Seventy-Fifth Yeor EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS i LAST GLANCES The Search for Valid Standards Where Opinions Are Free, 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MWH. Truth Will Prevail, NEws PHONE: 764-05352 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.. TUESDAY, 13 APRIL 1965 NIGHT EDITOR: SCOTT BLECH University-Tuskeoee Program:* A Challenge and a Promise A VISIT' to the Tuskegee Institute is an exhilarating experience, as the members of the University Symphony who performed on the Tuskegee campus last week found. Most of them asked why they couldn't have stayed in Tuskegee longer, and nearly everyone who has vis- ited Tuskegee shares the musicians' en- thusiasm. One is inclined to think of Alabama as another country, populated by roving bands of assassins and bandits who are intermittently and reluctantly controlled by state troopers; one imagines Tuskegee as an embattled garrison of Negroes sur- rounded by the mass misery of their sharecropper friends, the massive resist- ance of the white community and the choking tentacles of segregated, racist government. The experience, however, has been somewhat more encouraging than the image, for after years of careful prepara- tion, struggle and setback, Tuskegee's Negro community has won its political rights and has established the first gen- uine bi-racial government in any county in the South. Tuskegee stands as a shin- ing symbol of hope for the Negro-and the outstanding example of the folly of the dolorous and disgusting predictions and imprecations of white supremacists. CERTAINLY, what has happened at Tus- kegee might be difficult to achieve elsewhere; Tuskegee's leaders have plac- ed their hopes in the political process because they outnumber whites three to one in the city and four to one in the county. In other areas, such as Birm- ingham, where Negroes are in the minor- ity, demonstrations and boycotts may be far more effective. The high level of educational attain- ment and employment of Tuskegee's Ne- groes is another factor which makes the city's experience somewhat atypical; and the nature of their employment-large- ly with the Tuskegee Institute, the U.S. Veterans' Administration hospital and the school system-have given the area's Ne- groes a higher average income and a greater degree of economic security than is normal. But while the tactics used in Tuskegee may not be universally applic- able, its example should become univer- sally known. Yet bi-racial government, itself an in- valuable advance, must be accompanied by educational, economic and social ad- vances or it is meaningless. Here, in a commendable decision, the University has taken an interest and has, with Tuskegee, developed an admirable program of fac- ulty and student exchanges, departmen- tal consultations and joint studies and surveys on the problems of race and edu- cation. TIS "TRADITIONAL" exchange rela-. tionship is essential as a solid first step toward effecting educational ad- vances in Tuskegee. There are, of course, still more proposals that are now under study. They should be put into action as soon as possible. In particular, the Uni- versity should complete plans for fur- ther and more numerous musical ex- changes such as a joint University Or- chestra-Tuskegee Choir performance and for other cultural activities, such as a concert featuring the University's fast- developing dance groups. It should also complete its deliberations and establish a definite, regularized pro- gram of student and faculty exchanges such as the program Tuskegee has with St. Olaf's College, under which several students from each school trade cam- puses for a semester's study in their major field. These areas are both under serious discussion now but, evidently owing to the large number of complications, noth- ing has yet resulted. No one is culpable but, on the other hand, one hopes a sense of urgency will guide administra- tors and produce results shortly. T HIS IS, TO REPEAT, a traditional sort of exchange relationship, and clearly it must be developed to its fullest before Tuskegee and the University establish additional areas of joint activity. As Mu- sic School Dean James B. Wallace said to the orchestra prior to its departure for Tuskegee, "You won't be going down to participate in civil rights demonstrations -although I wish Alabama's governor would change his name. Your visit is, however, important because the educa- tional and cultural opportunities we take for granted are intolerably scarce for both races in the Deep South. You will be playing before an audience some of whom have neverseen a violin before." On the other hand, this concept of the program need not last forever. This Uni- versity is a social institution as well as an educational institution and, to the extent that the social problems in this nation involve educational solutions, this University has a responsibility to deal with them. By working in this. area to develop