/ Page 4-Friday, January 19, 1979-The Michigan Daily 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Eighty-Nine Years of Editorial Freedom Vol. LXXXIX, No. 91 News Phone: 764-0552 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan TheRegents Who should govern the University Vietnam vs. China By Gareth Porter TN HIS State of the State Address last week, Governor Milliken again proposed that University Regents no longer be elected by voters, but that they now be appointed by the Gover- nor. The Republican governor's proposal has been viewed by most ob- servers as a political ploy. It has little chance of passing in a state legislature dominated by Democrats. However, the fact that at least one government official is questioning the procedure for picking Regents, leads- us to ask: What are the interests that the Regents are supposed to serve? Do they now serve those interests adequately? Three Oroad-based groups take the most active interest in what goes on at the University. These groups are faculty, students, and the state. The faculty and the students make up the University community; we spend almost every day during the semester parading through the maze of libraries, halls, and dormitories on campus. Citizens in the state con- tribute greatly to the University budget through taxes, but their con- nection to the institution is remote. Other groups such as the alumni, the city of Ann Arbor, even potential students (namely high school seniors) are concerned with operations at the University. But the concern of these groups pales when compared to that of the aforementioned groups. It is ironic, however, that only one group is direc- tly represented on the governing body of the University. The very basis for state control of the Regents stems from the principle of one person one vote. However, in this case, that prin- ciple does not hold just; it is not the most efficient way to govern an in- stitution as varied as ours. It is true that, as elected officials, the Regents are obliged to consider the needs of all constituents. The problem which must be analyzed is whether a board of Regents, as it is now chosen, can best serve the needs of the people of this state, but specifically of this University community. It is unreasonable to govern a school which incorporates the interests of three distinct groups with people elec- ted from only one of those groups. Moreover, the group which is repre- sented best is the least concerned. A taxpayer in Muskegon has little knowledge of the innerworkings of the University. In fact, the average Muskeon resident doesn't even care about the University. Besides hearing about the Wolverines' exploits on the field, major scientific breakthroughs at the University, and during the 1960s, student unrest on campus, most Michiganders have little contact with the University. This is exemplified by the low per- centage of voters showing an interest in Regental election. Most years, voters do not even know the names of Regental candidates, but simply vote along party lines. Governor Milliken must have had this uninspiring record in mind when he suggested that responsibility for appointing Regents be handed over to his office. His solution, however, would be no improvement over the present one. It would, in fact, be worse. If appointed by the Governor, Regents would not even represent the one group that now sits on the board. History is a good in- dication of the future; in the past, the Governor's appointments have in- volved political graft. In 1975, for example, when a seat on the Regents opened up, Governor Milliken appoin- ted David Laro, his Genessee County campaign manager. There is no doubt that the Governor has less right than the people of the state to appoint Regents. But it also appears that the system as it exists now is' not the best. Governor Milliken'sw proposal, to which diametrically opposed, does give the legislature and the University com- munity the opportunity to analyze the system. It seems a good time to discuss what would be the most adequate method of governing the University and making the board in control a responsive tool rather than a stum- bling block. The bold Vietnamese move to unseat the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia is the outcome of a series of developments which destroyed the elegant power balance established in Indochina after the victories of the Vietnamese and Cambodian revolutionary movements in April 1975. The factors which combined to eliminate that balance included Cambodia's own. provocative border policy, the deterioration of Chinese-Vietnamese relations, the growing Chinese role in supporting Cambodia against Vietnam, and the weakening of Pol Pot's regime because of military insurrections and' purges. The circumstances at the close of the war in 1975 held Vietnam tightly in check. Concerned about maintaining friendly relations with China, which regarded Cambodian independence as vital, Vietnamese foreign policy also required normal relations with Southeast Asia as well as with the United States. So Hanoi leaned backwards in 1975-76 to avoid the appearance of aggressiveness in its relations with Cambodia. Moreover, Vietnamese officials did not regard Cambodian border attacks in 1976-77 as an immediate threat and were still confident that Cambodia would have to negotiate a border settlement. When Vietnamese troops launched a major counter attack in late 1977, Hanoi apparently felt it could teach the Cambodian regime a lesson and force a negotiated settlement. Instead, Cambodian stepped up its own attacks across the border and spurned a