Seventy-Sixth Year
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
ulbright - A
Question of udgement
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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.
SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1966
NIGHT EDITOR: MEREDITH EIKER
Summer Orientation:
Meet the Rat Raee
NEARLY EVERY University student can
remember those two hectic summer
orientation days when tours, tests, and
meetings all ran together in a confusing
blur and finally ended with a sigh of re-
lief and fatigue.
And no wonder. One look at the time
schedule, in which every minute is ac-
counted for, is convincing proof that the
orientation program is designed for auto-
matons, not humans.
AT 7 A.M. ALL are expected to appear
for breakfast, to be greeted by smil-
ing orientation leaders who will stick
with them through the day, shepherding
them across campus, through endless
lines where they will be fed rolls of red
tape to compensate for a half-eaten
lunch.
The typical schedule, for example, ex-
pects freshmen women to suddenly ap-
pear at the UGLI for "Information Sourc-
es" from the Health Center and then on
to Harris Hall or the Women's Pool at
the same time the literary' tour is sup-
posed to end. Nevertheless, the schedule
must be followed.
Even the recreation period is closely
timed so that the freshmen can be taken,
group by group, to the basement of the
Union to bowl one game.
UNIVERSITY administrators are the
first to admit, even to the freshmen
themselves, that the University isn't real-
ly like this, and that more is done in
those two days than is usually done in a
regular week during the semester.
It seems that a lot of the confusion
and rushing around that is done in the
present system could be alleviated by
simply extending the orientation program
over a period of perhaps three rather than
two days.
By doing that the freshmen could move
at a more relaxed pace, get better ac-
quainted with others in his group and
enjoy his walks across campus without
having to worry about the orientation
Editorial Staff
CLARENCE FANTO.Co-Editor
CHARLOTTE WOLTER .... .............. Co-Editor
BUD WILKINSON................... Sports Editor
BETSY COHN ...... .......... Supplement Manager
NIGHT EDITORS: Meredith Eiker, Michael Heffer,
Shirley Rosick, Susan Schnepp, Martha Wolfgang.
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Published daily Tuesday through Saturday morning.
leader disappearing ahead of him with
his fast Michigan walk.
More unplanned free time would give
the freshmen an opportunity to explore
the campus on his own or in small groups,
for no one ever learned his way around
by continuously following someone else.
BY MERELY EXTENDING the time of
orientation, then, and perhaps adding
one or two social get-acquainted activi-
ties, summer orientation could be made
an enjoyable first college experience, not
a time set aside to dispense with neces-
sary red tape.
And, there seems to be no reason why
this could not be done. Jack Petoskey,
director of orientation, pointed out that
finances would be no problem in chang-
ing the system. However, he said he thinks
the present system is adequate for the
time being.
If this is done, the attempt to "reduce
anxiety" will not have to be replaced by
a feeling of overwhelming confusion and
uncertainty about what has actually been
accomplished.
WITH THE PRESENT system about the
only thing the incoming freshman has
a chance to really become acquainted with
is the University's bureaucracy and its
peculiar symbol, the student ID number.
--SUSAN SCHNEPP
'Wait Wait'
YESTERDAY President Johnson signed
into law legislation to provide $12.1
million to finance a rent subsidy program
and $9.5 million to finance a national
teacher corps (these as part of a $2.8 bil-
lion appropriation to help finance var-
ious federal agencies through the last
few weeks of this fiscal year).
Both programs will act as supplements,
one to help provide decent dwellings for
low-income families and the other to
train teachers to aid in the education of
students from poor families.
Although these appropriations are a
step forward they still leave something
to be desired. Appropriations have al-
ready been made to continue the rent
subsidy program through the 1967 fiscal
year, but no plans have been made for the
teacher corps beyond this year. If Con-
gress acts as slowly as it did in appropri-
ating the first money (it took them al-
most a year this time) these needed pro-
grams may die for lack of funds.
AT THE SIGNING ceremony the Presi-
dent commented that some "would
have us wait before launching the Teach-
er Corps ... Oh, just wait, wait, wait."
These are our sentiments exactly.
--MARY WOLTER
"The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Viet Nam Hearings
. . . speak for themselves. They
show elected representatives of
the American people prodding
officials of the Executiverbranch
of our government for answers
to difficult questions of national
policy.
