Page 4-Thursday, November 1, 1979-The Michigan Daily
Ninety Years of Editorial Freedom
WAISHINGTON WINDOW
Carter's conservation e fforts
Vol. LXXXX, No. 49
News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
Carter can not get on TV
P OOR JIMMY CARTER. Being the
most powerful person in this coun-
try does not mean that he can get
anything he wants. Besides his ritual
wars with Congress, the president has
now taken on what some view as the
fourth branch of government-the
television networks. And again, he ap-
pears to be in trouble ofu suffering
defeat. For the sake of this country,
let's hope so.
Carters campaign committee filed a
complaint Monday with the Federal
Communications Commission,
charging the three major networks
with wrongfully refusing to sell him air
time for a political speech. The
president wants to address the nation
on IDec. 4, when he announces his for-
mal candidacy for re-election. But the
television stations said no.
In denying the president's request,
network officials have argued that
selling Carter time would force them to
honor similar requests from other
presidential candidates. Such a move
would trigger a chain reaction in which
every candidate from Ronald Reagan
to Larry Pressler would be seen in the
living rooms of American homes all
across the land.
And that is exactly what the country
does not need at this time. Already this
upc'oming 1980 race has received more
than appropriate attention. As early as
last spring, stories appeared in
newspapers and nightly news telecasts
showed the candidates making the
rounds from cornfields in Iowa to town
banquest in New Hampshire. It
Nuc ear Pc
qp .can neve
T HE PRESIDENT'S commission
on Three Mile Island has at last
returned the conclusion that opponents
of nuclear power have been saying all
along-that nuclear power plants can
never be made 100 per cent safe.
That finding is as dangerous as it is
disturbing, since the constructiqn of
nuclear power plants has, continued
unabated, even after the Three Mile
Island accident underscored the
fallability of these supposedsly fail-
'safe systems. As long as human error
is a factor, like the commission con-
cluded, nuclear power safety can
never be assured.
Perhaps this finding will provide
new impetus to the move to declare a
moratorium on the construction of new
plants, and a freeze on the issuing of
new nuclear plant licensing. A
majority of the commission members
themselves agreed for the need for
such a moratorium, but bickering over
the specifics precluded the inclusion of
that recommendation with their other
revelations on nuclear hazards.
was-and still is-simply a case of
presidentialmania.
While the media has given too much
attention to politics-a flaw in the
industry that goes back to its incep-
tion-neglected have been the serious
issues of the day. Sure, inflation and
energy have made their way on the
creeen, but one seldom hears about
women and minorities striving for
equality. There just isn't enough time
in a 30-minute newscast. You can't
forget commercials.
It is this kind of media coverage of
minor moves by each candidate which
has -made the situation worse. Since
candidates know the media will give
them great publicity, they start their
campaign almost two years before the
election. Their philosophy was taken
from the success story of Jimmy Car-
ter. It is this attention which
exaggerated the importance of this
month's Florida Democratic Caucus.
It is this zealousness which made Ted
Kennedy's every sneeze a national
event.
The Carter camp thinks it has found
reason to complain to the FCC. Un-
der the provisions of the
Federal Communications Act, the
networks are required to provide
important political candidates access
to the airways. While this may be true,
the act has not carried weight until the
campaign really gets underway, and
after networks have begun to sell time
to any candidates.
It is still more than a year before the
election. It is way too early. Jimmy
Carter will have to wait.
By HELEN THOMAS
UPI White House Reporter
WASHINGTON - President Carter
believes that energy conservation is catching
on.
The president believes he started from
scratch to educate the American people to
turn off their lights,1 lower their thermostats
and drive at 55 mph. He concedes he was not
without frustration. But he never doubted the
need to conserve energy would soon be
recognized as a necessity in a nation that has
always had bountiful resources.
"I think there's a growing awareness very
rapidly coming on ... the American people
that we do indeed have an energy problem,
and that every American needs to do
something about it," Carter said in a recent
interview.
"The thing that impresses me most
strongly is that the conservation of
energy ... need not be an unpleasant thing,"
.he added. "It need not be a sacrifice. It need
not be something that disrupts America. It
can be an exciting, positive, pleasant thing."
CARTER SAYS IT is not necessary to drive
automobiles that weigh 5,000 pounds, with one
person in a car, going 75 miles an hour. He
also suggests lowering thermostats in the
winter and wearing a sweater.
These are not sacrifices, he maintains.
They are prescriptions for increasing the
"quality of life," making it safer and "more
enjoyable with a sense that we've done
something not only for ourselves and our
family, but also for our nation, and it will be a
patriotic thing."4
The president has tried to be an educator on
the subject since the first days of his ad-
ministration, calling the energy crisis a
"moral equivalent of war."
Despite the president's rosy outlook on the
joys of retrenching, there appears to be no
massive rallying to the cause.