the Tuskegee program further, the University could become a vital and essential force for the kind of quiet edu- cational improvement that could con- tribute greatly to social change. The University is already participating in Michigan in the War on Poverty in efforts quite similar to the education and community-action programs which it and Tuskegee should begin to plan now. Since the problems of discrimina- tion, poverty and unemployment are na- tional problems, it would be foolish to work only on their Northern half. And in working on the full problem, the Uni- versity will find that it is triumphantly reaffirming its dual purpose in a demo- cratic society. PRESIDENT HATCHER and other Uni- versity administrators, who must tire of hearing students lecture them on the University's responsibility somehow to promote change in South Africa or some other area equally beyond a university's scope or purpose, should be commended for establishing the exchange program with Tuskegee. It is useful and it is ad- mirable. But the University should cer- tainly expand this traditional approach and later develop new avenues involv- ing adult education and re-education, community development and similar areas in the Tuskegee program-as it will soon begin doing in Detroit. For here rests the true value and the true relevance of a university in a demo- cratic society: When educational matters are involved, it is not only wise for a university to work with social problems, but necessary. And such is the challenge and the promise of the University-Tuske- gee program. One might say, however, that this sort of endeavor, however commendable, would be of value to the University it- self only in the sense that it offers sat- isfaction and, perhaps, prestige. Such a view seems to imply that exertion and expenditure should be directed towards solving problems not because the solver will gain anything, but simply because his humanitarian and social instincts re- fuse to let them go unsolved any longer. BUT THIS VIEW is incomplete. A uni- versity is not only a social institution; its other function is education. And the crucial part of the Tuskegee program is its exchange nature-an exchange in the most complete sense of the word, as valu- able to the University as to Tuskegee. There should be little pride involved on the University's part, and the Uni- versity should not feel like a patron, mes- siah or missionary. Tuskegee's, example should indeed be more widely known- and not the least in Ann Arbor, for the professors and students at the Tuskegee Institute are an extremely sophisticated and capable group. Challenged yet vic- torious, denied yet successful, proud of their citizenship but determined to give it meaning, they are a reminder that a hard land does not breed soft people. As the Peace Corps volunteers have found, so the University will find that, in fostering such social, educational and economic progress as is entirely within the nature and scope of a university and entirely relevant to its stature as a social institution, it will not simply have ef- fected social change or thereby have be- eomA is, indrecot heneficiarv. By KENNETH WINTER Managing Editor, 1964-65 EARLY IN the morning when they should be going to bed, early in the afternoon when they should be going to class and early * in the evening when they should be writing news stories, Daily staff members often sit around instead and play a little game. The game, which they pursue more earnestly than most of their "serious" acti- vities, is called "What's Wrong with the University?" The playing pieces are all the specific things that are wrong: the parking problems, the silly Srules, the full classrooms and the empty classes, the lost souls and the soulless, the vacillating or dogmatic administrators, the ir- relevance and all the other tar- gets editorials on this page have blasted for almost 75 years. The idea of the game is to find the common denominator: the rot- ten core of the University, the thing that's basically wrong, from which all the other evils proceed. F ire that one administrator, abolish that one list of regulations, im- plement that one idea or embrace that one ideology and the Uni- versity will become academic Utopia. The climax of the game comes in the senior editor's "last glance" editorial. Here, lest he be eternal- ly convinced that he has grappled with this institution in vain, the departing editor must reveal the location of that one button which, once pushed, will transform this into the best of all possible worlds. I GUESS I LOSE. Many of my predecessors have claimed that various buttons were the button, but pushing each of them has yielded, or would yield, only par- tial solutions to a few problems. Drive out the dean of women? We did, and things brightened a little, but there still are plenty of problems even in the office she vacated. A b o1i s h paternalism? We're doing it, and now we en- counter the question of whether or not students can