Ity Simijn PaU
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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1969
s the individual opinions of staff writers
noted in all reprints.
NIGHT EDITOR: NADINE COHODAS
Deploying
multiple warheads
MANY TIMES HAVE the people of this
country watched quietly as their
government erected newer and frighten-
ing means of destruction. They have seen
countless times the mounting of more
p o w e r f u I and sophisticated weapons
whose only effect has been to further
weaken the tenuous security of the globe.
Yesterday, on the eve of the Senate's
decision on President Nixon's Safeguard
anti-ballistic missile system, the exist-
enc'e of another such weapons system was
officially confirmed. John S. Foster, Jr.,
director of research and engineering for
the Defense Department told a House
Foreign Affairs subcommittee that mul-
tiple warhead capacity has already been
added to the existing Polaris submarine
A-3 missile. .
Foster was quick to point out to the
committee, which is investigating the ad-
visability of a mutual moratorium with
the Soviet Union on the flight testing of
multiple warhead missiles, that the mis-
siles already deployed are not independ-
ently targeted. Unlike the MIRV which
would be able to deliver nuclear warheads
at targets separated by hundreds of miles,
the MRV which Foster described would
deliver several warheads in a pattern
centered around a single target.
THE MIRV WARHEAD, according to
military spokesmen, is in advanced
development stages in both the United
States and the Soviet Union.
Foster concluded his testimony before
the subcommittee by calling for the pro-
posed moratorium on MIRV testing.
Stu m er Staff
MARCIA ABRAMSON ........ . ............. Co-Editor
CHRIS STEELE........... ............... Ca-Editor
MARTIN HIRSCHMAN .. Summer Supplement Editor
JIM FORRESTER .. . .......... Summer Sports Editor
LEE KIRK .......... Associate Summer Sports Editor
ERIC PERGEAUX......................Photo Editor
NIGHT EDITORS: Nadine Cohodas, Martin Hirsch-
man, Judy Sarasohn, Daniel Zwerdhing.
Although moratorium on the testing of
MIRV is still possible at this point the
hopes for larger accord will be signifi-
cantly worsened by the revelation of
MRV deployment. Because of the impos-
sibility of determining the strength of
opposing nuclear forces, when equipped
with MRV capability, without direct on
site inspection agreement will now be
much more difficult to achieve.
-CHRIS STEELE
No comment
THE GIRL SCOUTS of America filed a
$1-million suit against a poster com-
pany yesterday, charging that the de-
piction on a poster of a pregnant Scout
and the motto "be prepared" was a
"wanton and malicious defamation of
the Scouts.
. The Girl Scouts charged that a poster
of a girl "in an advanced state of preg-
nancy, wearing the official Junior Girl
Scout uniform" was "intended to impute
unchastity and moral turpitude to mem-
bers."
The poster shows a smiling girl in full
Junior Girl Scout uniform and insignia,
including the green beret with "GS" in
a trefoil, and a New York troop patch on
her right shoulder, in one corner is the
motto "Be prepared."
The plaintiffs, a 57-year-old organi-
zation that now numbers 3,750,000 girls
from 7 to 17 and adult leaders, alleged
that the poster was "designed to destroy"
the association of Girl Scout symbols and
aims with "truth, loyalty, helpfulness,
friendliness, courtesy, purity, kindness,
obedience, cheerfulness, thriftiness and
kindred virtues among girls."
-N.Y. Times
0 August 5
A ci
By WALTER SHAPIRO
Associate Editorial Director, 1968-69
First of two parts
REMEMBER WHEN television
was good enough to be called
a "vast wasteland"?
Hearings began yesterday on a
bill that would remove, whatever
small chance exists of halting
commercial television's determined
efforts to extend the lower limits
of mediocrity.
Rarely are legislative battles in
Washington simply a matter of
the good guys versus the bad guys.
But it is hard to view the bill in-
troduced by Senator John Pastore
in any other context.
