7V
9P firi~igan Baity
Seventy-eight years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan
just a song in the wind
Madison streets in revolution
by ;im heck
Ao I
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 af reprints.
ESDAY, MAY7, 1969 NIGHT EDITOR: NADINE COHODAS
WEDN
Nixon's get-tough policy:
Insensitivity to chronic ails
ITHE NIXON administration's "get
tough" policy on campus disorders is
constructed to inhibit further protests
through fear of police, extensive fines,
and court sentences.
Attorney Gen. John N. Mitchell has
called for prosecution of disrupters to the
fullest extent of the law, Vice-President
Spiro Agnew has urged Congress to cut
off Federal Tunds to colleges and univer-
sities if student disorders exceed the
"limits of permissibility," President Nixon
has warned university administrators to
stand up to the disuptive tactics of-stu-
dent extremists, and the Justice Depart-
ment is collecting information about stu-
dent disorders and will offer the informa-
tion to state and local law enforcement
officials.
The states are responding in a similar
manner - one proposed Wisconsin law
would increase nonresident tuition in the
belief that out-of-state students are re-
sponsible for most of the trouble.
But protests have proved to be the only
effective means ,for airing the real issues.
They have resulted in reforms which
petitions and referendums have failed to
initiate, -effecting the language require-
ment, ROTC, black studies programs,
and, in some cases, degree requirements.
THE NIXON administration is trying
unsuccessfully in its own way to deal
with what it considers to be the causes of
student unrest.
Defense Secretary Melvin ,Laird has
said the Defense Department is prepared
to consider changes which would improve
ROTC programs at individual institutions.
I
Assistant Secretary Roger Kelley said
these changes would "civilianize" certain
ROTC courses.
And the House Special Subcommittee
on Education, proceeding on the assump-
tion that SDS constitutes a majority of
those involved in campus demonstrations,
invited two SDS members to testify. Be-
cause they declined, the subcommittee
will resume its hearings on student-unrest
this week without student testimony.
Such measures do nothing to help the
situation. Academically improving ROTC
is irrelevant to a student questioning its
existence on campus in any form, and
SDS members, regardless of their unwill-
ingness to cooperate with Congress, do
not constitute a majority of discontented
students.
THESE MISDIRECTED attempts at
solutions emphasize the need for more
reasonable communication between stu-
dents and the Administration. The real
problems are being obscured with super-
ficial tangents and false assumptions.
Incidents such as the Columbia demon-
strators beating a professor must be con-
demned - no rationale can justify such
action.
' But the trend of the Nixon administra-
tion toward restrictive and punitive meas-
ures for general campus demonstrations
is unfortunate and dangerous.
By focusing on the protests themselves
and basically ignoring the causes of stu-
dent discontent, a serious problem is be-
ing covered which won't disappear when
the symptoms are eradicated.
-SHARON WEINER
MADISON
THE RASH OF student demonstrations
is leaving scars on virgin lands, plaguing
some campuses with war fatigue and the
scene in many college towns bares resem-
blance to the spring demonstrations at the
Sorbonne - in Madison they shout, "Long
live Paris!"
The Mifflin-Basset-Johnson street area
of Madison is virtually a series of battle
camps with students stocking their bureau
drawers and cubboards with rocks, broken
glass and anything else that might deter
charging police.
Police bulletin boards are covered with
hasty sketches of "war, manuevers." More
than 100 have so far been arrested and
more than half that number have been in-
jured. Police ran out of their 750 cans of
tear gas late Saturday night and began
using "pepper gas" - a lethal DM-drug
outlawed in the 30's.
THE STUDENTS and police are battling
to see who really can control the streets.
Saturday a request for a dance permit for
a two-block area w a s denied, by mayor
William Dyke who said, "The streets must
be preserved for the passage of traffic."
Two weeks ago, a similar party was de-
nied a permit in James Madison Park. Po-
lice made several arrests but there was no
violence. A week ago a party was held on
Gilman St. and police helped block traffic.
Dyke said his decision was based on the
fact that "They were not looking for a
party, they were looking for a fight." And,
"The streets belong to the city."
"THE STREETS belong to the people."