find anything , worthwhile to do with their free- dom. More money? Sometimes we get it, and students still stare out of classroom windows in utter boredom. Student-faculty contact? It happens now and often turns out to be tiring, not exciting. Higher academic standards? We've got 'em, and they drive as many students to hate learning as to love it. Free speech? It's almost free here; now we have to find something worth saying. Better public relations? We sell our soul for the very money we were going to use to enrich it. A democratized University? Faculty already be- moan the plethora of committees which demand their attention. A stronger President? OK, only so long as you agree with the way he exercises his strength. A winning football team? Many-perhaps all-of these are the key to solving certain specific problems. My pet peeve is that their proponents seldom stop there; soon they are reflexively yelling "free speech!" or "more money!" in every crisis. My own search for a concrete, accessible panacea has been no more fruitful than these. So my answer to "What's Wrong with the University?" is on a distress- ingly abstract level. It can be summed up in the phrase false standards. ONE OF THE ideas that almost every undergraduate encount- ers somewhere is that the quality which sets man apart from other animals is his ability to symbolize. Faced with a concept which is im- portant but too complex, too ethereal, too elusive to handle, man gives it a name, a number or some other simple label, and- eureka!-suddenly finds he can think about it, compare it, mani- pulate it and communicate it. But the blessing is also a curse. Precisely because the important concept is so hazy, a symbol can't match it perfectly. And precisely because the symbol is so neat and simple, man relies more and more on it. Gradually the original, worthwhile concept is forgotten, and the symbol replaces it as an end in itself. Then the symbol and the reality are free to evolve Iin separate directions, so that the symbol loses its correspondence with, and often even contradicts, the reality. It becomes, in short, a false standard, MY CONTENTION is that this is what has happened here: that the true functions of the Univer- sity, and the true needs of the people who comprise it, lie buried beneath layers and layers of cor- rupted symbols. And most of us, most of the time, seem content to live our lives, and shape others' lives, by these false standards. I'd like to stop here. If the reader would simply start apply- ing this abstraction to his own false standards, if he would just resolve to discover (or rediscover) some true standards, I could stop * BEGIN WITH an obvious, if tired, example: the grading sys- tem. The University's basic func- tion is to educate people, but it has also accepted the job of evalu- ating them, of telling the world whether it should accept or reject them. And it seems neither will- ing nor able to renounce this func- tion. But the dimensions of human excellence are too numerous and obscure to specify directly. So each professor takes those which in- terest him and reduces them to a number by some formula which appeals to him (or to his depart- ment chairman). Then, ignoring the elementary-school principle that you can't add apples, min- utes and inches together and come up with anything meaning- frl, the University lumps the num- bers together and crams them onto an eight-by-eleven-inch sheet of paper. Thus we can see that John, with 3.56 units of excellence, leads Jane, who is worth only 2.41, and is twice as good as Joe, that parasite of society, with a miser- able 1.78. Indeed, the remarkable feature of this false-standards system is not that it is false but that its symbols bear any relation to reality at all. A bad evaluation system is bad enough; worse is that it doubles back and threatens the more im- portant goal: education itself. For as soon as you set up a false- standards system, people will be able to beat the system. And when that system is an end in itself, they'd be foolish not to try. Thus we practice the infinitely subtle art of grade-grubbing. And we adopt the facory worker's at- titude: our job is to produce- whether the product be a term paper, a good attendance record or a flash of artificial enthusiasm -and the teacher's job is to pay us grade-wages for our work. We even espouse the factory worker's values: we -love learning about as much as he loves the fender he welds onto a Chevrolet. THUS THE TRAGIC transfor- mation takes place: while we should be eager to learn as much as possible, we seek instead ways to learn as little as. possible while still producing acceptable grades. The grading system brings out one more important characteristic of the false standard: it seldom has the decency to be entirely false. Though it has driven me to jump through some worthless hoops and generated a strong aversion for some subjects, pur- suit of the four-point has also forced me to learn some facts and