Vietnamese offer to withdraw troops five kilometers behind the border and establish an international presence between the two sides to insure a cease fire. Later, Vietnamese officials would attest that they had underestimated the seriousness of the Cambodian attacks. "In fact, we somewhat looked down on them," said a Central Committee member in Hanoi last November. The failure of the Vietnamese effort to shake the Cambodian regime from its truculent stance undoubtedly created strong pressures from the military for a more carefully planned and ultimately successful campaign in Cambodia. By early 1978, the Vietnamese began to realize that the Hanoi """ Vientiane o l Rangoon HANA Bangkok y Anda n oenh" Saigon - - - -- - - --- G lf of " 0 300 south China sea Miles Cambodian attacks on Vietnamese border settlements and towns were a serious and long term threat, aimed at creating a "no man's land" in the border area. Thousands of Vietnamese civilians living near the border were massacred by Cambodian troops, and a general climate of insecurity in the border provinces prevailed. Hundreds of thousands of people which had previously been accepted as the basis for border demarcation. When the Vietnamese refused to accept changes, Cambodian delegates suspended the talks to consult with Phnom Penh and never resumed negotiations. The Cambodian ambassador in Hanoi, In Sivout, told a European diplomat in September 1977 that Phnom Penh would not negotiate recognizing China as the enemy. By that time, according to a Central Committee source, the Vietnamese saw China's hostility in bilateral relations with Vietnam and the border war with Cambodia as "one war." The logical implication was that the Phnom Penh regime was not attacking Vietnam because of Cambodian interests, but was serving the interests of China. The Vietnamese broadcast last June 22 of a former battalion commander's call for Cambodian troops to turn their guns against the Pol Pot regime was a signal that Hanoi's aims were no longer to reach a negotiated settlement but to overthrow the incumbent government. The Vietnamese were also emboldened by internal uprisings against the Pol Pot regime, extensive political purges carried out in 1977-78 against civilian and military official- at all levels, and by Cambodian defections to the Vietnamese side. Vietnamese sources claimed a series, of mutinies and insurrections by units of the Cambodian army, mostly in eastern Cambodia. By mid-1978, a number of middle and upper cadres from Phnom Penh's army and party were prepared to collaborate directly with the Vietnamese in overthrowing the Pol Pot regime. The Vietnamese believed they would be able to put together a Cambodian regime to replace the Pol Pot government when it was necessary. The only question remaining then was the precise timing of the lightning offensive which ended the world's most radical experiment in revolutoion. Gareth Porter recently re- turned from his fifth visit to Vietnam where he interviewed numerous high level officials as a guest of the government. Former co-director of the Indochina Resource Center~ and a consultant to the House MIA Committee, Porter is the author of A Peace Denied, a history of the Paris peace agreement. He is now completing a two-volume compilation of documents on the Vietnam war. This article was written for Pacific News Service. were forced to abandon the two ecomomic zones which had ben expected to provide productive employment for the jobless from the cities in the South. This coincided with increasingly serious food shortages throughout Vietnam, which intensified after devastating floods last September wiped out three million tons of paddy. The rigid refusal of the Pol Pot regime to negotiate with its ancient enemy Vietnam deprived Cambodia of one of the constraints on Vietnamese power. The Cambodian Communist leaders appear to have shared former Prince Norodom Sihanouk's attitude that any negotiation on territorial issues would ultimately invite aggression by Vietnam. According to Political Bureau member Xuan Thuy, in an interview last November, the Cambodian delegation to preliminary border talks in May 1976 demanded eleven changes in the last French map of the border a border agreement with Vietnam unless Vietnamese troops were first withdrawn from contested areas - a position which ruled out any possible diplomatic solution. The Vietnamese might have attempted some other means of solving the border problem, however, had they not begun in 1978 to consider the Pol Pot regime as an arm of their real enemy - China. Ironically, it was China's military and political support for Cambodia that caused Hanoi to conclude that China was deliberately threatening Vietnam's security, stability and economic development. After China began to attack Vietnam for its alleged mistreatment of ethnic Chinese, and withdrew its aid program in May of 1978, the Vietnamese decided that China had to be considered as Vietnam's main enemy. At a secret Central Committee plenum in mid-July, Vietnamese party leaders passed a resolution Letters An open letter to Athletic Director Don Canham The Michigan Union Score one for the Regents and one for the students too! <::: Editorials which appear without a by-line represent 'a con- sensus opinion ofjthe Daily's editorial board. All oth(-r editorials, as well as cartoons, are the opinions of the individuals who sub- mit them. Dear Don: As I have done for the last 9 years, I again write to you pleading that you replace Schembechler. My brother John and I are charter members of the Victors Club which we set up 10 years ago. We encouraged