Seventy-Sixth Year
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
SOUND and FUYt Everyone Seems To Be Taking Trips
'A
WhereOiosAre Free, 420 MAYNARD ST. ANN ARBOR, MICH.
TruthW3Il40lAYAR S.eANvRBRMIH
NEws PHONE: 764-0552
Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the inidividual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 1966
NIGHT EDITOR: SHIRLEY ROSICK
Hop eful Sign for Student
Rights at MSU
IT COMES AS A SHOCK, but the latest
news out of Michigan State Univer-
sity is heartwarmingly liberal. An MSU
faculty committee has come out in favor
of freedom of expression and communica-
tion.
The faculty committee moved much
closer to the reality of the sixties than
the administration by asserting 1) that
the purpose of the university is "the
enlargement, dissemination and applica-
tion of knowledge" and 2) that to in-
sure unrestricted progress toward these
goals all regulations must be based on
"the principles of maximum freedom and
necessary order."
THE FIRST MAJOR recommendations
of the committee seek to bring MSU
up to date with developments at other
institutions in the field of student rela-
tions with the faculty and administration.
The committee's report calls for the es-
tablishment of a student-faculty commit-
tee on academic rights and responsibili-
ties and a student-faculty judiciary.
The report also seeks to establish a
student-faculty-administration commit-
tee to review dormitory regulations.
These committees are envisioned as a
means to begin communication between
students and those who have been pre-
siding over them. Lack of communication
and the administration of rules that are
unfair, overly restrictive, and simply ar-
chaic has annoyed and frustrated those
students at MSU with any interest in
their rights. In the past it has led them
to take actions outside MSU'sVrules.
THE WAYS in which students, seeking
to express their complaints and their
desires for more freedom, have clashed
with the MSU administration, and how
the faculty committee is attempting to
improve the situation are best illustrated
by recent incidents concerning student
publications.
Last fall's Paull Schiff case revolved
around the charge that he had violated
an MSU policy against distributing cop-
ies of unapproved periodicals door-to-
door in the dormitories. At that time
MSU President John Hannah called the
incident "a real threat to this and every
other university's right 'to enforce and
discipline student behavior."
'THE FACULTY recommendations for
publications would put an end to the
administration's role as the power that
determines what students should read
on campus. They call for a change in the
organization of the State News in order
to have it function more like The Daily.
They include ending censorship, plac-
ing all editorial responsibility on the
students editors. They call for an end to
"approving" publications, the withdraw-
al of which caused the uproar over The
Paper, and ask that publications no long-
er need university approval to distribute
on campus.
THESE ARE, OF COURSE, only recom-
mendations and must be approved by
the faculty senate and board of trustees.
Yet, just the fact that they are being
considered is a milestone for MSU. Of
some doubt is the degree to which the
recommendations in the report will be
followed and the degree to which stu-
dents will appreciate the action.
In the latter case it seems that the
administration, like it or not, has been
responsible for increasing student aware-
ness. Its imported Merit Scholars seem
to be taking the lead among student ac-
tivists to help modernize MSU.
Yes, President Hannah, it's true, prog-
ress is improving your university.
-MICHAEL HEFFER
ALL OVER America, college kids
are taking trips. Not the ordi-
nary, let's-live-it-up-in-Fort Lau-
derdale type excursions, but "ex-
periences" with the psychedelic
drug, LSD. Recent estimates by
U.S. health officials have offered
the startling revelation that at
least 10 per cent of the nation's
college students may be turning
on with LSD. The stuff is easy to
get, requires only a minuscule
amount for full impact, and is a
new fad among many subcultures
within the college population.
But a Senate committee has
been investigating the growing
use of LSD and the tragedies
which often result from its un-
supervised consumption by thrill-
seeking kids.
THE "MIND-OPENING" sen-
sations, which proponents of LSD
allege can be experienced by tak-
ing the drug, often lead to at-
tempted suicide or other psychotic
behavior. Although the evidence is
by no means conclusive as yet,
many doctors say that use of LSD
in an individual susceptible to
emotional instability may touch
off violent, unpredictable reac-
tions.