Mark Rosenburg, SDS leader told the ral-
leys each day. And so the "people" barri-
caded the streets with furniture, lamp posts
and wood, and Saturday night extended
pick-up police trucks ornamented with a
half-dozen riot-masked police rammed the
baracades at 40 mph.
When they began spraying the tear gas
everywhere until a fog hung over the city,
they looked very much like grasshoppers
spitting tobacco.
Police then played hide and seek with
the "people" chasing them all o v e r the
city, into dormitories and then clubbing
them, and just before the "people" became
unconscious, sprayed a little tear gas in
their eyes. (Tear gas is more potent than
smelling salts.)
TO QUOTE the Daily Cardinal, student
newspaper there: "Through the clouds of
burning gas and t h e mounds of jagged
stone and hurled debris, one fact looms
clear after this weekend's dreadful events:
the police of this city have lost t h e i r
minds . .
Two city aldermen and a state repre-
sentative had spent the entire Saturday af-
ternoon pleading with Dyke to issue a per-
mit.
Aldermen Paul Soglin and Eugene Parks,
who represented the area, both visited the
scene of the rioting and both were arrested.
Soglin was arrested again Sunday morning
for returning to the area after his release.
Parks was arrested Saturday night after
he begged students to disband over a police
loudspeaker. A coed being clubbed drew
his attention, he protested, was clubbed
himself and charged with unlawful assem-
bly and released on $500 bail.
STUDENTS CONTINUE to rally and un-
fortunately this cyclical battle between po-
lice and students leaves the rebellion rel-
atively issueless unless one wants to resolve
the radical rhetoric of w h o the streets
really do belong to.
President Fred Harrington h a s stayed
completely out of the disturbances though
the Wisconsin Student Association (WSA)
has been trying to raise the near $20,000
now needed in bail money.
*i
WSA President D a v i d Schaeffer in a
not-so-joking manner told a gathering of
college newspaper editors and student gov-
ernment presidents who were assemblying
for a protest against ROTC that they had
best not go into the streets and should
probably return home. Apparently the po-
lice were arresting outsiders and charging
them with the new federal law of crossing
state lines to incite a riot. Schaeffer said
WSA couldn't possibly get the $10,000 bail
money attached to the federal charge.
HARRINGTON BECOMES progressively
docile with each demonstration and his ap-
pearance is now one of a man doomed to
professional ostracization and soon to be
forced out of an academic career. Indica-
tions are he will make a nobel effort to
gain the favor of those who hold the purse
strings by issuing a statement supporting
Dyke's militaristic actions.
Recently the state legislature passed a
law -- probably unconstitutional - which
forbids persons convicted of protest Activ-
ity from setting foot on the hallowed earth
of Madison for one year after their con-
viction. Harrington reportedly regrets now
having not come out in full support of the
measure when it was introduced and in-
stead cautiously suggesting something more
rational might be worked out.
He was visciously attacked by alumni for
suggesting that reactionary representative
Paul Gotleip (who introduced the bill)
"didn't know his business." And now Har-
rington's office reports the barage of tele-
grams and telephone calls demanding he
expel demonstrators and fire professors is
"incredible."
SCHOOL ENDS in Madison the first of
June but the students now involved in the
rebellion are year-round residents in the
student ghetto-,They have functioned well
without general student support a n d so
there is little reason to suspect this guerilla
war will end soon.
ma rtin iikscka
Bathtub pot -
YAF, YFW and now NYA
LATE LAST WEEK a packet mailed to
"the former membership of Youth for
Wallace" announced on a gaudy red-
white-and-blue letterhead the formation
of the National Youth Alliance "pledged
to carry on the ideals and principles em-
bodied in the Wallace Campaign."
Enclosed in the packet was a s m a l1
pamphlet entitled "Lost and Alone," out-
lining the Wallace version of life on to-
day's typical college campus. At a time
when SDS has reduced 'the comfortably
liberal New York Times to sputtering in-
coherence, -one can imagine how bleak
campus life looks to the Wallacite right.
But at a time when there is a potential
developing for a rightest revival aimed at
the campus, it is sobering to realize how
easily the, Wallace blue-collar appeal
could be transfered to academia.
MERELY SUBSTITUTING the lower
middle class student for the l o w e r
ProtectingU.S.A.
