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May 28, 1969 - Image 4

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Michigan Daily, 1969-05-28

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Iyr £irdigan Ba4l
Seventy-eight years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan

College: Whitey only?

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 all reprints.

WEDNESDAY, MAY,28, 1969

NIGHT EDITOR: JOEL BLOCK

1OST AMERICAN public col-
leges North and South may
justifiably be charged with racism
by omission or apathy, if not with
conscious discrimination.
A recent nation-wide survey of
80 public universities reveals black
enrollment at predominantly white
colleges averages a whopping 1.93
per cent. The same survey reveals
60 per cent of all black college
student are segregated in black
schools.
This poor performance is little
better than the record of primary
and secondary education in the
South, where 80 per cent of black
youth attend segregated schools,
Yet most public colleges, unlike
Southern schools, have avoided
both the issue of desegregation
and the stigma of racism. To, most
people, American public univer-
sities are just too liberal to dis-
criminate.
MANY ADMISSIONS officers
contend low black enrollment re-
flects a drastic shortage of quali-
fied black students. But the pres-

ence of 250.000 students at black
colleges testifies that more blacks
are qualified for work at predomi-
nantly white schools than the ad-
missions officers would like to ad-
mit_
Besides, some exclusive Ivy
League schools have already rec-
ognized a responsibility, a moral
responsibility if you will, to give
remedial instruction to black stu-
dents who need it. These black
have potential for colleges but
i--

4

The Budget:
Total disregard for quality

Tobe
Lev

DURING TIMES of austerity it becomes
everyone's responsibility to seek equi-
table means of distributing the little
money that is available. A situation of
austerity exists throughout the nation
and is manifesting itself in federal and
state cut-backs in funds f o r necessary
public programs.
The University, recognizing this respon-
sibility, drafted an austerity budget for
fiscal 1970 that was not one cent above
its request for' fiscal 1969. This request
was tempered with tedious study and me-
ticulous shaving. It was a budget of max-
imum austerity and was presented in such
a fashion.
The governor received the $75.9 million
request and reduced it $8.5 million. ,
AND NOW the state senate appropria-
tions committee has mercilessly slash-
ed $2 Million more off the governor's re-
quest. Their rationale for doing so is silly
and highly immature.
The committee resorted to t h e arbi-
trary analysis of headcounts. Completely
ignoring qualitative factors, the commit-
tee, for example, appropriated more mon-
ey to Michigan State than the University
because Michigan State has more people.
But it costs more to educate a doctor
than a hotel manager, and more to edu-
cate a graduate student than an under-
Editorial Staff'
MARCIA ABRAMSON ................r..... Co-Editor
JIM HECK............ .................. Co-Editor
MARTIN HIRSCHMAN .. Summer Supplement Editor
JIM FORRESTER .. .. ........ Summer Sports Editor
PHIL HERTZ....... Associate Summer Sports Editor
ERIC PERGEAUX, JAY CASSIDY ......Photo Editor
NIGHT EDITORS: Joel Block, Nadine Cohodas, Harold
Rosenthal, Judy Sarasohn.
ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS: Lorna Cherot, Erika
Hoff, Scott Mixer, Sharon Weiner.
Sports Staff
JOEL BLOCK, Sports Editor
ANDY BARBAS, Executive Sports'Editor
BILL CUSUMANO............ Associate Sports Editor
JIM FORRESTER ........... Associate Sports Editor
ROBIN WRIGHT ..:.......: Associate Sports Editor
JOE MARKER..................Contributing Editor

graduate. And the University supplies 70
per cent of the graduate and professional
degree of all public institutions in t h e
state, but will get only 10 per cent of the
proposed budget's higher-education allo-
cation.
[N THE END, naturally, the legislature
will be cutting its own throat as well
as purse strings. By forcing the Univer-
sity into a tuition hike to raise the $2
million necessary" for even basic opera-
tions next' year, our out-of-state tuition
may become the highest of a n y state-
supported college in the- country.
It was a tight race this year, but Ver-
mont barely beat us out with, the highest
tuition for out-of-state students. N e x t
year, with an anticipated substantial
hike, we may well become the leader. No
doubt this will deter many students from
coming here. A self-perpetuating region-
alism will develop, as indeed it has begun
already. And regionalism is certainly not
conductive to quality education.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

