Seventy-Third Year
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
_ - UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
hre Opinions Are STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG., ANN ARBOR, MICH., PHONE NO 2-3241
Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in at: reprints.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1964 NIGHT EDITOR: KENNETH WINTER
A LAST GLANCE:
The Paradoxical Uni versity
Greatness in Failure
"So I Said To Those Wise-Guy Kids. 'Do You Know Of
Anyone Who Is Living In Abject Poverty ... ?'"
-1, o7
THE FOLLOWING PIECE is the 90th
Daily editorial written over the past
four years by one Gerald Storch, which
for better or worse happens to be my
name.
I look back at the previous 89 efforts
and I am not very pleased with myself
because most of them were childish and
sort of unreal. I read them again but
now am surprised and a little bit em-
barressed to find my own name actually
attached at the bottom.
And now comes the 90th and last-the
farewell editorial that is supposed to
be the best thing one ever writes, a
poignant but mature catharsis of what
one thinks about the University and him-
self and life in general.
ATHENS OF THE WEST - the great
University of Michigan. Or at least
that's what they say.
In this newspaper's trimester survey of
a couple months ago, 48 per cent of a
grand total of our distinguished, bril-
liant, dynamic faculty members in the
sample were gracious enough to fill out
and return the questionnaire. Even the
freshmen, with a 70 per cent response,,
acted more responsibly.
I am often told that the system of man-
ners, so ingrained among American stu-
dents, is good because it trains them to
display basic courtesies and respect for
other people. Yet in the closing minutes of
the, class hour, brilliant, talented Michi-
gan students, without much thinking
about it, clatter their notebooks and
squirm and twitch and noisily get ready
to leave-even though in drowning out
the instructor's concluding remarks they
are doing one of-the rudest things imag-
inable in an academic community. It hap-
pens every day, in every class.
The state House of Representatives
which recently toyed with cutting higher
education budgets by five per cent later
whisked through in nothing flat a bill
for higher legislative salaries. Yet one of
the University's distinguished, dedicated
Regents announces his "respect and ap-
preciation" for this very same group, and
deplores the "unjust aspersions" cast upon
them when Daily editorials venture to
criticize legislators' cavalier treatment of
the University's appropriation.
"THIS IS A GREAT University" Yes,
let's keep telling ourselves that.
Briefly the vision arises of the Regents
directing the robed semicircle chorus of
students, faculty and administrators in
united harmony to a tune of "Yes, this is
a great University."
The, paradox is simple: this actually
is a great University only because there
are enough people here with the sensitiv-
ity and intelligence to realize that it
isn't.
Some of them I have known at The
Daily. A few drop out of school. Others
can be found in various faculty offices
and in several positions in the adminis-
tration. All inject the campus with most
of whatever idealism and conscientious-
ness it has.
THERE HAVE BEEN moments in class
when the instructor would say some-
thing I found deep and moving. Ann Ar-
bor is hilly, and one can drive or walk
to a high crest and gaze down for hours
at the beauty of the town. Then there
are times for walking alone through the
central campus late at night, staring at
the empty, dark buildings and wondering
what education is all about.
But that is college. An isolated four
years from real life, when a person is
still young and worried enough to strive
for a broader and more intelligent grasp
of the problem of living it. Four years
of meeting approximately one per cent of
one's 25,000 fellow students and trying
to understand one's own self better by
learning from others.
I HAVE GOTTEN MUCH from the Uni-
versity, in spite of its veneer of com-
placency and carelessness toward just
about anything. In my work for The Daily,
I tried to give something back in re-
turn. In doing so, there were some truly
great people on the paper whom I al-
ways looked up to and wanted to emulate.
Their names are now enclosed in dusty
bound volumes of old Dailies and have
been quickly forgotten by the campus. It
is somewhat upsetting, I must admit, to
realize that soon the same thing inevit-
ably will happen to me.
-GERALD STORCH
City Editor, 1963-64
'ANGEL STREET':
Drama Season Flubs
Hamilton Melodrama
FOR YEARS TEACHERS have been telling students that modern
actors have trouble playing Shakespeare; but things are even worse
than we thought. They can't play honest-to-God melodrama either.
"Angel Street," by Patrick Hamilton, is an English melodrama or
thriller, of a kind that used to be a staple of the West-end stage in
London. This one exposes the machinations of a Victorian husband
who turns out to be far other than he should be. His real aim in life
is to complete a crime to which he committed himself 15 years before
the plays begins, when he foully murdered an old woman for her rubies.
Only he didn't find the rubies, and here he is, 15 years later, looking
for them.
