words, even if it would not cost the
University a penny, the Regents will not consent to a bookstore, they
will not give it the benefit of being able to write off state sales tax
by being associated with the University. So much for conscience qualms
about voluntary contributions. The Regents real concern is revealed,
that is, that the students not be given any unfair advantage over private
merchants. The virtues of free enterprise, the extortion of profit out of
a captive market, these are more important to the authorities of the
University than the manifest desire of the student body they should
be here to serve.
Something needs to be said, too, about Fleming's attempted com-
promise. At the last Regent's meeting, in June, Fleming was. openly
hostile to the bookstore proposal. He made misleading comparisons
between the Wisconsm student bookstore-initial capital $6,000, and
the proposed University bookstore-initial capital $250,000, to try to dis-
credit SGC's plan. He consistently took the lead in attacking the
proposal, playing the role of devil's advocate, even though opponents
of the store were well represented among the Regentsand the book-
store owners.
Now, trying hard to be subtle, he comes up with one of his more
blatant attempts to co-opt students by paying lip service to the ideal,
that is, the bookstore, while satisfying the powers that be by making
the ideal impossible to achieve. The effect of his proposal would be to
require SGC to choose between rejecting a 'sincere' offer of Regental
sinnnrt for the hnnkstore which is meaninole withnnt funding, and
*
A