Sewslny-Tbird Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS O rTHEUNIVESITY OF MICHIGAN _ . UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS "Where OpInipis Are Free STUDENT PUBLICATONS BLDG., ANN ARBOR, MICH., PHONE No 2-3241 Trutb Wil Prevail" Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in a reprints. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1964 NIGHT EDITOR: H. NEIL BERKSON Legislators Ask a Lot To Get a Little T APPEARS that the political philoso- heard about what the group was doing, phy of "ask a lot-get a little" has some he came out in opposition to the group's proponents in Michigan's Legislature. plan to revamp the entire document. This These legislators, members of a special was not an unusual move on the gover- House committee proposing amendments nor's part, since the constitution is his to the new constitution, apparently feel baby, and its success is probably one of that it's alright to say one thing and the major reasons for Romney's political mean another, as long as they end up success. with what they want. For some reason, Romney's blast at the The group originally drafted proposals committee, and his vow to fight it with that would have changed 100 sections of every means at his disposal brought not the document. Recently, the group's co- only attention to the group, but also ad- chairman, E. D. O'Brien, said that the ditional support. Last week, when the bipartisan committee had never wanted committee seemed to have much of the the 100 changes it proposed, but that support necessary for the passage of these suggestions merely represented a many of its proposals, it decided that it starting point. was time to reveal its true intentions and The group now asks only for passage of narrowed down the proposed amendments amendments concerning the election of to those pertaining to elections. the Legislature and county and townshipS officials, and it seems that this was all 0 IE AID tat oersod it wanted originally. his approach to the problem of It proposed wholesale changes in the amending the constitution. This is true- cnIutin ose elfrhe aeinhepeople thought that the group meant what constitution merely for the attention it said when it called for "necessary" that they would draw to the group. For changes in many sections of the new doc- when.Gov. George Romney, who helped to ument. Outsiders failed to see that the write the constitution and whose support committee never wanted passage of all for it was instrumental in its passage, the things it originally proposed, only for some of them It must have been apparent to the Strategy committee that the governor would oppose any wholesale changing of the constitu- THE UNITED STATES government has tion, and if threatened with the possi- at last revealed the strategy that will bility, would be happy to end up having enable us to win the war in Viet Nam. the document change as little as possi- To quote the Associated Press: "In the be. opinion of Washington authorities, theT outbreak of large-size guerrilla attacks THE COMMITTEE'S SCHEME seems to have worked, for Romney will prob- since the coup is not altogether bad. This ably support, or at least not attack the is because the Reds can be hit more easily fewa tso poposedaby the by government forces when they present few amendments now proposed by the rgern t etts ,,e House group. However, the use of what arger target." seems to be deliberate falsehoods by the committee in order to achieve its goals BEFORE LONG, if the present trend con- was unethical. tinues, the targets will be so large No matter what is said of politics and that anyone will be able to hit them. The "political practices," the state legislators only trouble is, no one seems to have shouldn't have to rely on trickery and thought too much about the problem of seemingly outright deceit to obtain what defeating these ever-expanding units aft- they think is in the best interests of er they've been spotted. Michigan's citizens. If their ideas aren't Oh, well, perhaps by then we will have in the best interests of the state, then the advantage of having small, highly they shouldn't be working for their pass- mobile forces that will be difficult to hit. age. -E. HERSTEIN -THOMAS COPI CITYSCOPE: Begging the Issue LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Residents Hit Oxford Criticism To the Editor: DURING the past semester three editorials have been written bemoaning the fate of the Oxford coed. According to these articles her rights have been severely trampled on by the Uni- versity, Assembly, and anybody else close at hand. She could