New priorities for a degreened -U' ie £ir4tdan Batht Eighty-one years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan 4 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers ur the editors. This must be noted in all reprints THURSDAY, JANUARY 27, 1972 NIGHT EDITOR: SARA FITZGERALD What's new in Nixon's plan Chemistry Prof. Thomas Dunn is co-chairman ,of the Faculty Reform Coalition Budget Com- mittee and a member of t h e Vice President for Academic Af- fairs' Advisory Committee. By PROF. THOMAS DUNN IN MY OPINION, the University as a whole has yet to face up to the full implications of the com- bination of the present economic situation with the changes in the social and political values of our society. We may disagree with the trends, we may choose to fight= against many of the excesses of emergent anti-intellectualism but, in the end, our only real defense is to face the realities, -however unpleasant they may seem, and to plan for the future in new terms. There are many who feel that the present socio-economic cli- mate is only temporary and that a year or two will see a return to the optimism of the late 50's and the 60's. For many reasons,- which are not relevant to the substance of this article, I do not accept such a point of view, but even if I did I would be forced to consider a reappraisal of our present policies and practices in the light of our immediate expec- tations. What then, are our pres- ent problems and what can we do about them? THE THREE MOST important constraints are, firstly, that ; the Univedsity budget will not ex- pand in real terms within the foreseeable future-say five years. In fact, it will probably not even keep pace with the present infla- tionary rate. We must, therefore, look forward to fewer real dol- lars than we have now. Second, the legislature has de- creed that the University may not further increase student num- bers. We may not, therefore, ex- pect increased revenue from stu- dent growth and any further in- creases in existing fees would al- most certainly be offset by a de- creased legislative appropriation. Third, observing that our in- come is essentially static, there is no way in which the present size of the faculty can be increased. If the rate of growth of the' THE DISTINGUISHING characteristic of President Nixon's peace proposal announced Tuesday night is its obvious political motivation. Nixon is presenting a seemingly rea- sonable plan which will "end the war in Vietnam." Nixon the peacemaker is try- ing to undercut and defuse domestic criticisms of the war, especially that which comes from Democratic presiden- tial hopefuls., While Nixon the peacemaker Is as- sauging' the war critics, Nixon the anti- communist is promising that America will not throw her ally in Saigon to the wolves.. Instead, he says, there will be fair and free elections under interna- tional supervision and the people will choose the best government. But the Nixon proposal, which is cal- culated to seem more than generous to- wards Hanoi, in reality entails no change from -.the administration's previously stated goals in Indochina. All along, the Nixon administration has been committed to keeping pro- Western governments in power in South- east Asia. The Nixon peace plan would ensure that the pro-Western govern- ments in Laos, Cambodia and South Viet- nam continue. THERE WILL BE a new presidential election and President Thieu would resign one month before it takes place. But what does a western-style election mean in a country which has never had a tradition of democracy? It means that the election will not be an election as Westerners understand the word. It means that the corrupt Thieu political machine which has grown strong on U.S. dollars will control the voters, if not the ballot-box. Furthermore, the peace proposal says nothing about elections in the National Assembly-a group which is now packed with Thieu's men. While the Western election would serve to continue the present South Viet- namese government, the cease-fire pro- vision would ensure that friendly gov- ernments in Cambodia and Laos stay around for awhile. While Nixon is insisting on conditions favorable to administration goals, he manages to imply that he is amenable to previous North Vietnamese proposals for an exchange of prisoners of war in return for total U.S. withdrawal. He complains that "we are being asked publicly to set a terminal date for our withdrawals when we have already of- fered one in private." In this way, he in- timates that he always has been willing to accede to North Vietnamese demands for a withdrawal in evchange for pri- soners, but the Communists have some- how refused to accept his concessions. HOWEVER, what Nixon actually has been asked to do is withdraw all U.S. troops in return for POWs. What he is offering, in private and now in public, is to withdraw all U.S. troops if his South- east Asian