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Eighty years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan

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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
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TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1971


NIGHT EDITOR: JIM BEATTIE



Sharing the revenue

NOw THAT President Nixon has joined
the revolution-so go the descriptions
in the press-it seems appropriate to ex-
amine closely just where his efforts will
take the United States.
"Let us put the money where the needs
are. And let us put the power to spend it
where the peopleare," the President de-
clared in his State of the Union address
last Friday night.
So he proposed that the federal gov-
ernment dismantle $10 billipn worth of
social programs enacted by Democratic
administrations over the past eight years.
The funds thus saved, along with an ad-
ditional billion, would be allocated to
state and city governments who, Nixon
said, would be better able to administer
the funds according to the needs of the
people.
It was a compelling array of Presiden-
tial rhetoric, and the subsequent positive
reaction indicates that Nixon has suc-
ceeded in staving off the crucial ques-
tions: Would the proposed transfer of
funds actually give the populace more
control over spending, and which people
in particular would be the beneficiaries
of the plan?
VIRTUALLY ALL the programs that
Nixon would dismantle are in the
areas of education and urban reform. In-
cluded, for example, are Title I of the
Secondary and Elementary Education Act
of 1965, which allocates $1 billion an-
nually to schools with large numbers of
disadvantaged students, and the Model
Cities program, which, with a cost of $0.5
billion a year, has been one of Nixon's pet
scapegoats.
Certainly, if programs such as these are
a step-albeit a limited one-toward al-
leviating the maldistribution of wealth
and cultural deprivation, they are badly
hampered by the inefficiency, waste, and
lack of committment of a federal bure-
aucracy which remains isolated from the
people the programs are directed at.
Editorial Staff
MARTIN A. HIRSCHMAN Editor
STUART GANNES JUDY SARASOHN
Editorial Director Managing Editor
NAINE COHODAS..............Feature Editor
JIM NEUBACHER Editorial Page Editor
ROB BIER............. Associate Managing Editor
LAURIE HARRIS...........Arts Editor
JUDY KAHN .Personnel Director
DANIEL ZWERDLING....... ..,.Magazine Editor
ROBERT CONROW.... ........Books Editor
JIM JUDKIS. .... .... . .. Photography Editor
EDITORIAL NIGHT EDITORS: Jim Beattie, Lindsay
Cbaney, Steve Koppman, Pat Mahoney, Rick Perloff.
NIGHT EDITORS: Jim Beattie, Dave Chudwin, Steve
Koppman, Robert Kraftowitz, Larry Lempert, Lynn
Weiner.
DAY EDITORS: Rose Berstein, Mark Dillen. S a r a
Fitzgerald Art Lerner, Jim McFerson, Jonathan
Miller, Hannah Morrison, Bob Schreiner, W. E.
Schrock.
COPY EDITORS: Tammy Jacobs, Hester Pulling, Carla
Rapoport.
ASSISTANT NIGHT EDITORS: Juanita Anderson,
Anita Crone, Linda Dreben, Alan Lenhoff, Mike
McCarthy, Zack Schiller, John Shamraj, Geri Sprung,
Kristin Ringstrom, Gene Robinson, Chuck Wilbur.
Edward Zimmerman.
Sports Staff
ERIC SIEGEL, Sports Editor
PAT ATKINS. Executive Sports Editor
PHIL HERTZ .....,....Associate Sports Editor
LEE KIRK......... .Associate Sports Editor
BILL DINNER . Contributing Sports Editor
SPORTS NIGHT EDITORS: William Alterman, Jared
E. Clark, Richard Cornfeld, Terri Fouchey, James
Kevra, Elliot Legow, Morton Noveck, Alan Shack-
elford.
Business Staff
IAN G. WRIGHT, Business Manager
PHYLLIS HURWITZ CRAIG WOLSON
Administrative Adv. Mgr. Sales Manager
VIDA GOLDSTEIN........Staff coordinator