not stay at Oxford over Thanksgiving vacation, her privacy was invaded, by inspectors, and she was forced to keep her room open for three hours last Sunday for an open house. First of all, Oxford is a resi- dence hall with apartment type living, not an apartment house. It is under University policy. The girls, have hours, and they do not pay rent. They make reguar hous. ing payments. But they have many privileges and freedoms that are not afford- ed to girls in other residence halls. The girls are not harassed at clos- ing time by housemothers hand- ing out late minutes. Men are al- lowed in the rooms from n'n un- til closing. The apartments are supervised well but not overbear- ingly by two young coulas. The rooms are larger and newer than any other residence hall. In all they are set up for responsible, mature young women, * * * OXFORD was not kept open at Thanksgiving vacation because not all residence halls are kept open at vacations. This .s not such a big catastrophe in other dorms -an inconvenience, yes, but cer- tainly not a special torture de- signed exclusively for Oxford girls. The University remedied this to some extent at Christmas time by allowing a number of girls to re- main during the three week vaca- tion. As for the girl's privacy being invaded, the rooms were tnspectei by sanitation inspectors and U- versity officials. This was done in the interest of the University in order to preserve the building for future use. This is any landlords' right They found refrigerators which had never been defrosted and had mold in them. Several bathrooms, where sanitation is of the utmost importance, were filthy. Such use or abuse will limit the useable years of the building. Many girls were disturbed by not being told when these inspec- tors were coming. They were told at the beginning of the yea that periodic inspections would be made. They were not announced since this would destroy the pur- pose, which was to see if the girls kept them clean. If the girl's pri- vacy was infringed upon, that was unfortunate, but in case Miss Koral is not aware of it, the rooms in the dorms are checked every other week. AS FOR the Open House which Miss Koral terms the "most bla- tant infringement upon the pri- vacy of Oxford women," while it was inconvenient, it must e real- ized that Oxford is a showplace for the University because of As newness and uniqueness, and for this first year, at les,, many peo- ple are going to want to see it. In spite of health inspections, forced open houses, and other such "infringements,' Oxford'has it all over the other dorms. -Priscilla Keyes, '64 President- Oxford Apartments -Susan Joyce, '64 Vice-President Oxford Apartments (Miss Joyce and Miss Keyes false- ly contend that the purpose of the inspections would be negated if they weren't announced ahead of time. If warning residents would negate the purpose of the inspec- tions, then the only apparent ad- vantage of surprise inspections is to embarrass untidy students. Keeping the apartments in sanitarly condi- tion, not embarrassing students, is the objective of the University inspections. -M. E. K.) 'News' Policy... To the Editor: WOULD again like to ask The Daily to make mention of the failure of the Ann Arbor News to cover adequately local civil rights activities. Early Friday morning, I left a press release at the News an- nouncing that the Ann Arbor Area Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was sponsoring a dem- onstration on Sunday at the Ann Arbor home of Congressman George Meader to protest the congressman's concerted efforts to wreck the civil rights bill before the House and to urge him to vote for strong civil rights legislation. I have left similar releases at the News announcing the recent Mon- day night picketing of City Hall by CORE and the NAACP. * * * LATE FRIDAY, after reading my copy of the News, I called the home of the City Editor and asked why there was no mention of the forthcoming demonstration in the paper. He said he had read the release, but the "News had a pol- icy of not printing announcements of such demonstrations before- hand." I asked why a demonstra- "Well, you know that groups often announce things, but never do them." I reminded him that CORE had announced and carried out over 25 public demonstrations in Ann Arbor since June 3, 1963. The City Editor then informed me that I was keeping him from his dinner which .was getting cold. I apologized for interrupting his meal and hung up. * * * I STILL do not know why the News did not consider the an- nouncement of a demonstration to carry the whole burden of the ending, with the result that the final image of Heathcliff's and Catherine's ghostly figures walking arm in arm into the distance be- comes ludicrous, laughable, and eminently hissable. Not only have producer Sam Goldwyn, director William Wyler, and their cohorts crippled their artistic aspirations by throwing away the bulk of their material, they dealt themselves fatal blows with the witless script, ludicrous acting (with one exception: Lau- "It's A Gift" Why, when so much good cinema lies buried in the vaults, must such things be exhumed, and why must The Daily's reviewer aid and abet the crime through perfuntory gen- eralities about romanticism vs. realism. --John Remmers, Grad. 