THE SHORTAGES AFE spotty and there is
no real sense of solidarity in tackling the
problem. The enormous profits earned by the
giant oil companies in the third quarter of this
year helped spread the notion that sacrifices
are far from being shared equally. In fact,
there is a feeling the companied are making it
big now on one of the world's finite resources.
Sometimes Carter's solutions seem sim-
plistic.
*Buy a wood burning stove, he says, perhaps
not realizing the price of firewood, or its
availability.
Riding a bike to work becomes an im-
possible task when people live many miles
from their jobs. Car pools also take some'
doing in out-of-the-way places. In some:
places, mass public transportation is non-a
existent.
Moreover, there are very few examples of
major sacrifice in the way of life at the White
House or on Capitol Hill that can be con-
sidered pace-setters for the nation.
IN THE END, the sacrifices that will be:
made will come from pure necessity. The
burden ofinflation and its leveling effect on
the average family is example enough when
the hohemaker goes grocery shopping;
Buyer resistance is born of reality
In wartime, a president can rally the nation
to sacrifice on a massive scale: In a
depression, such sacrifice is forced on the
people. But in today's world, it seems to be
more a case of holding back the dawn.
Changing a nation's lifestyle is an immense
task. Carter has always said that he has made
it a creed to take on the tough problems skip-
ped over by some of his predecessors.
As the president sees it, the Americani
people must be re-educated on, the limits of
this bountiful land. He has started the process
that will go well into the next decade-and will
be a legacy for his successors to perpetuate.
Spacy Jane
Pr oPg A
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By Tom Stevens
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arms in S. E.
wer plants
,r be safe
The President now has his mandate
to order such a sweeping moratorium
on A-plant construction and licensing.
He also has the mandate th close those
existing plants which all hold the
potential for erupting into Three Mile
Island incidents from New Hampshire
to California. And the president now
has a mandate to order the massive
redirecting of funds and committment
that is necessary to bring alternative
energy sources like solar power out of
the experimental stage and into prac-
tical, everyday, safe usage.
Nuclear power is still in its infancy.
But with still unsolved problems of
waste disposal, leakage, and the very
real potential for disaster that can
never be controlled. Nuclear power is
an infant that is being rushed into a
premature birth in this country,
without the caution and concern due
when the stakes are as high as human
existence. Let us now take the com-
mission's conclusions as a warning,
and put the baby to bed for awhile until
it matures. Time is running out.
To The Daily:
The Carter administration's
lavish support of the military dic-
tatorship in Thailand and to the
Pol Pot forces still fighting in
Kampuchea must be exposed to
the American public.
"Washington's arms sales to
Bangkok add up to $400 million so
far this year, about four times the
average of recent years,"
Newsweek reported October 8.
"The Pentagon is jumping
Thailand to the head of the line
for deliveries of M-48 Patton
tanks, anti-tank missiles, mor-
tars and M-16 rifles. Within a few
weeks, the Thais will receive
their first F-5 fighter jets equip-
ped with Sidewinder air-to-air
missiles."
Reporting from Bangkok in the
September 26 issue of Le Monde,
Patrice de Beer says that "the
Thai press and government con-
tinue to announce, with great fan-
fare, the arrival of new American
military hardware and ar-
maments. Giant cargo planes
loaded with artillery and a ship-
ment of tanks are expected
momentarily . . . (the tanks
arrived this week).
''New American 'advisers'
have also begun to show up here
to train Thai troops in the use of
the new weapons, some of which,
such as the TOW antitank
missile, are extremely
sophisticated."
The pretext for this military
buildup is a supposed threat of a
Vietnamese invasion of Thailand.
But there has not been a single
incident of Vietnamese forces in.
Kampuchea crossing the Thai
border, despite the open inter-
vention of the Thai army on the*
side of the Khmer Rouge forces in
the war in Kampuchea.
In fact, in an October 4 dispatch
filed from the headquarters of a
company of Thai marines in Ban
Laem, Thailand, New York
Times correspondent Henry
Kamm described how he inter-
viewed "the leader of a group of
about 15 male and 10 female Pol
Pot soldiers.who had come to the
marine post to pick up rice, fish
sauce, peppers and blankets that
they carried backto their base
Across the border."
However, Washington's
miserable game in Indochina is
beginning to arouse indignation
around the world. "The seating of
the Pol Pot regime at the U.N.,
with the assistance of the West,
including the U.S. and Britain,
underlines the whole immoral
nature of great power
maneuvering over Cambodia,"
the Manchester Guardian Weekly
declared on its front page Sep-.
tember 30.
The editors of the. British
weekly pointed out that "much of
the debate over the aid
"framework" springs out of the
desire of the interested parties to
use it as a means of building up
the legitimacy or the military
strength of the side they favor.