But by and large, government at the
state and city level is victim of the same
problems. Many governments, in fact, are
even less efficient, and are continually
confronted with blatant incidents of cor-
ruption and misuse of public funds.
And given the broad categories in which
the $11 billion would be divided-trans-
portation, manpower training, law en-
forcement, education, urban development,
and rural development-these govern-
ments would have free reign to misspend
the new funds.
For example, under the pr o o s e d
changes, Title I funds would go into the
education fund of revenue sharing. While
the local governments could continue al-
locating the money to schools in black
ghettos and other disadvantaged areas,
Nixon administration officials admit that
the 1 o c a 1 agencies could completely
change the distribution, philosophy, and
purpose of the funds.
In addition, funds from Model Cities
and other federal programs directed at
the development of poverty areas would
be diverted to the urban development
fund of revenue sharing. And while each
city would receive no less federal funds
than it is now getting, it would not be
required to allocate the funds to poverty
areas.
THERE SEEMS little reason to expect
that the state and city governments
will direct the funds toward those sectors
of their constituencies with the most
pressing economic and social problems.
This is especially true in the South and
much of the mid and far west, where the
state and local governments remain dom-
inated by individuals with few ties to
poverty-stricken areas.
And even in the larger cities and states,
which are the most likely to direct the
funds to the areas in need, government
officials lack the ability, and the back-
ground to establish and adequately ad-
minister the programs that are required.
Thus, there is little likelihood that
transfering the purse strings from the
federal government to the state and city
governments would have a salutary ef-
fect on the nation's social and economic
malaise.
IT IS BECOMING increasingly clear that
the most appropriate step would be
to remove the control over these funds
from government entirely-at any level-
and place it in the hands of the individ-
ual communities who require the funds
the most.
The members of these communities,
having directly experienced the ills which
must be corrected, are considerably more
qualified to determine the best approach-
es to a solution than public officials with
far less of a personal stake.
This has already been recognized by
leading educators, who have successfully
pressed for the enactment of community-
control education systems in several large
cities, including New York.
Clearly, to "put the money where the
needs are," and "the power to spend it
where the people are" is not to turn it
over to the state and city governments.
And the contradiction of Nixon's rhetoric
can be corrected by making the communi-
ties the recipients of the funds, with the
power to spend it according to their
needs.
-ROBERT KRAFTOWITZ

By MICHAEL DAVIS
Daily Guest Writer
ghat is Graduate Assembly? The repre-
sentative of the post-baccalaureate
community? A political kindergarten for
graduate students not skilled enough to
compete with undergraduates? A company
union for the Rackham School? Or what?
The best answer is, I think, that Gradu-
ate Assembly (GA) is the major obstacle
to a student government that can repre-
sent graduate students effectively in policy-
making at Rackham. It is illegitimate, un-
representative, unresponsive and staffed by
the politically inept.
LEGITIMACY. GA is illegitimate in both
origin and form. It is illegitimate in origin
because the graduate student body did not
authorize or ratify creation of the Assem-
bly. GA (or, as it was first called, Gradu-
ate Student Council) was called into being
by the Rackham administration. The stu-
dents who wrote the GA Constitution,
called the first meetings and remained ac-
tive in the Assembly until 1967, were those
the Rackham administration had talked
into creating it.
GA is illegitimate in form because the
graduate student body to this day cannot
initiate GA legislation, cannot put GA leg-
islation to referendum, cannot amend the
GA Constitution, has no part in the election
of GA officers, and has little to say about
the actual membership of the Assembly.
GA remains unauthorized.
REPRESENTATION. GA is formally un-
representative. The GA Constitution claims
the Assembly is the representative of the
"graduate student body". The Assembly
doesn't represent most graduate students,
represents many who are not graduate stu-
dents, and allows many to vote who repre-
sent nobody.
The GA Constitution provides for repre-
sentation by department, assigning each
department one representative for its first
100 graduate students, a second for its
second 100, and an additional representa-
tive for every 200 after that. Since there
are approximately 8000 graduate students,
and since few graduate departments have
more than 300 students, the full member-
ship of the Assembly should be at least 80.
Actual attendance at its monthly meetings
is seldom more than 25, a quorum is seven-
teen, andethe quorum is often lost early
in the evening.
The figures I have given so far make
things look better than they are. The As-
sembly now claims (Bylaw 6) to represent
the whole "post-baccalaureate commun-
ity", that is, both graduate and profes-
sional students. This means that the actual
membership of the Assembly should be at
least 140. Nevertheless, though GA claims
to represent professional students as well
as graduate students, in fact no profes-
sional school-except Social Work, Engi-

neering, and perhaps Education-has a
representative in the Assembly.
But the worst remains to be said. There
are, (among those counted as voting rep-
resentatives, some (and perhaps many)
that were never authorized by their con-
stituents. To vote at a GA meeting, all one
has to do is go, take a seat, and (when
asked) inform the secretary of his de-
partment. The Assembly neither asks a
member for credentials nor checks his
authority in any other way. That's under-
standable under the circumstances: GA
membership would be even smaller if it
counted among its members only those
properly chosen.
RESPONSIVENESS. Were GA only il-
legitimate and formally unrepresentative,
GA might still be worth something to
graduate students. But, its structure adds
to illegitimacy and unrepresentativeness, a
guarantee that GA will be invisible, inward-
looking, and dependent on the administra-
tion for its rewards; that is to say, that GA
will generally not respond to its constitu-
ents' wishes or interests (knowing little of
the first and caring less about the second).
GA is invisible because there's no co-
ordinated election of its members and be-
cause its officers are elected by the As-

