Seventy-Fifth Year
EoDrTr AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
I LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
Money Collected for Viet Cong
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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
SATURDAY, 13 MARCH 1965 NIGHT EDITOR: LAURENCE KIRSHBAUM
Marines for Viet Narn:
Rose's for Mrs. Reel)
AST SUNDAY a contingent of civil
rights demonstrators embarked on a
protest march from Selma, Ala., to Mont-
gomery. They never made it.
Before the protestors could get out of
town, they were met by mounted state
troopers. The police rode straight into
the crowd. When the clubbing, whipping
and gassing were over, 73 men, women
and children demonstrators were injur-
ed, 18 of them hospitalized.
One was John Lewis, chairman of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com-
mittee, who sustained a possible broken
skull. Before he was taken to the hospi-
tal, he made a brief speech in which he
said, "I don't see how President Johnson
can send troops to Viet Nam but not
to Selma."
Monday morning 3500 Marines arrived
in Saigon. But, evidently there were no
troops to spare for Selma.
THE SAME DAY Negro leaders announc-
ed plans for a second Selma march to
take place on Tuesday. The National As-
sociation for the Advancement of Col-
ored People pleaded for President John-
son to send troops to Selma "to make sure
there shall be no recurrence of Sun-
day's bloody assaults."
But the government sat firm.
President Johnson said Tuesday he
would only be deploying federal offi-
cials to Selma to supply up-to-the-minute
reports. Attorney General Nicholas Kat-
zenbach concurred: "I would hope that it
wouldn't be necessary to send troops to
Selma."
IT WAS NECESSARY. Tuesday evening
Rev. James Reeb, who had flown in
from Boston to take part in the demon-
strations, walked out of the Walker's
Cafe, was hit in the back of the head by
a club and critically injured.
Thursday, while Reeb was dying in a
Birmingham hospital, Attorney General
Katzenbach was asked if the government
would send federal troops to Selma after
Sunday's violence-"I have not recom-
mended this course to the President and
I believe that I am right in not doing
so."
Thursday evening Rev. Reeb died.
The next morning the State Depart-
ment announced that more troops will be
sent to Viet Nam.
THE TURN OF EVENTS in Selma in
light of the stepped-up military oper-
ations in Viet Nam suggests several
frightening concepts about political pri-
orities in the United States.
Our concern for defeating Communism,
preserving freedom and perpetuating the
American ideal of equality evidently jus-
tifies the concept of spending millions of
dollars and hundreds of American lives
in Southeast Asia.
But our concern for preserving democ-
racy and perpetuating the American ideal
of equality evidently does not justify fed-
eral protection for our own citizens in-
tent on transforming the Constitution
from a mockery into a reality.
HERE IS SOMETHING sick about a
nationthat can deploy thousands of
soldiers to go off shooting Viet Cong
elephants (the enemy, when they can be
found) in the jungles, but can't spare a
few hundred to avert the murder of a
minister by a used car salesman in Ala-
bama.
The United States is maintaining a
strange kind of internationalism-one
that sees Communist aggression as the
greatest threat to democracy and is blind
to the necessity of upholding the demo-
cratic principles that we hope to give to
the world.
NOW THAT REV. REEB has gone to an
early grave, the nation has opened its
eyes to a haunting reality: his death
could have been averted if the govern-
ment had provided federal protection in
Alabama.
But now it is too late. President John-
son's yellow roses of sympathy were all
the United States could do for Rev. Reeb's
widow and four children.
-ROGER RAPOPORT.
To the Editor:
T HE PUBLIC relations boys for
the left-wing have done it
again. By means of the usual emo-
tional appeal to humanitarianism.
they succeeded in collecting thirty
dollars for the National Liberation
Front moretcommonly known as
the Viet Cong. This money was
collected for the purpose of buying
medical supplies-perhaps so that
many Viet Cong soldiers can live
to fight another day.
