Seventy-Sixth Year
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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the inidividual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
Y, AUGUST 10, 1966
NIGHT EDITOR MICHAEL HEFFER
The Lansing Rioting:
Some Wish To Ignore Hate
By LEONARD PRATT
Co-Editor
+piME PLANT department's un-
authorized and unjust removal
from the Diag of a Voice sign
criticizing the war in Viet Nam
brings home as little else could
the betterment of students' gov-
ernmental condition that has tak-
en place at the University over
the last few years.
It shows how bad things must
have been.
It's difficult to say whether
the removal was an official de-
partment act or merely the whim
of an employe who disliked the
sign. Department supervisor Al-
fred Ueker at first claimed no
knowledge of the removal, but his
silence since lends itself to either
interpretation, and it as acknowl-
edged that a department spokes-
man last Thursday told an Of-
fice of Student Affairs official
that the OSA ought to "censor"
such signs.
THIS STATEMENT is anacron-
istic nonsense. It bears all the ear-
marks of an approach to student
rule-making that heretofore seem-
ed to have disappeared years ago.
It is arbitrary, restrictive and im-
posed on the students involved
without their prior knowledge or
consent.
That such remarks and perform-
ance should come out of the plant
department isn't surprising. It is
a sort of administrative backwater
of the University that by all ac-
counts hasn't been looked into for
years.
Of all the peripheral service
operations a university gets in-
volved with, plant is both one of
the most expensive-the Universi-
ty spent more than $7.5 million on
it here in fiscal 1964-65-and one
of the least subject to the fresh-
ening effects of public scrutiny.
Just so the blackboards get wash-
ed, nobody asks questions.
BUT WHEN an organization
like that gets involved in setting
student policies, there's trouble.
As one irate Voice member re-
marked on Friday, "This is a
Berkeley incident." If this had
been the fall, and 150 people had
been present instead of the sum-
mer's 50, it might have become
just that, even if on a small scale.
Fortunately, OSA officials rec-
ognize that.
They also see the whole matter
for just what it is-a question of
who sets student rules, miscellan-
eous custodians or the OSA and
Student Government Council. It is
testimony both to the quality of
the OSA's staff and to the dis-
tance that student affairs have
come in the last several years that
they saw this issue clearly from
the start and never questioned
their right to decide it in the stu-
dents' favor.
THE EXEMPLARY perform-
ance of the OSA notwithstanding,
there still remain several things to
be done before the air will be
cleared of this sordid episode.
These things ought to be done
while students are in regular ses-
sion; if that means waiting until
fall then Voice members should
be content that the issue will be
settled in front of their constit-
uents.
First the responsibility for the
sign's removal and destruction
must be squarely placed, on an
administrative process if not on
the individuals who carried it out.
It will clearly be pointless for the
administration to say the matter
has been dealt with unless we are
told what the matter was. Despite
J. Duncan Sells', director of stu-
dent organizations, prompt action
yesterday, this has not yet been
done.
The next step has evidently
been taken. Discussions between
Sells, Ueker, and Gilbert Lee, vice-
president for business affairs, the
officer in charge of the depart-
ment, have resulted in "a clearer
understanding .. .which,.. .does
promise against the recurrence of
such an unfortunate incident."
The locus of student rule-making
authority has been acknowledged
as resting firmly in SGC and the
OSA.-
Next, Richard Cutler, vice-presi-
dent for student affairs, must be
sure that he has the administra-
tive means, be they personal or
structural, to make this acknowl-
edgement stick.
WHAT IS NEEDED finally is a
preferably public administrative
policy statement identifying
plant's activity as being in fact
what it seems to be-a reversion to
administrative behavior long con-
sidered defunct.
How this statement can be en-
forced will probably be a two-fold
matter split, as is the enforce-
ment of most major student poli-
cies, between the OSA and SGC.
SGC must be willing to act as the
student watchdog for similar fu-
ture cases. Its will and ability to
do that are without question.
The OSA's half of the bargain
is to ensure that SGC's observa-
tions get attention at the admin-
istrative level. This. will probably
have to be worked out in personal
discussions between Cutler and
Lee.
