C hr Adligatt Batt Sew y-Tbird Y-r EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE 'UNIVERSITY OF MICMGAW "". UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS There Opinions Are Free STUDENT PUBLICATIONS BLDG., ANN ARBOR, MICH., PHONE NO 2-3241 Truth Wil Prevail" Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in al reprints. SIDELINE ON SGC: Council Plays Same Old Game "I Deetare, I Don't Know Where-A The Lad Picked Up Such Habits" I- Y, DECEMBER 7, 1963 NIGHT EDITOR: STEVEN HALLER i . . Confused' SGC Drops Only Clear Power IN CONFUSION OF PURPOSE, Student Government Council Wednesday voted to give away its only clear power and to deny its only useful function. Council agreed to Union President Raymond Rus- nak's proposal for an all-University cal- endaring committee which would calen- dar student events, a function now under- taken by Council. Earlier, Council, dis- daining its role as a student spokesmtan, refused a request of its United States Na- tional Students Association Committee to send a telegram to South African Justice Minister B. J. Vorster protesting that gov- ernment's persecution of the National Union of South African Students. If Rusnak's proposal is realized - and there is a good possibility that the Offices of Student and Academic Affairs will im- plement ft-Council will be left with only two maj6r though cloudy functions: rec- ognition of student organizations . and promotion of student interests. The com- plicated SGC dealings in the area of membership selection and the OSA's constant rejection of any Council initia- tives in this area clearly show that SGC's power of recognition, and therefore regu- lation, of student organizations is illusory. SGC is really left with administering for- rhalities. It just assures that the new student organization's constitution is in order and approves amendments to them. No significant regulation is either needed or taken. THIS LEAVES SGC without any govern- mental function. And since the conclu- sions of the latest round of the member- ship selection debate, Council has shown little interest in undertaking any govern- mental role. Indeed it has had trouble controlling its own offspring, its stand- ing committees. Further, SGC, for the second time in two years, rejected any assertion of non-academic rule-making authority, its true function as a student government. Perhaps it is time to consider what SGC's true role should be and whether its current structure is too elaborate for the job. Student Government Council can best serve the student community as a lobby, pressing for improvements in the student's lot in -the University community, and representing his interests in all-Uni- versity decision making. SGC HAS TAKEN some halting steps in this direction. It approved Daily Editor Ronald Wilton's motion for SGC lobby- ing against any state-imposed tuition in- crease and for higher appropriations and Elaine Resmer's for additional student and legislative participation in "U-M '63," a University public relations program.. But Council has been silent on the pres- sures of trimester at a time when a strong stand would have alerted the faculty to the difficulties students face in adjusting to the new, tighter calendar. It has also pussy-footed on non-academic rules and regulations. IF ANY CHANGES are to be made in the Council plan, they should be aimed at- strengthening Council's lobbying role and eliminating sham bureacuracy and func- tions. A strictly lobbying group does not need ex-officio members; it should be as representative of the student body as pos- sible. Nor need it be so large or unwieldy. An eight to ten member council, chosen in an all-campus election would serve just as well. Its committee structure need not be as large or bureaucratic as it now is. By functioning as an adjunct to lobby- ing, it can attract higher quality members interested in pursuing vital and fruitful projects. Since the end of October, Council has been drifting, looking for new issues. Per- haps it is time it understood its lobbying role and acted strongly. But, unfortunate- ly, last Wednesday's actions show it has much to learn. -PHILIP SUTIN National Concerns Editor, By MARY LOU BUTCHER WEDNESDAY'S Student Gov- ernment Council meeting was distinguished by an appalling phe- nomenom known as "other- directedness." It has been the trend in recent weeks for Coun- cil members to approach problems not in terms of what is the best solution but, rather, in terms of what is the solution which is most likely to please the administration and/or the Regents. Council members no longer ask themselves what they as students would like to do but, instead, what they as students would be "per- mitted" to do. Sadly, this was the case at the Nov. 20 meeting when Council members refused to amend the SGC Plan-its constitution- to expand student rule-making powers for fear that tle Regents would veto the change. AT THE same meeting, Council did approve two relatively "safe" amendments to the Plan-the ex- pansion of SGC through the ad- dition of the President of the In- ternational Students' Association as an ex-officio member and a definition of SGC boards and committees. To become effective, the amend- ments were subject to the ap- proval of the Vice-President for Student Affairs James A Lewis and the Regents. While Lewis did not veto the changes, Council President Russell Epker announced Wednesday that he had not yet sent the legislation Ao the Re- gents for consideration. He justified the procrastination by noting that some Council mem- bers had approached him express- jng "reservations" about their votes in favor of the changes. He also pointed out that Lewis had expressed concern that the Regents would not be favorable to Council