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December 11, 1964 - Image 4

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Publication:
The Michigan Daily, 1964-12-11

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Seventy-Fifth Year
ETmD AND MANAGo Da tSTUDENTS OP E UNVERstrY Op MIC=USAa
UNDER AUTHORITY OP BOARD IN CONTROL OP STUDENT PUBUCATIOMS

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
The Facts Versus the No-Curriculum Approach

I

... .

Where Oplnio re r 420 MAYNARD S'., ANN ARDOR, MICH.
Truth Winl Prevan

NEWs PHoE: 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.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1964 NIGHT EDITOR: LAURENCE KIRSHBAUM

East Quad Food Problem:
Legitimate Beef

O PARAPHRASE an old saw, everybody
talks about quad food but nobody does
anything about it. But this is no longer
true, for a group of students in West
Quadrangle are doing something about
it. In cooperation with West Quad Busi-
ness Manager Gilbert P. Lutz, a seven-
nan student committee has been formed
to look into student protests over the
quality and quantity of food being served
in the West Quad cafeterias.
Such a committee is surely a good idea,
but why should the concept be limited
exclusively to West Quad? I cannot speak
with first-hand knowledge about the
conditions in South Quad, except to utter
some hasty generalization such as "things
are tough all over;" but as a four-year
East Quad resident, I can testify that
conditions there could certainly stand a
bit of looking into.
'CONSIDER FIRST the matter of "quan-
tity." West Quad students have pro-
tested that their cafeterias have occa-
sionally run out of the food mentioned on
the menu "before even half the residents
have passed through the meal line." Yet
how is this any different from East
Quad, where one can never count on get-
ting what the menu says he will (wheth-
er he enters at the middle of the meal
hour or not)?
Students have even complained that
the line has run out of peanut butter and
jelly, the ubiquitous "second choice" of
which the dietitians continually boast.
(Quote: "Well, if you don't like what we
serve you, you can always take peanut
butter and jelly.") One is reminded of
Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol": "If they
would rather starve, then they had bet-
ter do it, and decrease the surplus popu-
latitn."
A Citation
A CITATION (if small) for beleaguered
administrators.
Someone, somewhere, somehow has
managed to get bus service to North Cam-
pus expanded from every hour to every
half hour during most of the day.
While patronage will probably continue
at a low level for a while (until new riders
are attracted and old ones adjust their
personal schedules to take advantage of
the changes), the expansion is a much-
needed step toward providing convenient
accessibility -to North Campus.
It would also help considerably if the
buses could circle the central campus
picking up riders, rather than forcing
them to walk to the shelter by the Dental
Bldg.
MAYBE WE can't do much with the big
problems of the University, but with
small ones at least there is a chance.
Every little bit helps.
-R. JOHNSTON

EVEN IF one concedes that the dieti-
tians do manage to turn out a good
meal once in a while, this fact is far over-
shadowed by the small size of the por-
tions allowed. The late President Ken-
nedy's "physical fitness program" ap-
parently cuts no ice with the East Quad
dietitians; second helpings of meat (a
healthful food, to be sure) are forbidden,
while the quaddie is forced to gorge him-
self on bread, butter and potatoes in
order to leave the table with a full
stomach.
The situation may be exactly the same
from one quadrangle to another where
"quantity" is concerned, but it is doubt-
ful that this is so; one often hears of dif-
ferences between what is served in one
quad and what is served in another (as
when a resident of one quad notes that
chocolate milk is served every night there
while another quad is lucky to get it on
Sunday nights; likewise with lemonade
or iced tea on hot days).
WHERE "QUALITY" is concerned, it
seems that East Quaddies would once
again have a legitimate gripe. Some of
the weird combinations that the dieti-
clans manage to come up with simply
must be seen (or eaten, if one feels up to
it) to be believed.
What would Duncan Hines say, for ex-
ample, about "Oriental Soup," which re-
sembles nothing more than a bowl of
dishwater in which a few wilted pieces
of 'grass (or the like) are floating? Or
"Macaroni Neapolitan," which no respect-
able Italian would touch with a 10-foot
pole? It is doubtful that such delicacies
as these could have found their way in-
to a treatise on "Adventures in Good Eat-
ing." Or, as Newton might put it, "What
goes down must come up"
NEAR THE end of last semester, a ques-
tionnaire was circulated in East Quad,
purporting to ascertain what the quad-
dies liked and didn't like in the way of
food. The report was a grammatical gem,
containing references to such foods as
"tost, rost beef, plumbs, and plu." Never-
theless, many quaddies diligently filled it
out and returned it in the hope that food
conditions would improve as a result of
their having done so.
The result? As far as can be seen, the
questionnaire has been ignored. Condi-
tions have not improved; if anything,
they have gotten worse, with little hope
for better luck in the foreseeable future.
IS A STUDENT committee the answer
for East Quad residents, as it may be
for West Quad? I am sure that East Quad
director Stuart M. Zellmer would be just
as interested in meeting with the stu-
dents on such a matter as is West Quad's
Mr. Lutz, but it would be up to the stu-
dents to initiate such a move. East Quad-
dies "talk about the food" as much as
West Quaddies do; so if West Quad stu-
dents can "do something about it," why
not East Quad students?
-STEVEN HALLER
Contributing Editor

