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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.
Those Crazy Buddhists-Setting Fire To Themselves"
AT THE CAMPUS:
Fellini's Testament:
AY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1963
NIGHT EDITOR: GERALD STORCH
Michigan Legislators
Faces Three Challenges
VERNOR GEORGE, ROMNEY formally
alled the Legislature into special session
erday, challenging it to make decisions
ting the basic direction of state activities.
e decisions, which may effect Michigan
after the current crop of lawmakers de-
from the Lansing scene, are concerned
fiscal reform, legislative apportionment
adjustment of state laws to fit the new
titution.
ow and partisan action
an's progress for decades.
d-looking ones can open a
s in the state.
can hinder
Broad and
new era of
SCAL REFORM is the most immediate of
these issues, clearly and sometimes painfully
ng everyone's pocketbook. The challenge
the Legislature is clear here; yet it is the
least likely to be met.
'he current tax structure, based on regres-
sales, nuisance and business taxes, is
exible and incapable of meeting state needs.
good times, like the present, these taxes
d large revenues. In poor times, their yield
ps sharply while the demand on state ser-
s increases, creating massive deficits.
Desperat]in
[VER SAY DIE" seems to be the motto of
citizens from the Thumb-area who are
ving desperately to get a four-year degree
nting college in their community.
he latest madcap proposal will go into
ct when Delta College opens its doors. A-
dful of nursing students will enter their
for year of studies at the school but will
live no credit for their work.
iIS seemingly insane plan is an educated
gamble.I
group of private investors in the Bay City-
land-Saginaw area have been trying to get
state board of education to grant a private
rter for a junior-senior level school atop
a. This would be a stop-gap measure until
. George Romney's citizens' committee rec-
rends a plan of action for educational ex-
sion in the area.
he board has denied the charter once, but
reconsider the idea later this month.
lhe noncredit nursing program resulted from 1
delay.
the charter idea is approved, the students
r be lifted from their academic no-man's-i
i and receive credit for their courses. This
bviously what the investors are counting on.
n the other hand, if the plan does not get
nod from the state board these students
e wasted a year toward getting their degree.
iERE IS a need for a four-year college at
Delta but stop-gap measures such as the '
credit course are fruitless. Endless delay
ics on the part of the state board and other
cerned organs demonstrate insensitivity to
munity requirements. -
-G. EVANS
Associate City Editor
hose Hazy
By taxing business operations and individual
spending, these taxes do not encourage the
economic expansion necessary for the well being
of the state government and its citizens.
THE KEY to fiscal reform is the unpopular
income tax. When the state was in more
difficult straits a year and a half ago, former
Gov. John B. Swainson and moderate legisla-
tors of both parties found it impossible to pass
an income tax. Now when the end of the state
deficit is in sight, it will be more difficult to
convince legislators and the general public that
an income tax is the necessary base for fiscal
reform.
Romney and the Legislature will have to
summon all the political courage they have to
enact an effective fiscal reform. Both will have
to resist the inertia caused by the state's rela-
tive good fortune and the blandishments of
lobbiests concerned with protecting their spe-
cial interests. Romney, in addition, must exert
strong leadership over the dissidents within his
own party and convince Democrats of the
soundness of his plan.
LEGISLATIVE APPORTIONMENT presents a
great challenge to the broadmindedness of
the Legislature. It is a basic issue, for malap-
portionment gives power to a narrow-minded
bloc which lacks a vision of the entire state's
interest. For too long the Legislature has been
dominated by this sort of men.
The new constitution, with its dubiously
constitutional 80 per cent population, 20 per
cent area Senate apportionment formpla and
an easing of the House's representation for-
mula, offers some hope for better apportion-
ment. It will give Detroit and the greatly un-
der-represented suburbs more legislators.
Still, the, new document's provisions can be
twisted to maintain the unfortunate gerry-
mander. Romney and Republican legislators
must act with restraint. Extreme action may
bring potentially government snarling lawsuit
or continue the current gerrymander's ill
effects on forward looking legislation.
THE THIRD CHALLENGE is the most com-
plex of the three. Tailoring state laws to
fit the new, more generalized state constitution
requires an outlook that can predict results
many years in the future. Extending terms of
current elective offices, scheduling elections to
avoid bedsheet ballots, reorganizing depart-
ments to fit the centralized structure of the
new constitution and enacting enabling pro-
visions for oounty home rule and civil rights
all require great legislative wisdom.
Fortunately, the Legislature is well-prepared.
An 18-man special committee has intensively
studied these problems, relying on the advise
of experts in state government. The report
should lay a good foundation for, legislative
action.
TFESE ARE the three basic challenges facing
the Legislature this fall. The public should
watch its lawmakers closely to determine how
they met them. Next November, the voters
should act accordingly.