'Unite to

fight the repression'

To the Editor:v

AND THEN THERE ARE 100 faculty
members, whose salaries are not pro-
vided for in the budget. The members, as
in past practice, have already been hired.
What does t h e state legislature expect
the University to do now - face a breach
of contract suit?
Traditionally, the House has added
some funds. Certainly they will not pand-
er to the arbitrary prejudices of the Sen-
ate. It will be difficult- for them to repair
all the damage that has been done, but
we can hope their efforts will not be to-
tally uisuccessful.
Vice President Smith has said this kind
of financial malnutrition is guaranteed
to drive the University down the road to-
ward mediocrity.
We're getting there; and the committee
is behind us all the way.
-SHARON WEINER
-JIM HECK

i
1

I WONDER HOW many of you
who are reading these lines were
at the West Park concert, this past
Sunday? Did you all groove the
scene and have a really great
high? - good. I was there, too,
and I want to tell you some of my
impressions. First of all, I'd like
to know whether you felt just a
tiny, bit guilty over there in the
sun? No? Well, that's funny.
Did those of you who wore your
$30 (or is it $35) African shirts
know that there are poorhungry
black 'kids less than five miles
away (extremely well-hidden from
the road so that you would never
see them by chance) in Willow
Run Village? And you)cats with
-your $35 (or is it $45) genuine
leather boots, did you give five
minutes of thought to the fact
that a full battle dress armed
company of troops attacked the
dorms at Greensboro, N.C.? And
you c4te little sexy chicks with
your mini skirts and $30 tinted
granny glasses- do you give one
good "god damn about the fact
that U.S. Army helicopters drop-
ped "chemical irritants developed
against the. NLF in Vietnam" on
the center of the Berkeley cam-
pus?
AND YOU GRAD students
whose. secure futures are virtually
assured, are you jaded by the
Vietnam death reports (430 this
week)? I know that it disturbs

most of you ia bit) when you
think of it, but why even bother
to think of it when you can watch
the MC-5 screaming about "revo-
lution." After all, you "agree" with
what they are saying, don't you?
Well, kiddies, that's all a lot of
gibberish! The MC-5 is nothing
but a bunch of middle class kids
talking to middle class kids. It
ain't revolution baby, and it's,
never gonna be revolution.
Sure these guys are better then
anything that we had before. Sure
the hippy movement is a good

thing. Sure they're both for more
freedom and that's a great thing.
But one should never lose sight
of the really important things.
Don't be misled into diverting your
attention and energy to secondary
issues.
UNIVERSITY students fell for
it hook line and sinker last year:
student power in order to abolish
the language requirementsa(no-
body seemed to pay much atten-
tion to the fact that on north
campus they're conducting real

war research). And all of you
chicks with your woman's libera-
tion movement (which is not to
be ignored) -but really-isn't it
kind of irrelevant? As Tom Hay-
den said last year, all of these
things are at best diversionary,
and at worst, counter-revolution-
ary. They are just giving more
leisure time to middle class kids,
and not at all helping the poor
and oppressed people of the world.
COME ON YOU bourgeois SDS
and others, put your money whtere
your mouth is. Protest--demon-
strate-do something-anything to
show your sympathy with the
black students at Ferris State and
Greensboro, the people at Berke-
ley, the troops in Vietnam, the
wretched of the earth. Unite and
build a strong organization now
-so that we can all fight the
coming repression.
-Prof. Joel Smoller
Mathematics department
May 27
Letters to the Editor should
be mailed to the Editorial Di-
rector or delivered to Mary
Rafferty in. the Student Pub-
lications business office in the
Michigan Daily building. Let-
ters should be typed,. double-
spaced and normally should not
exceed 250 words. The Editorial
Directors reserve the right to
edit all letters submitted.