Nevertheless, more and more
experimentation with LSD is tak-
ing place, and the consequences
are apt to be disastrous. For not
only is the result of taking an
LSD trip often dangerous to the
individual, but the need so many
people in our society apparently
have to escape from the world of
reality is even more shocking.
THE POTENTIAL benefits of
LSD research are enormous, ac-
cording to medical authorities. It
has been found that the drug can
aid in the treatment of schizo-
phrenics and in a few cases has
even managed to eliminate many
symptoms of mental illness in an
individual.
Psychedelic drugs ought to be
the subject of further intense re-
search as a possible means of
learning more about the workings
of the human brain and the forces
(chemical or other) which can
hurtle the individual psyche into
the distorted world of psychosis.
However, LSD should not be
available for unsupervised exper-
imentation and thrill-seeking by
emotionally immature, unstable
individuals - in fact, by anyone
who is not engaged in scientific
research with the drug. Even Dr.
Timothy Leary, the Pied Piper
of the LSD set, has urged his fol-
lowers to abstain from use of the
drug for a year and seek to re-
plicate its effects by experiencing
the reality of emotional involve-
ment in life.
CALIFORNIA and Nevada have
already clamped controls on the
drug, making unauthorized pos-
session or knowing use of LSD a
misdemeanor punishable by a
maximum fine of $1,000 or one
year in jail. At the same time,
illicit manufacture or sale of LSD
would be a felony with penalties
of one to five years imprisonment
for the first offense. Congress is
now debating a federal law to
control distribution and use of the
drug and action is already over-
due.
The fad is now spreading from
college subcultures to the high-
school crowd. The reason for
LSD's popularity-aside from the
fact that it is easy to procure-is
no different from the reason for
many other pointless fads in mod-
ern society.
Too many people are becoming
more and more blase about the
world of reality, or are finding
the stresses of urban existence too
unrewarding a n d monotonous.
LSD provides a welcome relief
not only from these tensions but
from internal psychological pres-
sures usually associated with the
"identity crisis" among college-
age youth.
THE AMORALITY so prevalent
in adult society-from condoning
an illegal, senseless war in Asia to
overlooking growing petty cor-
ruption in the business world-
has spread to youth. When so
many kids come from homes in
which self-fulfillment is reckoned
by a dollar sign, the premature
cynicism which afflicts youth be-
comes even more understandable.
As James Reston wrote last
weekend, many college-age indi-
vidualsare more idealistic than
their parents, turning to pursuits
such as the Peace Corps or VISTA,
vowing to contribute some of their
talents and energy to society
rather than dedicating their en-
tire life to their oWn selfish goals.
But, he pointed out, the vast ma-
jority of college students are no
different from preceding genera-
tions-they are searching for se-
curity, they are materialistic, and
they are predominantly preoccu-
pied with furthering their careers
and finding a mate.
YET THE SEARCH for security
can be-and usually is-a diffi-
cult one. LSD provides a tempor-
ary haven, a way-station for
those individuals who have more
difficulty adjusting to the in-
creasingly stringent demands of
their elders and their nation for
higher grades, better jobs, serv-
ice to the military, and more
material possessions.
But there is little evidence that
use of LSD has provided any val-
uable new insights for this trou-
bled minority. Despite the fan-
tastic sensations which the drug
allegedly offers to its users, how
many of them have been helped
to a more realistic understanding
of the social forces at work around
them (and often impinging on
them) or a deeper awareness of
their own fallibility?
ANOTHER SERIOUS question
to be answered is exactly why
thousands of college students ap-
parently find so little worthwhile
in their education and daily ex-
istence that they feel impelled to
seek "mind-opening" experiences
with LSD.
Has emotional satisfaction and
intellectual fulfillment become so
hard to achieve in our society that
individuals are forced to seek
purious ways of obtaining it? Is
the need for immediate self-grati-
fication so urgent that individuals
are willing to forego later, deferred
rewards which can only be ob-
tained through long, difficult at-
tempts to successfully communi-
cate with one's friends and asso-
ciates and establish meaningful
emotional ties with them?