-PHILIP SUTIN
National Concerns Editor
Crazy DaVS
TODAY AND TOMORROW:
A Peaceful Settlement
FEDERICO FELLINI'S "82" is
unqualifiedly a masterpiece.
Using confessedly biographical
material, he has abandoned a
realistic vocabulary in favor of a
highly stylized texture of dream.
illusion, memory and reality. "812"
is at once Fellini's most personal
and his most controlled film.
Even more specifically than
"La Dolce Vita," "8%/2" is concern-
ed with the problem of artistic
creation. Fellini's film director-
protagonist,"Guido Anselmi (Mar-
cello Mastroianni) discovers that
he has lost control over his own
powers as an artist and a person.
In an effort to regain his integ-
rity and finish a new film, which
is only in the seminal stage, Guido
is forced to retreat to a spa. Dau-
mier, Guido's collaborator for the
film, reads the tentative script
and criticizes it as a mere string
of episodes with no unifying idea.
THE TRIUMPH of "8%" Js the
film language employed in ex-
pressing Guidos rage for order.
The opening fantasy sequence it-
self contains this theme in minia-
ture. The camera pans across a
huge traffic jam. Then we see
the back of abgreying head. A
man in a car begins gasping as
gas fills the interior with aa loud
hiss. He frantically pounds on the
windows, trying to escape. And as
his gasps get shorter, he begins
to float out of the car. First, he
cautiously half walks, half floats
across the roofs of the neighbor-
ing cars, then rises into the
clouda.
The camera cuts to:a beach. A
man, tugging on a rope, yells to
'another figure, "We've got him."
Then we see the rope attached
to the greying man's leg as he
floats above the beach. He tries
to disengage himself but fails and
plunges downward.
The greying man is Guido An-
selmi. Suffocating in the chaos of
his own experience, Guido wants
to soar, like Daedalus. From the
sky he can achieve the detach-
ment and control necessary to
finish his film, But the wish ful-
fillmentefailsand the camera im-
mediately cuts to the spa.
IN "LA DOLCE VITA," Mar-
cello, an earlier Fellini protagon-
ist, also finds himself unable to
achieve aesthetic detachment from
his particular experience, the
world of the Via Veneto. He re-
mains a journalist, one who re-
cords rather than creates.
Marcello's failure is reflected in
the structure of "La Dolce Vita."
It remains a string of loosely con-
structed episodes. Fellini is satis-
fied with the big effect. The re-
lationship of the artist and his
world is rendered with a n admir-
able bravura, but, in the end,
superficially.
In "8," however, Fellini illu-
strates that an artist need not be
chaotic or dull to express the
chaos and dullness of his charac-
ter's experience. "81 " marks an
advance over "La Dolce Vita" in
that Fellini's artistic success or
failure is not reflected in the suc-
cess or failure of his artist-pro-
tagoniot. Even though Guido can-
not order his experience until the
very end of "8/2," Fellini controls
this chaos throughout, expressing
Guido's rage for order by means
of a perfectly consistent visual-
aural vocabulary. The use of non-
synchronous sound and stylized
sets contribute to this vocabulary.
But most impressive is the pat-
tern of parallels that Fellini im-
poses on the texture of illusion
and reality. For example, in an
early memory sequence, Guido is
a little boy surrounded by women
who bath him in wine and swad-
dle him in warm towels. He is
the "sweetest little boy in the
world." Later, in the harem se-
quence, Guido's wife, his mistress
and assorted actresses reenact the
bath and swaddling.
WITH SOME works of art a
discussion of vocabulary and form
becomes a discussion of theme.
In James Joyce's "Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man," for ex-
ample, the broadening of Stephen
Daedalus' awareness is communi-
cated in a movement beginning
with completely sensual, undif-
ferentiated imagery in the open-
ing pages and culminating in the
abstract narrative language of the
St. Thomas Aquinas discussion.
Similarly, Fellini has developed
a major new visual language to
express the subjective experience
of his artist protagonist. In this
respect "8'" is technically the
most important film since God-
ard's "Breathless."
-David Zimmerman
LETTERS
to the
EDITOR
To the Editor:
RONALD WILTON'S article,
"The Two Sides of College,"
is a concise statement of the edu-
cational philosophy endorsed con-
tinually by The Daily',staff, The
article clearly implies that while
the student must , attend to his
studies here, he'll find more chal-
lenging educational opportunities
in the "non-academic" side of
campus life, particularly through
commitment and participation in
politics.