other fellow men to join and contribute $1,000.00 gifts each year to the University and designated it for the Athletic Scholarship Fund. We hoped to get a hundred mem- bers but, as you know, we got hundreds. When Bo got that heart attack at his first Rose Bowl game, Bob Westfall and I went after Forrest Evashevski to come back to Michigan, where he naturally always wanted to be. He unequivocally agreed to be head coach and that he would never take over your job as athletic director. When I put it up to you, you rejected him and said you wanted to give Bo a chance. I reminded you that when we made you athletic director, you promised you'd never let us suffer along with a "dead horse". I also told you that the University of Michigan football program was not compatible with coddling a cardiac patient who didn't dare to rip and rare about bad officiating and who couldn't even run up and down the sidelines to shout en- couragement to his players. You had no answer for that. So you rejected Evashevski who had taken lowly Iowa to back-to-back national champion- ships. He went into TV announ- cing and Bo has done just as I promised you he would. He nur- sed his faint heart and broke all of our hearts! There isn't a Michivan alumnus alive who I haven't sent my-$1,000.00 for the past two years now. I know you won't resign, so we shall have to get the Board in Control of Physical Education to dismiss you, like we did Kipke and Cappon in 1938 and hired Crisler. Please note how rapidly Russ Davis improved when he "escaped" from Bo in the Rose Bowl and played under Coach Blaisdell who allowed him to carry the ball in the shrine classic. Six touchdowns he made! One hundred ninety-nine yards he carried! I'm glad I helped him on his way to Michigan so he could get into a game where he was justly noticed. And Leach in the Hula Bowl! But those boys never had a chan- ce under Bo's coaching. So today I get the attached let- ter from Bo to the Victors Club members. First time he ever acknowledged our existence! He knows he can't go out and recruit any more for two reasons: 1. Weak heart. 2. Six straight bowl losses. The idea of him stating at this late date: "The importance of re- cruiting quality young men can not be over estimated in maintaining the Uni- versity of Michigan as 'Champions of the West.' " The Michigan program is en- ded for a while. Never again can it rise with you and Bo at the helm. We can not get quality young men to come there. It isn't For whom does Ashe speak? fair to them anyway. That punt Bo called for on fourth down on the U.S.C. 48 yard line with'only 2:45 to play was like the punt Bump Elliott called for in 1967 on Navy's 31 with 30 seconds to play. Navy won 26-21. That was curtains for Bump! Now read Jim Murray's attached article about that great call which prevented Michigan from scoring a touchdown and a 2-point conversion to win the Rose Bowl 18-17. Well, I'll send a copy of this to the Michigan Daily and the Free Press as I do every year, but they have never known Michigan in all its glory as "Champions of the West" so I doubt that they will follow up on it. -Earl Townsend, Jr. SPORTS STAFF To The Daily: Aetna Life and Casualty Com- pany sponsored Monday's ap- pearance of tennis champion Ar- thur Ashe. In The Daily's report (16 January) Ashe's anti-divest- ment position was stressed, but there was no mention of Aetna's considerable holdings in South Africa. There is little doubt that Ashe is, as the Daily stated, "a long-time opponent of South Africa's apartheid policy." Aet- na, on the other hand, may feel that it has a lot to lose by vigorously opposing apartheid. Perhaps Aetna was as concerned about polishing its corporate image as it was about informing students about "Careers in Business." As Ashe mentioned, he has visited South Africa "several" which they have had to endure great suffering; many have died. Though it is illegal to do so, most black organizations in South Africa have called for the with- drawal of foreign corporations. In discussions with anti-apar- theid forces abroad these same organizations have asked for divestment campaigns as well as material aid. The growing support, among black South Africans, for divest- ment was made apparent by the U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Mr. Bowdler, in a confidential memorandum. In March 1977 Bowdler wrote that "with radicalization of black attitudes, the tendency to call for divest- ment grows stronger. . . it must be expected that the role of American firms here will become plementing the concept of black majority rule, that is out, of cour- se they cannot play any role whatsoever. Ashe is also quoted as saying: "If America gets the hell out of South Africa, Europe will get the hell in, and they don't care." A quick glance at a history book shows that the Europeans were in South Africa long before Americans were. British firms have larger holdings than their U.S. counterparts in South Africa. We. urge the University com- munity to consider the interests of people who are speaking on South Africa, whether that per- son is Arthur Ashe, Robben Fleming, or an Aetna official. D e bi Duke EDITORIAL STAFF Editors-in-chief DAVID GOODMAN Managing Editors M. EILEEN DALEY DAN OBERDORFER F dinria iliu fn GRIEGiG KRUPA BOB MILLER.......... PAULCAMPBELL....... ERNIE DUNBAR ......... HENRY ENGELHARDT . RICK MAD)OCK ........ . CUB SCHWARTZ......... ........................Sports Editor ..............Executive Sports Editor .Executive Sports Editor .Executive Sports Editor .........Executive Sports Editor .Executive Sports Editor TT TCl T RTT Ci Cl Cl r" A ""