It is perhaps of more than aca-
demic interest to note that the
Constitution of the United States
defines treason as . .. "in adher-
ing to their enemies. giving them
aid and comfort . .."
None dare call it treason?
-Kenneth L. Yeasting, '67
Gary N. Barber, '67
Selma March
To the Editor:
THE FEDERAL court order ban-
ning Tuesday's demonstration
march in Selma was a safe one.
However, it is noteworthy to real-
ize that in an attempt to prevent
further police atrocities and al-
leviate tens'on. the ban has abused
democracy and the Constitution.
The restriction of free non-
violent expression and association
is totally incompatible with de-
mocracy. All true American should
and must indeed resent and ex-
coriate this act.
-Basil Lloyd Blair, '66
Flint Controversy
To the Editor:
"FLINT AND State Junior Col-
leges," Leonard Pratt's edi-
torial of March 11, does not re-
veal the core of this controversy.
Put aside the complications of
personality, rivalry tradition and
constitutional confusion-all of
which are elements, to be sure. But
then you uncover the central
argument: the proposed expansion
of the Flint College from an upper
division to a four-year program is
seen as a challenge to the concept
that the 13th and 14th years of
at least public education of all
kinds should be provided by junior
colleges. This concept envisions
the universities providing the 15th
and 16th years and the graduate
and professional programs.
This concept has a great many
ramifications, some good points,
some bad, some uncertainties, and
some significant support as well
as opposition. Unfortunately, the
Flint College expansion plan has
become a battleground for this
controversy as well as several
others.
--Jack H. Hamilton
Assistant to the
Vice-President
for University Relations
Young Democrats
To the Editor:
MUCH OF the apathy generated
toward student organizations
seems to be caused by the fact
that what they do in the ordinary
course of events is not considered
"newsworthy" and is thus not
publicized in the newspapers. The
Young Democratic Club, for ex-
ample, is ending its most success-
ful year on campus, yet no one
knows what it has been doing.
I wonder how many students
know that the first project of
Young Democrats this year was
sending a busload of students into
the 16th District in Detroit, to
aid in the campaign of Rep. John
Dingell against Rep. John Lesin-
ski, who had voted againstthe
1964 Civil Rights bill The areas
we covered on that day in Sep-
tember won the election for Din-
gell.
I wonder how many students
realize that, for the first time,
there was campus-wide distribu-
tion of campaign materials from
Young Democrats. Much money
was spent to inform the student
body of the issues in this last
Presidential campaign.
*, * *
I WONDER how many students
knew of the over 500 people who
signed up with Young Democrats
and worked in the election cam-
paign for ten weeks under their
auspices. And how many knew
that Young Democrats supplied
almost 200 poll-workers on elec-
ton day, so many in fact that we
were able to cover the Second
Congressional District completely
and still send about 35 workers
into the 17th District In Detroit
to help re-elect Majority Leader
Joseph Kowalsky. And how many
know that fifteen Young Demo-
crats received national awards for
working over four hours a week
during the campaign?
Iwonder how many students
were aware of the continuous de-
bates conducted during the cam-
paign between Young Democrats
and Young Republicans.
Very few students knew that
Young Democrats contacted al-
most 1000 Democratic students of
voting age and either got them
absentee ballots or saw that they
were registered to vote in Ann
Arbor. The slim margin of victory
for Rep. Vivian can be partially
attributed to this heightened stu-
dent vote in November.
AND EVEN at this moment, how
many students know that 120
Young Democrats are working
every week in all five wards of
Ann Arbor to elect a Democratic
City Council? Only the "insiders"
realize that, for the first time,
there is a Young Democrat ward
director on the campaign staffs of
all of the Democratic candidates,
and that a Young Democrat is
seated on the Executive Board of
the Ann Arbor Democratic Party
for the first time. It was largely
our work in last spring's Council
election which opened the pos-
sibility of a Democratic majority
on Council for the first time since
the 1930's.
All of this-political action, edu-
cat'on and the social activities of
the club-went by unpublicized.