encounter some ideas which, much as I resented them at the time, have proven valuable. It has even shoved me into contact with some subjects which I discovered were interesting in their own right. Human laziness is prevalent enough that I feel safe in assert- ing that such academic pressures, however spurious their nature, also have compelled a lot of other people to make better use of a lot of their time. This is, in a way, very unfor- tunate. If the grading standard were entirely false, it probably couldn't last. But the few grains of truth it contains give us a golden opportunity to justify it and forget the whole problem- even though the balance of the educational evidence is strongly against the system. Thus, false standards not merely endure, they prevail. " ASK ANY University ad- ministrator what he is, and he'll probably tell you he's an educator. This, though maybe a little un- defined, is a comforting response. It implies that his commitment is to see to it that man's knowledge is transmitted and expanded, that younger generations are prepared for life at least as well as the generations they succeed, and so on. And you'd expect his stan- dards would follow from this com- mitment. Now go to a Regents' meeting and listen to what our top officials really revere. Likely as not, they'll be crowing about a victory over some other educator-"We got the biggest grant!" "We were the first university to do this!" "We lured another professor from Berkeley!" -bemoaning a defeat-"We lost the NASA center!" "Michigan State has more Merit Scholars!" -or savoring the sheer size of their empire-"$40 million worth of research!" "Three million books!" "Six campuses!" "7000 degrees a year!" Seldom is it mentioned that we might do better with a few less campuses or that because there are so many graduates some of them aren't what they ought to be. And once, just once, I'd like to hear an administrator volunteer the thought that maybe that grant would have done more good some- place else. BUT THE PUBLIC rewards edu- cators more for empire-building than for educating. It's no coin- cidence that Clark Kerr, presi- dent of the nation's biggest uni- rules of empire-building. Your score depends simply on how good the students you graduate are-- and never mind whether you made them that way or they were simply good to start with. In fact, you even get a few extra points if you can brag about how brilliant your entering freshman class already is. Hence the con- stant pressure (which this univer- sity has so far resisted better than most) to waste more money on image-building, propagandiz- ing, recruiting and (to put it bluntly) bribing top freshmen to come here and make our job easier. The false standards of empire-s building underlie other maladies, too. Zealous administrators want to collect nationally prominent professors for their institutional trophy case ("More than 50 per cent of the permanent faculty is listed in Who's Who in America," a University PR booklet pro- claims), and the road to national prominence is publication. Thus a publication list becomes the nego- tiable currency of the faculty mar- ket, and even professors who'd rather teach and officials who'd rather reward teaching find them- selves drawn into the "publish or perish game." The Saginaw Bay Area needs a new college, and someone sug- gests the University might build a branch there. But other state edu- cators see their empires threaten- ed. The battle ends up in a draw, and the bay area ends up with no college. THE RULES of the game some- times stretch a bit. A few years ago, University officials vowed to legislators that the out-of-state student ratio was going down the following fall, while they knew full well it was going up because they'd already admitted the stu- dents. Back in Ann Arbor, where out-of-state students are more popular, an administrator private- ly admitted that the University would gradually cut the portion to 25 per cent, while his colleagues issued angry public denials. It's now declining every year, and will soon hit 25 per cent. And we spend the Legislature's money to lobby in the Legislature for more of its money against the other state schools, who are spending the Legislature's money for the same purpose. With this sort of game being played at the top, is it any wonder that at the bottom the students care more about how many other schools the football team humili- ates than about how much it con- tributes to this school? 