The Senate Communications
subcommittee, chaired by Pastore,
began hearings on- a bill which
would forbid the Federal Com-
munications Commission to accept
competing applications for the re-
newal of broadcast licenses.
The bill means that the F.C.C.
would have to evaluate broadcast
license renewal applications in a
vacuum. Only in those extremely
rare cases when the Commission
decides not to renew a license,
could it accept a competing ap-
plication for the frequency.
Although sounding rather in-
nocuous, the bill might serve as a
textbook example of why regula-
tory agencies can't regulate.
Traditionally the F.C.C. has
been rather lax with the broad-
cast industry. But when for the
first time in its history, the Com-
sission refused to renew the li-
cense of a major television station
last January and instead awarded
the facility to a competing ap-
plicant, the industry was thrown
into panic.
The Pastore bill is the industry's
answer to this uppity regulatory
agency.
Since the F.C.C. had shown
faint signs of making license re-
newals more than a pro forma
charade, Congress is being pres-
sured to restrictsthe agency's :ati-
tude in these cases.
Under the communications Act
of 1934, licenses for broadcast
frequencies are subject to renewal
by the F.C.C. every three years.
The Commission is required by the
Act to hold a comparative hearing
whenever a competitive applica-
tion is filed against a station ap-
plying for license renewal.
These provisions are almost
meaningless since the F.C.C. has
a staff of 17-including program
analysts, accountants, lawyers and
engineers-who must review over
2500 broadcast license renewals a
year. Including cases where com-
peting applications were filed, the
Commission held hearings on only
39 license renewal application be-
tween 1959 and 1968.
SET AGAINST this background,
it must have seemed almost rev-
olutionary to the broadcast in-
dustry when the F.C.C. by a 3-1
vote denied the renewal of
WHDH-TV in Boston last Jan. 23.
With three members either ab-
sent or timidly abstaining, the
Commission based its decision pri-
marily on concentration of media
control. For WHDH is owned by
the Boston Herald-Traveller, a
newspaper which also owns local
AM and FM radio stations, as well
as having extensive cable television
interests in the area.
The F.C.C.'s gadfly, the youth-
ful Nicholas Johnson, noted in a
concurring opinion, "In America's
eleven largest cities there is not a
single network-affiliated VHF
television station that is inde-
pendently and locally owned. They
are all owned by the networks,
multiple station owners or major
local newspapers."
Johnson concluded by saying
that the WHDH decision opened
the door "for, local citizens to chal-
lenge media giants in their local
community at renewal time with
some hope of success .."
But traditionally the tanding
of local citizens before the F.C.C.
was virtually nil. Short of filing
a competing application (a proce-
dire which before the WHDH case
seemed an exercise in futility), a
citizen's rights before the Commis-
sion were all but limited to writing
letters of complaint.
EARLY IN JUNE, however, the
rights of citizens' groups before
the F.C.C. was affirmed from a
surprising source.
Warren Burger, writing his last
opinion as a U.S. Court of Appcals
judge, overturned the F C.C. and
held that the United Church of
Christ had been unjustly barred
from appearing before the com-
mission in opposition to tne re-
newal of the license of WLBT-TV
in J a c k s a n , Mississippi. The
church had tried to bring WLBT's
long history of blatant, on-the-air
racism before the F.C.C.
In a precedent-making decision.
Burger argued that the television
viewer, or groups representing
viewers, qualify as interested par-
ties to appear before the Commis-
sion in license renewal cases. In
line with this reasoning the Court
returned the WLBT case to the
Commission for rehearing.
But the Commission in original-
ly renewing WLBT's license by a
5-2 vote indicated its preference
for inadequate service over risking
the possibility of no service at all.
Short of bankruptcy, criminal
misconduct, or a competitive ap-
plication th'e F.C.C. still will not
deny, renewal of a broadcast li-
cense.