THERE IS NO obvious answer
to any of these questions, but the
growing enthusiasm over and use
of LSD among a significant min-
ority of the population must be a
cause for concern, inquiry and
federal action to ensure that the
problem does not get completely
out of control.
'The Four Suits': Avant-Garde at Its Best
The Four Suits by Thomas Schmit,
Philip Corner, Alison Knowles,
and Benjamin Patterson.
By ANDREW LUGG
BERNARD HUNT is a British
art-integrationist- and theater
director. Recently he has been
training a group of young people
to act. The method is to get the
students to play games, such as
passing coins so that nobody can
see them, sophisticated versions
of tag and so on. The drama is
approached only after some three
months of play, the students hav-
ing by this time developed a high
degree of self coordination as well
as group coordination. No doubt
similar experiments are being
carried out in the States, but I
am not aware of these.
This activity, caln it enlighten-
ment through play, is an impor-
tant basis for the "art" of Thomas
Schmit, one of the four contri-
butors to "The Four Suits."
Schmit has developed a theater
in which he has extended "the
distance audience-art to an abso-
lute anonymity"; the audience
becomes the actors. (Incidentally,
audiences must, as they usually
are for off-beat pastimes, be
small.)
SCHMIT, in breaking down the
habitual bounds of theater and
doing away with actors (Stanley
Kauffman's lament), demands a
direct and immediate response
from his audience. It is not enough
that they feel what is going on,
but that they actually do it too.
Like Hunt, much of Schmit's
suggested directions involve vio-
lence-tear up a visitor's packet,
turn on a loudspeaker until it
explodes. These are given with an
optimism which is commop to
those artists who work with a
great love for the world while
maintaining a profound despair
of it.
But this is only one aspect of
Schmit's "theater. He forces us to
feel and be fully conscious of all
aspects of our "daily round" and
to take responsibility for them.
He is provoking us with "austere
statements- of form" - "Please
shut this book and sit down naked
on your balcony and feel the
wind!" This brings us to his wit
which is formidable.
In "As You Like It, a detective
story," a very personal "This Is
Your Life" is given for each mem-
ber of the audience so that,
Schmit says, "the avant-garde
audience finally gets what it wants
to get." The mood is one of-take
off your skin and dance around
in your bones.
PHILIP CORNER and Alison
Knowles are more difficult to deal
with, Corner being concerned with
music which doesn't take easily
to book form and Knowles with
the graphic arts-her prints need
to be seen.
The graphic developments which
Corner includes in his section are
difficult to read. We are back to
chance and indeterminacy and
John Cage. The pieces that come
close to theater, however, are
good, and much of what was said
about Schmit is important here
too. The main difference lies in
Corner's concern that the audi-
ence question what they are doing.
Schmit doesn't care-they can if
they wish!
Alison Knowles' prints (printed,
we are told, by "a sort of silver-
point, as yet unnamed") form a
brilliant sequence of juxtaposed
words and images. Again, there is
wit, but now counter-balanced by
some very flat disturbing images
which paradoxically exclude exu-
berance and excitement.
THE LAST of the "suits" is
Benjamin Patterson. In his sec-
tion, Patterson goes some way in
defining what his work is about.
Patterson is part artist, part
psychologist. It 'is not surprizing,
then, that he requires "that the
central function of the artist be
a duality of discoverer and edu-
cator; discovered of the varying
possibilities for selecting from en-
vironment stimuli, specific per-
cepts and organizing these into
significant perceptions, and con-
currently, as an educator, training
a public in the ability to perceive
in newly discovered patterns."
The selections from Patterson's
work included in "The Four Suits"
show the mode of training that he
has in mind. In "Methods and
Processes" he directs us to:
"think smell of roasted coffee
bean
think feel of brown suede
leather
think color of cognac," etc.