The Young Democratic Club is
the most active and successful
political club on campus. We have
the highest paid membership of
any student organization. We have
a large percentage of graduate
students and continue to be the
most attractive organization for
undergraduates. These activities
are what we do in the ordinary
course of the school year.
We have no internal factions or
sign-ripping incidents to publicize
us and spread our name over the
front page. When we do get pub-
licized, it is for our endorsement
of SGC candidates or for our par-
tcipation in such protests as the
theatre stay-in, which are also
important functions of' tne club.
But this is the price of success.
SO OUR ANSWER to the stu-
dent who asks, "What do Young
Democrats do?" is always, "Where
have you been?"
-Michael Grondin, '66
Chairman, Young Democrats
BOSSART HELPS:
Merrill's Songs, Control
Cripple His Performance
_At ill Auditorium
ROBERT MERRILL presented last night a program of pieces from
early Italian to contemporary American songs. For a sophisticated
listener from Ann Arbor, the program consisted almost entirely of
hackneyed pieces from every singers' repertory. Eugene Bossart pre-
sided at the piano, however, and was more the leader in this recital
than the follower that most pianists are as accompanists.
Robert Merrill-whose voice is in itself one of the most beautiful
in the world today-has not learned the art of control. He sang almost
the entire first half of the program with an unfocused tone. He also
lacked the ability to sing a true piano or pianissimo, but rather crooned
these passages in the style of a pop singer.
His habit of sliding up to high tones was one I have not noticed
before in his singing, so it may be that he is tired from this tour. Even
during the second half of the program he never sang like the "leading
baritone of the Metropolitan Opera Co.," the way he is billed.
THE FIRST PART of the program was devoted to the Italian songs
most people learn in their first year of voice lessons. Merrill's per-
formances could not erase the fact that these were basically lyric
pieces and that the vocal line should not be broken up to emphasize
any syllable. Few performers can make these war horses enjoyable
after the tenth time; Merrill is not among them.
Merrill sung the French songs which followed with some feeling
for text, but his enunciation was poor. He did the operatic arias with
little subtlety, but with great volume on the high notes. Several of the
arias were transposed down, so the audience, which was small, was
spared any of Merrill's pinched uppertones. Merrill sang the encores
from "Porgy and Bess" flippantly, and interruptions from the audience
stopped the show occasionally.
Merrill certainly could have chosen songs of more merit than those
he chose. Surely, Barber and Finney have many fine songs we rarely
hear.
BOSSART COULD not have been better on piano; let's hope that
next time Merrill's voice and program are better.
-Richard LeSueur
Shows Citeia Potential
At the Cinema Guild
THE CURRENT Ann Arbor Film Festival, showing products of limited
budgets and unbridled imaginations, contains works of quite a
wide range of quality, as is to be expected. While cinema may not
be the only art form still alive, great well-springs of potential remain
untapped.
Robert Spring's two films were perhaps the most consistent of
Thursday's second round of films. "Quiet," a funeral-parlor-game,
is a gross travesty on morticia with quasi-Sabbot overtones; the
photography is well thought out yet often amateurish, while the
accompanying electronic music score is effective in its own right.
"Annabel Lee," a series of images on Poe's poem, includes a
superb scene depicting the girl running along a rugged beach toward
her bearers-to-be, who are silhouetted on a dune against a super-
imposed progressing solar eclipse. The closing scene is reminiscent
of an Orpheus descending, but to a sepulchre.
*n * * *
"WHEEEELS NO. 1" by Stan Vanderbeek was a delight. An
animated series of cutouts with appropriate traffic noise, this subtly
funny, neo-Dada rhapsody on wheels inverts current art trends by
making automobiles from faces, shoes, fire hydrants, etc. Growling
cars devour one another, pseudo-Edwardian relics spew transmission
gears, and the audience has a ball.
William Earle's "Popcorn" includes multiple stills, often droll, set
to interesting sound, but is rather poor cinema.