Even when inclined to take ef-
fective action, the Commission
has been handcuffed by its inabil-
ity to measure broadcast perform-
ance.
The F.C.C. has been forced to
resort to such crude devices as
measuring the amount of air time
devoted to public service program-
ming. Although several Commis-
sioners take such quantitative
yardsticks seriously, these for-
mulas merely fill Saturday and
Sunday mornings with allegedly
"public service" programming,
generally of the most banal va-
riety,
The importance of competitive
applications stems from just this
absence of any qualitative measure
of broadcast performance.
Robert Thorpe, an aide to Nich-
olas Johnson, explained that al-
though "the Commission will not
revoke a license solely for anti-
trust reasons, allegations of con-
centration of media ownership
would be a potent factor in a
comparative proceeding."
NOW THAT THE RENEWAL
application of WLBT is again be-
fore the Commission, a competing
application has been filed by a
black group which includes Aaron
Henry, Chairman of the Mississip-
pi NAACP, and Charles EVrS. the
recently elected mayor of Favette.
Mississippi.
This black-oriented challenge to
WLBT is not unique.
Ben Kubasik, Executive Director
of the National Citizens Comtnut-
tee for Broadcasting, said -n an
interview, "The existing broadc st
legislation has never been test ed,
but it provides awfully good
grounds for minorities to chal-
lenge the white-dominated pre-
serves in major broadcasting to-
day."
In addition to WLBT, there are
currently five competing applica-
tions pending against major tele-
vision stations. Challenges to
WPIX in New York (owned by the
New York Daily News), WNAC
in Boston (owned by RKO Gen-
eral ) and KNBC in Los Angeles
(one of five VHF stations owned
by the N a t i o n a l Broadcasting
Company) have been filed by
groups claiming to represent, at
least in part, the, local black com-
munities.
IT IS CONCEIVABLE that some
of these ghetto-oriented applica-
tions have been designed by clever
businessmen to play on the liceral
sympathies of Commission inem-
bers. But the potential impact of
black-controlled television should
not be minimized.
Senator Philip Hart noted in
hearings of the Communications
subcommittee last March 12, "Re-
-cent studies have indicated that
40 per cent of the poor black chil-
dren and 30 per cent of the poor
white children, compared to 15 per
cent of the middle-class white, be-
lieve that what they see on tele-
vision represents an accurate por-
trayal of what life in America is
all about."
Despite integrated deodorant
commercials and Negro situation
comedies, television has been al-
most as laggard as newspapers in
attempting to transcend racial
stereotypes.
The Pastore bill runs couniter to
far more than merely the inter-
ests of the suburban elite already
catered to by educational televis-
ion. It runs counter to the inter-
ests of everyone except the tre-
mendously powerful broadcast
industry,
tizen's place in the wasteland
in
University planning and
the
North
ampus myth
By MARTIN ZIMMERMAN
Daily Guest Writer
"AN UNPLANNED CITY," John Kenneth
Galbraith has noted, "has as m u c h
chance of being beautiful as an unmade
bed." Similarly, a poor plan is more often
than not, worse than no plan at all. There
is substantial evidence to indicate that this
is precisely the case at the University of
Michigan. Specifically, it is poor planning
which has made the campus uglier; it is
poor planning which has caused the area
called North Campus to grow to its pres-
ent amorphous state; it is poor planning
which has placed a higher priority on land
and building costs per se than upon edu-
cational and community needs; finally, it
is poor planning which has excluded the
students from a meaningful role in Uni-
versity physical expansion.
Such assertions may no doubt come as
surprise to the uninitiated. It is a curious
anomoly that the topic of physical plan-
ning has rarely been broached by the Uni-
versity at l a r g e. Certainly its influence
should warrant this. Ostensibly, at least,r
the central campus, t h e medical center,
and the north campus are all being' devel-
oped according to plans submitted to the
university and approved by the regents.