Wilton says: "For most, the
academic transition is the easier
of the two. In many cases, par-
ticularly Where the freshman
courses are concerned, the work
is merely an extension of high
school." If this is generally the
case, and I doubt if it is, thdn one
can assume either that the fresh-
man's concept of educatioh is so
shallow that he reckons no dif-
ference between high school and
college, or' that the college is just
not doing its job. Regardless what
the case is, I would warn the new
student what the faculty's con-
ception of his education is: it is
learning through books.
* 4' *
THE ENTIRE university system
tacitly implies this; professors are
hired to teach, books are assigned
to read, library collections are
weekly increased, papers assigned
to be written, courses must be
taken to be "in college" here, and
the student's stated duty in col-
lege is to fulfill these elected aca-
demic responsibilities, but the col-
lege will never punish him for ig-
noring the non-academic side of
college.
There is, therefore, only one side
of college that's important; this
is as it should be, for at no other
time in a person's life willhe have
the chance to learn what others
have said and written in history
than right now. The mere learn-
edness of college-its obsession for
books-makes it unique and valu-
able.
I CRITICIZE the "total .xper-
ience" concept of education urged
by Wilton because not only does
it excessively detract from the op-
portunity of the greatest worthon
campus-academic learning--but
it also directs one's energies into
a useless channel. As the voting
percentages of the student body
in campus elections so embarrass-
ingly demonstrate, most students
consider campus politics and the
hapless labor of Student Govern-
ment Council a waste of thought.
To suggest that students actively
support political candidates of
Real Life is ridiculous, because
only a small percentage of under-
graduates can vote. There is little,
moreover, that a student body can
do, unfortunately, to abolish the
House Committee on Un-American
Activities except get itself a bad
name, as in San Francisco. The
Daily, of course, thrives on poli-
tics, but the student's actual par-
ticipation in politics is mostly in-
effective and unreal.
LET THE STUDENT be chal-
lenged primarily by his studies;
may the college be blamed if he
isn't. And let his development into
"a productive, responsible citizen"
be less self-conscious: let nim lay
down his placard for the time being
and try tolerating his roommate
and studies. Let him educate him-
self in the way the college has ad-
mitted him for, because that's
what the faculty expects of him.
-Henry L. Fulton, Grad
9
,,
I.
By WALTER LIPPMANN
T HIS IS being written as the
march in Washington is form-
ing, and I am telling myself that
if anything goes wrong, it will be
due to an unforeseen accident.
The government and the Negro
leaders have worked closely to-
gether, starting with agreement
that this is to be a demonstration
of protest for the redress of legiti-
mate grievances. They are agreed,
too, that it will be most impressive
and persuasive if the marchers
have the discipline to refuse to be
provoked to violence.
* * *
THIS FUNDAMENTAL meeting
of minds differentiates the dem-
onstration sharply from all other,
massive protests in other parts of
the world. As Mr. Roy Wilkins of
the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
has pointed out to the Chinese
Communists, the Washington
marchershare not in rebellion
against the government of the
United States.
Apart from the eccentric fringe,
the overwhelming mass of the
American Negroes are asking only
for their lawful rights which are
the normal prerogatives of non-
colored American citizens. The
American Negro movement is not
at all revolutionary as have been
the anti-colonial movements in
Africa and Asia.
The American Negroes are de-
manding the rights which hava
been legally theirs since just after
the War Between the States. They
are not trying to oust and replace
the white man, but to join him
inside the existing American so-
cial order.
WE MUST never forget, how-
ever, that if this thoroughly non-
revolutionary movement is re-
pressed too long, if the redress of
grievances is denied too long, it
could and probably would become
clandestine, violent and ugly.
Looking back, it now seems clear
enough that the position today
would be quite different if the
Southern States had in fact pro-
vided separate but equal educa-
tional opportunities for Negroes
and whites.
The compelling reason for the
reversal by the Supreme Court of
the old rule was that for 60 years
the separated schools have been
grossly unequal. There have been
some exceptions. But by and large
the schools for Negroes have been
very bad.
Those who now deplore the com-
plications of more than token in-
tegration in the Southern schools
should ask themselves what would
have happened if the public
schools, though separate, had for
the past 60 years really been
equal..
All this illustrates the rule that
the longer you put off the redress
of real grievances, the harder be-
come the remedies.
* * *
THE GRIEVANCES of the
American Negroes are coming in
two successive and overlapping
waves.
The first wave is the unfinished
business of abolishing what Mr.
Justice Harlan called in 1883 "the
badges of slavery and servitude."
These badges consist of public dis-
crimination ,on the basis of race.
The Supreme Court decision in the
school cases, the civil rights meas-
ures against disfranchisement, the
public accommodations measures
are part of the unfinished business
of making American citizens out
of chattel slaves.
