5f7 3ir4dgan kaItU Seventy-Third Year a w EDITED AND MANAGED BY ;STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS "Where Opinions Are Free STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG., ANN ARBOR, MICH., PHONE NO 2-3241 Truth Will Prevail" Editorials. printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This mst by noted in all reprints. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1963 NIGHT EDITOR: GAIL EVANS LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Terms Hatcher's Inaction Regrettable Abolishing the Box-Top Plan: Credit Without Class Hours THE VERY EXISTENCE of such a thing as First, students would not have to be bur- a "degree" implies that, at least in the dened with the busy-work of some classes. literary college, a student achieves his pedigree Upperclassmen might have to take only four courses per semester instead of the usual cum- by turning in 120 box tops, usually called credit bersome five. hours, and receiving in exchange a sheepskin, Second, students majoring in some fields a testimonial to his having sat through at would not have to be overloaded with three or least 1800 hours in class. And this is generally more courses in one department during a .se- the case: credit hours are awarded for courses mester. Especially in mathematics, to receive taken. Instead, they should be awarded for an adequate background, a student must cover learning a subject. so many areas that the amount of hours in The engineering college has taken the lead courses taken from the math department rises in this interpretation of an education. Recent- above the 40 hour limit on credit in any one ly, the Regents approved a change in the department. Given a credit examination sys- wording of the undergraduate degree require- tem, a good student could cover a larger num- ments. The level of attainment of the student ber of mathematical topics in less time. is the new criterion for granting a degree, Third, peripheral knowledge in cognate fields rather than a set number of credit hours. Un- could be picked up without going too deeply der special circumstances, a student may be into a field. excused from taking a course needed in a fundamental field of study, such as engineer- FOR INSTANCE, if a student were majoring, ing graphics, or in a particular program, such in Spanish literature, he might want to get as mechanical engineering. He is not required a general picture of some basic area of French to take the course, and he does not make up literature without becoming absorbed with the credit in other courses. However, students too many names and dates. To this end, he exempted from these courses are rare. So the could attempt to pass a credit exam in a course change in wording affects only a few en- in French literature. gineers. Also, a student may want to start taking higher level courses in a subject without first A WORKABLE SYSTEM that regularly gives spending a lot of time taking prerequisites. A credit to students for subjects they have credit examination system would Allow him to learned outside of school is in operation at the start taking more difficult courses in tess Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After time. receiving permission from the department in Finally, the University could escape the cnm- which the subject is taught, a student registers plaints from those students who claim they to take a credit examination, usually just a can spend their class time better by learning final exam in the course. If his performance things. is acceptable, he is given a grade and credit Not all students can learn subjects outside for the equivalent course. One advisable modi- of class. And not all subjects ran be learned fication to this educational method is to give without some assistance. But +he University reduced credit instead of full credit for courses should stop wasting capable students' tirre in taken by way of credit exams. courses which they can learn without going to Such a system would correct many ills at class. the University. -MICHAEL SATTINGER Comparative Grading WHAT DO grades in college really mean? The Detroit News, in a recent article, surveyed the situation of the meaning of grades in college as seen by various educators in the state. One of them, Michigan State University. President John A. Hannah, said that although 76 per cent of last year's MSU freshmen came from the top 24 per cent of their high school classes, 40 per -cent were below a C average at the end of the year, and 24 per cent were not doing any better as sophomores. Comment- ing on this, Hannah said, "Certainly, we are getting better students now, on the average, than those of five or 10 years ago. Presumedly we are doing a better job of teaching and in- spiring them. "it seems illogical that we see not reflection of either change in the academic grades we record." To decide this dilemma, some reflection on the intrinsic value of grades is necessary. GRADE signifies a student's standing compared to other students in his class. It