Vital questions such as apportionment of
state funds for engineering versus lit
school facilities, use of student funds for
the proposed theater, whether to expand
the bus system which already costs well
over $100,000 a year, whether the Univer-
sity' Events Building should have had pri-
ority over badly needed intramural facili-
ties - all t h e s e are physical planning
questions of paramount concern. Yet, dis-
cussion of these questions by the Univer-
sity community has rarely occurred except
on an infrequent ad hoc basis. The whole
problem of the role of physical planning
bas not been subjected to any public de-
bate at all,
Why is this so? Part of the explanation
is because physical planning has tradition-
ally been relegated to professional special-
ists. Such data as enrollment projections,
building square footage, funding, and land
acquisition, have been considered too re-
mote and complex to be understood by the
University community. Thus it had best
be left to exoerts.
university, than it naturally follows that
any attempt to change the basic institu-
tional structure should in the process ad-
dress itself to the role of physical ;plan-
ning as well.
Underlying all these points of view is the
lingering fear t h a t the University has
reached the point of no r e t u r n. It has
grown at such a rate during the last two
decades that it is now out of control. There
is ample data to warrant this. Since 1950
building investment has tripled, building
area has increased by two-thirds, and en-
rollment h a s practically doubled. Today
the University has 36,000 students, 20,000
employes; it owns 12% of Ann Arbor land;
it contains over 14 million square feet of
building area which has a value of close to
$200 million. In the future, administrators
are thinking in terms of enrollments as
high as 70,000. Current plans are for it to
exceed 50,000, w i t h a 70% increase in
building area and 60% increase- in build-
ing investment.
The result has been a manefestation of
the "size syndrome." Mark Killingsworth,
former editor of The Daily, commented in
a 1967 editorial that "size is a problem for
a 35,000 student university with a budget
of nearly $175 million, and the university
community - student, faculty, adminis-
tration, and Regents - have all recognized
this. Size means inflexibility - an inabili-
ty to introduce reforms or merely to try
something new. Size means anonymity...
Size means mechanization - a grinding
bureaucratic mentality which affects ev-
eryone . . .'"
THE "SIZE SYNDROME" is more or less
a psychological manifestation of the idea
of the "multiversity." This has been defin-
ed by George Beadle, president'of the Uni-
versity of Chicago, as "a series of colleges
held together by a central heating system,"
(or in the case of the University of Michi-
gan - a cow pasture tied to four campuses
by an unknown bus schedule).
The concept of the multiversity has been
perceived from two radically opposing
points of view. On one hand, many share
the deterministic notion that the institu-
tion is going through an evolutionary pro-
cess which cannot be basically altered. The
only alternative is perpetuation - a basic
roasaefnrir. o+ the hii s, in.at,, nn
at this point. What is considered important
is the commitment to revolt.
In neither case does physical planning
imply a way of controlling or reforming the
institutional structure. In the first case it
assumes an anonymous role of recording
the expedient; in the second case it is con-
sidered totally undesirable and irrelevant.
There still remains, however, the hope
that the idea of the university can be re-
stored to its traditional stature; that the
institution can find its own self-propor-
tions; that it can be controlled - not by a
computer; that the basic changes which
-are necessary do not require destruction of
the total institution. Clark Kerr, in h i s
b o o k, The Uses of the University, com-
ments that the University, like the prehis-
toric dinosaur, may become extinct. But he
adds that "the problems of today and to-
morrow may inherently be problems of in-
ternal resolution. The University may now
again need to find out whether it has a
brain as well as a body."
An understanding of the role of physical
planning in the past can help focus on this
question. To what extent has it been det-
rimental to the balance between academic
process and the environment? How h a s
physical planning fostered the idea of the
multiversity? What kind of premises does
it really rest upon? An explanation of the
North Campus myth can do much to ex-
plain this.