'Protest'.. To the Editor: THIS LETTER of protest repre- sents one small cry in the night against the wholesale profanation of everything that is sacred in the literature and criticism of our cul- ture. Mr. Hyman's review of the production of "Wuthering Heights" convincingly manifests a basic failure to distinguish be- tween twosvery distinct art media as well as a myopic critical in- sight. That the movie adheres faith- fully to the book is questionable even if we disregard the second half of the work as Mr. Hyman so easily does. The structural in- tricacies, the second generation and the ultimate reconciliation of the elemental passions in Hareton and the younger Cathy have been neatly dropped out to allow a more simplistic unification of focus in the movie. Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" has undergone the in- evitable exorcism that most liter- ary works are prone to before the dissecting eye of Hollywood. Therefore, it seems to me that any comparative evaluation of the two media requires not the pedes- trian judgment of how closely the movie follows the original plot lines, but rather how well the cine- matic techniques have been em- ployed to capture the essence of a work, or more correctly how suc- cessfully is the original source used in the creation of an entirely new work of art. * * * "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" does not "pulverize the slice of life re- alism , i simply passes beyond it to a macrocosmic realm of reality. To see Heathcliff as a man beset by vindictiveness and the personi- fication of evil which is not quite evil, is to root the stcry in a re- ality b1xunded by time and space. Those same elemental passions imaged by bhe mors, which the camera insistently explores, make Cathy part of the Heathcliff blood and raie the story beyond good and ,vil and indeed vindictiveness. It is not that I question 3 our right to priounice ve dict n whether the movie is unashamedly roman- tic or the reting urkderstandably maudlin whatever these terms mean, but in any event, Mr. Hy- man, your readers deserve a criti- cal perspective that makes the at- tempt to pierce bey'rd the pack- aged mdatitudes and journalistic jargonese of most. .-1.Miehtel Iaufman, Grad. Fraternities.. .. To the Editor: YOUR distinguished publication is indeed blessed to have on its staff a gentleman as knowledge- able and authoritative on the sub- ject of fraternities as Mr. Graff. His editorial (which would have been more appropriately entitled "It Takes a Man Like Me to Quit Fraternity Pledge Follies") clear- ly shows the sincere and objective familiarity with the entire frater- nity system of 45 houses gained through rushing a limited number of them and through pledging and quickly depledging one of them. The thought that Mr. Graff could have retained any lasting bias or bitterness from such an ex- perience is, of course, reprehen- sible. We must overlook the fact that the "famous Greek institution the TGIF" takes place with consider- able frequency in other foms of private housing, and that similar festivities, minus the beer due to the University's kind paenal guidance, are frequent in the hal- lowed, ivy-covered residence halls. It is, of course, a unique problem of the Greek system that "grades are important, but education s not." IT IS axiomatic that a fresh- man pledges a fraternity soley for the status wh:!ch it offers him. For what other reason could he con- ceivably want to move out o the intimate, unregimented residence halls and yet forfeit the opportun- ity to wash his own dishes and floors in an apartment? The fact that juniors and se- iors of many fraternities live in apartments because their houses are physically incapable of hold- ing them, the fact that sacrificing a limited amount of personal lib- erty is imperative for living any- where other than in a state of na - ture, the fact that conformity is a serious dilemma relevant to our entire