.1 u r Airhigau Paxi Seventy-Fifth Year EDrrED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNiVERSITY OF MICHIGAN UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLucATIONS Each Time I Chanced To See Franklin D. A 'Breathing Period' Before Finals Begin by H. Neil Berkson E _ ' TutherWOi reairee 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, Micx. NEWs PHONE: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1964 NIGHT EDITOR: DAVID BLOCK The Apathetic Student: Product of a Complex World LAST SATURDAY night 500 exuberant fans turned out at Willow Run to greet the football team with cheers of "Hail to the Victors!" and "Rose Bowl, Rose Bowl!" Unfortunately, it seems that a winning football team is the only thing which is capable of arousing students from their normally apathetic state. Most students here, as elsewhere, pre- fer not to look beyond the classroom, the fraternity house, or the next football game. Caught up with the everyday, they have failed to acquire a thorough knowl- edge of the complex and urgent problems with which modern society must deal. The Diag rally conducted by the Stu- dent Action League a few weeks ago showed signs of a renewal of concern in the broader problems of the University. However, student interest failed to ma- terialize when confronted with the op- portunity to act through proper channels at the President's Convocation. THE SITUATION here is not unique. Students everywhere seem to be more and more concerned with less and less. It is clear that the majority of today's college students are looking merely for a "safety zone" between high school graduation and the beginning of re- sponsibility. They are not students but simply undergraduates waiting to be transformed into graduates so that they can enter the Valhalla of high wages, country clubs and split-level suburbs. Prof. Paul Sshlipp of Northwestern University's philosophy department re- cently reminded University students that they have a choice between perpetuating the "mess" things are in or proceeding to change them. He noted that there are places where students not only pour over their books, but take time to inform and commit themselves. It is necessary to permeate usable knowledge with sane and real understanding, he said. AMERICAN STUDENTS close their minds too early, though. They are blind to the need for a personal life of moral dedication, backed up by devotion, 'commitment, daring and audacity. It takes leadership, courage and people of action to direct organizations and help resolve indecision. Students have the op- portunity and responsibility to assume this leadership and show their concern on the college campus. A recent New York Times article stated that the growth of student movements on American university campuses is "phenomenal." Such a statement can be mainly attributed to the fact that today's student activists are a fragment that is vocal, militant, organized, growing and full of determination. Granted, there are marches, petitions, pickets and endless small, student alpha- bet-organizations which do reveal some emotion and receive some attention. The fact remains, however, that the number of students involved make up a small per- centage of the student population and their actions are quite limited. Gravel Garden MAYBE Ann Arbor should change its advertising motto from "Research Center of the Midwest to "Gravel Garden Center of the Midwest," for that seems to be the new orientation the University is pushing. In one of its more frivolous improve- ment programs, the University is grow- ing some of the most extensive gravel gardens of any institution of higher edu- cation in the United States-AND IN- DEED THE WORLD. These gardens, lo- cated next to or between buildings are little areas of land that are filled with grey, dusty gravel. Aside from being aesthetically unpleas- ing, it's a waste of money; and upkeep-after students throw or kick all the stones out - will no doubt be a problem. ACTUALLY, the gravel garden plan is just part of a larger plot to sterilize the University campus. It seems that another phase of this conspiracy is to stick con- crete wherever it is seen that people have been walking on the grass. A much PERHAPS THE BLAME falls on the pressures of a society which has greatly expanded and a technology which has become overwhelmingly complex. The principle difficulty lies in the popula- tion explosion which has nearly doubled the college-age group in the last twenty years. In those "good old days" twenty or thirty years ago, about the only neces- sity for attending college was the price of tuition; colleges were satisfied with the average student. Today, the admitted represent one out of every four, six or even ten applicants; the high school student is driven to work for superior grades, not out of love for learning, but because it is the only means to admission to college. Before he sets foot on the University campus, he has been conditioned to regard his aca- demic work as the means to an end, in- stead of an end in itself. And, due to the pressure for graduate training, the undergraduate finds no respite from his frantic efforts. He has still another ad- missions officer to impress. IN ITSELF the population explosion would not account for apathy. But the expansion of population brings a relat- ed transformation of technology and at- titudes toward education. This is the age of bigness-big business, big govern- ment, big churches, big-screen TV and "big" education. Bigness per se is not unhealthy. A large school has more resources at its dis- posal than a smaller one. But it also requires more organization, which in turn creates the danger of over-organization and the choking