0 FALSE STANDARDS are per- sonal as well as institutional. Stroll out to Hill Street and drop in at a sorority, where the best- organized version of the find-the- seniors - a - husband - so - they -don't have-to-become-secretaries race is in full swing. Please don't be too quick to sneer. The person who cannot find mutual purpose, intimacy, com- passion and commitment in an- other human being is, to a certain extent a hollow man, and prob- ably to a greater extent an un- happy man, his other achieve- ments notwithstanding. It would be a far better world if everyone succeeded in this quest; those who reject it all with quips about "the Mrs. Degree" and demand a re- turn to undiluted study or work, are displaying some rather callous false standards of their own. But the way we go about it! The women make commodities of themselves: they doll themselves up, suppress whatever "un- feminine" abilities or ambitions they may have and seek a sorority which contains enough other at- tractive commodities to lure cus- tomers. And the customers come. Per- haps they come to gratify their Ids or their Egos with sex; perhaps they seek a maid and mistress for life; perhaps they need some- think to display at the house party; or perhaps it's just that this is one commodity that No Young Man Should Be Without. (Doubt it? Pick up a copy of the voice of popular ideals, Play- boy magazine, and see the image of ideal modern man: he owns a penthouse, a sports car, a hand- tailored wardrobe, a stereo system and' at least one Playmate; all of them are sleek, beautiful, and exist solely to satisfy his every whim.) BUT PERHAPS either the com- modity or the customer wants something more: to relate, as a human being, to another human being. This is a terribly complex and undefined goal; it's so much easier just to display one another, to bargain with your sex and to save your confidences for people of your own gender. If you do it well enough, the world (which is inside of you as well as outside) will tell you-perhaps convince you-that this is love. And if the reality still evades you, don't face it; grab instead for a concrete symbol of what you desire. Get married. HER SHELTERED security gradually becomes commonplace and then boring; gradually the commodity realizes that she can't stop being a human being. She yearns to join her husband in the challenges and achievements of the real world. So he, who was coming to take her for granted as a docile maid and mistress, sud- denly finds this convenient pos- session making demands of him. "We never talk any more." "Why don't we do things together?" But she has renounced personal de- velopment at the altar (if not before); to the world she now seeks to re-enter, she has little to offer. If he acceeds to her new ambitions,hshe becomes a burden; if not, she becomes miserable. Thus the vision of a life of mu- tual experience and discovery be- comes, at best, a life of mutual tolerationand, at worst, a life of mutual torture. This brief description can't do justice to either the process I de- scribe or the numerous variations and exceptions to it. But what- ever the exceptions, the rules of the mating game must rank among the most vicious of our false stan- dards. The comedian whose routine be- gins with "Take my wife-please", always finds a large and appre- ciative audience. * FINALLY, it should be noted that the critics of the Establish- ment (present company included, no doubt) are no more immune from false standards than is the Establishment itself. Far too many valid protests have disintegrated as radicals have in- sisted staunchly on direct action and civil disobedience, while mod- erates declared that they'd use "proper channels" or nothing at all. As a result, both factions end up with nothing at all. And the tactical vested interests pale in comparison to the even pettier quibbles over which person or group will be the messiah for this particular crusade. Worse than the abortive protest is the protest intoxicated by suc- cess. Defiance, rebellion and rad- icalism, even when originally gen- erated by perceptive insights of legitimate grievances, yield the intrinsic pleasures of self- righteousness and dramatic ac- tion. Hence they become ends in themselves, often to the point of shattering hopes of ever resolving the grievances. The keen insights themselves be- come rallying cries which get ap- plied indiscriminately all over the place. Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, for example, laid bare some ugly cracks in the facade of the big, over-organized univer- sities. But the insight became a rallying cry: today, if you flunk a test, get homesick, receive a park- ing ticket or feel confused about your personal goals, it's obviously because the assembly-line multi- versity knowledge factory has re- duced you to an IBM card (two years ago, oppressive middle-class, Puritanical paternalism was at the root of these problems). THE STUDENT surrenders the personal and societal benefits of education for the false standard of grades; the educator builds em- pires instead of people; the young couple gains a marriage and loses a relationship; the dissenter lets his ideology obscure his ideals. And the hardest, most easily evaded task for each of us is to realize that the false standards are not the other guy's but our own. If the shoe fits ... "ALLRIGHT, wise guy," you interject, "so all of us are crawling with false standards. So before we can do anything about them, we need some