is not meant to show how well he does as com- pared with students of 10 years ago; it does not show how much more he has learned than his$ classmates who did not go on to college after high school. When an employer, for instance, looks at a student's academic record from college, he is not interested in seeing a flock of A's and B's that indicate only that this student had to be better qualified and work harder than college students used to. He already knows that. He is interested in picking out the ap- plicant whom he considers to he best qualified for the job he wants to fill. And if grades ere one of his criteria, he wants them to show the relation of the applicants to each other. There is no such thing as a completely ob- jective standard in academics. If we are not to base standards on a comparison of students -even if over a long period of time rather than individually, in each class--on what are we to base them? WHAT WOULD it mean to have a 3.5 average or to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa if everyone who graduated were to receive these honors? Honors mean just that-those whose accomplishments in a certain field exceed their classmates'. In addition, there is the question of how generally-raised grades would affect perform- ance. An increase in A's and B's and fewer D's and E's would result in lowered standards; the same proportion of students would be satisfied with enough grade points to keep them in school, and the scale would return to the same proportion of C's, but with less work required to get C's. Some students would still fail through acute lack of study. No one will deny that at times it seems that grades don't mean anything at all. Everyone at the University knows some people with very good grades who are not as smart or even as knowledgeable as some careless intellectual with mediocre grades; and everyone also knows people whose accomplishments in their fields after they leave college could not have been predicted by their grades. But to put grading on any basis but relative accomplishment is to take away any meaning at all that grades might have. -RUTH HETMANSKI To the Editor: ON THURSDAY at 3:45 p.m., I passed a picket line at the residence of President Harlan Hatcher. The picketing was in pro- test to President Hatcher's unwill- ingness to declare himself in sup- port of a city ordinance against discrimination in housing. Earlier in the day I had read Fred Russell Kramer's brilliant editorial in The Daily calling upon President Hatcher to publicly state his support of legislation designed to aleviate discriminatory condi- tions which his own Board of Re- gents has acknowledged to exist. President Hatcher's failure to re- spond affirmatively to repeated appeals to state his position on the proposed legislation is regret- table, to say the least. A half hour later, at 4:15, I listened to Prof. Viktor Frankl, of the department of neurology and psychiatry at the medical school, University of Vienna, and a for- mer inmate of Auschwitz concen- tration camp. He showed slides of the camp as it exists today: its wire fences, barracks, gas cham- bers and crematoria. Over six mil- lion Jews died in this and other concentration camps. Then my thoughts went back to the picket line I observed only thirty minutes earlier. When there is prejudice and discrimination be- cause of race and color, can one afford the luxury of silence? -Rev. Erwin A. Gaede The First Unitarian Church Policy,.-- To the Editor: EITHER the Regents of the Uni- versity have a policy concern- ing fair housing or they do not. President Hatcher says, "The poli- cy of the University on fair hous- ing has always been clear and defi- nitivesand Ihfind it difficult to understand how it could be mis- interpreted," but he won't reveal its content. I cannot understand how it is possible to have a policy in re- gard to a matter that involves an entire city, and at the same time keep it a deep dark secret. If it is not a secret, as President Hatch- er has implied, what objection can he have to revealing it. As chief officer of this Univer- sity it is his responsibility to see that the policies set forth by the Regents are carried out. Clearly, if the Regents have a policy, Presi- dent Hatcher has not carried out his responsibilities. -Robert L Rhodes, '63 Responsible.. .. To the Editor: IN REGARD to Miss Bowles's in- terpretation of the recent activ- ities of the Human Relations Board, I wish to take issue with her apparent acceptance of "some administrators and Regents" des- ignation of direct action as "ir- responsible." The students who demonstrated feel and felt that direct action was the only possible way to try to get a statement on fair housing from President Harlan Hatcher. He mentioned bylaw 2.14, thereby en- dorsed at at Friday's Regents meeting. The HRB was seeking a public statement on the bylaw on fair housing, specifically from Presi- dent Hatcher, who is the spokes- man for the University. THE PRESIDENT was content not to make any statement, we were