THE AMERICAN press is having a field-
day labeling all protest or anything
that resembles a student demonstration
the violent activities of extremely small
minorities usually composed completely
of Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS) members.
A paramount example was offered by
the Wdrld's Greatest Newspaper last week
in an editorial lambasting the SDS mem-
bers at Columbia for having taken over
a building again.
The Tribune editorial lightly comple-
mented an "anti-violent group" that tried
to stop the activists from ceasing the
building. The Tribune explains, however,
that the "anti-violent" group was unable
to accomplish that heroic task because
"fist-fighting broke out."
-J.H.
Editorial Staff
MARCIA ABRAMSON.....................Co-Editor
JIMi HECK................................. Co-Editor
MARTIN HIRSCHMAN. ummer Supplement Editor
JIM FORRESTER ............Summer Sports Editor
ERIC PERGEAUX, JAY CASSIDY....... Photo Editor
NIGHT EDITORS: Joel Block, Nadine Cohodas, Harold
Rosenthal, Judy Sarasohn.I
ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS: Lorna Cherot, Erika
Hoff, Scott Mixer, Sharon Weiner.
Business Staff
GEORGE BRISTOL, Business Manager
middle class factory worker and equating
black scholarship students with ghetto
blacks growing fat on welfare checks, you
have created a situation where such
rightwing appeals may make considerable
headway among the excessively goal-
oriented.
So for humor, (or for deep political and
sociological insight), the bulk of the NYA
pamphlet is reprinted below:
YOU ARE AN American student. You prob-
ably come from a middle or working class
family where you have had to work for many
of the things you have owned. You are an
average and better student in high school or
college. You're in school for one reason-to
get a decent education. In order to keep your-
self in school, you may work after hours and
on weekends to pay your tuition and other
expenses.
Suddenly you find yourself swallowed up in
a morass of confusion, decay, and anarchy. You
are no longer the individual you thought you
were; but are now a mere number in a file. All
over the campus you find students taking
"pot." Some are on "ups" and "downs" or even
on LSD or big-H. You can't stand the sight of
the drug culture on your campus.
CLASSES ARE EVEN more shocking. Your
history professor tells you that the three
greatest men in history are Karl Marx, Fidel
Castro and Eldridge Cleaver. Your sociology
professor spends most of the the time defend-
ing homosexuality and decrying American
fighting men in Vietnam. Your English pro-
fessor hardly shows up for class. You are
amazed to find that your school is filled with
black scholarship students who are getting
away with murder-both academically and
politically.
The black militants have the run of the
campus. Your girlfriend has been insulted by
the blacks. Your best friend was beat up in
the school cafeteria because he refused to
surrender his seat to a black activist. One day
you find your school closed. The SDS has oc-
cupied the administration building and instead
of getting education you are working hard
for, you must be content to shuffle around the
campus past tables full of revolting New Left
literature and communist propaganda.
You speak out one day in history class. You
say Karl Marx was a liar, Fidel Castro is a
butcher and Eldridge Cleaver is a convicted
rapist. You have passed all your tests, handed
in all your reports and haven't missed a day
of class. Yet, when you receive your semester
gradt card, you find yourself with an F in
history. You flunk, but the black students who
'hardly ever show up for class, never hand in
reports and flunk the tests get top grades.
YOU HAVE NOWHERE to turn. Your educa-
SLOWLY, VERY SLOWLY indeed, the hard core opposition to mari-
' juana is backing off, retreating to safer grounds.
While pot was once a prime target it is now referred to only as a
part of sweeping generalizations about the evils of "all those other
drugs."
Even doctors - who by all accounts should have some concrete
answers - refuse to be pinned down in their judgments.
THE OFFICIAL POSITION of the conservative American Medical
Association is now that occassional usage of pot is unlikely to be harm-
ful. But the organization continues to raise unfounded suspicions con-
cerning possible genetic malfeasance from frequent use. We must wait,
they seem to be saying, until the weed is visited upon the third and
fourth geieration of them that love it.
No one is waiting. In a very real sense, the nation is witnessing a
wave of lawlessness unequaled since the prohibition of the '20s. Home
gardening is experiencing an unexpected resurgence in what may be
the greatest boon to the American economy since bathtub gin. And in
the hip-flask tradition of our forefathers, people are lighting up more
often and more out in the open.