of the spirit of mutual- ity which is essential to the functioning of an active intellectual community. William H. Whyte, Jr. has pictured college as a training camp for the orga- nization man. "Students do not wish to protest, they wish to collaborate," he wrote. They seek to run with the organi- zation and receive its secure protection. MOREOVER, at the University, pres- sures are simply too great. The first of such pressures is toward conformity and relates to the 50 per cent of the student body that Educational Testing Service found came to college for social reasons. The "wise" student quickly learns to do homage to the accepted middle- class values both inside and outside the classroom. The insidious pressures of higher standards and competition en- courage the student to conform to what is expected. The second pressure is primarily one of time. Both society and the University are demanding too much every single day. The average student cannot keep up with the frantic pace; the pressures and complexities become overwhelming. Small wonder, then, that there is a strong inclination to, as one student put it, "lie down in darkness, leaving orders: 'Do Not Disturb'." It is easy to under- stand how a generation, when it finds out that the answer to the question, "What can you do?" starts, "Well, it is rather complicated . . ." quickly becomes apathetic. Today shoulders are shrugged more often than fists are shaken. PRECISELY IN THIS AGE of bigness and complexity, of increased pressures within the University and from the non- academic world, there is greater need than ever for students who are dedicat- ed to a renaissance of freedom and con- troversy on the campus. But, ironically, our concern for ourselves may keep us from recognizing and meeting this need. Such a reaction both increases the apathy of disillusionment and makes of today's students a causeless generation. It breeds an apathy that is carried into later life and may lead-as at times it already has-to an abridgement of free- dom and undue concentration of powers. ONE STUDENT here carried the pres- ent situation to its logical conclusion by suggesting a merger of the Young Democrats and Young Republicans to form the Young Moderates, united under the banner of an "Apathy Ticket." Hordes of Young Moderate activists would emerge, perhaps joined by a group of YouInt' Americans for Nothing, mopa2gan- WITH THANKSGIVING VACATION one week away, the fall semester is coming to a close. If the reaction on campus is anything like last year, students will return to school a week from Monday, realizing for the first time that finals are 16 days away. While the effects shouldn't be as bad now that we've had a year under the new calendar, many people will go dizzy cramming, and there will be a strong yearning for the former Christmas interlude. Regardless of the feasibility of the new calendar- and there can be no debate over the fact that it works-the shortened semester creates much more pres- sure than its predecessor. Blame students, perhaps, for, being human, they find it somewhat hard to adjust. While the work gets done, it would be a safe bet that the number of shortcuts used in producing papers and passing exams has increased. The new calendar em- phasizes production over education. Or blame the faculty, which hasn't adjusted its courses enough to account for the new system. The fac- ulty, by the way, imposed trimester against strong counter-arguments because professors shunnedthe wholesale revision of courses which the quarter system would have necessitated. THE POINT REMAINS that the shortened semester is too tight; ways of relaxing tension should not be ignored. One proposal-a classless reading period before finals-was revived by a group of students at the begin- ning of the week. This idea drew support as early as last January and before, but no one has been interested in carrying it through. "We tend to overstructure class teaching. If a reading period were properly led up to and guided, students would gain much benefit." The speaker: President Hatcher, in The Daily's trimester series last winter. Dean Haber of the literary college hoped that "a hard look can be given to adding a reading period, which would ease some of the strain I observed." He advocated a period of five to seven days before finals. Such a "breathing period" creates many interesting possibilities. It might be combined with an intensive faculty speaker program-the campus, in other words, would briefly turn away from the classroom ritual, opting instead for a week of private study and more excha'nge with the faculty. This period might even be better if it came somewhat earlier than immediately before finals. THE CATCH? The "time-schedule" orientation of both students and faculty. Those who measure education only in terms of grades, credit hours and degrees would find a "study week" useless. Class, papers and exams are important: when the first isn't in session and the second and third aren't imminent, why be here? Nevertheless, while the ideal may be eliminated, the need to take some of the pressure off remains. Now that the idea of a free period within the semester has some backing, it should be pursued until it assumes concrete form and becomes reality. * * * * THE LATEST ISSUE of Saturday Review contains an article which will be read with interest by a number of ambitious men around the campus. The article: "A University Presidency: What It Takes" by Sir Eric Ashby. Ashby, who was here for a few days last spring, is master of Clare College, part of England's Cambridge University. In the past few months his writing and speeches have drawn increasing attention in the U.S. press. The college