They gave the opportunity for
distinguished former govern-
ment officials with special
knowledge and background to
present their views and submit
those views to critical examina-
tion. They provided the Ameri-
can people with the raw material
upon which they must base their
judgment of the efficacy of na-
tional policy in serving the in-
terests of the people of this
nation."
IN HIS UNYIELDING attempt to
bring what he calls "reason and
restraint" to the discussion on the
war in Viet Nam, Sen. J. William
Fulbright has endured the loss of
the friendship of the President,
some measure of contempt from
his fellows in the Senate, and some
scattered accusations that he was
hindering the progress of the war
by questioning its premises.
But, worst of all, much that
Fulbright has done over the past
few months has been largely ig-
nored by the very officials who
make the most crucial decisions
affecting the war, and who seem
to have become more and more
insulated from criticism of those
decisions. The emergency demands
of war, and the resentment felt by
a powerful administrator when he
is challenged seem to be defeating
Fulbright's efforts.
THIS IS nothing new, however,
in American policy making. Unlike
the intellectuals in other countries,
the American intellectual com-
munity has historically been frus-
trated in the political arena. This
is especially true in the area of
foreign policy planning, despite
the fact that the most prestigious
men in Congress have sat on the
House and Senate Foreign Rela-
tions committees and their knowl-
edge of the subject is rarely
doubted.
Nevertheless, men like Fulbright
will cling stubbornly to the belief
that their function in foreign pol-
icy planning is a necessary part of
the democratic process and the
operation of our government. Ful-
bright expresses the belief this
way.
"That is what democratic gov-
ernment is all about. If the
American people as a whole, in
speaking through their elected
representatives, do not have the
capacity to know what is good
for them in the larger theater of
world relationships, then we
should abandon the democratic
system."
THERE ARE various opinions
on this question, many of which
suggest that democratic means
are, perhaps, not the best way to
manage foreign policy, especially
in the modern world where quick
decisions on complicated matters
are often necessary.
First, there is the question of
secrecy. The CIA and the Depart-
ment of Defense are not the only
governmental organizations that
operate under security conditions.
Many diplomatic meetings, discus-
sions, in fact, a great deal of our
communication with foreign gov-
ernments is informal and, there-
fore, as is the nature of informal
conversation, unknown to the gen-
eral public.
This is not to say that some
control is not exercized. Agree-
ments and decisions made by dip-
lomats are done in accordance
with the broader outlines of for-
eign policy that are visible to the
general public. Obviously, though,
this leaves a lot of room for per-
sonal prerogative, and there is
little doubt that it is exercised.
THEN, THERE IS the question
of expertise. Those in the execu-
tive branch - of government will
argue that only their officials,
specialized in and responsible for
specific areas of concern, are able
The Associates
by Carney and Wolter
to make competent decisions. It is
also argued that they have access
to information not available to
others (the question of secrecy
again), who would agree with their
decisions if they were "aware of
the facts."
Fulbright's hearings could be
construed as evidence to support
this argument, for he called on a
so-called expert himself in the
person of former Ambassador
George F. Kennan, the man who
first formulated the policy of con-
tainment, as a critic of the federal
government, yet neglected to call
on Southeast Asian scholars who
had not been involved in govern-
mental policy making for that
area.
It seems that even Fulbright
knows that the best support for
the validity of his criticisms is
not the opinion of the professor
expert in foreign relations, but
rather, one of the government's
own men.
WHATEVER one can say in
answer to these arguments for the
validity of our foreign policy, and
the necessity that it be made by
executive decision, most exchanges
on the matter dissolve into charges
of "undemocratic" by opponents
of the decisions, and "lack of in-
formation" by the decision makers.
But, perhaps, Fulbright has
found a concrete way to answer
the critics of democratic decision
making, and, at the same time,
give the American people at least
part of the information they need
or want in order to judge for
themselves.
No one has released the Neilsen
ratings for the Foreign Relations
Committee hearings on our policy
in Viet Nam. It is estimated that
they were quite high. A book re-
printing transcripts of the hear-
ings is selling briskly, indicating
some measure of interest, if not
approval.