"This wrangling must surely
4sia
stop. The West should not have"
supported Pol Pot at the U.N. It
should not now compound this
mistake by trying to structure aid
to Cambodia in such a way as to'
give minimhum legitimacy to
Heng Samrin and maximum help
to Pol Pot. Nor should it pursue
the unrealistic aim of using an
army of aid officials in Cambodia
as a means of 'internationalising'
that country and opening it up to
(Prince Norodom) Sihanouk."
Byusing mass starvation as a
weapon against the spread of a
social revolution in Indochina,
the imperialist governments are
committing a crime that is just as
great as their original destruc-
tion of Kampuchea. The inter-
national labor movement must
expose this murderous policy and
demand immediate and uncon-
ditional aid for Kampuchea, and
an end to U.S. arms shipments to
Thailand.
-Bob Warren
Young Socialist Alliance
RO0TC course credits
UI
To The Daily:
LSA credit for R.O.T.C. courses
has been an issue of fervent de-
bate since credit was first
revoked in 1970. As recently as
April 1979, the College
Curriculum Committee reviewed
the credit withholding policy at
the request of the Military Officer
Education Program Committee,
a point L. Wayne Brasure failed
to note in a recent editorial. They
voted by a 2 to 1 margin against
recommending R.O.T.C. courses
accredidation.
The R.O.T.C. question is a dif-
ficult one because emotional
feelings towards the military
have entered into the debate and
have prevented discussion based
on the program's true academic
merits. Yet, we feel that R.O.T.C.
is sufficiently lacking
academically to continue denying
it credit.
BRASURE WRONGLY grants
academic soundness to R.O.T.C.
courses. R.O.T.C. instructors
whose qualifications only require
Bachelor's degrees are far below
the academic norm established
by the University. None of the in-
structors have Ph.D's and only 42
nr emnt hav Master's degrees
models of professional military
officers for students. They retain
their military title and wear of-
ficial uniforms. This role and that
of an LSA instructor, an
academian and one dedicated to
the University, are incompatible.
University faculty in a 1969
report to the Regents recommen-
ded "that the several schools and
colleges allow credit for courses
taught by instructors holding
regular academic appointmen-
ts." Not only do R.O.T.C. instruc-
tors have no such appointments,
none are so qualified and thus,
University and College standards
are not met in R.O.T.C. courses.
The course content itself
precludes the granting of course
credit. Regular University cour-
ses have been increasingly sub-
stituted by R.O.T.C. courses.
Brasure admits that much of the
upper classmen R.O.T.C.
curriculum is similar to
established LSA courses. The
question then is: why should LSA
give R.O.T.C. courses credit
when they offer similar courses
or why does not R.O.T.C. accept
LSA courses- in fulfillment of
their requirements? Certainly, a
nnlitincal ceneclass could be
analytical and qualitative
research and presented con-
clusions should derive from
reasoned and logical thinking.
The Curriculum Committee
maintains an unofficial policy
against any course used as a soap
box for the propogation of
political ideology or dogma. The
purpose of R.O.T.C. is to indoc-
trinate students into military
logic and lifestyle. As an exam-
ple, Air Force R.O.T.C. offers
Aerospace Studies 411: National
Security Forces in Contemporary
Society. A goal of this course ac-
cording to the syllabus is to "un-
derstand the nature of the inter-
national political system andthe
constraints which that system
places on the formulation and
implementation of U.S. defense
policy." The topic's discussion is
planned for two lectures, while
the Political Science Department
feels that such a topic is worthy of
several courses. Because of the
time constraint, the course
material can not be presented in
an objective manner.
$rasure himself noted that
R.O.T.C. "is geared to produce
officers . . ." As Professor King
stated: "the function of LSA is to
professional school and "on the
job training" as R.O.T.C
provides contradicts its liberal
arts orientation.
We feel that R.O.T.C. courses
do not deserve credit. Nor, do we
feel that R.O.T.C. and R.O.T.C.
students should feel they need
credit. Engineering. school, for4
example, only allows its students
four credits for R.O:T.C. courses-
as distinguished from the twelve
credits asked from LSA. Yet,
engineering students constitute
the largest contingent in R.O.T.C.
Brasure does bring up a good
point in noting the injustice of
paying the University and not
receiving credit. Still, 64 per cent
of R.O.T.C. students divide
$590,000 of scholarship money,
which is not based on financial
need. To provide credit to those
students who are in fact paid for
being in R.O.T.C. is a ldicrious
proposition. R.O.T.C. courses arc
still recorded on the transcript,
and thus, the academic overload
is recognizable. The Department
of Defense offers sufficient incen-
tive for students to join R.O.T.C.,
as exhibited by the rise in student
enrollment. The granting of court
se eredit mnuld be extraneous
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