not. If we differ with the President, it seems reasonable to use the legal means in our power to attempt to get what we want. If we are to be limited by what "some administrators and Re- gents" think are appropriate means, why should we also not be limited by what they think are appropriate goals? As our goals differ so perhaps must our definition of appropriate means of achieving them. Thus, as long as our actions remain legal, we should not be prevented from pursuing them. Our willingness to support our stand seems to me to be responsible, realistic and even effective, not the reverse. Have we jeopardized progress in other areas of student affairs? The administration may call us irre- sponsible and thereby find a ra- tonale for slowing down change in other areas. They may feel that by our willingness to support what we believe in we gave evidence of more maturity than average. Thus there is no logical necessity for the statement that we have hind- ered progress. -Sylvia J. Berliner, '63 Indictment . . . To the Editor: THOMAS HAYDEN'S review of "Spectrum Left" is another of his brilliant expositions of the lib- eral viewpoint. For example, there. is his irrefutable indictment of de- bate over basic goals: "With many nations operating welfare economies, we fight about wheth- er our society has any obligation to care for ... people." Certainly it is clear that only the most evil (i.e., conservative) of men would dare to question the sacred principle of the welfare am sure Mr. Hayden will agree. This would be an application of the great liberal ideal: The ma- jority is always right-except when they disagree with us. -Carl Miller, '64 Low-Simmer . . To the Editor: USUALLY in debates on sex the partisans of the crude, animal- istic approach speak with the louder voice and receive the more publicity. We say animalistic ap- proach for theirs indeed is one at the level of monkeys rather than at that of human beings. The vacuity and deceitfulness of this approach will never be too force- fully exposed. Basically the crude, animalistic creed is easy tounderstand and to act upon, as one need only let oneself go. Given a boy-girl rela- tionship, its object is none other than the calculated search for passion and the satisfaction of raw desire. The simplicity and di- rectness of thisblueprint, tying in with otherwise normal drives, are made to order of those who lack in sensibilities and higher human feeling. When approval of "Maybe I Should Try To Cut Down" - - ~~ TODAY AND TOMORROW: * On NotFidge;t~ingoverFrance. this crude approach is voiced, it is more often than not by males. For its partisans, love and the per- son are secondary. Press them a little and they will tell you that woman is little or nothing more than an instrument of pleasure as may suit their tem- porary fancy. They are impatient with such notions as honest, car- ing sentiment and the respect due to the dignity of every human being. Crass, narrow, exploitative, close to the ground like our an- thropoid ancestors is the animal- istic approach. * - * HOW DIFFERENT is the sweet, tender, low-simmer affection ap- proach! By its teiims many con- ditions have to be met before pas- sion can become a reasonable and meaningful act, making for hap- piness in depth. Passion must fit into a context of security,' of per- manence, or belongingness, an1 then too, of the urge to share one's happiness through acknowledge- ment of the greatness of the hu- man powers of procreation. Such a context is preceded in time, how - ever, and always sustained by the attuning of two people to each other, by a communion of hearts, minds and emotions. Not achieved by the furtive, rough and tumble pursuit of the satisfaction of raw sexuality, this communion is born instead of that wonderful thing called affection, which may of course take many forms, but which in all cases is marked by the demonstration of care, and the partaking of that warm, yet quiet kind of happiness which the intimate company of a sweet girl can so well provide. It is affection-that exchane of the whispers of the heart - which makes the company of a girl so enjoyable and enriching, so different and worthwhile in its own right. Affection stands as an end unto itself on all occasions where fondness for the other per- son is genuinely felt, whether it be in the case of a few isolated dates in passing, or, and even more so, in the case of many such dates building up to a permanent and secure union. * * * THE PARTISANS of the crude, animalistic approach think of a boy-girl relationship as necessar- ily centering on one or the other of two poles, the cold and platon- ic, or the passionate. In between, however, lies affection, the whole realm of romance par excellence; affection is like the placid lake, the breathtaking mountain range, the setting sun, the warm and starry night. The animulistic ap- proach thereby short-circuits the deepest, most fundamental and permanently satisfying element in a male-female relationship. Of course affection and passion are on the same