Also, it was obvious to those who
viewed the hearings that the of-
ficials who testified for the gov-
ernment's position were not un-
comfortable about their views, but
were instead uncomfortable about
the fact that they had to explain
them to the committee and to a
large television audience. In other
words,-it was more lack of practice
than lack of conviction.
IN ADDITION to making the
democratic process more immedi-
ately evident to the public, the
hearings demonstratedone of Ful-
bright's strongest points.
"On national issues of this
kind, decisions do not turn upon
available facts but upon judg-
ment. There is no secret infor-
riation or magic formula which
gives Presidential advisors wis-
dom and judgment on broad
policy but which is not avail-
able to the intelligent citizen."
No new startling facts about
the war were revealed in the hear-
ings, nor were any great scandals
of government mismanagement of
the war or of impending disaster
for United States troops. Even
the data which the officials de-
clined to discuss publicly for se-
curity reasons was not particularly
crucial to the understanding of the
administration's position.
WHAT WAS REVEALED was a
somewhat archaic view of world
politics, clinging tenaciously to
precepts first laid down by Allen
Dulles, still oriented to the best
of all possible United States'
worlds. What was also revealed
was that the difference between
this view and Fulbright's is one
of judgment, and, as Fulbright
pointed out again and again, the
policy judgments presently being
followed are not working too well.
But Fulbright, despite a tem-
porary victory of words, in all
likelihood is destined to be frus-
trated again in the attempt to
inject the thinking of the intel-
lectual and the general public
into policy making. No matter how
serious the defects in its policy,
the tremendous power of the
United States and the men making
foreign policy decisions will allow
them to escape somehow unscath-
ed even from this involvement
(and probably the next few), and,
in the final analysis, that is the
most important criterion.
* * *
THURSDAY NIGHT, Sen. Ful-
bright attended a Democratic
fund-raising dinner at which
President Johnson spoke, address-
ing "my old friends-and some
members of the Foreign Relations
Committee." The jabs taken at the
hearings were numerous, with the
President saying, "You can say
one thing about those hearings-
although I don't think this is the
place to say it."
Through it all, J. William Ful-
bright sat unmoved until the ban-
quet had ended and left, quietly.
Whatever comment he could have
made in answer to those jabs was
unnecessary. He had obviously al-
ready made his mark.
EARLIER THIS WEEK Koh Tai
Ann, a student from Singa-
pore touring the United States
offered in an article on this page
to answer any questions either
about her country in general or.
university life there in particular
that our readers cared to ask her
through letters.
As we have not received many
letters in answer to her column,
we would like to extend the invi-
tation once again. Koh Tai Ann
has been involved in student gov-
ernment and publications on her
campus and is particularly in-
terested in questions of this na-
ture. One of the reasons she is
touring this country is to observe
student organizations, so that she
can return to Singapore with ideas
to help groups on her own campus.
TO GET A BETTER perspective
of American campuses she must be
able to talk to many students:
that means you, our readers.
y
I
Rimbaud: The
Wanderer as
Visionary
By DAVID KNOKE
Special To The Daily
PERHAPS IT IS not at all amaz-
ing that from the time man
first began singling out individuals
of his tribe for adulation and
emulation, the wanderer has held
a special place in the hero's pan-
theon. Stretching from the Odys-
sey of the Mediterranean world to
the beat cult of Kerouac, man-
kind's folklore is full of tales of
travels and sufferings, of dark
strangers who passed briefly in
the world, to serve penance like
the god Apollo with broken feet
in the house of Admetus.
THE MYSTIQUE of the wan-
derer, free of home, family, loyal-
ties and responsibilities is an at-
tractive remnant of a nomadic
'life, seen through the tinted
glasses as a Huck-Finnish idyll to
those straightened and domes-
ticated by an urban, time-
conscious existence.
And, when the vagabond could
sing eloquently the joys of his
seemingly care-free life, his life
became surrounded with apocry-
phal anecdotes. The wanderer be-
comes the crafty Ulysses plotting
his way back into his birthright;
he becomes a Zorba of the flesh,
a Faust of the intellect, a Buddha
of the spirit.
Or, in the case of Jean Arthur
Rimbaud he becomes a tragic, mis-
understood figure.