WHAT PATTERSON is inves-
tigating is the modes in which
the senses operate. He is doing
more than just making us aware
of our environment, our material
surroundings, our "psycho-socio-
logical habits and intellectual tra-
ditions." This is Schmit's aim.
Patterson is going beyon this by
suggesting possible alternative en-
vironments. He puts it to us that
this is the task the artist has al-
ways and should always dictate
for himself.
For example, in painting each
new style leas had its role of edu-
cator. Pointillism, cubism, pop art,
etc. have been redefinitions of our
environment. What is different
now is the urgency which resolves
itself with a demand for direct-
ness of involvement with the
audience,
This, coupled with a prolifera-
tion of possible techniques, results
in the most permissive "culture"
ever. There are no longer any
limits to the various art forms.
Painting becomes sculpture, with
three-dimentional canvasses, a
film runs along side dance and the
records of the Supremes accom-
pany a poetry reading.
THE CONCRETE poets, the film
Underground, the happenings'
groups, etc. are all "art-integra-
tionists," operating between media
and drawing from the various art
forms whatever they require.
There is no self consciousness and
little respect for the past.
Jonas Mekas in a recent review
of Andy Warhol's "Exploding Plas-
tic Inevitables" mentions the
dynamism and urgency associated
with these arts-"The dance floor
and the stage are charged with
the electricity of a dramatic break
before the down . . . It is all here
and now and in the future."
IF YOU ASK, "why happen-
ings?" "why such a book as "'The
Four Suits'?" there are, I think,
three reasons, one of which we
have touched on already, namely
a desire to make us aware of our
environment. Another lies with
Buckminster Fuller and Marshall
McLuhan-the so-called Electronic
Age and the revolution in media.
The third finds its roots with,
among others, John von Neumann
who wrote in 1957 (bear with the
pedantry)-"Logic and mathe-
matics in the central nervous sys-
tem, when viewed as languages,
must structurally be essentially
different from those languages to
which our common experience re-
fers."
What we see of the world is our
way of looking at it-"not how the
world strikes us but how we con-
struct it." (This assertion has
found considerable experimental
confirmation. I refer my more
sceptical readers to the work of
H. K. Hathine). If you think this
is tied up with Heisenberg and
Sartre, then you are right.
UNCERTAINTY, "absurdity,"
the quest for "reality" and so on
are the intellectual bases for our
avant-garde. As always, the artist
is "recording" the passing show.
And, this is what our four artists
are doing.
"The Four Suits" is a fine
example of avant-garde art. It
provides a good introduction, es-
pecially with Patterson's work and
is imbued with those excellent
qualities-wit, pretentiousness, and
arrogance.
A
#i
The Other Side of Education
LEARNING IS A GOOD experience. But
education is another matter. I often
wonder exactly what learning means to
a kid who, all his life, has only known the
paddle and the spelling book. Does he
have any desire 'to read when the only
thing available to read once he has
sweated through the technique is Dick,
Jane, and Sally?
The middle class knows the dead edu-
cation system. There is no reason for
learning or studying or reading or think-
ing but to be rewarded by the system.
But at least they can receive those re-
wards.
WHAT ABOUT THE KID who has the
same system thrust upon him but has
none of the middle class frills? What
about the kid who gets beat by the
teacher for talking in class and then goes
home to a father who would beat him
again if he only knew? This same kid
knows that even if he studies and suc-
ceeds in the system, he will probably in
the end still be in the ghetto because his
skin is black.
Does society-which is made up of hu-
man beings-want this type of thing to
continue? Do they think this is the way
life should be? I can't help but think that
the only reason man is afraid of saying
anything or pushing for change is be-
cause he is afraid the system, and the
people caught up in it, do not want
change. If he says or does anything, it
will kill him. But many of those people
do want change--if only they could com-
municate.
THEE PICTURE, however, is not that
black. There are attempts and good
ones at communication. The Tutorial and
Cultural Relations Project is one of those
attempts. One University student-usual-
ly with a middle class background, tutors
one child-usually Negro or poor white.