OUT OF THOSE discussions
should come a clearer understand-
ing within the administration that
the making and enforcement of
student rules rests with the OSA
and SGC, and no one else. If the
vice-presidents cannot convince
Lee's subordinates of the propriety
of such an understanding, then
somne changes are In order.
-ib
i
THE RIOTING in Lansing proves many
things, chief of which is that griev-
ances are everywhere around us and no
one, no city, no nation is immune.
Governor Romney, In an official state-
ment made yesterday, said "There is
neither need nor justification for violence
or disobedience of law in the state of
Michigan in order to receive human jus-
tice or to eliminate human injustice re-
sulting from discrimination on the basis
of race, color, creed or national origin."
Romney added that "Our state civil
rights commission has the broad author-
ity to insure such rights and opportunity
of employment, education, public accom-
modation, and housing and is working
with great effort towards that end."
BUT THE END is not yet in sight, and
while the process of remedying many
years of racial discrimination is admitted-
ly a slow one, promises are not enough.
Romney said in his statement that he
was not sure what had inspired the riots
but that "it is clear that they have gen-
erally involved young people."
But the problem goes much deeper
than age, or even race. It centers around
hatred.
REV. KENNETH FAIVER, pastor of
Christo Rey Church not far from the
riot-torn area, said that the white com-
munity had initiated the riots by driving
through the Negro neighborhood throw-
ing rocks, insults and other filthy instru-
ments of hatred.
Later, white youths threw Negroes out
of recreation spots located in downtown
Lansing. Faiver said that this had been
going on for many years; "main street
has been a drag strip for the last three
years and Negroes have been afraid to
go down there."
Faiver said the Negroes have definite
grievances; the mayor's office said that
they have heard of no grievances. The
Negroes charge that the police have been
"unnecessarily hostile"; the mayor's of-
fice doesn't think the police have done
enough.
The Civil Rights Commission of any
state or city in the land cannot improve
this type of communications problem;
they cannot replace years of hatred with
"brotherly love" until they recognize that
hatred exists.
THERE IS OBVIOUSLY a communica-
tions gap between the residents of the
ghetto and the inhabitants of city hall.
Neither group knows nor cares much
about the other. An integrated city hall
is needed across the country; not neces-
sarily the standard integration of color,
but the integration of affluence and
poverty, complacency and despair, the
status quo and the forces of change.
Political officials must seek out the
seeds of violence in order to prevent its
occurrence; discussions in the aftermath
are not enough. The city's slummers and
its dwellers must live and talk with one
another. A commission should be estab-
lished in which spokesmen from all groups
would meet and speak with one another
to avoid misunderstanding, communica-
tions black-outs, and riotous encounters.
Hatred is more difficult to erase. It
appears to be predominant among the
youth of both races. It is a hatred which
they learned from their environment. To
rid the city's souls embittered with
hatred you must change the surroundings
of their minds.
THIS CALLS FOR integrated housing.
The removal and renovation of exist-
ing ghettoes is hardly the answer. The
city must open its neighborhoods to all
those who can afford to live in them.
Equal affluence calls for equal job oppor-
tunity and education. It is in these areas
that the various civil rights commissions
can be of use.
But until promises become concrete in
results; the riots will go on and on and
on. Who knows? Your neighborhood may
be the next.
-PAT O'DONOHUE
Cannibal
RECENT SCIENTIFIC breakthroughs in
the field of planarian (common flat-
worms) research have shown that canni-
balistic worms who eat victims adept in
certain skills learn those skills faster.
But if they eat victims trained to do
things adverse to their training they
can't make up their minds and become
confused.
This comes as no surprise. It's a well-
known fact that the same discovery ap-
plies to humans. Ask any member of
Breakthrough (a conservative organiza-
tion). Ask anyone whose ideas are ex-
tremely to the left or right, or, are sag-
ging in the middle.
YOU ARE LIKELY TO FIND that, when
they digest information that doesn't
agree with their views, they become be-
wildered and doubt themselves.