friends are allowed to stay in power. Because the Nixon peace plan virtually demands that the present Southeast Asian governments remain in power, it has been assailed and is likely to be re- jected by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. However, even if the plan were accept- able to the North Vietnamese, and American involvement in the war ended completely, it would still be no reason to hail the President as a peacemaker, much less re-elect him. In ending the war, the President would only be doing what he should have done years ago. And the good he accomplishes would only par- tially offset the disaster of the American people divided and American lives lost since he took office. -LINDSAY CHANEY University had been slower, its faculty would no x be uniformly distributed in age from the re- tiring full professor to the aspir- I Letters to The Daily Faculty salaries To The Daily: . IT MAY BE helpful to your readers to understand the con- text of the MSU Board of Trus- tees' decision to disclose faculty salaries (Michigan Daily, January 23). MSU is a publicly supported in- stitution; its Board of Trustees is a public body, and B o a r d actions, by definition, are a mat- ter of public record. Faculty sal- aries are made a part of that record by virtue of Board action approving them. Faculty salary information has traditionally been protected from public scrutiny, despite the fact that ' access to it cannot legally be denied. One consequence of this practice, at MSU, is that selected salary information has been dis- closed to the public through un- official channels. Predictably, that has led to invalid interpretations and unwarranted generalizations which serve neither the best inter- ests of the faculty nor those of the University. The action taken Friday repre- sented what, in the view of a ma- jority of MSU Trustees, constitu- tes a more responsible course of action: official disclosure of salar- ies in a document containing re- lated information necessary to rea- sonable interpretation (e.g., longe- vity, term of appointment, a n d assigned time fraction). -Patricia M. Carrigan, Ph.D. Michigan State Univtrsity Board of Trustees Jan. 25, 1972 An omission To The Daily: I BELIEVE in giving credit where credit is due. Therefore, I should like to praise Dave Burhenn for his, concise and precise ac- count of the public hearing held at City Hall Wednesday, Jan. 19, covering An°n Arbor's financial crisis and possible solutions to it. This hearing was particularly im- portant since the public will be asked next month to participate in an advisory vote on the 1% flat rate income tax accompanied by a millage reduction in the proper- ty tax. It is regrettable that the Daily does not likewise believe in giving credit where it is due. There was no mention in the article that the public hearing was sponsored by the League of Women Voters. To my knowledge the LWV is the only organization in Ann Arbor that has had or plans to have hearings for the public on this vital topic. So I say to The ture, "play fair.". henn, give credit in this case, to Women Voters. Daily, in the fu- And to Mr. Bur- where it is due, the League of -Polly Warner Jan. 20 T ~ Winding down the war, winding down the war; me and Richard Nixon, winding down the war. ing assistant, but the growth of the 50's and 60's meant the ac- quisition of large numbers of younger men-most of whom are not yet in their 50's. The net result is exemplified by the College of Literature, Science and the Arts in which there is likely to be an average of only about 8 retirements per year for the next ten years. This, from a total LSA faculty of about 1200! As Dean Rhodes recently said, "It looks as if we shall all grow old gracefully together." HOW THEN, are we to continue to recruit the young men upon whom the continued viability of the University depends? How are we to establishdprograms in new areas without the new money which has been so readily forth- coming in our immediate past? The answers to the second ques- tion may be difficult, -but they will still probably tour out to be a'lot easier than those regarding fac- ulty. There is no doubt, however, that the essential element in both of them is long range planning coupled with priority budgeting. President Robben Fleming's memorandum of Nov. 22 regard- ing planning and budgeting has already been discussed in these pages and its appearance must be welcomed by all who feel that thme period of laissez faire and unrestricted academic entrepre- neurship has come to an end. Anyone who has had experience establishing an organization such as Fleming envisages, with Uni- versity-wide input into budgetary planning, will readily appreciate, the problems of translating an organizational chart into an oper- ational organization, but this, surely, is an immediate necessity. Even thought it is no secret that politicians and administrators