have gotten poor preparation in
ghetto high schools.
Black enrollment at Harvard,
Princeton, Dartmouth and Cornell
is rapidly approaching or has al-
ready reached ten to fifteen per
cent of the total student popula-
tion. The exclusive Seven Sisters
schools in the East expect to have
a freshman class which is 13 per
cent black.
THE UNIVERSITY is' lagging
far behind these pacesetters. As
of last year, black enrollment at
the University was 4.5 per cent,
well below the percentage of
blacks of the population of the
state.
Yet Clyde Vromam, admissions
director, says, "We're not like
some schools which have just be-
gun recently to admit students
from disadvantaged groups-pull-
ing hundreds of people off the
streets in late August for Sep-
tember enrollment." But the Uni-
versity is still far behind some
others; we obviously have little
room to talk.
PERHAPS ITS this approach
and the attitude behind it which
scares many blacks from applying
to predominantlywhite schools
in the first place. And the colleges
have not sought out talented
blacks to reassure them they would
be treated like students and no*
curiousities.
This University and others have
sucessfully ignored accusations of
racism in the past by vaunting
their liberal images and empha-
sizing they keep no admissions
records by race.
NORTHERN LIBERAL univer-
sities watched the fight for In-
tegration in the South with rapt
attention for fifteen years. Finally
black militants have demonstrated
the twin issues of school desegre-
gation and institutional racism di-
rectly concern them too.
If American institutions of high-
er learning are truly "liberal" they
will respond quickly and energetic-
ally to the challenge of the black
militants. It's about time.

Y,

Warring to secure a soccer

field; to destroy a Peoples'

Park

(Editor's note: The following article writ-
ten by Mr. DeWitt is reprinted with his
permission. Mr. DeWitt is a lecturer of
physics at therBerkeley campus.)
By HUGH DeWITT
Daily Guest Writer
BERKELEY
FOR MORE THAN a week the Uni-
versity campus and parts of the
city of Berkeley have b e e n under
military occupation by police and the
National Guard. Several times t h e
trouble in Berkeley has been on the
level of open warfare. Under these
circumstances research in theoretical
physics no matter how interesting,
my own and that of my students,
seems remote and irrelevant-
Besides it is damned hard to think
about physics with the noise of heli-
copters overhead and with tear gas
coming in through the windows. As a
concerned and worried citizen I am
trying to participate in activities in
Berkeley to help'bring the trouble to
an end. However in addition to what-
ever I can do here, it occurs to me
that it may be useful to tell my view
of what is happening here to people
around the country. The reporting in
newspapers and by the wire services
is never complete and is often dis-
torted. Furthermore the moods and
feelings of p e o p 1 e involved in the
troubles are often lost in short news
stories.

" THE PRESENT TROUBLES began
with a controversy over the use of a"
city block of University land just east
of Telegraph Avenue and three blocks
.south of the campus. The ,land was
acquired by the university two years
ago. At that time the land was filled
\with rooming houses t h a t provided
cheap housing for students and resi-
dents of the south campus area.
These people were evicted and t h e
houses torn down last summer. Since
then the land has stood ugly and em-
pty, and became a vast mud flat this
past winter. According to some uni-
versity master plan, this piece of land
was to h a v e an intramural soccer
field built on it at some unspecified
time in the future.
While a soccer field is certainly in-
nocuous it is important to understand
that the university already has sev-
eral playing fields, an d no student
group has expressed any need for an-
other one. On the other hand there is
a great need for some kind of a park
in the south campus area, and b o t h
the City of Berkeley and the univer-
sity have been very slow to acknow-
ledge this need.
The residents of the south campus
area include ordinary working peo-
ple, students, student drop-outs, a n d
all varieties of kids commonly called
'hippies'. Among these people th'e r e
are drug addicts, Trotskyites, Mao-