MEANWHILE, TO give the audience good measure, he's also driv-
ing his wife mad, and making passes at the maid. But Scotland Yard
never sleeps for 15 years at a time, and the husband therefore has to
spend a good deal of time off stage lolling about among out-of-work
actresses so that Inspector Rough can set the wheels of justice turn-
ing, and in the meantime, explain to the wife that she isn't mad
after all.
It sounds pretty silly, and it is. But such plays were written as ve-
hicles for actors who know how to make the most of every strong
line, of every theatrical situation, and in fact, with a Wolfit or an
Orson Welles in the lead, "Angel Street," although it would never stir
the deeps of thought in anyone, would at least give the adrenalin
glands a good time.
LAST NIGHT, Drama Season did almost everything wrong. Kent
Smith in the lead was far too amiable a villain. Cutting old ladies'
throats? That chap? Good God, no, I don't believe it. But he meets
his match in Inspector Rough played by Robert Carraway.
Mr. Carraway couldn't remember his lines in the first act; for
the rest of the play he read them, but his reading was worse than his
fumbling. Deanne Yek plays the saucy maid in an indescribable accent.
Judy Riecker plays the honest maid respectably, but one can't hear.
The only acceptable performance comes from Ruth Livingston as
the wife. She looks suitably pre-Raphaelite, drawn and thin, and she
understands the theatricality of her part.
So there it is. The ladies behind me left, and I don't blame them.
An audience at the old Lyceum theatre would have wanted its money
back.
-Frank Brownioy
Department of English
,1;
7
;I
(
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
Continuing the Debate on MSU and Merit Winners
Hypocrisy and Civil Rights
GROUP that is least concerned
with today's civil rights movement is
the sector of the population that should
be most condemned by it. A large part of
the population in the northern United
States pays lip service to the principles of
freedom for all, and because their hearts
are in the right place, they are forgotten
by civil rights leaders.
But they should not be, for this sector
of the population holds the key to the
problem. It is unhampered by prejudice
and in a position frequently to do some-
thing about it. This part of the popula-
tion is more influential than any other.
Its members very often hold jobs in
places where discrimination is an issue: in
the firms with discriminatory hiring prac-
tices, in schools, in the government.
Startled out of inertia and complacency,
they could inflict positive pressure within
these organizations to end discrimination.
Additionally, these people, in the North
at least, are a large minority, if not a ma-
jority of the population. Because they
live in dozens of communities that are
never mentioned as targets for demon-
strations, they have the opportunity to
set a precedent. And, because they do
constitute so much of the population, if
enough participated and drew in their
less liberal counterparts, it would be
strong testament of the worth of the
cause.
BUT THEY ARE NOT exerting inside
pressure to change the American way
of life, nor are they setting an example
for those who live around them. They are
sitting on their attractive porches drink-
ing coffee and discussing smuggly wheth-
Actinz Editorial Staff
er or not civil rights demonstrations are
the right ways to achieve the goal of
equality for all. Usually they decide that
they are not, because "peace is never
achieved through violence."
They are scared to positively support
their beliefs. They are scared that their
neighbors will ostracize them if they have
Negroes as friends, that their property
will become useless if land is sold to Ne-
groes, that they will lose their jobs.
And they are right.
But what they lose is miniscule in
proportion to what posterity and the
great part of the population will gain by
their loss. They might trade their kids'
college education for what would be a
community's good high school education;
but sometimes sacrifice is necessary. For
civil rights, it is absolutely essential.
THE CAUSE of civil rights is just, but
it often is weakened because it is as-
sociated with people who do not yet have
too much to lose-students and the peo-
ple who are trying to get the rights they
have been denied. It will be strong only
when people who have a lot to lose, lose
it, demonstrating powerfully adherence to
the principle of equality for all. And the
more people that realize this, the less
will be the loss.
Civil rights groups now are battering
against the most impregnable part of
society-those people who are solidly
against equal rights. The usual tactic in
a military campaign is to attack the
weakest place in the line of defense. The
weakest part of the defense in civil rights
is the "lip service people." Making life
more uncomfortable for these people than
it would be if they supported civil rights
conceivably could make them switch
roles and use the immense power they
have to change the situation.
To the Editor:
T HE DISCUSSION of past weeks
in The Daily and by others of
Michigan State University's schol-
ar recruiting program was recently
continued in the April 22 editorial
by Michael Sattinger, "Seeing Who
Benefits from MSU Scholarships,"
and the April 29 article by Jeffrey
Goodman, "MSU Paces Nation in
Merit Winners." Both admit that
"MSU seems to be on top" in the
number of such scholars recently
admitted, as Mr. Goodman put it,
but both endeavor to denigrate the
MSU scholarship program.