alike, show little reluctance to surrender the making of unpopu- lar decisions to democratically. elected committees; this must not be allowed to stand in the way of establishing such broadly - based committees. Let us make no mistake about it-these program evaluation and budget priorities committees will inevitably reach some very un- palatable conclusions with respect to some of the present programs and priorities of this University. It is unthinkable that otherwise. it can be WE MUST earnestly hope that the committees do not function only at 'the top.' Their functions, particularly those of program evaluation and long range plan- ni ag, must be exercised at alllev- els of the University and in all departments. institutes and ad- ministrative units. -Just as in good budgeting procedures, there should be a flow of information in both directions, rather than the one- way flow towards the top which has been the distinguishing mark of our budgetary processes in re- cent years. In the end, the recom- mendations have to be translated into action and this can only be achieved in a university of this type, at this time in our history, by a broadly based consensus. Any systematic evaluation of the units of the University as envis- aged above, implies a pre-existing philosophy, since it, is clear that values, other than purely finan- cial ones, are integrally involved in any such judgment even on the basis of cost, and it is this which requires us to minutely ex- amine our philosophical attitudes, as well as our financial realities. Many of these decisions will be agonizint ones but failure to make them will mean, in the end, only what we have refused to face our problems. SOME OF THE questions which will have to be asked are . What is the prime function of the University? Is it to provide job- trained professional dentists, law- years, scientists, medicos and en- gineers? Is it to apply its re- sources directly to the solution of the more 'pressing problems of the cities? the environment? poverty? racial prejudice? Should the University offer a well-defined service, the direction of which can be changed simply by the addition of money? Should it align itself, as a university, with whatever political party or social cause which happens to hold sway at any particular moment in time, thereby seeking to publicize its relevance? Should it chart its course on the basis of whatever See DEGREENING, Page 3 4 Rhodesia: Preserving racism FOR OVER seven years, the state of Rhodesia has been largely ignored by the rest of the world, severed from its former status as a British commonwealth nation, quietly pursuing a policy of mi- nority rule by 250,000 whites over five million blacks. Now, unless world opinion is focused in support of equality for all the people of Rhodesia, the current racist white government is likely to be legitimized. Currently, the prospects for self-deter- mination for Rhodesia's blacks are at a particularly crucial point. After deciding the possibility of substantially altering Rhodesia's government had passed, Bri- tain agreed last November to seek a com- promise agreement with the present Rho- desian government. Without involving the black majority at all, white Rhodesians and Britons negotiated a plan aimed at changing Rhodesia's reputation for white suprem- acy by promising eventual black partici- pation in government. Black Rhodesians had little faith in the proposal and rioted last week to demand equal rights. F9ur- teen unarmed blacks were killed. BOTH GOVERNMENTS had good reason for wanting to patch things up. Rho- desia's refusal to structure her govern- ment in a democratic manner was em- barrassing to the British, while her re- belliousness worsened diplomatic rela- tions in general. Washing her hands of the whole affair would be a welcome relief to the British from the criticism of spawning a racist regime. For Rhodesia, patching up her dif- ferences with Britain would remove Editorial Staff ROBERT KRAFTOWI'rZ Editor JIM BEATTIE DAVE CHUDWIN Executive Editor Managing Editor STEVE KOPPMAN .... .. Editorial Page Editor RICK PERLOFF .. Associate Editorial Page Editor PAT MAHONEY .... Assistant Editorial Page Editor .. .O 7W nrJ r8a noe on i V i - whatever threats remain to her legiti- macy while reopening trade relations with her former biggest trading partner. However, the compromise that the two nations are currently trying to imple- ment is a compromise in name only and represents a desertion by Britain of the goal of equal rights for the black ma- jority. First, the proposed governmental changes themselves would prevent equal- ity under the law. For example, blacks have been told by the British that "if honestly implemented, (the new laws) would lead to majority rule." But this would occur under the laws only if the number of blacks who can meet educa- tional, income and property qualifica- tions