action (as demonstrated by the recent 5-3 Regental split in reaffirming SGC's authority to deal with discrimination in stu- dent organizations) at this time, and Council might be better off to wait a while before sending its legislation for their approval. WHILE NO ONE had strong enoughf'reservations" to bring the amendments up for reconsidera- tion, neither did many Council members feel strongly that the legislation should be sent imme- diately to the Regents as it should have already been sent. The dis- cussion was calm and speculations about the probable Regental de- cision superseded any criticism of the delay in action. Uncertain of the prevalent feel- ing of Council, Epker finally took a vote which narrowly favored immediate consideration by the Regents. THE MEETING subsequently continued on the same old course when a proposal was brought up to send a telegram to the minister of justice of the Union of South Africa protesting the expected cur- tailment of activities of the Na- tional Union of South African Students. While-several Council members expressed sympathy with the situ- ation of NUSAS-the only multi- racial student group still f unction- ing in the apartheid-ridden coun- try-only a few were willing to extend encouragement to these students through the telegram. The opponents of the motion argued that they agreed with it" in principle "but would rather see Council take organized action of some sort which would be more effective. The notion that the telegram TODAY AND TOMORROW: The National Sickness: Hatred and Venom could not be "effective" as could group action that could be pro- mulgated through such campus organizations as World University Service is the key to the whole debacle. Council refused to recognize that it could very well seek the desired effect through both of these methods. It refused to consider the fact that the intangible morale-boost- ing which such a telegram could effect on members of NUSAS was every bit as important as or- ganized action here on campus. It was so busy worrying about whether the South African gov- ernment would even look at the telegram that it decided not to express its beliefs except to people who are sure to listen and agree. - ~ fcAooLaF t 2 AT J ~ gLl /M '~I r + E / f SPi A3 f By WALTER LIPPMANN THE FIRST NEED of the coun- try after President Kennedy's assassination is to take to heart the nature of this unspeakable crime. There is a searing internal crisis within the American spirit which we have first to realize and then to resolve. There is no public crisis at home or abroad which demands such attention that it cannot wait until we have collected ourselves and taken a moment of self-evalua- tion. The American future depends on it and our capacity to govern our- selves. What we have to realize is that, though speech and gossip and rumor are free, the safety of the republic is at stake when ex- tremists go unrestrained. Extrem- ists may profess any ideology. But what they all have in common is that they treat opponents as enemies, as outside the laws and the community of their fellow men. WHAT HAPPENED in Dallas could, to be sure, have happened in another city. But it must be said that the murder of the Presi- dent was not the, first act of political violence in that city, but one in a series. The man who is now the President of the United States was manhandled by his fellow Texans. The man who rep- resents the United States at the United Nations was spat upon. In this atmosphere of political violence lived the President's mur- derer, himself addicted to the fas- cination of violence in his futile and lonely and brooding existence. The salient fact about him was his alienation from humanity, from country, family and friends. Nothing within him, it would seem,: bound him to the President or to the governor as human beings. No human feelings stayed his hand. IN HIS ALIENATION, Lee Os- wald turned to the left. But that was incidental. Those who asaulted Lyndon Johnson and Adlai Steven- son had turned to the right. The common characteristic of all of them was their alienation, the loss of their ties, the rupture of the community. An extremist is an outsider. For him, the government in Washing- ton is a hated foreign power, and the President in Washington is an invading conqueror. There is no limit, therefore, to his hatred which feeds upon the venom of malice, slander and hallucination. In Dallas today there is much searching of conscience, and well there should be. For Dallas has long been conspicuous for its tolerance of extremists and for the inability of its decent citizens, un- doubtedly the great majority, to restrain the extremists and restore a condition of honest and temper- ate and reasonable discussion. It was comforting, therefore, to read last week that the mayor of Dallas, Earle Cabell, had said that "each of us, in prayerful reflec- tion, must search his heart and determine if, through intemperate word or deed, we might have con- tributed in some fashion to the movement of this mind across the brink of insanity." We must all follow the mayor of Dallas in that prayerful reflec- tion. For it is only too easy to forget that in a free country there must be not only liberty and equality, but also fraternity. THE ONLY SOLACE for the nation's shame and grief can come from a purge or at least the re- duction of the hatred and venom which lie so close to the surface of our national life. We have al- lowed the community of the American people to be rent with emnity. Only if and as we can find our way back into the Ameri- can- community will we find our way back to confidence in the American destiny. We must stop the flow of the poison that when men differ, say about taxes or civil rights or Rus- sia, they cannot be