But not for long. They soon rid them-
selves of the disturbing information and
continue in their old rut.
Often they do not even bother to swal-
low the information. After all, they think,
cannibalism is not human.
And it is much easier to stay outside
the conflicting maze of indecision and
cling to outmoded, disproved, irrelevant,
but pacifying ideas.
-MICHAEL DOVER
V
Lyndon Johnson-Politics or Policies
io
By ROBERT MOORE
T HE NEXT ELECTION, and the
election after that, will prob-
ably be won by the people that of-
fer the most convincing defense or
criticism of (1) the Viet Nam
war and (2) economic policies.
. It is important that both of
these issues are complex, certainly
beyond the comprehension of all
but a fraction of the voters, and
probably beyond the comprehen-
sion of many who claim commit-
ment to one side or another of the
two.
The advantage in these complex
issues lies with the powers that
are intent on remaining powers,
not with the dissenters. For the
more difficult it is for the pub-
lic to understand and assess a
situation, the easier it is for the
government to avoid democratic
judgment or to stack the whole
process to assure themselves of a
favorable result.
THAT MAY BE one of the basic
issues: how does the non-special-
ist public judge its specialists?
It is a basic truth of politics
that presidents spend half their
time choosing their policies and
the other half defending them. A
president who can bargain with
the mass media and with impor-
tant public opinion groups (union,
business, professional, etc.), can
convince their captive public that
his policies are well-directed, his
standards just. And a president
who can manage the news with
grace and power, can marshal the
facts to "prove" just about any-
thing. This, also, is only politics;
every president does it.
President Johnson, the polls
tell us, has done a masterful job
of convincing the same Americans
who voted for a dove in 1964 that
a hawk in 1966 is the best presi-
dent. The Viet Nam policy John-
son defends is a combination of
military expediency and political
values. Often the public is treat-
ed to the phenomenon of the mar-
tial tail wagging the civic dog in
this policy; reason-making, it
seems, follows policy-making.
JOHNSON and his assistants
have spent unnumbered hours ex-
plaining these political, tactical
and moral reasons. Except on the
campus, they seem to have been
accepted. Like any good debater,
Johnson has maximized his best
arguments (North Viet Nam's in-
filtration; its inscrutable reluct-
ance to negotiate; and the war-
talk of Communist China) and
minimized his weakest (support
for an unpopular South Vietna-
mese military government; and
the long-range effects of contain-
ment of China and unbending op-
position to wars of national lib-
eration).
Although, in terms of manpow-
er, he has escalated the war as
much as diplomatic realities would
allow, he has carefully made him-
self appear a man of moderation,
resisting their extremes both the
escalators and the deescalators. He
has enlisted the basic support of
most major newspapers, the AFL-
CIO, Big Business and most of
both political parties-a remark-
able feat matched only by his
failure to convince the rest of the
world.
JOHNSON'S handling of the in-
flation issue is different; he does
not defend his policy by argu-
ment, since most people are agreed
that stable prices are better than
unstable prices.
In the economic issue, Johnson
is conspicuous for his absence. He
painstakingly avoided taking di-
rect action in the airline strike,
even though his economic policies
were being trampled; in the same
manner he has avoided direct in-
volvement in recent economic pol-
icy-making, leaving the publicity
to his staff or to the federal banks.
Publicly he has done little more
than to plead for his guidelines.
The extreme case of his evasion-
justified or not-is his refusal to
push for a tax increase in an
election year.
The present government policy
is to hold down prices by raising
interest rates, giving people less
money with which to bid up the
prices of goods. But the monetary
policy has been unsuccessful in
slowing inflation and has penaliz-
ed the small man by raising mort-
gage and borrowing rates.
A TAX INCREASE is probably
needed. It would work in the same
way as interest rates, giving peo-
ple less money with which to raise
prices; and as a side-effect, high-
er taxes would allow some of
Johnson's most admirable domes-
tic programs to have a decent fi-
nancial chance to succeed.