true stan- dards. I suppose you're going to tell us what they are." Yep. The basically true standard, it seems to me, is people: the values, the desires, the aspira- tions, the needs-in short, the happiness-of present and future generations of human beings. Other standards are true only if and when they contribute to this standard. (The term "people," it might be noted, includes Communists, Ann Arbor merchants, Ku Klux Klan wizards, quaddies, individuals with beards, Vietnamese peasants, bour- geoisie and quite a few others. The term "happiness" includes short- and long-term, physical, intellectual, emotional and all other satisfactions; those whicli occur in 2965 as wellas those which occur in 1965. And the term "other standards" includes tradition, efficiency, individualism, authority, involvement, democracy and whatever else people might proclaim as the ultimate criterion.) The standard can, in principle, be applied to all our normative judgments. And in fact, by keep- ing it in mind, we find it applies directly to our most grossly false standards-such as those I've mentioned. It at least tells us in such cases that something is ser- iously wrong and often points the way to better standards. BUT WITH what we know to- day, it isn't possible to apply the standard with any accuracy to most of our most difficult dilem- mas. The nature and causes of human happiness, and the con- sequences of living by whatever standards we may have, are too complex and subtle to yield clear- cut answers very often. At this point, I can't confidently declare what standards will do the most for even my own happiness. Does it lie in hard work or idle play? Should I seek personal re- lationships or personal achieve- ment-or can one have both?- Should I follow the counsel of those older and hopefully wiser than me, even when it contradicts my own perceptions? When should suspended judgment give way to commitment? And I'm even more wary of imposing whatever stan- dards I adopt on three billion other human beings. So we must live with worling approximations to the ideal, and at the same time seek standards which bring us closer to it. In- deed, this should be the ultimate purpose of the University: to dis- cover the conditions that produce human happiness and to find ways to bring them to reality. And the most important institutions within it are those which lead us in this quest, by pointing out false standards and suggesting truer ones to replace them. THERE'S THE formula. But it indicates that there are many buttons, not just one, which we must push; and we don't yet know where they all are or how to push them. And this is why, we must con- tinue playing "What's Wrong with the University?"-for we aren't about to find true standards for the world until we've penetrated the fog of our own false stan- dards. That job, in itself, should keep us busy for quite a while. t !' I 4i 4 4 i MIS-EDUCATION: Freedom to Learn and The Overtight System r G ENERALLY SPEAKING, stu- dent efforts, to get an educa- tion befitting free men rather than slaves can succeed only with strong faculty backing, for the students are transient, they do not definitely know what they want, they do not know the score behind the scenes and thus they can be abashed by administrative double-talk. On the other hand, given the supine history of American facul- ties in our sectarian and trustee- ridden colleges, and given the present extra-mural careerism of the important professors, the stu- dents must lead if there is to be any change. The extension of Academic Freedom to the claim to Freedom- to-Learn implies a revoluntionary change in the status of American college-going. Up to now, Ameri- can collegians have been regard- ed, and have regarded themselves, as late-adolescents; but the claim to Lernfreiheit (freedom of stu- dents to ask for what they need to be taught, and if necessary to invite teachers, including advo- cates of causes) means that they are young adults who are capable (YET) . . . there are strong American influences to prevent student maturation and indepen- dence. First, the frantic career- drive, spurred by the anxiety of middle-class parents, leading 'to conformism and willingness to submit to scheduled miseducation, credits and grading, in order to get a diploma quick. Secondly, the 'students are not financially independent; tuition is exceedingly high, so that it is im- possible to opt for independent poverty . . Probably most important the universal compulsory school-going without alternative choices is in fantile. In 1900, only six per cent graduated from high school. We thus have conflict: the direct and evident heed for the students as a working class of the economy would tend to make the students more mature; but the conditions of their collegiate exploitation tend to make them insecure and im- mature IN MY OPINION, the chief political action of students would, at present, be intra-mural--hu- m n,n*. a n d ma n lri'nor n'i'l4',',,.l -ha #I V