To the Editor:
THE DAILY editorial writers
have done it again! Done
what? Put forward yet another
scheme which is, let's face it, com-
pletely impractical by today's
standards.
I refer, of course, to Edward
Herstein's editorial on the "non-
curriculum approach" for the resi-
dential college. What he is, in
fact, suggesting, is a form of tu-
torial system and I, for one, would
be the first to agree on the desir-
ability of such a system. BUT-let
us face the facts.
Mr. Herstein wants a 30-hour
week of student contact, in one
form or another, for the staff. If
one assumes that a reasonable
amount of contact per student is
about 12 hours per week, with
something like 4-6 hours of indi-
vidual discussion (this would be
needed so that a personalaassess-
ment is possible), then a little
arithmetic suggests that this re-
quires a student-staff ratio of
anything from 4:1 to 7:1, de-
pendent upon how you make up
the other hours. -Now face the
facts, Mr, Herstein!
* * *
I WOULD also like to comment
upon certain other points in the

editorial, in particular the lack of
feasibility in the curriculum sys-
tem implied by Mr. Herstein. Un-
fortunately I do not have any
sympathy with Mr. Herstein's
problems in being forced not to
learn some things at all and being
forced to learn other things twice!
(Quite an achievement!) Also with
his statement that "the Univer-
sity" will not help him to learn
some of the things which he does
wish to learn. I seriously doubt
whether anyone who expresses the
first viewpoint has any wish to
learn anything, in fact.
Coming to the University from
outside, one of the more exciting
things here is the flexibility of
the course system of study, con-
taining, as it frequently does,
"reading courses" whose content
can be decided very liberally by
the faculty member concerned.
In addition to these formal
courses, I have found my own
collegues only too willing to help
anyone who wished to learn some-
thing not provided for in the for-
mal manner and I am sure that
they are not a unique set in this
matter.
AT THE HEART of the matter,
finally, is the desire and willing-
ness of the student himself to

learn-not to be taught-and I
would hope that such a student
would have little or no cause for
complaint at the University.
-Thomas M. Dunn
Professor of Chemistry
Equal Rights
To the Editor:
THE YOUNG Democratic Club
would like to extend sincere
congratulations to the Young Re-
publicans, in their decision to join
the battle for equal rights in the
local community. This battle is
one that transcends petty politics
and one that requires complete
devotion to the ideal as a means
of achieving the possible. Thus,
we have no desire to renew old
rivalries or reincarnate minor dis-'
putes, when such an ideal is con-
cerned.
As an initial step of good faith,
may I suggest that the Young
Republicans refuse to endorse or
in any way support for re-election
Councilman Paul Johnson, a
staunch opponent of the Ann
Arbor Fair Housing Ordinance.
May I also suggest that YR's in-
form the six present Republican
councilmen that they whole-
heartedly support the attempts to