Yet a tax hike hurts. Because
the issue is so complex, it is diffi-
cult for anyone to understand that
higher taxes will eventually mean
stable prices. And, Lyndon B.
Johnson, just another elected offi-
cial, fears the political effects of
a tax hike with which he would be
identified.
Perhaps deliberately, perhaps
not, Johnson makes big business
and big unions the causes of in-
flation, charging that they ignore
his economic guidelines for wage
and price increases. Yet these
guidelines are a foolish ruse, to
some economists, combatting the
effect and not the cause of infla-
tion. The way to avoid floods is
to build dams, not to declare that
water will not be permitted in city
streets without a permit.
EVASION - perhaps elsewhere
known as political skill may save
Johnson from an unfavorable ac-
counting of his economic policies;
rationalization-perhaps elsewhere
known as logic and strategy-may
likewise save him from unfavor-
able accounting of his Viet Nam
policies. It is all politics, and John-
son has on his side the unmanag-
able complexities of the issues.
Except for the true believers on
the ends of the political spectrum,
the public as a whole has to peer
through the rhetoric of Viet Nam
and the statistical obfuscation of
economics to determine whether
Johnson is a strong man or a fool;
and both the public and the gov-
ernment have to finally decide
when evasion, argumentation, vot-
ing blocs, newspaper politics and
news management stop being poli-
tics and become, in effect, a main-
ing of the body politic in its pri-
mary responsibility of judging its
leaders.
'r
FILM REVIEW:
Cinema Guild Chooses Films as Art
IF
By ANDREW LUGG
IN THE DOZEN or so reviews
that I have written for The
Daily over the past few months,
I have attempted to apply in my
criticism two principles:
1) The director must use film
space radically and plastically
(balancing lines, colors, shapes,
forms, etc.) .
2) Content must be judged on its
own terms.
IN THE FIRST principle I am
interested in the visual aspects of
the film, and in the second, I am
judging comedy against comedy,
psychological investigation against
psychological investigation, and so
on.
Thus, it is quite consistent for
me to announce that the Jerry
Lewis film, "Three on a Couch,"
is a better film than "Who's Afraid
of Virginia Woolf." Lewis' film
fulfills both my criteria, whereas,
in my opinion, the filming of Al-
bee's drama leaves much to be de-
sired. The use of the camera is
contrived andat times downright
boring.
Lewis' film is "cinematic"
whereas "Virginia Woolf" is not.
I am involved with the film art,
not using films to obtain the mass
circulation of other art forms.
, ', ,*
FOR THIS REVIEWER, films
are the oracle of spacial and tem-
poral relationships. Our art form
is peculiar in this respect. Great
films are a development of the
medium, not a plagiarism of oth-
er media.
I have a "vested interest" in
the "oracle" and it is here that I
take my stance.
The "oracle" does not appear
exclusively in "art movies." I have
pointed out that it is in Lewis'
Solving The Race Problem
The Easiest Way
MONDAY THE HOUSE by voice vote
added a provision to the Civil Rights
Bill that would make it a federal crime
for an outsider agitator to enter any area
to incite violence.
At the same time, the House refused to
add a clause to the Civil Rights Bill, in-
troduced by Rp. Ceharles Diggs, Jr. (D-
Mich), that would hav provided $50,000
compensation for victims of any racial
crime.
THE ACTION of the House can only be
an unthinking reaction to the racial
rioting in large American cities this sum-
mer and to the erroneous (in most cases)
belief that the riots have been instigated
by outside agitation.
In fact, It is the easiest thing in the
world to believe that the riots were start-
ed in this manner, for it removes all
blame for the riots from corrupt local
officials, from governmental leaders'
misunderstanding of the Negro's plight,
Editorial Staff
LEONARD PRATT ......... ............. Co-Editor
CHARLOTTE WOLTER .................. Co-Editor
BUD WImLINON.m. . Spots Editor
from unsuccessful urban renewal and so-
cial work projects, from discrimination
and from the blindness of the white com-
munity in general to the problem that
they just do not want to see.