continuum. For lack of prudence, lacy of control of sense urges generally, the pass- age from affection co passion is very quickly made. Indulgence in "drool-style" kissing, isolation in the Arboretum or in a parked car on a dark road are admittedly be- yond the pale of the sweet, ten- der, low-simmer affection ap- proach. Some may claim that commun- ion of hearts, minds and emotions can be attained and rt present suf- ficient justification for indulgence in passion irrespective of a con- text of permanent union. The po- tentialities for self-deception, for haste, regret and demoralization here, where responsibilities are not engaged, arcconsiderable. No- where, basically, does this path, lead. I hold that the element of security is fundamental as a con- text for passion in furtherance of human happiness in depth. In any case, it would almost seem indeed to be a law of boy-girl relation- ships that involvement in a great- er or lesser degree of passion out- side of a context of permanence actually gets in the way of the growth of a communion of hearts, minds and emotions. Such involvement concentrates the mind in a way detrimental to full appreciation and knowledge of the other person. In this manner many couples may find themselves in a sort of rut in that they engage in various degrees of "heavy stuff" on the promptings of empty, yet compelling habit-without really too much enthusiasm-and so fail to experience the soft, fulfilling joys that come from lower-sin- mered demonstrations of care and attachment. Passion at the wrong time-however noble and enrich- ing otherwise-spells the death of love. TO BE SURE, one could hardly be so naive as to fail to recognze that girls are not entirely free of the animal themselves! However, we like to think that in a majority of cases they would most happily settle for sweet, tender, low-sim- mer affection as the core of ary boy-girl relationship. If things go crude and animalistic, it is more often the male's fault, who without let-up insists, drives, pushes - stupidly, pawingly. Sexual urges are like any of the other urges within us. They too must be civilized, organized. No more than our other urges can they be used raw. True, aphrodisiac films and pocket-books and "peep- ing-tom" magazines do make tis organization a good deal more dif- ficult. There are then two approaches to sex - one identifiable with crawling, the other with soaring. We have made our choice! -Paul A. Hudon, Grad Nadir To the Editor: AN EDITORIAL by Andrew Or- lin in Saturday's issue attrib- utes the failure of an organization called the Students for Cudlip and White for Board of Regents Com- mittee (sic) to find a faculty ad- visor to facultynmeekness cowardice. May I suggest alternative hy- potheses? Perhaps no faculty member approached cares to sup- port Cudlip and White for Board of Regents? Or perhaps no facul- ty member gives a damn for the Committee's object? But appar- ently Mr. Orlin is not interested in a faculty advisor's opinion any- way since he states that the orga- nization asks for one "merely to sign membership lists and other documents of red tape." We can agree when Mr. Orlin complains that "things have reached their nadir" if things are editorials. -Prof. Leo F. McNamara Count .,. To the Editor: THE DAILY for Thursday car- ried an editorial entitled "Non- Implementation." The editorial stated, among other things, "Stu- dent Government Council will ex- tend invitations to the four candi- dates (for Regents) to come be- fore one of its Wednesday night meetings." One should rea onably expect that persons enrolled in the Uni- versity would either be able to count or should make certain of the facts before making state- ments. If the writer of the editorial and the Student Government Council had bothered to check with the County Clerk or with the Michigan Director of Elections, it would have been learned that there are six candidates for the Board of Regents on the Michigan election ballot for the April 1, 1963 spring election. -Ralph W. Muncy Prove It ,.., I . . '4 Fresh Air in Grand Rapids WELL, ANOTHER YEAR has passed for the Michigan Federation of College Young Re- publicans; they have indulged in their annual ritual and sacred rites; they did it at the Grand Rapids convention last weekend. It is the only thing they do all year. There was a small change in this year's script--a conservative was elected chairman instead of a liberal-but the end result was the same. The control of= the Federation simply shifted from the Stockmeyer-McPherson ma- chine to the YAF machine. On the surface, it would seem that the Federation is destined for more of the same inept, self-seeking leadership which has plagu- ed it since inception. But on the horizon looms a glimmer of hope. LAST WEEKEND, amid the lavish flood of campaign materials and goodies edible, one could glimpse a rare phenomenon. A maverick candidate for chairman emerged, destined for failure but symbolizing the clean politics for which the Republican Party once stood. Denne Osgood of Calvin