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make that ordinance effective.
through enforcement and amend-
ment. While we are taking the
YR resolution at face value, we
are now looking for positive action
by the Young Republicans on iiat
resolution.
THE FIRST STEP has, we feel,
been a completely sincere on by
the Young Republicans. It now
remains for them to make an in-
depth investigation of the racial
problems which beset Ann Arbor,
and to use their political influence
to bring about specific solutions
to these very difficult problems.
Perhaps the most encouraging
step is that students are at last
realizing that Ann Arbor affects
them and that they in turn have
a vital role to play in the com-
munity. Hopefully, together with
YR's, we can erase the stereotype
of the student as a rather undesir-
able transient resident of the area.
We are voters and we are citi-
zens, and we should be considered
responsible Republicans and Dem-
ocrats. But this will only be
brought about by establishing our
credentials as people who can take
a realistic view toward real prob-
lems, and as students who are
not merely "playing politics." We
wish Young Republicans much
success in their efforts, and assure
them that we will continue wrk-
ing toward these goals in the
Democratic Party.
-Michael W. Grondin, '66
Chairman,
Young Democrats
Berkeley
To the Editor:
P ERMIT ME to disagree with
Phyllis Koch's editorial re-
marks concerning the Berkeley
demonstrations. I will not presume
to require the space needed to re-
fute each paragraph.
She maintains that the picture
is one of "disorder and confusion."
On the contrary, every report that
I have read on the subject has
pointed instead to the great de-
gree of orderliness which the stu-
dents have observed despite the
odds of administrationand police
coercion. As for the confusion, I
think that is most probably prev-
alent only in Miss Koch's mind.
It is a question of minimal free-
dom versus restrictive authority,
and that is hardly a confusing
distinction.
MISS KOCH further maintains
that "the minority of students
have been too impatient," that
far-reaching reforms take time.
I think this is probably a gross
mis-reading of facts, for the stu-
dents have not demanded "far-
reaching reforms" (more's the
pity). It does not take any time
at all to provide for freedom of
political action (which Miss Koch
apparently does not distinguish
from freedom of speech) if those
in power would just resolve to do
it.
One's beliefs (a true democrat
might'reasonably affirm) must
have proper and abundant chan-
nels for expression. Otherwise,
that expression tends to be found
in channels which bastions of
authority traditionally consider
"improper" and "anarchical." Fa-
cetiously called "universities," our
institutions of higher education
are inherently undemocratic, anti-

individualistic, authoritarian and
intellectually stultifying. They
tend to manufacture mindless
humans who continue to babble
the shibboleths of a sick society.
It is not free. It is frightfully in-
stitutionalized and subtly author-
itarian, and our "universities" are
remarkable examples.
No, I think the concessions made
to the students at Berkeley are
indicative of the righteousness of
their cause and the effectiveness
of their methods. What Miss Koch
calls the peaceful methods, on
the other hand, have been failing
infamously at the University.
-Everett Woods, '65
No Inspiration
To the Editor:
AFTER READING Tuesday's
editorials of Merle Jacob con-
cerning the situation at Roose-
velt University and of Phyllis
Koch concerning the situation at
Berkeley, it seems to me that
The Daily has hit a new low in
editorial writing.
In the first case, that of Miss
Jacob, there cannot nossibly be
any excuse for running an edi-
torial that takes less of a stand
than your news columns. The gist
of her writing seems to be naughty
children, you did wrong, and
naughty administration, so did
you.
Not that such a statement is
necessarily out of order, but it
takes a much less insipid or hope-
fully more inspired way of stating
her message to warrant publica-
tion in your columns.
MORE INSPIRED, but with
much less sense, is the article of
Miss Koch. She uses the example
of the student employes' union
to show that a small group work-
ing quietly within an orderly
framework can accomplish great
things. If this were satire, I would
be appreciative, but I sense that
it is not. I offer the student em-
ployes union as an example of
the fact that working within the
framework of the administration,
you can accomplish exactly what
the administration wants you to.
Moreover, I prefer to offer
Mahatma Ghandi as an example
of what Miss Koch describes as
"lawlessness and disrespect for
authority" which "can lead only
to disorder, confusion and chaos."
When the administration is as
clearly wrong as at Berkeley, it
is their duty to admit that fact
and make the necessary conces-
sions.
YET, I do not quarrel with
what is said in these two editorials
as much as with the lackluster
expression they are given. Is it
asking too much of your staff to
writeion issues aboutwhich they
are interested enough to be in-
spired and informed enough to be
sensible?
-Robert Shenkin, '65BAd
Hmm
ALL SUBJECTS offered at the
University are classified as
academic regardless of their con-
tent or method of presentation.
-Bulletin of the University
of Washington