society, end the fat that Mr. Graff tends to confuse his short relationship with a high school counterpart of a fraternity with his equally unsuccessful one at the University, all are incone- quential in this regard. The campus is extremely fortun- ate that Mr Gaff, unscarred by his horrendous skirmishes with the fraternity system, has donated his perceptive talents to us through the medium of your newspaper. On behalf of all ofhus, "cool" and otherwise, I thank him. --Mitchell Stengel, '65 Treaties .. To the Editor: ( WISH to applaud Robert Hip- . pler's courageous editorial deal- ing with the removal of the American military base at Guan- tanamo. Mr. Hippler has' ap- proached the problem at last with needed rationality. He re- fuses to stoop to such low, emo- tional exhortations as "bitter- ness," "bitterness," "bitterness," "bristling military base," "we have absolutely no right," "en- slaved Cubans," "hostile base." Instead, Mr. Hippler remains aloof, viewing the whole with his cold, objective eye. Mr. Hippler maintains that our treaty with Cuba is invalid, being established with a previous re- gime. Mr. Hippler, you don't know how many international problems you have cleared away with th, sweep of your mighty pen. We can now pull out of Viet Nam, Formosa and South Korea, all treaties were made with form- er governments. If the leaders ob- ject, we need only show them Hippler's editorial. And Germany -evacuate, for Stalin is dead. And Panama-cease and desist. While we're at it, does anyone feel like defying the Constitution this afternoon? Well, come on. It s only a meaningless piece of paper signed 36 governments ago, So, as the sun slowly sinks into a world of anarchy, tyranny and abuse, we say a fond farewell and thanks to Robert Hippler, Nero andkChamberlain, sitting, fiddling out their ungrounded re- alism from the cornice of the buurning Parthenon. -Daiel R. Campbell IT SEEMS AS THOUGH the University has found a neat way of stating its po- sition on local matters without being too committed: simply let a University ad- ministrator send a letter to a city coun- cilman. This method was unveiled Monday night when Councilman Wendell Hulcher finally announced that a letter he receiv- ed from Vice-President for Student Af- fairs James A. Lewis recommended changes in the controversial fair housing ordinance. These changes w o u ld definitely strengthen the ordinance, but to just what degree is still being debated. THE QUESTION here though is not the proposed amendment, but rather of the responsibility among the University's administrators. Councilmen Paul Johnson and John Laird raised a major question Monday night when they asked whether the Lew- (. Alicligan &Bata Editorial Staff RONALD WILTON, Editor DAVID MARCUS GERALD STORCH Editorial Director City Editor BARBARA LAZARUS............Personnel Director PHILIP SUTIN ............National Concerns Editor GAIL EVANS .................. Associate City Editor MARJORIE BRAHMS .... Associate Editorial Director (iLORIA BOWLES.................Magazine Editor MALINDA BERRY..............Contributing Editor DAVE GOOD.....................Sports Editor JIM BERGER............ .. Associate Sports Editor MIKE BLOCK.............Associate Sports Editor BOB ZWINCK ............ Contributing Sports Editor NIGHT EDITORS: H. Neil Berkson, Steven Hailer, Edward Herstein, Marilyn Koral, Louise Lind, An- drew Orlin, Michael Sattinger, Kenneth winter. ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS: David Block, Mary Lou Butcher, John Bryant, Laurence Kirshbaum, Richard is-to-Hulcher communication was to be taken as University policy or merely a personal preference on the part of Lewis. Such a question has significant bear- ing on the fate of the amendment, since it would be much more meaningful if Lewis' stand can be considered University policy. The voice of the University would lend considerable weight to the amend- ment. Neither Hulcher, nor anyone else at the council meeting could answer the perti- nent question. Lewis is in Washington and cannot be reached. And no else at Lewis' level has offered an answer. In fact, no University administrator intends to an- swer this question. ONE UNIVERSITY OFFICIAL, however, did attempt to explain the situation. That was President Harlan Hatcher. He carefully skirted the issue by saying that Lewis was acting in his capacity as vice- president for student affairs. Then he quickly added, in order not to give the wrong impression, that no meet- ings were held on the matter and that Lewis does not have the power to set University policy. The evasive tactics of University offi- cials to