court, because GA wanted to be allowed to
advise on the structure of the post-
Interim-Rules judiciary the Rackham Ex-
ecutive Board has decided to establish.
COMPETENCE. These defects have pro-
duced another. Graduate students with po-
litical skill generally avoid GA. Graduate
students in GA seldom develop any politi-
cal skill except intriguing against com-
peers and playing up to administrators.
Consequently, GA members are generally
ignorant of University affairs, depend
heavily on their officers for information,
often get lost in parliamentary rules they
don't understand, and decide most issues
almost absent-minedly.
Now what can be done to give graduate
students a government of their own equal
to their needs? This question is especially
relevant now, as GA is seeking representa-
tion on University committees with student
membership to "more accurately reflect"
the proportion of grad students on campus.
It is also asking to be consulted in all com-
mittee appointments involving graduate
students. With this in mind, I make the
following suggestions:
FIRST, GA should stop trying to repre-

"GA is illegitimate because the graduate student body
cannot initiate GA legislation, cannot put GA legislation to
referendum, cannot amend the GA Constitution, has'no part
in the election of GA officers, and has little to say about the
actual membership of the Assembly."
.": «.::. :: J ..... n,.:::: * :::* :.*".:.;; ..:".r:J.1. :.',.":..":::.1",Y,":V. ":: ": :."": J "":"f".".'J'. .,.1.:?.--'i": :1":':.:.::1 ::.:.: .::.::. .:1":'.P.'.+....:

gain from GA taking on extraneous con-
stituencies is the Rackham administration
--and what they gain is a free hand.
GA should choose as its constituency all.
and only those, students enrolled in Rack-
ham. Rackham students are GA's natural
constituency. Students in Law. Dentistry.
Medicine, and other professional schools
have organizations of their own adequate
to represent them in dealings with their
respective administrations. GA has in fact
served primarily as the body to which the
Rackham administration has gone when
it wanted student approval for something.
Students enrolled in other schools should
not have a voice in purely Rackham mat-
ters. Graduate students need an organiza-
tion of their own to deal with their own
administration.
GA should not demand the right to make
such appointments itself (as it recently
did), since, in principle, if GA should have
the right to appoint graduate students,
LSA Student Government should have the
right totappointnLSA students, Nursing
School Student Council should have the
right to appoint nursing students, Law
Student Senate should have the right to
appoint law students, and so on-until
there would be no unified student voice
whatever.
GA should amend its constitution to pro-
vide for initiative, referendum, and recall.
The graduate student body should, when
dissatisfied with its representatives'action.
be able to legislate without them, undo
legislation they passed, or recall them
should that seem necessary. Such provi-
sions would substantially increase GA's re-
sponsiveness.
GA should next amend its Constitution
to provide for amendment by the graduate
student body. Graduate students should.be
able to change the form of their govern-
ment directly when they think it neces-
sary. Provision for that would also sub-
stantially increase GA's legitimacy.
GA should amend its Constitution to pro-
vide for direct election of its members
either from several large districts within
Rackham, or by simple at-large elections.
Elections should occur at a certain time
each term, should be centrally adminis-
tered and supervised, and should be widely
advertised. Electing Assembly members in
this way would eliminate the rotten bor-
roughs, increase GA's visibility, help GA
know better what graduate students want,
and otherwise increase GA's representa-
tiveness and responsiveness.
LASTLY, if GA finds itself incapable of
reforming itself in something like the was
suggested here, it should see whether it is
capable of destroying itself. The graduate
student body would, I believe, be somewhat
better off with no government of its own
for a little while than with Graduate As-
sembly as it is now. With GA gone, there
would be room to create a graduate stu-
dent government.