4

"WILL THERE BE ANYTH ING

ELSE?'

i

MAGAZINE CONTAINS OGELSBY'S NEW PLAY:

'Peacemaker' Makes Generation a Collector's Item

Memo to the Athletic Director

DEAR FRITZ CRISLER,
Saw where Coach Elliott picked a 44-
man squad to go out to Pasadena. They
should dismember Oregon State.,
It's sound football not to take the third
fourth stringers. They aren't going to
score any points for you. They would
just be extra fares.
Sure, they may be seniors who have
been out for football for four years at
Michigan getting their brains bashed in,
H. NEIL BERION, Editor
KENNETH WINTER EDWARD HERSTEIN
Managing Editor Editorial °Director
ANN GWIRTZMAN...............Personnel Director
BILL BULLARD .....................Sports Editor
MICHAEL SATTINGER .... Associate Managing Editor
JOHN KENNY........... Assistant Managing Editor
DEBORAH BEATTIE ...... Associate Editorial Director
LOUISE LIND........Assistant Editorial Director in
Charge of the Magazine
TOM ROWLAND .......... Associate Sports Editor
GARY WYNER.......Associate Sports Editor
STEVEN HALLER ............Contributing Editor
MARY LOU BUTCHER;.......Contributing Editor
CHARLES TOWLE....... Contributing Sports Editor

but they don't count because they can't
help you win. They spent this year play-
ing the parts of Dick Butkus, Gary Snook,
Tom Myers, and so on in practice while
the regulars gave them their lumps. We
don't want this kind of loser going out to
the Coast. It would be bad for morale.
Sure, they went out to practice every
day and gave it all they had, but sport is
no place for sentiment.
CONGRATULATIONS on deciding to
take the Athletic Board in Control out
to California. These are the nice fellows
who really deserve to have an expense-
paid trip. The monthly meetings you and
the rest of the members had are the
real reasons the Wolverines won the Big
Ten Title. Football games are won by
old men drinking coffee in smake-filled
rooms.
So have a good time, get a nice tan, and
WIN for the Maize and Blue.
Respectfully Yours,
-LLOYD GRAFF
Tg 1

T HIS IS NOT a free copy of
Generation I am reviewing. I
bought it, and would now buy
another for a friend. Three quar-
ters of the writing in this issue
is a play which may make it a
collector's item in the future. The
other poems, stories and art will
suffer by comparison, but they
should not be ignored. There are
some good things scattered there.
There is some sensitive photog-
raphy of faces and hands; on
the other hand my ignorant eye
doesn't see much in the drawings.
They attempt very little, and they
succeed.
There are two good "critical"
poems. In muscular lines, like
"Smilin' Jack on PT 109" him-
self, the writer turns that large
accumulated imagery of the com-
ics, "that never changing hair,"
against itself. "Newburgh" is
quietly conversational and effec-
tive. If poems could talk to each
other, "Understanding" and "Love
Poem" might chatter bloodily; the
first despises what the second
commends.
There are a good number of
haiku-inspired poems in this is-
sue. Perhaps meditation will en-
hance their effect, but I don't
find in any of them that instant
re-seeing of the commonplace
which invites meditation. In
poems so visual, the lack of a fresh
eye is not redressed by decent lan-
guage. But I found this haiku-like
eye in pieces of improbable poetry
where it was not expected. In the
very tail end of "After Leaving the

startled from/ that place in which
he hears no other calling/" And
again: ". . . as air descends
through cloud, lost deeply in it-
self/ the more it falls and is
sustained by meeting/ its memory
alone . . ." Meditate on that and
watch chlidren with new eyes.
The two short stories both play
the popular game, "let's think of
yet another way to go mad." But
there are infinite ways and game
soon palls. Both stories feature
two men and a woman in a little
insanity party, but the madness is
too much like a fashion put on.
The stories have traded cosme-
tics; in one,, the girl has "lemon
slacks . . . long blond hair . . .
fierce green eyes"; in the other,
"lemon-colored hair . . . green
eyes." The main trouble with this
game is that the more obviously
mad the scene the more common-
place the effect. Madness is closer
home, in the structure of our so-
briety, as when we say, "Why,
everybody knows that . ..".
From this point of view, Carl
Ogelsby's perfectly real non-
fictional letter on the Viet Nam
war to perfectly real Congressman
Vivian is a better story than
either story. If the writer and the
recipient of this letter were fic-
tional, we readers would ask what
kind of people would "call their
very eyesight a liar" and support
such a war. And the answer-plain
old functionaries trying to do a
sober job-would begin the mad-
ness. To render this madness, the
writer needs to extract and extenr

