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 "