S * * *
THE SUCCEEDING wave of
grievances is economic and has
to do primarily with the inferior
jobs and the inferior housing to
which most Negroes are condemn-
ed. In considerable measure,
though no one can say exactly
how much, this kind of inferiority
is due to the fact that the Negro
is poorly educated and poorly
trained and that, for a tiundred
years since his ancestors were
emancipated, he has still had to
wear the badges of their servitude.
But it is even more important
to realize that the economic gnie-
vances of the Negroes are due pre-
ponderantly to the fact that they
are so poor.
They are poor, not only because
they are Negroes, but because the
American economy is operating
well below full capacity and full
employment. In fact, there are
more poor and unemployed whites
than there are Negroes; but rela-
tive to their numbers, the Negroes
have a greater percentage of un-
employed.
Because of their race, the Ne-
groes tend to, be the last to be
hired and the first to be fired. But
if there were not a chronic sur-
plus of labor, they would have
much better jobs.
THE ECONOMIC grievances of
the American Negroes cannot be
redressed without a series of meas-
ures which will make buoyant our
sluggish economy. The candid
truth here is that this is not
likely to happen soon.
For measures are required to
stimulate our economy which are
distrusted and opposed in Con-
gress and, it would seem, in te
country as well.
It is probable, therefore, that
while the Negroes will prevail in
regard to the first wave of their
grievances, the removal of the
badges of slavery, no substantial
improvement of their general
economic situation is likely to
come soon. For this will require
the conquest of dire poverty, and
the country is not now ready for
such an undertaking.
(c) 1963, The Washington Post Co.
Flexiblity
I DO NOT KNOW when "flexibil-
ity becomes accepted as an un-
qualified virtue. It is a virtue in a
tire or in a skyscraper-in modera-
tion. Beyond a point, it becomes
softness in the former and wob-
bling in the latter. And who wants
a wobbly skyscraper or a soft tire?
-John F. Kennedy
f
I
y1
1
I
rE ALL-NIGHTER, that painfully futile last
esort of the negligent student, is about to
me a required course at the University.
last-minute marathon cram session, sus-
ed by ample stocks of cigarettes, coffee, pep
and other would-be study aids, climaxes
next morning in an exam groggily written
ept through entirely.
rmerly, it served as a reasonably just pun-
ent for those who left too many things
1 the last minute. But with the adoption of
University's new academic calendar-par-
arly its one-week final exam period-the
tconscientious student will find it impossi-
to avoid a .discouraging number of these
emically destructive ordeals.
OST STUDENTS start at least some of their
courses with genuine enthusiasm, undilut-
by the old grade-point rat race. This kind
notivation is what the University supposed-
-les to nurture, and it certainly should.
oome the first exam or paper, grade-con-
usness begins to grow and enthusiasm fre-
ntly starts to wane. But almost invariably,
final exam is the last straw: under pres-
of time and grade, a student almost in-
ably comes to view the subject-matter as
enemy to be conquered, gobbled up and spit
By this point, no matter what his original
rest level, what he wants most from the
se is that it be over so he never has to
at another word on that subject again.
WFORTUNATELY, all these agonies are
self-defeating: studying under the last-min-
let's-get-it-over-with plan results in for-
en facts and misunderstood concepts.
University decision-makers are aware of
unfortunate sequence of events in the ca-
s of their students. one would exnect that
matic potential of this dilemma is self-evident.
This will happen infrequently. But let's as-
sume the best: only one a day. A student with
four or five exams, then, has almost one exam
a day for the whole period, and about 12 hours
to study for each test. Even to review a whole
semester of facts, let alone digest, assemble and
criticize them, is virtually impossible in this
time. Thus the all-nighter becomes the only
alternative to premature surrender.
THE TRIMESTER and the exam marathon, of
course, were not devised by fiendish admin-
istrators with the intent of making student life
miserable. The austere appropriation from
Lansing has made them adopt these devices to
make more efficient use of our funds and fa-
cilities.' But given this unenviable situation, it
seems they could juggle the calendar to make
the trimester plan more livable.
When 'the transition to trimester is complete,
three semesters (or trimesters) of 14 class
weeks are envisioned, a total of 42 yeeks a
year. This leaves 10 weeks to divide between
exams and vacations. The projected scheme
would devote three of these to one-week exam
periods after each trimester and seven to va-
cations. But if the vacation-weeks were cut
to four, the two-week exam period could be
revived.
THE ARRANGEMENT would be as follows:
slightly less than one week apiece for spring
vacation, the break after the spring session and
the break after the summer session, and about
a week and a half for the winter holidays. This
would leave six weeks for exams--two weeks
each trimester-which is just about the mini-
mum time possible for a productive exam period.
These two weeks might be used for more
widely-snaced exams. as in the old system- the
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