settle this feud. It appears to ask:
Why intercede in a situation, how-
ever abominable, which you can-
not change and which will destroy
you? But this question alone
would have produced a wooden
play which "The Peacemaker" is
definitely not. And I do not agree
that in this feud peace was im-
possible; nor, says Oglesby's let-
ter, is it impossible in Viet Nam.
Peacemaking is not for a dilet-
tante. What is his concrete life
stake in peace? In this play, his
concrete stake is paradoxical; it
dooms the peacemaker to death
and the clans to endless war. I
will discuss this briefly and as-
sumed the interested reader has
run out and bought his copy.
TWO YEARS BEFORE the play
begins, Dyke, returning from war,
has inadvertently shot Harmon
McCoy, has kept it secret, and
the McCoys blame it naturally on
the Hatfields. In Act 1, 2 Dyke
asks himself and his wife Sally
"Why did I not tell?" and when
she reminds him of his own stated
excuse, "the best way to keep your
guilt," he knows it to be baloney.
"It has my curliness. It makes me
sick." Sally: "But why tell: what
question would it answer?" She
wants them to go West and forget
the feud. Dyke regards this choice
as plain, sleep-destroying coward-
ice.
To tell is critical for Dyke, and
he really believes his telling would
dismantle the war. As he lies dy-
ing he believes this: "But I told.

a participant. How could he tell
and trust himself to jail and a
trial when the Hatfields would not
commit the three captive McCoy
boys to jail but shot them instead,
and the McCoys would do like-
wise?
* * *
SO HERE is Dyke's problem and
how he meets it: He is afraid to
tell and fall into the fire of feudal
justice. Therefore, he tries to get
the feud under control by eliciting
pacts of nonviolence and trying to
get in marshalls. But he fails con-
tinually and his secret corrodes
his family life. When he consents
to family pressure to leave, he
confesses and dies and the feud
goes right on.
Dyke does not make public his
own stake in peace; and so de-
stroys his public purposes and
projects. This peacemaker is
neither an Olympian neutral nor
a full participant. He cannot flee,
as his wife recommends, nor
truly enter. He will not use that
resource, plan the occasion of its
use as a peacemaking tool, which
he believes is his most valuable
asset. He is a part-time, part-
minded, part-hearted peacemaker.
Is he like a good, liberal, well-
intentioned congressman - and
the rest of us - waiting for some-
body else to bring a peace to Viet
Nam when it will be safe for us
to confess and act on our own
secret? Namely-I consent to the
killing, I pay for it, killers are my
agents, I am part of the abom-
ination.

"was." The whole auxiliary sys-
tem is collapsed into the granite
verb, "be." This is much more
than just dialect imitation. In
"The Peacemaker," "be" is almost
a real character, gathering its
identity from the hard concrete
terms it mingles with, terms some-
times mixed in metaphorica3
colors. "Or stay as you be, like
tombstones foregathered, and
them bouldery faces." And why,
shoot the three McCoy boys? "Be-
cause! This here be the way! Heh!
This little old world go round."
The talk is also well distributed
among the characters which helps
the play to move. And finally,
here are some unforgettable spots
of group chatter, those features of
pre-linguistic vocalization found
in animal communities besides
man; features marvelously am-
plified in the University produc-
tion.
If Dyke is.a partway peacemaker
he is an ambiguous talker as well.
Somebody should do a statistical
analysis of verb auxiliaries and
relative clauses in Dyke and the
other characters. I guess that not
only would the distributions be
different, but that Dyke's data
would divide into two clusters de-
fining his public talk as peace-
maker and his talk alone and
with his wife. I think we would
find certain ambiguous points in
his talk where the style clusters
overlap, where the talk is mixed.
I sense that often these points
come at moments where Dyke's
personal failing paralyzes his

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