reconciled by persuasion and debate ';and that those who take the other view are implacable enemies. In the light of this monstrous crime, we can see that in a free country, which we are and intend to be, unre- strained speech and thought are inherently subversive. Democracy" can be made to work only when the bounds of the community are, inviolate and stronger than all ,the parties and factions and in- terests and sects. * * * I WISH I felt certain that the self-realization into which grief has shocked us will endure when we go back about our business. The divisive forces of hatred and ungovernability are strong among us, and the habit of intemperate speech and thought has become deeply ingrained. It is deepened by the strains of war and the frus- trations of this revolutionary age, by the exploitation of violence and, cruelty in the mass media, by the profusion of weapons and by the presence of so many who know how to use them. But I do have much hope in the healing arts of Lyndon Johnson. We can turn to him with con- fidence. For his great gift is in finding the consensus without which the American system of government with its states and regions, its checks and balances is unworkable./ To find the consensus among our divided and angry people is his historic opportunity. To restore the internal peace of the United States is his unique mission. That done, all else will be man- ageable. (c) 1963, The Washington Post Co. 1 t I CINEMA GUILD 'CaligariT' IlIustrates Unusual Technique t ' '.. ,; a The Purposes of DAC YESTERDAY the Direct Action Commit- tee picketed the house of University President Harlan Hatcher. The reason for this picket was to try to show that "Hatcher is a bigot and shouldn't be al- lowed to be president of the University and wield the power that he does," Charles Thomas, Jr., chairman of DAC, said. Thomas offered as support for his state- ment the facts that Hatcher is a member of the Detroit Athletic Club which has no Negro members and that he is also a member of the board of directors of a large Detroit company which Thomas ac- cuses of discriminating against Negroes. FROM BOTH DAC's present and past ac- tions, it is difficult for many people to. understand what DAC really wants. If it does indeed want equality.for the Negro in jobs and everywhere, this is a very laudable goal. However, it seems incon- ceivable that any group that says that it wants equality would use such slogans on their picket lines as "death to the white liberal." Thomas is of the opinion, however, that "if yelling and screaming will help to ob- tain freedom for Negroes, I say do it." DAC WAS ORGANIZED to do things that such groups as the National 'Associa- tion for the Advancement of Colored People and the Congress of R1acial Equal- ity can't or won't do for some reason. A militant group such as this can be a good thing for the civil rights movement because through their militance they may influence such groups as the NAACP and CORE to take somewhat stronger action, even though the NAACP says that it does not support or condone any action taken by DAC. DAC was founded last summer by peo- ple who felt that there was not enough progress being made in civil rights in Ann Arbor. Also, they wanted. a group that "would be run by blacks, because the problem is basically a Negro problem that should be solved by a group which is led and whose policy is made by blacks." They decided to organize a civil rights group that would be more miiltant than the ones existing at the same time such as CORE and the NAACP. But there were, some people who were quite disturbed about the shooting, and among them was Charles Thomas, Jr. Thomas and some others organized DAC so that they could protest this incident in an organized fashion. THUS DAC WAS FORMED to stage what Thomas calls "self-defense" type pick- ets and other forms of protest against discrimination in Ann. Arbor, and also to work for equal job opportunities -for Ne- groes. Thomas was. elected chairman of DAC, and contact was made with several mili- tant civil rights groups in Detroit, Uhuru and the Group on Advanced Leadership, in the form of a letter from Uhuru to DAC. This contact came as a result of the fact that DAC originally wanted to be called Uhuru. But DAC didn't affiliate with either GOAL or Uhuru, however, be- cause they didn't share their views on membership. UHURU AND GOAL both don't allow whites to be members of their organi- zations.; DAC wanted to allow whites to be members if they were willing to be un- der Negro leadership. "Much of our policy came from Uhuru and GOAL, though," Thomas said. DAC conducted several pickets of the Ann Arbor City Hall during the summer, in protest of the alleged brutality of the Ann Arbor police. The officer who shot Julde left the force before the end of the summer, although he was recently hired as a deputy sheriff. DAC then decided that it would con- centrate more on getting jobs for Negroes at businesses where the members thought Negroes were being discriminated against. They met with some degree of success in this venture, getting jobs for several Ne- groes at a local supermarket. THOMAS AND THE REST of DAC now think that there is discrimination in the University's Administration Bldg. and in other parts of the University. So DAC picketed the Administration Bldg. and threatens to hold a second, "un- conventional" picket. At this picket, OBERT WIENE'S "The Cab- inet of Dr. Caligari" is the classic representative of a move- ment that has had a relatively slight influence on the history of motion pictures. Though a fas- cinating and often ingenious film, It demonstrates that expressionism is a style most appropriately handled in the theatre and the plastic arts. Indeed the most typi- cally expressionist