avoid saying that Lewis' letter was a University policy statement is a shrewd and cute piece of politicking. It's also a safe method of politicking since there is no definite commitment on the Universi- ty's part. This is rather interesting in light of happenings last year in the month of February. At that time the University was being pressured by local civil rights groups to make a public policy statement endorsing a fair housing ordinance for the city. The University never did give an protest the activities of Michi- gan's own Dixiecrat Representa- tive worthy of print. In any event, some 50 people did consider the demonstration worthy of their participation. I thank them, The Daily, and local radio stations which did report that a demon- stration was planned. -J. Alan Winter, Gad. Sleep... To the Editor: YOU say you couldn't sleep Sat- urday night either? If you live within a three block radius of the University's Thompson Street Parking Structure, there was prob- ably a definite reason. The still- ness of the night was broken at 4:55 a.m. Sunday morning by the continuous blare of 12 klaxons- another false fire alarm. Last spring this foolery was a quite popular sport especially dur- ing the frustrations of exam time. Then it required over 30 minutes before the courageous guardians of campus property arrived at the scene, had the necessary keys, and located the fire alarm fuse box. Sunday it reuired exactly six- teen minutes to restore restful si- lence - a rather long time con- stant for any security system, What more important matters did the Security Patrol have at that hour anyhow? Punching time clocks perhaps? With such a long reaction time one wonders how ef- fective the Security Patrol would be in a real crisis. WHY MUST all 12 horns be sounded in a concrete structure where dager to life or property because of fire is so minimal? An immediate solution would be to disconnect 11 horns, for one horn would be quite sufficient to sound ar alarm. A more permanent solution would be an alarm signal at the police or fire department which would be far more effective and quiet, would render a near zero probability of future false alarm, and furthermore would let the boys at Quonset Hut No. 1 drink their coffee. -David L. Ross, '64E 'Absurdities' ... To the Editor: HAVE thus far suffered The Daily's film criticism in silence, but Michael Hyman's incredible review of "Wuthering Heights" is so full of absurdities that I am compelled to speak out. While I agree that most of today's "social- ly conscious" slice of life films are tiresome affairs indeed, Mr. Hy- man proposes a poor alternative, for the feeble, watered-down and impersonal Hollywood-type ro- manticism of the film "Wuthering Heights" is unrelated to Emily Bronte's powerful and highly per- sonal novel. Mr. Hyman intimates that he has read the novel and must real- ize therefore that the entire second half is missing from the film; what then is meant when he says the film "adheres faithfully to the book"? If he means it is faithful to its mood and spirit, he is wrong. By jettisoning the final half of the rence Olivier occasionally man- ages to suggest the Heathcliff of the novel), irritating music and colorless direction. Who can blame the audience for laughing when the action and dia- logue periodically descend into ludicrousness. Catherine's alterna- tions in mood between her wild,' abandoned love for Heathcliff and her attraction to the more civi- lized ways of the Grange are de- picted in cliche terms. She be- comes merely the Poor Little Farm Girl who yearns for expensive clothes and high society. Edgar Linton, as played by David Niven, is made to appear only a vain and foolish snob, as is Catherine after their marriage. We are never made to feel the sinister way in which. Heathcliff exerts his influence over the Linton family, because it is never detailed adequately. THE COMPLEX personal rela- tionships of the novel are gone, and with them the overtones of perversion (Hollywood has always been better at presenting themes of perversion in its gangster films than in its attempts at "quality"). And, in the absence of psycho- logical subtlety , and power, the theme of the consequences of good flirting with evil and the empty fruits of vengeance falls to pieces, and we are left with a mere tear- jerker, a "four handkerchief pic- ture," as they used to say. "A raere example of art in mo- tion" indeed! There is more true cinematic art in every minute of Hitchcock's least thriller than in this piece of literary vandalism. iS j "The Real Question Is. Can We Keep Them In HOT Water?" w,, aa A2 1 .4