IT ALSO IS the easiest (and probably
the most ineffective) solution-to pass
an act against inciting to riot-to this
country's most difficult problem. If one
does not wish to tackle the intricacies of
race relations, one can suppress expres-'
sion of the effects of race problems. One
may not stop Negroes from rioting, but
the police can move in more quickly to
put them down, and the folks at home will
be happier knowing that the riots are
being handled with force.
The presence of this provision in the
Civil Rights Bill is a great contradiction,
if we can believe that the bill is sincere-
ly aimed at alleviating some of the em-
ployment and housing grievances of the
Negro. If a Saul Alinsky or a Martin
Luther King had not been able to enter
a community to mobilize the resentment
of the Negro population, we would not
have a bill like this before the House at
all.
THE INCITEMENT to riot provision
comes to the crucial roll-call vote
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film in much the same way as it
is in Antonini's "The Red Des-
ert." But I would be the last to
suggest that the content of "Three
on a Couch" is as intellectually
titillating as is that of "The Red
Desert." Indeed, I am arguing that
such a comparison is meaningless.
IF THIS is not clear, I refer the
reader to Cinema Guild's fall
schedule. Some of the best direc-
tors are represented and by and
large we will be seeing, for want
of a better word, art.
In making the selection of films
for the fall program, the Guild
has not limited its selection to
Resnas, Antonini, Fellini or Berg-
man, etc.-modern directors who
demand a sophisticated response
to their films. Nor have they at-
tempted to measure other films
against these in order to judge
whether or not they are "art
films."
They seem aware that the tra-
ditional "academic" definition of
art is meaningless. That is, in
painting, for example, Richer-
stein's "comic-strips," are not
compared to Goya yet they de-
mand an equally intense critical
response. Similarly, a horror film
Is as worthy of criticism as is
Resnais'"Last Year at Marien-
bad."
NOTING THIS, the Guild has
made a broad selection. All the
films seem to me to be worthy of
detailed criticism - Chaplin as
much as Bergman, "Dementia" as
much as "Rules of the Game."
In "The Flower Thief" by Ron
Rice the visual images tumble
across the screen with great beau-
ty showing Rice's complete mast-
ery of the film art. This film is
a touchstone for American avant-
garde film-makers.
The Satyajit Ray Festival in
which the entire Apu Trilogy is
to be presented will show the best
of the Indian cinema. Ichikawa
and Kawalerowicz, both little
known, but great directors are
represented. So, too, are four of
the best, "from the past": "The
Birth of a Nation," "Earth,' "M,"
and "Le Million."
And I could rave on: Bunnuel,
Renoir, de sica.. .
IP Q'UnP -T'le n ' c t o have
cineastes are in for some fine
viewing. Watch then; hear the
oracle.
THE FILMS for the experimen-
tal film programs have still to
be announced. In a previous note
I made some suggestions in this
respect. Once again I will plug
for the directors I respect: Brakh-
age, Markopolous, Warhol, Van-
derbeekk Sjari and Emshwille.
These film-makers are the most
outstanding of the American
avant-garde. It seems to me such
film-makers should be represent-
ed in the Guild's fine fall pro-
gram.
PoliticsandP0i
Human
Nature
A SOCIAL instinct is implanted
in all men by nature, and yet
he who first founded the state
was the greatest of benefactors.
For man, when perfected, is the
best of animals, but when sepa-
rated from law and justice, he is
the worst of all; since armed jus-
tice is the most dangerous and he
is equipped at birth with arms,
meant to be used by intelligence
with virtue, which he may use for
the worst ends.
Wherefore, if he have not vir-
tue, he is the most unholy and
the most savage of animals, and
the most full of lust and gluttony.
BUT JUSTICE is the bond of
men in states, for the administra-
tion of justice, which is the de-
termination of what is just, is the
principle of order in political
society.
Now, any member of the assem-
bly, taken separately, is certainly
inferior to the wise man. But the
state is made up of many indivi-
duals. And, as a feast to which all
the guests contribute, is better
than a banquet furnished by a
single man, so a multitude is a
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