THIS YEAR marks the seventy-
fifth after Rimbaud's death of
cancer at the age of thirty-six. So
recently alive, so much a phe-
nomena of the industrial revolu-
tion, this French poet's turbulent
life is almost impossible to sep-
arate from the legends which
sprang up in his wake. A prodigal
visionary, ranking with Raymond
Radiguet and Thomas Chatterton
as one of the few genuine child
literatuers, he transformed French
lyric poetry and influenced all
modern literature to some extent,
yet gave up an attempt at a
literary career at the age of nine-
teen.
Following in the path laid out
by Charles Baudelaire, Rimbaud
sought to create a literary form
in which the artist does not re-
main isolated from his communi-
cated experience. Rather than the
Wordsworthian "emotions recolect-
ed in transquility," the Baudelaire-
Rimbaud style-most noticeable
in the Symbolist movement which
sent out its roots to all literary
schools of the late nineteenth
century-is a cri de coeur from
the artist's personal agonies, a
quest to wring some grain of
beauty from the sordidness of the
ugly civilization.
RIMBAUD'S POEMS, none pub-
lished in his life, range from the
pornographic scurrility of an in-
secure adolescent intending to
shock his elders to the supreme
command of lyric resonance of a
mature man with twice his age
and experience. Rimbaud's poetry
returned to the Ronsardian sim-
plicity of sound of the fifteenth
century, protesting the artificial
conventions of the Parnassian
school dominant in the 1860's.
scholarship, avidly devouring shel-
ves of books and annually carrying
off his school's prize for Latin
verse. He fled home at 17 from a
domineering straight-laced mother
to the wicked Parisian capital,
where he fell into a homosexual
relationship with Paul Verlaine,
leading poet of the Parnassian
movement.
Rimbaud actively sought a life
of depravity,nhoping through
drugs, squalor and abomination to
create a "derangement of the
senses" by which he would be-
come the mouthpiece of some di-
vine force of the universe. Rim-
baud rejected the' Catholic God of
his upbringing-Verlaine used to
jest that the boy genius grew lice
in his hair to throw on passing
priests-but his search for God
was one of the urgent quests of
his life.
In a way that made him ob-
noxious and misunderstood by his
older, sophisticated contempor-
aries, Rimbaud was vigorously
moral in his fanatic sense of mis-
sion, in his insistence upon a
sweeping of hypocrisy and cant
from art, in his search for rele-
vance in life which caused him to
burn his manuscripts, and wander
across Europe, Arabia and Africa
as an outcast, gun runner and
slave trader.
FOR RIMBAUD the choice be-
tween God and Satan did not
remain clear cut. In his halcyon
days he thought to emulate God,
to usurp his place; but two years
later, he returned to his ancestral
farm to write his valedictory
"Saion en Enfer" (Season in Hell)
and recant of his previous follies.
He was the one who delved in
magic and the occult, who wrote
the sonnet giving colors to vowel
sounds (spawning a literary cult
after his disappearance from
Paris), but now he would seek the
simple life of innocent Negroes
in the kingdom of Ham:
Here on the Briton shore the
city lights pierce the night. My
trip is finished; I'll leave Eur-
ope. Hot air will burn my lungs;
lost climates willtan my skin. I
will return with limbs of iron,
a somber skin, fierce eye; by my
countenance they will judge me
of a fierce race, I will have gold.
How ironic from his return 18
years later, a penniless, obscure
explorer, his leg amputated for
carcinoma of the knee and himself
dying by minutes.
IN THE CLASSIC SENSE of the
descent into Hell, Rimbaud be-
comes the redeemer, chosen from
his people to blaze a path to the
greater glory. He now rejects the
fame of the artist, seeks a God
whom he can love without losing
his personal freedom, and vows
to live like one of the common
beings he once despised.
The transformation of Rim-
baud's attitude from adolescent
egocentrism and masocho-hedon-
istic pursuit of sensuality to a
sense of community and social
involvement is little remarked
upon. It passes notice probably
because Rimbaud's later actions
continued to be an individualist's
wanderlust, but minus the frenzy
of his youth; and because he turn-
ed his back on poetry with this
last prose work of his.
THE STRUCTURE of the book,
however, shows the influence of
the historian Michelet (whose
theories also influenced Marx).