But they don't perpetuate the system.
They begin to know each other as human
beings and then they begin to learn to-
gether because they want to learn not be-
cause they are forced to perform.
The tutor learns quickly that those
kids are aware of a lot and have some-
thing that should never be devalued--
curiosity. When he gets to know the kids
as people not as statistics, he wonders
how society has overlooked them so long.
This summer, the tutorial project has
tutor is the goal. It takes work but the
ideal is not unattainable. Change takes
time but the start must be made.
MAN MAY NOT beat his swords into
plowshares overnight nor will kids be
able to learn without facing the trauma
of our education- system immediately but
University students taking three or four
hours a week is a beginning-a beginning
for them and for the kids.
-BETSY TURNER
'Accidental'
A CORONER'S JURY in Los Angeles has
ruled the shooting of Leonard Dead-
wyler by Patrolman Jerold Bova "acci-
dental homicide." It was an accident that
could easily have been avoided.
Leonard Deadwyler, a Los Angeles Ne-
gro, was shot as he was driving his preg-
nant wife to the hospital. Mrs. Dead-
wyler thought she had begun labor and
apparently believed there was no time
to be lost in getting to the hospital. Pa-
trolman Bova pulled the speeding Dead-
wyler over, then, somehow, Leonard
Deadwyler was dead.
BOVA CLAIMED that his gun discharged
accidentally when the Deadwyler car
suddenly lurched forward. Witnesses con-
tend that Bova shot deliberately. The
jury accepted Bova's version, but their
verdict leaves one crucial question un-
answered: Why did Bova hold a drawn
revolver with the safety off?
No one concerned denies that Dead-
wyler was speeding. An autopsy revealed
that he had been drinking before the
fatal drive. There was, however, appar-
ently no reason for Bova to suspect that
Deadwyler was armed. A drawn gun is an
extremely dangerous and unnecessary
tactic in the arrest of an unarmed man
on a misdemeanor charge.
The Deadwyler shooting took place in
Watts, the riot-torn racially-tense Los
Angeles slum. The incident nearly pro-
voked major new violence, and its ulti-
mate effect may be yet to come. This is
clearly a case where the police, for the
good of all, cannot possibly afford to
risk such an "accidental" shooting.
A DRUNK speeding driver may be a
4t
Just Who Is Marshall McLuhan, Anyway?
By DAVID KNOKE
N o, HE IS NOT the lead char-
acter in an American Western.
To one critic, "he is indeed an
unchic type who dresses in aca-
demically nondescript suits, drinks
Manhattans, incessantly twirls his
glasses as he talks." This may be
the personal image he projects,
but in the abstract, the image of
Marshall McLuhan approaches the
roughshod trailblazer more than
the nondescript professor.
For Marshall McLuhan has be-
come one of the most controver-
sial, fast-rising culture phenome-
non of the day. He owes his claim
to a prophetic role-or to notoriety
as some would have it--largely to
a 359-page book, "Understanding
the Media: The Extensions of
Man." But his critical insights in-
to the function of mass media on
the mass culture have hardly be-
gun with the printed word.
LAST YEAR a group of profes-
sors at the University of British
Columbia staged the first world
festival of "mclunhanisme," as the
French are calling it. People wan-
dered through a maze of huge
plastic sheets upon which were
projected slides at random inter-
vals while musicians flailed away
at bells, gongs and drums.
Dancers performed their steps
within the audience and the
Sculptured Wall "consisted of a
piece of fabric on one side of
which was a squirming girl whom
you were supposed to palpitate
"cold" media and how their tech-
nology influences society.
The "hot" medium is one so
compacted with logical, clear data
that its acquisition demands little
effort on the part of the recip-
ient. The "cool" media then be-
comes one, like television or the
frug, which has such poor resolu-
tion that participant must work
mentally or emotionally to extract
the message. "Depth involvement'"
pronounces McLuhan.