elements in "Caligari"-its sets, lighting, and makeup-are purely theatrical. Wiene's camera is for the most part stationary, with a certain amount of cutting froi' close to medium shots. The one cinematic device used consistently is the iris-in to open and close sequences, and to frame individual characters -although it could be argued that this effect is also possible in the theatre. But discussion of "Caligari" probably should not center on its theatricality and failure to utilize- the medium in ways that D. W. Griffith at the same time was showing were possible. The in- terest that the film has attracted probably has little to do with cinematic technique per se. * * * BRIEFLY, "Caligari" begins as ' story-with-a-film. A young man, Francis, is telling an acquaintance about a most unusual exerience. The camera fades to a town called Hostenwall, where a carnival has come and with it a strange man who calls himself Caligari. In his act he brings a somnambulist' briefly to waking and has him answer questions about the future of members of the audience. Soon a series of murders begin. Circumstance points to Caligari, until Francis finally Pursues the fleeing doctor into an insane asylum. The boy asks attendants if they have a patient named Caligari. They reply no, but that he may see the director. Predictably, the director is Cali- gari himself. When confronted with his captured somnambulist- murderers, he becomes hysterical, is straightiacketed and put in a cell. The story-within-the-film ends. * * 4 'e THOMAS MANN is reported to have admitted to weeping at the cinema-but to have quickly in- sisted that the medium was not an art because the spectator re- mained too close to it; the proper aesthetic distance was impossible. Without accepting his conclusion, we can recognize an insight into the cinematic effect. The situa- tion of the spectator at a film is such that psychologically his re- sistance is down. There is some- thing hypnotic about the medium -perhaps it's the darkness, per- haps the concentration' it exacts or the two-dimensional surface come alive. At any rate, a film ;like "Cali- gari" takes advantage of the situ- ation, and does this by using the essentially theatrical devices of expressionism. It is the sets es- pecially that creat'e a mad, night-, marish world in which there are; no right angles. 1?erspective is distorted; shadows fall toward the light source. The film deals with the problem of authority. Without committing oneself to a specifically Freudian interpretation, it is safe enough to say that the force of "Caligari" is in the handling of this theme so that much of its effect is vis- ceral, rather than intellectual. ASSUMING that this piece is a preview, I have remained deliber- ately vague in not synopsizing "Caligari" fully. The film turns on a revelation that only becomes clear aftr the story-within-the- story-within- the film was added to original screenplay only later by Wiene, over the strenuous ob- jections of its authors. This ad- dition changes the whole emphasis of the film, and is responsible for its thematic shift, and, if one wanted to make the point, for its ambiguity. S* * * DESPITE the limitations of the expressionist aesthetic in the cine- matic medium, "Caligari" takes skillful advantage of the cinema- tic situation. It remains a fascin- ating and ingenious film-more than a museum piece. -David Zimmerman FBI-: Narrow IN THE ANNUAL budget hear- ings, J. Edgar Hoover boasts a network of informers in liberal and Leftist organizations. A min- iscule Communist Party is his excuse for surveillance over a wide spectrum of opinion. "Since the Communist Party," Mr. Hoover told the House Ap- propriations Committee this year, "carries on many and varied ac- tivities to infiltrate and man- ipulate various segments of Amer- ican life, we must have broad and penetrative coverage so that we may bed aware of the plans and tactics of this subversive organiza- tion." *'* * JUST HOW "broad and pene- trative" this coverage is may be gathered from Mr. Hoover's boast that' the FBI had "approximately 16.5 known or suspected Commun- ist front or Communist infiltrated organizations under investigation." It takes hard searching to find a half dozen genuine Communist front organizations nowadays. Mmd. Hoover 'met this objection by explaining that while "some of these organizations are created by the Communists" many are "le- gitimate non-subversive organiza- tions" which the Communists have urged their members to join. This admits that many "legitimate non-subversive" organizations are among the 165 watched by the FBI. Among them, according to Mr. Hoover's presentation to the House Appropriations Committee, are "organizations in the peace, youth, political, trade union, Negro, dis- armament and nuclear testing fields." I. 'I "~It's The Christmas Season - Time To Hang Up The Legislation" .a4 'J=N I THIS LIST indicates how far the FBI reaches into respectable organizations with legitimate pur- poses, many of them shared by the administration. Notice 'that Negro rganizations are included among those over which the FBI keeps watch. In the fiscal 1962 budget hearings, in, explaining that the FBI hadt "some 200 organizations . .now under investigation" Mr. Hoover said that the Communists were exploiting the Negro sit-in demon- strations. It is clear that the FBI watches the Negroes closely. It is not at all clear that they watch anti-Negro organizations. Mr. Hoover dwells at length each year on internal security, but the menace is always on the Left. In this yyear's hearings. Mr. Hoover took time out to dwell on the in sidious dangers behind the Com- munist campaign for peaceful co- existence. But he never seems to see any danger in the paranoid racist pro- f