"The Amazing Colossal Man" by Yvonne Anderson animates
papermache hominoids made by grade-school children, to a science-
fiction plot. It is pleasant, but hardly a major contribution to cinema
art.
ABBOTT MEADER'S "The Elms" begins well-sparkling rapids
and ice-and includes good to superb splashes of color, but is generally
tiring and repetitive playing with the camera.
Sexual imagery was by no means ignored. "Mother," by Dov
Lederberg, revolved about a woman and child playing nude; of
variable technical quality and spotty coherency, the film tried to
convince that the female breast is of more than "prurient interest."
Two other films may not have been as successful. While Carl
Linder's "The Devil Is Dean" alternated between a erotchy dream
and a grossly oral jape. "Opus Alchemicum (Part ID" by Dennis
Morgan quickly became frankly copulative after weak attempts at
a variety of symbolism.
IN GENERAL the films appear to be on a significantly higher
plane than those of last year. Fertunately for the audience (whose
patience has often been tried in the past) but unfortunately for the
reviewer (who can neither rave nor revile), these nine films represent
no extremes-either of unqualified superiority or of crude trash.
-Gerald Ahronheim
UNSEEMLY SOUP:
Not Mad, Mad, Mad,
But Bad, Bad, Bad
At the Michigan Theatre
YOU CAN'T PLEASE all the people all of the time . ..even if you
use all the people. This is the not too funny lesson that one learns
from attending "It's a Mad, Mad . . . (ad nauseum) World."
Using the concept of "the more comedians, the funnier the film,"
and Mike Todd's cameo roles as ingrediants, Stanley Kramer has
pot-boiled together an unseemly soup. Attempting to emulate Mack
Sennett and the silent film slapstick era of comedy, Kramer has
concocted a wild fanciful plot around a hidden treasure and The
Chase for it.
Most of the important comedians in American are included, either
in starring roles or walk-ons (like Jerry Lewis, one of the disappoint-
ing "surprises"). The result is both upsetting and slightly infuriating
exactly because one does laugh throughout the film.
* * * *
THE FAULTS of "Mad . . . " are the responsibility of Kramer.
(It is ironic that his brilliant film. "Judgment at Neuremburg" should
have appeared only a week ago on television. For in "Judgment"
one sees Kramer at his best, in "Mad . . .," at his worst.)
Kramer is a skilled director. He handles action and plot develop-
n.ent with authority and precision, each scene building on the previous
one. This competence is responsible for the slickness and technical
accomplishment of "Mad . . ." But the fact remains that Kramer
is not a comedian, and "Mad . . ." ably demonstrates this.
It was a cardinal rule of vaudeville that you never followed one
comedy act with another, you always broke them up by inserting
the jugglers or the trained seals.
KRAMER ATTEMPTS to ignore this rule, and as a result he
fails. Even the role taken by Spencer Tracey is allowed to have comic
overtones (which are abruptly and crudely thrown away toward
the end) when it should have provided a unifying theme and a central
stasis for the comic action.
Neither the brilliant moments provided by Jonathan Winters,
the only consistently creative comedian in the movie, nor the
scattered "good laughs" that do occur, can make "Mad . . ." anything
but an aborted attempt at comedy. and a singularily disappointing
movie.
-Hugh Holland
DOCUMENTARY:
'Mary's Day' Is-Finest
Of Seven Film Entries
At the Architecture Auditorium
It was mainly a documentary about nuns celebrating a feast day
at an all-girls' college in California. Yet, strangely, "Mary's Day" by
Baylis Glascock was better than all the fantasies and visual experi-
ments and the best of the lot at last night's showing of seven films
entered in the Third Ann Arbor Film Festival.
"Mary's Day" was entertaining, skillful, and in its own earnest
way; extremely wild. Nuns carried signs ("I Like God") and decorated
their school with giant cardboard catsup bottles, all in promotion of a
remarkably "Pop" philosophy of religion.