increases. However, the white lead- ers have done everything possible to dis- courage this development in the past and will likely continue to do so. Second, Britain's and Rhodesia's intent to deny blacks any significant political voice is evidenced in their plan's presen- tation. Although Britain has publicly stat- ed that she is committed to the principle that that the terms must be acceptable to both Rhodesia's 250,000 whites and five million blacks, she has deceitfully side- stepped any accurate means of measur- ing black approval for the plan-such as holding a referendum among all Rhode- sians. Instead, a Committee on Rho- desian Opinion - composed largely of former officers in the British colonial service-has launched a massive propa- ganda campaign aimed at convincing black Rhodesians of the plan's worth. IN THIS LIGHT, it should not be sur- prising to read that black Rhodesians should want to prevent such a white- wash from being perpetrated or, consid- ering blatantly supremist views of the white ruling minority, that 14 unarmed blacks should be killed protesting the proposals. The rioting that occurred in response to the committee's visit surely is jus- tified by the refusalsof the racist Rho- desian government to give blacks any al- videre est red ere IAT&T vs. FCC: Preserving the status quo 4 by pat mahoney I F EW, IF ANY, monopolie4 regulated by the federal government have a more desirable position than American Tele- phone and Telegraph (AT&T). The Fed- eral Communications Commission (FCC), which sets the long distance telephone, rates that AT&T charges, relies on AT&T. for its information about the company. Since Congress created it in 1934, the FCC has never conducted "a full and open investigation of the fairness of AT&T's long distance rates," according to Rep. William Ryan '(D-N.Y.). Last month the FCC's problems were publicized in a dramatic way. On Decem- ber 21, by a four to two vote, the FCC decided to abandon' its investigation of the internal finances and structurebof AT&T and its subsidiaries which has been postponed since 1965. While telephone rates are far from a new problem for consumers and regula- tory agencies, their importance has in- creased in the past two years as utilities have sought increases. In Michigan, for example, the Public Service Commission allowed Michigan Bell Telephone Company to increase its revenue by $14.7 million on August 31, 1970. Originally Michigan Bell had requested a $48 million increase. With- in four. months, in December 1970, Michi- gan Bell applied .for an additional income of $59.6 million with $19.8 million on an interim basis. Last December, for business customers only, an increase of $18 million was apporved. The entire request is still being reviewed. "EVER-INCREASING sums of money for the escalating construction programs required to keep up with customer de- mand for new nd improved services" was ane of the eplanations Michigan Bell gave for the 1970 rate increase. Other rea- sons included "galloping inflation"' and rising costs while the company's rates were fixed. The Public Service Commission's deci- sion was based on giving Michigan Bell a 7.95 per cent rate of return. In 1970, the company's average rate of return was 7.31 per cent and last year 7.21 per cent. Similar problems have beset other utili- ties with fixed rates and rising costs. Dur- ing the 1960s, rates were often reduced, but inflation has reversed that trend. Michigan Bell's 1970 increase was the first since early 1960 and in that period rates were cut six times. These troubles. however, only increase the need for the FCC to find out more ahout the AT&T's ouperations than the rate' 3f return it wants. Part of the agency's abandonment of Phase TI of i's investiga- trm. "as blamed on a lack of resources. AT&T has $50 billion in assets and 800,- 000 etnploves around the world. The FCC bureau that would conduct the study has a $3 million annual budget and 162 staff workers. To correct this imbalance, Sen. Harris and Rep. Ryan have introduced a $2 million anpronriation for the inves'i.gation. Even if this proposal is approved, its nnorters will need to get a commitment frnm fa T,V afr- a-manniaf sm.v AT&T to earn will cost the average con- sumer $13 a year in telephone bills, Sen. Fred Harris (D-Okla.), estimates. , * , MICHIGAN BELL and New York Tele- phone are two of the 23 companies in the Bell system wholly owned by AT&T. So far the FCC has agreed to investigate only the rate of return AT&T may receive. Electric is the cheapest supplier of com- munications equipment, as AT&T claims. Methods by which capital investment (rate base) is computed have been unchal- lenged. When a new tenant moves into an apartment. AT&T counts the costs of turning on the telephone as part of its equipment expenses. Thus, the company earns a profit first on the cost of manufac- turin- the telenhone and then. again every A