president, Ashby says, "cannot directly help scholars to teach or to do research; on all but one of the subjects in the curriculum he probably knows less than the youngest assistant, and in the one subject which was his own expertise (if he ever was an expert) he is likely soon to become hopelessly out of date. What then can he do to promote the purpose of the university?" Ashby's answers counteract the "remarkably little" which "has been written about this particular kind of administration." END OF LINCOLN'S PARTY? Negro Voters Switch Power to Democrats By HAROLD WOLMAN AS ANALYSTS begin to sift through the wreckage of the Republican Party, it is becoming clear that the GOP has committed a fundamental mistake which may plague it long after Barry Gold- water and Dean Burch are no longer major party figures. In the election two weeks ago, 96 per cent of all Negroes who voted cast their ballots for the Democratic presidential candidate. Should Negroes continue voting for Democratic candidates with anything close to this degree of solidarity, the GOP may have trouble ever winning another na- tional election. ** * NEGROES represent under 10 per cent of the national electorate, but their voting power is strategi- cally located. In border states such as Kentucky, Maryland, Okla- homa, Delaware, West Virginia and Missouri, Negroes represent a substantial minority of the popu- lation and experience relatively few barriers to voting. In these states, Negroes al ready hold the balance of political power, In the Maryland primary last spring, for example, a ma- jority of whites actually voted for Alabama Gov. George Wallace, but the solid Negro vote for sen. Daniel Brewster, who represented President Johnson, gave Brewster an easy victory. On the basis of the recent elec- tion it now appears that Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Ar- kansas and Florida also can be classified as border states, at least in the political sense. It seems only a matter of time b fore the large Negro population even in the Deep South gets the franchise, and, barring a mass exodus of White Democrats to the Republi- can Party, Negroes should be the key electoral force here also. SHOULD THESE Negroes con- tinue to vote strongly for the Democrats, the GOP strategy of the recent campaign will have more than backfired. By ,appealing to the white southerner's racist sympathies in 1964, Barry Gold- water may have permanently separated the Republicans from the growing force in southern politics. The extent of southern Negro disenchantment with the GOP is mirrored in the following melan- choly statistics. In 1956, 45 per cent of southern Negro voters cast their vote for the Republican presidential candidate. In 1960 this figure fell to 40 per cent. However, two weeks ago Barry Goldwater was able -to garner only 10 per cent of the southern Negro vote for his version of the Repub- lican Party. * * * 4 POTENTIALLY more terrifying to the GOP than the above, how- ever, must be the voting statistics they are reading from the nortn,- em states.Lyndon Johnson re- ceived 96 per cent of the Negro vote in Pennsylvania, 94 per cent in New York, 97 per cent in Illi- nois and 99 per cent in Ohio. These key northern states with their total of 129 electoral votes have in the past proven to be competitive two-party states. A solid Negro Democratic vote in any of them would likely spell defeat for the GOP. Richard Nixon has conceded that he lost the 1960 election be- cause he was unable to capture a sufficiently large Negro vote in the North. Nixon, who attempt- ed to appeal to the southern white and the northern Negro at the same time, actually won a majority of votes from whites in the coun- try, 52-48 per cent. Yet nationally he could only win the votes of 22 per cent of the voting Negroes. The former Vice-President insists that he could have picked up needed Negro votes in critical northern states if he had directed his campaign with that objective more in mind. At the time, however, he devoted only two speeches to Negro voters and one of those was in Beverly Hills, California, hardly a center of Negro population. * * * NIXON'S COMMENTS high- light the great mistake Republi- cans are now beginning to rasalize they have made. Prior to the election Negroes were not delir- iously happy over the prospect of supporting Lyndon Johnson, a southerner whose civil rights rec- ord before he assumed the Presi- dency was less than impeccable. Had. the GOP brought forth a moderate with a good civil rights record such as Governor Scran- ton, Governor Rockefeller or per- haps even a wiser Nixon, they would have stood to make strong inroads into the Negro vote. Instead, the Republicans nom- inated Sen. Barry Goldwater, who was one of the few Republican senators to vote against the Civil Rights Act. Goldwater had clearly expressed his strategy for the GOP three years earlier at a meeting of the Republican National Commitree. At that time he said that the Republican Party would never at- tract a large Negro vote-a pro- phecy he has helped to fulfill- and that the GOP could best profit by coveting the votes of southern whites who were mis- placed in the Democratic Party. "Let's go shooting in the pond where the ducks are," Goldwater exhorted his party. *~ * * FROM THE MOMENT of his nomination it was apparent that Goldwater had indeed written off the Negro. At the convention Gold- water and his forces, after en- gaging in a debilitating fight with beleaguered liberals, refused to include in the platform a para- graph pledging enforcement of the Civil Rights Act. During the campaign Goldwater gave great emphasis to the need for law and order in the streets, a plea which Negroes viewed as a thinly veiled criticism of civil rights demonstrations. At Chicago late in the campaign Goldwater actually devoted an entire speech to criticism of the Civil Rights Act; * * * THE REPUBLICANS have fur- ther injured their appeal to the Negro voter by acquiring an al- batross in the form of segrega- tionist Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina who recently switched parties. Nor will the election of several like-minded congressmen from the deep South endear the GOP to the Negro; Republicans are no longer able to point to the Democrats as the party of segregation in the South. Can the GOP recoup? Obviously in order to do so it must rid itself of the leadership which is re- sponsible for the present dilemma, The party of Lincoln must return to the principles of Lincoln if it is to againwin elections on the national level. 