The film was as colorful as California. The photography was good,
although not the best of the evening. It was sense and content, not skill
that made the film better than the avant-garde "Everybody Hit Their
Brother Once" by Gerald R. Slick and "Papilotte" by Benjamin Hayeen,
which were the two other contest entries that stood out.
"Everybody" was a fantasy of a girl in a bikini (with LOVE lip-
sticked on her stomach) who danced around an allegorical mountain.
The film had spectacle, humor, good directing, and acting, but tended
to be unsubtle and was at times tiring.
"PAPILOTTE" WAS a farce of high finance, with incongruity
and dry humor. Hayeen has an eye for settings, presenting his hero
in a graveyard, the stock exchange, and at the U.S. Treasury, with
enough cinematic finesse to underline the strange humor of his-deadpan
protagonist in these situations.
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Out To ,Get' GROUP
HE CRY of "everyone's out to get us"
emanated so frequently from GROUP
headquarters during the recent Student
Government Council campaign that one
couldn't help but wonder whether the
organization was composed completely of
paranoids.
However, on reviewing the facts of the
situation, it becomes readilyaapparent
that there was a basis for the charge. It
was substantiated by a last-minute un-
successful attempt to block the seating of
three of the five victorious GROUP can-
didates at this week's SGC meeting.
Ranging from accusations of theft to
charges of flagrant violations of elec-
tion rules, the attempts failed to muster
enough evidence to demonstrate that
GROUP had meant to do anything but
follow the letter of the law.
THERE WAS ONLY one case in which
the GROUP motives could be seriously
questioned. This involved the GROUP ad-
vertisement which implied, yet didn't ac-
tually state, that all GROUP candidates
were endorsed by certain organizations,
when in fact some organizations had
endorsed only one or two members of the
slate.
GROUP was first charged with the
theft of a signboard belonging to the
Young Republicans. They were acquitted
when it was determined that the frame-
work, which GROUP took on instructions
from the basement of the SAB, had no
markings to indicate any ownership
whatsoever.
1 THE CHARGE of illegal distribution
of campaign material through Alpha
Phi Omega, GROUP answered that as an
organization recognized by SGC it had
the right to have posters distributed and
it had dealt with the proper authori-
ties to secure posting of the material.
This, in fact, was the case.
All recognized organizations on cam-
pus have the right to have notices posted
by APO. The APO president ruled that the
nosters did not constitute election ma-
apparently designed to provide IQC house
presidents with some sense of authority
-GROUP's explanation again resulted in
the charges being dumped.
GROUP SPOKESMEN asserted that the
distribution was begun only after a
reading of the compilation of IQC rules
given all candidates by SGC's elections
director. They explained that the distri-
bution was immediately halted when the
IQC regulations were made known.
If, indeed, anyone is to be blamed, it
is the SGC elections director, who
neglected to include in his compilation
the IQC rules GROUP had unknowingly
violated.
At any rate, the charge was blown en-
tirely out of proportion by the seeming-
ly publicity-hungry IQC presidents. The
absurdity of the rulings allegedly violated
almost resulted in the charge being
laughed out of the Credentials and Rules
Committee.
AS TO THE LAST MINUTE attempt to
block the seating of victorious GROUP
candidates, influenced perhaps by Tom
Smithson's blistering denunciation of the
idea, Council refused even to consider a
motion to that effect. The attempt failed,
no more successful than any of the other
multitudinous tries to scuttle the GROUP
slate.
In all these cases, what GROUP had
indeed violated was not the SGC election
code but the spirit in which it was inter-
preted by the Credentials and Rules
Committee. As explained by committee
chairman Sherry Miller, the purpose of
the code is to insure every candidate an
equal chance in the election.
Perhaps, however, the rules defined in
this sense are themselves wrong. Stifling
initiative has never been a desirable re-
sult, and stifling initiative is exactly the
result of the rulings in the code.
IN FORMING an organization to en-
hance their chances of being elected,
the GROUP candidates showed a great
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