North Campus is the most blatant ex-
ample of the fiasco of physical planning at
the University. In the last 16 years there
have been three different physical plan-
ning proposals made for this area. In spite'
of this, North Campus is not a "campus"
in any meaningful sense of the word, nor
will it ever be. The process of its evolution
is not much different from the pattern of
housing subdivisions scattered around the
outskirts of big cities. These subdivisions
are the urban sprawl of cities, and North
Campus is the urban sprawl of the Univer-
sity. It is devoid of any seriously reasoned
rationale; it is rather a result of a series
of rationalizations which have collectively
committed the University almost to the
point of no return.
There are a series of reasons given for
the move to North Campus, which either
collectively or individually are simply not
accurate.
LAND COSTS - This excuse is that land
is too expensive around central campus.
City statistics reveal that costs per square
foot in this area range from $4 to $10. In
contrast the land on north campus h a s
cost practically nothing at all. The Re-
gents minutes of February 1953 s t a t e a
typical purchase - 30 acres purchased at
$1050 per acre or only two c e n t s per
square foot.
The case is not simply a comparison of
land costs, however. For one thing, costs
for land immediately adjacent to central
campus are less than further out because
private interests consider it a bad risk ly-
ing as it does in the path of University ex-
pansion. More important than this, how-
ever, is that land costs actually amount to
a small portion of the total cost problem.
For instance, if the education college were
to construct new facilities costing $6 mil-
lion on five acres costing $5 per square
foot, simple arithmatic would show that
the land costs would only amount to 15%
of the total building costs. This becomes
miniscule when other factors such as fac-
ulty salaries and building operation a r e
added. Time in an intangible but signifi-
cant factor as well. If a faculty member
wastes ten minutes a day commuting un-
necessarily between north and central
campus it would cost $150 over a school
year. In a period of twenty to thirty years,
the cost of time wasted could very easily
equal the price originally spent for t h e
land.
CONFLICT WITH COMMUNITY areas
to North Campus is stated in the "Build-
ings Under Study - 1965," report, issued
by the office of the Vice-President f o r
Business and Finance. It states (p.29) that
"the addition of the North Campus in the
1950's served to . . . diminish the need to
extend the Central Campus into establish-
ed community areas." Presumably, t h i s
means respecting the "town and gown" re-
north of Huron street, almost the entire
block south of Mary Markeley dormitory,
and even the site of the Ann Arbor bank
at the corner of South University and East
University.
In fact the percentage of land within
Ann Arbor owned by the University has
doubled from 6 to 12 per cent since 1951
after remaining steady for the previous 30
years? Does this sound like a policy geared
to nonintrusion?
NEED FOR MORE SPACE - A Daily
story of January, 1965 carried in its title
that the need of North Campus was related
to the overcrowded central campus. Simple
comparisons of data between two publish-
ed reports would indicate that, to the con-
trary, there is every possibility that needed
facilities could be built in the central cam-
pus area. The first report, prepared in 1963
and entitled "The Central Campus Plan,"
projected a total of 4,600,000 square feet
for the area as feasible. The second report,
a "Building Under Study-1967" projected
only 3,600,000 square feet for academic
facilities. This means that the University
could construct all its desired academic fa-
cilities and still have a million square feet
left over for additional facilities such as
housing, parking, and libraries. This ig-
nores the possibility of other space economy
measures, such as high rise structures,
renting space, or utilization of air rights
over existing streets. To assert that the
central campus is overcrowded, in light of
these figures is not correct. There is room
for expansion in central campus in the
future.
EDUCATIONAL POLICY- This is the
most important consideration of all. On
this score there has been no formal re-
search beyond the needs of specific col-
leges. How much sense does it make to
group as currently planned the Music
School, Architecture and 'Design, School of
Education and the Engineering College on
North Campus? In terms of credit hours
taken, they have more in common with the
College of Literature, Science and the Arts
than they do with each other. Statistics
issued by the Office of Academic Affairs
for the fall 1967 term indicate that the
nereentag of credit hours taken in LSA
Ki
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