ists, anarchists,
tionar es, artists,]

self-styled revolu-
poets, and even kids

who hold regular jobs. Some of these
'street people' or 'dissidents' are very
much alienated from normal straight
society. A short stretch of Telegraph
Avenue is their gathering area; this
street has cafes, hippie stores, some
good restaurants, some elegant stores,
and some excellent bookstores. Gen-
erally we find it a charming area to
walk through day or evening, though
the Berkeley police regard it as a den
of iniquity.
Some of the 'residents of the area
are 1 o n g haired and unwashed, some
are disreputable and obnoxious, but
most seem harmless to me regardless
of the wild political ideas that a r e
commonly heard. The Berkeley po-
lice and some people in the City gov-
ernment regard these 'street people'
as a grave threat to established so-
ciety.
SEVERAL WEEKS AGO after the
heaviest of the winter rains were ov-
er some of these 'street people' got
the idea that it would be nice to plant
grass in the empty university block
of land. The area was unfenced, un-
posted, and there was no indication
of when t h e promised soccer field
would be constructed. The idea rap-
idly caught on and soon there was a
spontaneous movement to convert

part of the mud flat into a little park.
They did a nice job in a short time.
Grass, flowers and shrubs were plant-
ed; walk ways were constructed; and
swings were put up for children. The
area became known as Peoples' Park.
For some of the kids who worked on
the park this work may have been
the first constructive activity t h e y
had engaged in for months.
The question is often asked: why
did the-kids take over land that did,
hot belong to them without asking
permission of the proper authorities,
i.e. the University Administration
that owned the land? That question
may never have occurred to the rath-
er disorganized street people, and if
it had they could remember a bad
precedent in dealing with authorities.
Last summer a group of them had
formally and politely asked the City
of Berkeley for permission to close
Telegraph Ave. on July 4 and hold a
street carnival. Although there is
precedent for this kind of activity in
Berkeley the request at that time had
been ridiculed and denied.
The resulting trouble last summer
led to severe repression by the Berk-
eley police. Peace was only restored
after a group of churches and syna-
gogues convinced the City Council to
grant permission for the street carn-
ival, keep the police away, and let
civilian monitors f r o m the church
groups supervise the carnival.
I was one of the monitors at that
July 4 party, and I can testify as to
how well behaved these south campus
people were when the police stayed
far away.
IN ANY CASE this spring an un-
used mudflat was turned into a very
useful and pretty park by residents
of the area - but without permis-
sion. It should have been regarded as
a golden opportunity by the univer-
sity to do something useful for itself
and the community.
Faculty members in landscape arch-
itecture wanted to help the kids de-
velop the land, sociologists wanted to
study this apparently spontaneous
enterprise on the part of the kids,

One suspects that Chancellor Heyns
acted under' pressure to prove to the
iRegents that he was being firm. It
was a stupid undiplomatic move on
the part of Heyns, and brought out
the very predictable protests and
demonstrations from the street peo-
ple.
ON MAY 15 some of the street kids
tore down the newly erected No Tres-
passing signs, and tried to obstruct
the construction of the fence around

Roughly
wounded;
from bird

a hundred people , were
most of the wounds were
shot, and were not too ser-

ious. Several people received much
more serious from buck shot. O n e
man was blinded, and one man died
four days later.
IN 12 YEARS of living in Berkeley
this episode was the worst that I had
seen. I believe that there was no jus-
tification whatever for the shooting,
despite the claim of Sheriff Madigan

X.. . . . . ... .
"The police chased any groups of demonstrators
they could find, clubbing them as hard as they
could. .. police started shooting with shot guns ...
eyewitnesses report that the police shot indiscrimi-
nately in all directions . . ..................