4 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Wage Solution is Inadequate To the Editor: IT IS becoming more and more apparent to many students at this University that the corporate structure of this institution is more than just form. Gradually it has become also the spirit of the University administration. Several weeks ago Charles Leh- man of the education school in a special article for The Daily brought to light most percentive- ly the "accounting network" of thte University in regards to the past sparcity of state allocations. It might be added now that the introduction of the "accounting network" has brought a profound change in the attitude of the Uni- versity administration especially in its confrontation with the stu- dent community. I tFx f1f 4 $ *f r yJ 1? H .. v14 FAR worse, however, is that the university administration appears now to see this institution as a pure business enterprise. Educa- tion is its product, as the Chevro- let is General Motors'. Its inputs are "unrefined" students, its out- put. . . hopefully enlightened hu- man beings as G.M. makes steel, rubber, and glass into automobiles . . hopefull which will sell. To blame for this is the admin- istration's business attitude and spirit. It is a spirit which makes the administration complex, with few exceptions, think not in terms of people, but in terms of profits. It is a spirit which says we need efficiency at any cost, profit at lowest cost, and hang everything which interferes with our plans. It is a system which is concerned only with the welfare of students as it wishes to see it from its State Street Ivory Tower. It is a system which says, for example, we set wages at a point where we can get enough employes to do the work and no higher. s * THE corporation spirit of the University is a major threat to the welfare of the student body, the faculty, and to the whole academic community. The admin- istration must be reminded that it is not General Motors Corpora- tion and that, unlike industry postulates, it has a definite re- sponsibility for the welfare of its employees, be they students or not. Vice-President for Business and Finance Wilbur K. Pierpont said last week, "The University will continue its policies of establish- ing wage rates to meet or exceed the minimum rates established by minimum wage laws." Yet, the present University wage limits many students to one dollar an hour, far below the federal mini- mum wage. The University of Michigan Student Employes' Union has been in discussion with the ad- ministration for several months. In order to quell the rising sym- pathy for fair student wages at the University the administration has offered reluctantly a small increase, to'take effect in 1966. It has even reluctantly decided to increase the minimum wage level to the minimum level which the federal government set several years ago... but says this will not go into effect until 1967, three Nnivreiy hiig~C from 'now!T Administration instead of one geared to profit. -Barry Bluestone, '66 President, UMSEU Sad To the Editor: STUDENTS Unite! We will meet on the diag and march 10,000 strong to President Hatcher's home, we'll go to Washington and demand that the work load be les- sened at the University. This way the students won't have to sit home on Saturday nights and study. You mean this wasn't the reason for the poor turnout at the airport Saturday night when the team returned from Iowa? Oh, I k~now the reason: the hard working stu- dents decided that they needed a study break so they put away their electric computers and went to see that great epic, "Pajama Party." WHAT ELSE could have been the reason for Saturday's disgust- ing sight at Willow Run? Only about 500 people turned out to greet the team and a large portion of these were Ann Arbor residents and their children. The Victors doesn't sound too good when it is sung by about 300 students and a gathering of six- and seven-year- olds. Michigan has been accused of lacking spirit before, but Satur- day night's display was about the worst. I am sure that Slippery Rock Teachers College shows more spirit for its "Knitting Club." All the world loves a winner, but not the students at the University. They love to go to the stadium and scream and yell, but when it comes to showing real spirit they prefer to sit back and do nothing. Last year when Illinois returned from beating Wisconsin, 8000 stu- dents turned out to greet them. This year, Michigan is one game from the Rose Bowl and 500 people greet them. One can only venture to guess what will happen if Mich- igan beats Ohio State this week. Maybe the airport will let its em- ployes off so they can meet the team. STANDING at the airport Sat- urday night, one could have seen Dick Rindfuss, John Yanz and John Rowser standing on crutches waiting for the team to return. It's too bad they had to hurt I I