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