"On Wednesday

afternoon

the land. At noon a large number of
mothers and children tried to have
a demonstration there in support of
the park.
Large numbers of people gathered
and large numbers of police w e r e
brought in from Oakland to supple-
ment the Berkeley police. In my
opinion the police around here are
singularly unqualified for crowd con-
trol work. (They rapidly turned a
peaceful demonstration into a riot
situation, and before the afternoon
was over the trouble became a war.
At first only tear gas was used, and
it was strewn around liberally over
several blocks.
Next the police chased any groups
of demonstrators they could f i n d,
clubbing them as hard as they could.
Usually, the long-haired kids got the
worst beatings, but in short order the
police were clubbing anybody t'h a t
was in' front of them. Some of the
demonstrators or dissidents threw
bottles and stones at the police, par-
ticularly the Alameda Sheriff's Dep-
uties, who have proved themselves to
be particularly vicious
SOON THE POLICE started shoot-
ing with shot guns. Once the order

and Governor Reagan that it started
as a matter of self-defense. The po-
lice can hardly be blamed for being
ordered to defend the University land,
but their escalation of violence was
stupid and disgusting.
ON SATURDAY morning the Na-
tional Guard appeared in force all
over Berkeley, concentrated around
the campus. Generally the National
Guard soldiers just stand guard, and
appear bored and unhappy. They
don't provoke incidents the way the
police so often do.Theone case of a
soldier bayonneting a boy walking
away appears to have been an anom-
aly.
Throwing tear gas into any group
of people has become a daily occur-
rence; usually it is the police who do
it. Governor Reagan has declared a
State of Emergency a n d says that
troops will stay until order is restor-
ed. He is apparently unable to reco-
gnize that the continued presence of
masses of outside p oli c e and the
troops contribute to and often incite
the disorder.
On Tuesday after a victim of
Thursday's shooting died, a group of
students and other people wanted to

something like mustard gas; it caus-
ed skin blisters as well as severe eye
irritation. This cloud of gas swept in-
to several university buildings, dis-
trubed a number of classes, sa m e
went into the windows of the student
hospital on campus, and then t h e
wind carried a cloud of it into the
Strawberry Canyon Recreational Ar-
ea.
It was a warm day and a 1 a r g e
number of students, wives, and child-
ren were around the swimming pool.
The children started to scream with
pain, and the area had to be evacu-
ated fast. One person with an asth-
matic condition was near death for a
short time. This result of the gas at-
tack was not reported in local papers
as far as I know.
IT HAS BECOME very difficult for
any academic activity to function on
the University campus. Several de-
partments and about 200 individual
professors have said that they will
not teach until the police and the
Guard leaves.
I concur with this stand complete-
ly.
In the City of Berkeley it is get-
ting to be dangerous to come down
town during the day because of gas
an danger of being arrested, 497
people on one street were swept up
yesterday by the Guard, arrested, and
taken to the Santa Rita Prison Farm
(our local concentration camp). Bail
was set at $800 on a charge of illegal
assembly. Anybody on the street was
arrested whether demonstrating or
not.
IN MY OPINION the responsibility
for the war in Berkeley must be
shared by the University Administra-
tion and Governor Reagan. With a
little flexibility on the part of Chan-
cellor Heyns several days ago I think
the original Peoples' Park issue could
have been resolved to the satisfaction
of most people. (Incidentially the
university students yesterday voted
overwhelmingly in favor of the park;
if the university ever builds its soc-
cer field now, it is likely to be boy-
cotted.

Ai

l

Art

National Guard helicopter sprayed
gas all over the Sproul Plaza ... it
causes skin blisters . ..the. cloud
swept into the buildings, the hos-
pital, and then the wind carried a
cloud of it into the ,Strawberry
Canyon Recreational Area.
"It was a warm day and a large
number of students, wives and
children were around the swirm.

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