College did not tions, or make a lot of promises he wouldn't have known how to go about keeping. PERHAPS this is why he lost. His campaign was not geared to a convention committed to having one continuous party and leaving the politicking to a handful of self-styled, but halfbaked little puppeteers. He campaigned on a platform of education and political action, which would have returned the Federation to its original goals-goals long ignored. Moreover, he campaigned for a clean con- vention-a convention based upon free decision by each and every delegate. Needless to say, he didn't get that either. But what is most important is that faced with certain defeat, he refused to foresake his course. His name was placed in nomination, and some 40 delegates had the courage to stand up and be counted in his behalf. In the past, the Federation has experienced 11 months of relative lethargy between the one month each year when each faction noisily prepares for the convention. Probably, the coming year will not be any different. By WALTER LIPPMANN WASHINGTON, which is stun- ned and dazed by General de Gaulle's actions, is still reacting instinctively rather than deliber- ately. In excluding Britain and in seeking to expel America from Europe, the general has struck a blow at the foundations of Ameri- can post-war policy. The first reaction to this radical strike against ideas and policies which had come to be regarded as past of the nature of things was to deny that General de Gaulle had changed anything-or to avow that he could not change anything because history and destiny were working for our ideas and our poli- cies-or to try to improvise in a hurry some project which would tempt and seduce the wayward general or, failing that, would cir- cumvent him. * * * NOTHING MUCH is likely, it seems to me, to come of these instinctive reactions. There is 'o be sure some truth in each of them. Thus in the long run the Atlantic Community, which has been a controlling fact for three centur- ies, will reassert its influence on national purposes. The geography and the history which unites the peoples on the two sides of the At-' lantic will prevail over all other considerations in the long run. There is also truth in the feeling that, since Europe and America cannot go their separate ways, they will eventually divide, because they thing." There is no positive action, I venture to think, that our gov- ernment can take just now which goes anywhere near the heart of the situation. The heart of the situation is that Western Europe has outgrown the dependence upon America which began with the First World War. Western Europe will not, therefore, accept any longer American lead- ership and dominance in European affairs. This is the new reality upon which General de Gaulle is acting, and it is to this new reality that we must perforce adjust our foreign policy. * * * THE NEW REALITY has been in the making for about 10 years. Into it have gone the great chang- es in the military balance of pow- er between.the United States and Russia... the brilliant recovery of Western Europe . . . the depletion of the United States' gold reserves and the decline of the United States from its financial pre-emi- nence.. . the failure of the United States under two Presidents to cope successfully with a chronic sluggishness which contrasts so vividly with the exuberant expan- sion of Western Europe . . . the recognition in Moscow that the balance of military power is so fav- orable to the West that the cold war cannot be waged aggressively in Europe. The net sum of these contribut- ing factors is that in relation not only to the protecting power of have to turn upon whether he or we can draw the right conclusions from the new reality. The best way, indeed the onb' way, for us to test the question is to relax and to let it become the problem of our European friends to decide the basic question. The basic question is where, in the de- scent from American paramountcy into American isolation from Eu- rope, they wish to stabilize our relations. This is the question pi s- ed in many forms and most spe- cifically by the French decision for an "independent" nuclear force. Our best line is to say that if France means literally to have an independent right to start a nu- clear war, she will have to leave us with the independent right not to participate in it. If, however, France in fact does not want that kind of independence, then in fact she wants some kind of partner- ship. If so we shall have to face the issue of whose finger is to be on the trigger of the nuclear forces of the partnership. THESE ARE difficult questions. It may be that they are theoret- ically insoluble questions. But there is no pressing need to solve them, because, for quite other rea- sons, there is for the time being no serious danger of thermonu- clear war. It is not tidy to do noth- ing to settle the questions. But it is, I think, wiser to do nothing than to spend a lot of energy on gimmicks-such as a NATO nu- clear force-which seek to bypass