An avid reader of Michelets works
in his childhood, Rimbaud evolved
his idea of the poet's function as
a man of action from Michelet.
He came to view this role. as a
step along the evolution of man-
kind.
The lowest of these was poetry;
the next was the rule of humanity
wheresreason was supreme; the
highest step, which Michelet be-
lieved the nineteenth century was
entering, was the civilized age, the
age of prose, in which universal
love and compassion was supreme.
THE TRAGEDY of Rimbaud
was that after his descent into
Hell he turned his back on his
natural mode of expression, poetry,
and tried to resolve everything
upon a purely action basis.
His final vision of the ascent
from Hell, his arrival at the jour-
ney to the end of the night found
him weak and spent in the light of
a morning star. Glancing upward
he saw the light of a siiver star,
like the heavenly messenger of
hope that appeared over Bethle-
hem so long ago:
From the same desert, from
the same night I raise my eyes
to the silver star, forever, with-
out which do. not move the
Kings of Life, the three magi-
heart, soul, spirit. When will we,
across grave and mountain,
salute the birth of new work,
the new wisdom, the flight of
tyrants and demons, the end of
superstition, to celebrate-the
very first!-Christmas upon the
earth?
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origins in
Rimbaud
OF OBSCURE peasant
the northeast of France,
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Penicillin, the Atom and Hybrid Corn
Collegiate Press service
(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is an
interview with Grant Swinger,
chairman of the board of Break-
through Institute and chairman
of the newly-created Center for
the Absorption of Federal Funds.
Written by D. S. Greenberg, it
appears in the March issue of
Science Magazine.)
. DR. SWINGER, what is the
Center for the Absorption of
Federal Funds?
A. It is an organization created
by a consortium of several in-
stiutions, for the purpose of sur-
veying preliminary steps toward
a fresh look at some of the more
vexing problems of research, edu-
cation, and society.
Q. What are some examples of
its work?
A. I'll be happy to tell you, but
A. Well, the center staff mem-
bers have resolved the conflict
between teaching and research,
Q. How?
Q. How?
A. By doing neither.
Q. I see. Then what do they do?
A. They confer, they comment
on each other's past papers, they
travel a good deal. There is no
shortage of activity. In fact, the
pace is cruel. It is just that our
people don't want to get into the
classic dilemma of having to
choose between the classroom and
the laboratory or library.
Q. WHAT ELSE does the center
do?
0. Well, it is doing some pre-
liminary work toward the develop-
ment of new programs, procedures,
and goals for our member in-
st~itutions.
It would be set aside for traveling
members of the center and the
associated institutions.
Q. Yes.
A. AND WE ARE also looking
into the establishment of the first
$1-million chair at any university.
Q. A million-dollar endowment?
A. No, a million-dollar salary,
and that would be for 9 months.
The resulting publicity and pres-
tige for an institution witch such
a chair would be simply farastic.
Q. The salary would cover only
9 months?
A. Yes, to provide opportunifves
for consulting and travel in t b
summer months. Furthermore, ou,,
preliminary investigations suggest
that, to maximize the prestige, the
recipient should have neither
teaching nor research duties, and
much for each decision he renders.
The advantage to the university,
of course, is that it does not have
to make a permanent commitment,
any may return the dean at any
time, which, in effect, is what now
goes on anyway with many major
appointments.
Q. I see.
A. We also have an assortment
ofre lated services, such as Rent-
a-Fellow, if an institution is un-
able to fill the fellowships that it
has available.
Q. ARE THERE other activities
of the center?
A. Yes, for example, we are de-
vising new types of tests and
examinations. The most promising
development so far is one in which
the student is furnished with, let's
say, 25 footnotes, and is required
Africa in the morning for a con-
ference on Space, the Atom, Par-
ticle Physics, and the Emerging
Tribe.
Q. How long will you stay?
A. Oh, it's just for the after-
noon. I have to be in L.A. the
next day for an international con-
ference 'that will be attended by
about 200 persons.
Q. On what subject?
A. As far as I know, a topic has
not yet been selected.
Q. DR. SWINGER, this may be
a delicate matter, but how can
these activities be justified to the
public authorities?
A. Oh, I think that an examina-
tion of the ristorical record shows
that we are well over that hump.
But the advice of our Committee
on Research and Publications is
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