TWO WEEKS AGO, I was on my way to an exam, dazed, puffing
heavily on my Marlboro, when I was stopped by a student who asked
me for a light.
I watched him walk slowly back to the tree where his girlfriend
was sitting, about 20 yards from State St. He took a puff and passed the
reefer to her and so forth. And he didn't even offer me a drag! I moved
on to my exam undaunted.
(Note: Dear police; the last time a journalist wrote anything spe-
cific about marijuana she spent a good long time in jail for refusing to
disclose names. I do not know who the aforementioned smokers were
and I could not possibly identify them. In addition, if necessary, I am
prepared to perjurously testify in court thatI have never smoked pot
and even that I did not write this column.)
r
WITH PARANOIA infecting the nation it will probably be some
time before marijuana is legalized. Nonetheless, the end to prohibition
is inevitable. For eventually legislators and congressmen must realize,
they can do more by legalizing pot - with a heavy tax - than by their
present vain attempt to suppress a substance which gives less people
sore throats than sulphur dioxide.
The President's 100-day hoax
By LORNA CHEROT
THE FIRST 100 days of the
Nixon administration have
been nothing-more than a say-as-
little-as-possible, do-nothing hoax.
The nouveau Nixon, surrounded
by foreign and domestic special
aides, is intended to give the im-
pression that our President is pru-
dent, cautious and conscientiously
fair-minded in considering both
sides of an issue,
But rather, Nixon's prudence is
actually a lack of knowledge and
sensitivity to such issues as Viet-
nam, nuclear escalation, student
unrest, increasing black intoler-
ance of whites as they move closer
to physical as well as psychological
separatism and the economic
death of the cities.
HIS CAUTION is no doubt a
stalling tactic in the hope his in-
ept Cabinet and party can think
of new and creative legislation to
INSTEAD, OUR P r e s i d e n t
makes a host of bombastic polit-
ical promises-the same insincere
pledges he fed the American people
in the presidential campaign of
1968.
While prostelytizing the need for
economic austerity and bureau-
cratic efficiency as an excuse for
closing Job Corps Centers and pro-
viding no additional revenue for
the cities and their poor, the Presi-
dent proposes a worthless $3 bil-
lion ABM system. In lieu of the
recent Supreme Court decision on
welfare residence requirements,
and the findings of Sen. George
McGovern's committee on hunger
in the United States, Nixon's in-
sistence on selling a "modified,"
useless defense system is an ex-
ample of his callous and sadistic
sense of fair-mindedness. He thus
pays tribute to the power of the
military-industrial complex and
discounts the powerless indigent of
the cities.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE of Nixon
political expediency is his decision
to ignore the Rev. Ralph Aber-
nathy's plea that the President
lend his support to the hospital
workers' strike for better wages
and recognition of their union as
a negotiating body. The late-Pres-
ident John F. Kennedy lent such
support at the request of the late
Rev. Martin Luther King when he
was working in Birmingham. Ob-
viously Nixon's desire to develop
a Republican stronghold in the
South took precedence over the
attempts of black workers to ob-
tain a decent wage, and the right
to organize and protect them-
selves.
Instead Nixon used the back-
ground of distorted press coverage
of the black "seizure" at Cornell
to deliver a hysteria-oriented,
demogogic speech reprimanding
college and university presidents
"to develop a little backbone" and
and an alarmist society nurtured
by a jingo establishment press.
NIXON'S CONTINUED adher-
ence to an ignorant clamoring
mass in an effort to maintain his
popularity is setting the stage for
more guerrilla confrontations, pos-
sibly a third world war, an increase
in student radicalization, and the
hottest summer yet.
His expedient tactics will drop
he and his party to the absymal
rank of Milard Filmore's Know-
Nothings anl he will emerge as a
do-nothing, impotert President..
4
"And 1see so many people coming to California
that the West Coast falls into the ocean!!
obliterate the cancer of domestic
and international turmoil. The
P r e s i d e n t's "fair-mindedness"
could be judged as an, over-reli-
ance on popularity and opinion
polls in an attempU to preserve his
new flawless mask as humani-
tarian and leader.
Nixon has failed to assert him-
self as an aggressive leader serving