To deal with all the claims in
these two disquisitions would, in-
deed, tax the mind and spirit of a
Merit winner, so that is a job I
will not attempt. Two statements
are, however, particularly remark-
able.
First, in the Goodman attempt
to show that "a good proportion
of the scholarship winners at MSU
are (sic) not there totally by
choice," the writer noted that the
student will not know if MSU is
giving him a scholarship until
April of his senior year. Since
most of these students put down
MSU as first choice to get an
MSU scholarship, he went on, and
since by April "it is pretty late
for him to change his choice," the
writer concludes that the student
is stuck, whether he gets an MSU
scholarship, an outside one, or
nothing, and will have to go to
MSU-which conjures up images
of hordes of deluded students sell-
ing their birthrights for a mess
of Spartan pottage.
THAT'S A RATHER startling
conclusion, however. All students
who aren't "early decision" can-
didates hear from their prospective
schools-the University, Harvard,
MSU or Podunk-in April, and
all of them have until May 1 to
make up their minds. With his
acceptances and scholarship no-
tices before him in April, the
student has until May 1 to decide
where he will go, which commits
him.to nothing, let alone four
years of his life in exchange for
$400, as the article would have us
believe. In fact, even John Stal-
naker, president of the National
Merit Scholarship Corporation, o-
sevred that University attacks on
the MSU program are "mosty sur
grapes"-a comment that ha
been studiously ignored in Ann
Arbor:
The other charge, so devastat-
ingly phrased and so brilliantly
conceived, is that "MSU is in
quest of intellectually excellent
students. Their National Merit
Scholarship program serves no
other purpose." (Sattinger editor-
ial.) This is somewhat like ,aying
"onelights a lamp for illumina-
tion," or, "one sleeps to rest."
Obviously MSU wants excellent
students; and, by the admission of
even these two worthies, it is
getting them. That's a very com-
mendable attitude, and those are
very commendable results; we de-
lude ourselves to think otherwise.
Far from being ignoble or crass,
a university that recognizes its
faults and conscientiously and dil-
igently seeks excellence is, in that
respect and in that measure. ex-
paganda stunt," "a ball of tin,"
they s6offed. But this bravado
concealed extreme embarrassment
and anxiety-so, later, as a histor-
ian said of another day, "now that
they were terrified, they were
ready to put everything in order"
The University has been shaken
from its comfortable complacency
by the Spartan scholarships as
surely as the U.S. was by the So-
viet sputniks. We have by now
spent enough time lamenting -he
lead we have lost. It is now time
to regain it.
-Mark Killingsworth, '67
ROTC Controversy
To the Editor:
I'D LIKE to give Jeffrey Good-
man the credit he must feel
he sorichly deserves for writing
his article "Beat, Drums, Beat."
He paints a very vivid picture of
an unmilitary, sloppy bunch of
college students, whom he chooses
to refer to as "slobs" strolling
around Ferry Field (instead of
marching) and standing in groups
that in no way resemble military
formations.
He criticizes the ROTC students
for being unshaven and dressed
like slobs and attempts to imply
that they lack moral character
by saying that when the cadets
and midshipmen come to parade
rest they immediately start telling
dirty jokes and whispering ob-
scenities to each other. This is
how he described thr.m at their
Thursday evening practice. He also
extends his criticism to their ap-
pearance Saturday morning, the
day of the military review.
*, * *
I DON'T KNOW where Good-
man was when he viewed these
practices and the review itself (if
he did), but in my company, while
the practice was going on, I saw
no man who looked any more
sloppy than any other college stu-
dent on this campus. There were
certainly no dirty jokes being ex-
changed, since there wasn't any
conversation going on in the ranks.
And as to Goodman's reference to
our military formation-I'll grant
you that we are not the equivalent
of the Pershing Rifles Company
(a tri-service military organization
from Michigan) which took first
in the nation last year in drill
competition, but we may certainly
be compared favorably with a
company of enlisted men graduat-
ing from their basic training. I
make this comparison from ex-
perience (having served in the'
U. S. Navy) which is more than I
can say for Goodman. He ap-
parently made his criticism with-
out having any experience except
that of writing unsubstantiated,
cutting editorials.
If Goodman had taken the time
to see the military review Satur-
day morning, he would have seen
(as I did) three battalions of
clean-shaven cadets and midship-
men presenting a very good mili-
tary appearance. I might add, too,
that shoes WERE shined and uni-
forms WERE pressed.