In the history-of-the-world-ac-
cording-to-McLuhan, the techno-
logical villain was the printed
word, which he exacerbated in his
previous book, "The Gutenberg
Galaxy." Before the invention of
moveable type and its subsequent
lineal fragmentation of the social
weal, primitive man lived in a
world in which all the senses built
a unitary impression and every-
thing was just ducky. The spoken
word predominated and built a
tribalized world "with its seamless
web of kinship and interdepen-
dence."
The alphabet, symbolized by
mythical Cadmus sowing the dra-
gon's teeth, and the printed page
fragmentated man's senses and
created a visual "mossaic" culture.
Specialization, the assembly line,
the invention of logic and rational
scholarship (not very evident, by
the way, in McLuhan's disjointed
literary style, despite being pro-
fessor of English at Toronto Uni-
versity) and the breakup of the
tribal society can all be traced
back to these developments.
steady and rapid transformation
into a complex depth-structured
person emotionally aware of his
total interdependence with the
rest of society."
This, in essence, is the McLuhan
thesis, that man's media are the
extensions of his senses, which
thereby change his character. This
discovery is in itself not a start-
ling improvement upon the theory
of role playing. And his "tribal
man" tends to be a Rousseau-ish
bluring of fact. McLuhan's real
impact lies in his title. "Under-
standing media" means to equate
recognition of the formative func-
tion of media with an opportunity
to bridge the "two cultures" gap.
"THE CULTURALLY disadvan-
taged child is the TV child," he
writes. "For TV has provided a new
environment of low visual orien-
tation and high involvement that
makes accommodation to our older
educational establishment quite
difficult. One strategy of cultural
response would be to raise the
visual level of the TV image to
enable the young student to gain
access to the old visual world of
the curriculum and classroom."
He sees the artists' function as
"a DEW Line, a Distant Early
Warning system that can always
be relied upon to tell the old cul-
ture what is beginning to happen
to it. In that sense it is quite on
a par with the scientific." Mc-
Luhan views Baudelaire, Rimbaud
and Joyce as the precursors of the
literary style which broke with
verbal subconscious expression of
Joyce's imagination.
THE McLUHAN analysis of me-
dia is useful in sorting out various
aberations in pop art, op art, Ab-
surd Theatre, Camp styles, spec-
tator sports and dances. The ne-
cessity and desire for participation
leads to a breakdown of cultural
barriers in art as well as politics
and social life.
The enthronement of mediocrity
in the form of the Beatles, or the
massive participatory response to
the civil rights movement with
its demand for "freedom now" ap-
pear to be a submerging of in-
dividual identity into a group
unity, confronted in the Age of
Anxiety by automation, the wel-
fare state and the bomb.
"The mark of our time is against
imposed patterns," writes Mc-
Luhan in his introduction. "We are
suddenly eager to have things and
people declare their beings totally.
There is a deep faith to be found
in this new attitude-a faith that
concerns the ultimate harmony of
being."
MARSHALL McLUHAN has
been criticized for sloppy scholar-
ship, hasty. generalizations, non-
objectivity, irreverence and ego-
centricism. Perhaps this is part
of a carefully planned image he
wants to project; certainly his
"Understanding Media" was both
a shocking affront to staid cul-
tural critics and, at the same
time, one of the first serious at-
tempts to analyze a pervasive
modern phenomenon.
McLuhan has spawned a slew of
devotees and imitators. He will be
influential for quite some time in
the sociology of media studies and
no serious student can afford to
ignore his trailblazing.
Get the message?
LETTERS:
Highway Robbery
To the Editor: privilege, and he is not even con-
nected with the University.
RECENTLY I received a form Secretary of Defense Robert S.
letter from the University of McNamara has often been quoted
Michigan stating that I had not as saying that he wants a dollar's
registered an automobile during worth of goods for a dollar spent.
the Spring-Summer term. I am a Even though I do not have the
graduate students, with a family, notoriety of this man, I still want
living in a residential section of a dollar's worth of goods or
Ann Arbor, and, therefore, I services when I spend a dollar.
"nl. n r Arisrationef a re,~ i1 iarirl f+,
q
"