* * *
UNDOUBTEDLY the real pur-
pose of Goodman's article was to
reflect discredit upon the military
organizations on this campus and
of our country. We, of the military,
are aware of the already prevail-
ing anti-military sentiment on this
campus. It probably pleases many
people to read an article such as
Goodman's. I know it certainly
must please all the enemies of our
country to read about any anti-
military sentiment that develops
on our nation's college campuses.
Whether Goodman realizes it or
not (and he undoubtedly doesn't),
the reason he is free and able to
criticize as he does is precisely
because this country does have a
strong military organization. To
maintain this military organiza-
tion which keeps his unapprecia-
tive hide free, a large supply of
officers is. needed. And ROTC stu-
dents such as Goodman chooses
to criticize provide one of the
major sources of officers. While
he chooses to sit back and criti-
cize, college students such as these
at least have the gumption to get
up and do something about keep-
ing our country free.
-Bert V. Calhoun, '65BAd
EDITOR'S NOTE: I WAS at the
review; I am an MS I1 cadet myself.
And there WAS conversation. pass-
ing, there WEREunshined shoes
and unpressed uniforms. But none
of this is really important.
What I think far more pertinent
is that Mr. Calhoun-and many
others like him-has shown his total
lack of a sense of humor. Doesn't
anyone know how to laugh at him-
self any more?
For sparking laughter was pre-
cisely the only purpose in my edi-
torial. My particular feelings about
the military, my country and the
bravery or gumption of American
soldiers are not here at issue. All
this is is my feeling that despite
all the Army ROTC's attempts to
make well-oiled cadets out of us, we
remain just normal, healthy, some-
what sloppy and somewhat lazy
college boys.
And I submit that wars are won
by just the sane kind of men-by
men, individuals, not by "a strong
military organization." Beneath all
the discipline and order, it takes a
hell of a lot of just plain individual
guts to fight a war, and while this
does not make the discipline and
order unnecessary, it does make
military parades a bit too much.
-JG.
'Ensian 'Bias'
To the Editor:
A LITTLE LESS than a year
from now, I will be completing
To the Editor:
I FEEL COMPELLED to offer a
few remarks about that star-
spangled Saturday night at Michi-
gras.
The near riot and the effect this
had on the. atmosphere of the
otherwise happy affair made me
unhappy. And a race riot is no
place for women, in my opinion.
If there is to be fist swinging,
hope that it is between males, and
not males against females. One
female I saw refused to leave the
side of the field house where the
trouble was brewing, because she
wanted to "see" a race riot.
* * *
PART OF THE TROUBLE was
the result of poor planning on the
part of the Michigras Central.
Committee. The affair simply was
not planned to accommodate the
general public.
Next time this University plans
Michigras, it must either be de-
signed and recognized as a public
affair, or be restricted, through
the purchase of tickets, to card-
carrying University personnel only.
The whole riot incident was re-
gretable because it was needless,
It was not inevitable that fiiction
would break out at Michigras. It
was probable, however, that some-
thing would go wrong in a poorly
planned, overcrowded melee like
the one in evidence on the Michi-
gras Saturday night.
-Robert B. Ellery, '65
IM
four rich and rewarding years at
the University. I sincerely hope
that the yearbook that marks this
milestone in my life will not be
marred with the kind of slams and
personal prejudice found in this
year's 'Ensian.
--Sherry Miller, '65
Riotous Weekend
Y'
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'QUEEN OF SPADES':
fi
Tchaikovsky Opr ci Theatre
T HE UNIVERSITY PLAYERS and the opera department have
brought an exciting production of Tchaikovsky's "The Queen of
Spades" to Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre under the musical direction of
Josef Blatt and stage direction of Ralph Herbert. The opera, sung in
a translation by Mr. Blatt, is based on Puskin. The translation makes
the plot realistic and Mr. Herbert has directed so that the opera is
effective, not affected.
It is a story of German, a poor soldier tortured by a craving for
money. He learns that a countess, whose niece he loves, has the secret
of three cards, but if she tells them she must die. German literally
frightens her to death as he futilely tries to learn her secret, but her
ghost tells him the cards. He gambles, wins the first two draws, but is
tricked on the third.
The role of German is the most difficult both vocally and dra-
matically, but the roles of the countess, Lisa, and Tomsky are also
difficult.
LARRY JARVIS showed the audience the complete command he
has of his beautiful voice. His acting left something to be desired in
the dramatic scenes where he could not sustain the drama. Sue
Morris was dramatically and vocally the most convincing person on
stage. She has the ability to sustain both acting and singing at the
same time,
Lois Alt was a convincing countess. Vocally, she was in good form,
but the death scene performance was overacted. Frank Dybdahl sang
both of his songs well and acted with grace. Of the other principles,
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