A

sembly itself. It's anybody's guess how
many graduate students ever knowingly
vote in a GA eltction. (My guess is that the
number is always well under 500.), Because
most graduate students never hear about
any GA election, few graduate students
know who, if anybody, represents them; in
what way, if any, they can influence GA
decisions; or what, if anything, GA has
done right or wrong. Because GA is invisi-
ble, GA members never have to promise
anything to get elected or to answer for
their actions once elected.
GA is inward-looking in this sense: Elec-
tion to Assembly office depends on how
well one maneuvers within the Assembly.
Anyone who can stick it out long enough
and not make too many enemies, can get
elected to GA office. There's no reason why
anyone hoping for office within the Assem-
bly should try to please anyone outside.
There is, therefore, always a good deal of
infighting within GA and little contact
with anyone outside.
Graduate Assembly is a paradigm of co-
optation. For example, GA refused to de-
fend Peter Denton against trial by a fac-
ulty - dominated and faculty - recreated

sent every student that is not an under-
graduate. There's no "post-baccalaureate
community" with interests different from
the "pre-baccalaureate community". Most
University students live in Ann Arbor, pay
the same prices for food and housing, walk
or drive the same streets, eat in the same
restaurants. go to the same shows, use the
same libraries and gripe against the same
central administration. Many graduate
students even use the same classrooms as
undergraduates and study under the same
faculty. Very seldom do the interests of
graduate students (as graduate students)
conflict with those of undergraduates.
SECONDLY, GA should stop trying to
equate graduate students with some other
interest group. For example, GA should not
consider itself the representative of mar-
ried students just because half of all grad-
uate students are married. (After all, half
of all graduate students are unmarried and
one-fourth of all undergraduates are mar-
ried.) GA should leave other interest groups
to be represented by organizations better
fitted for the work. There's enough for GA
to do in Rackham. The only people who



Letters to The Daily

i

Power and the people,
A letter to Mr. Nixon

WCBN

To the Daily:

A COMMENT attributed to Re-
gent William Cudlip in The Daily
(Jan. 23) concerning the proposed
application for a broadcast license
by the student radio station WCBN
requires some comment.
"I want to know who's really go-
ing to be in control, what the
managerial structure is going to
be. This looks like it's going to be
an aerial Daily and I think we
might want something different.
Several questions are posed by Mr.
Cudlips statement: first, does it
matter who is in control; second,
what is wrong with an "aerial
Daily;" third, is it the business of
the regents to determine what "we
might want" as far as a student
radio station is concerned?
As to the first question, if Mr.
Cudlip is really concerned about
whether students can responsibly
manage a radio station, it is clear,
that he is unfamiliar with student
broadcasting elsewhere in the
United States. In the New York
area, for example, student con-
trolled and operated stations at
Columbia, Princeton, and several
other universities provide some of
the most comprehensive and high-
quality programming available in

an area of excellent commercial
broadcasting.
His second implied question, at-
tacking the Daily, is hardly worth
answering, except for something
that happened last spring during
the BAM strike. During the criti-
cal negotiations between BAM and
the Regents, the points of nego-
tiation were intentionally leaked
by someone negotiating for t h e
Regents and read publicly over
the University-controlled WUOM,
in direct violation of the agree-
ment between the negotiating par-
ties that these points would n o t
be released until the negotiations
were concluded. In this case
WUOM was acting in an inexcus-
ably irresponsible manner, a n d
one that was (supposedly) taken
in the University's behalf, against
the stated interests of the over-
whelming majority of the student
body.
THE THIRD QUESTION is just
annoying. I would frankly like that
criterion of what is wanted applied
to WUOM. Of the three university
FM stations receivable in Ann Ar-
bor (the other two are Michigan
State's WKAR and Wayne State's
WDET), WUOM has the fewest
number of broadcast hours, no
early morning or late evening

broadcasting, little classical music
broadcasting (and what little it
has duplicates programming on
other stations), no rock, and pro-
vides extremely little air time of
interest to any part of the student
body.
This is not to say that it's all
bad; its noon show, for example, is
excellent and provides a refresh-
ing format in a time period where
not much is doing elsewhere on
the radio. But WUOM also pro-
vides for its own use and for dis-
tribution to other stations the soc-
io-economic wisdom of the busi-
ness school that most often re-
flects extremely conservative
point of view which can hardly
be said to be balanced by air time
on the other side of the spectrum.
I truly hope that Regent Cudlip
will not speak for ,the others when
the time comes. Student broad-
casting is a reality, and has been
for many years. I wonder that Mr.
Cudlip is really afraid of 10 watts
of student voice when WUOM's is
closer to 100,000.
-Edward Surovell
The Educational Change
Team
School of Education
Course
To the Daily:
AS AN INDIVIDUAL member
of the LS&A Curriculum Commit-
tee, I would like to inform the
University community of some as-
pacts of Tuesday's meeting which
are not mentioned in Bob Screin-
er's otherwise accurate account.
To say that the discussions of
College Course 327 were "often
heated" is seriously to understate
the outrage which I and other
mnembers of the committee ex-
pressed at the publicity surround-
ing the launching of Prof. Hef-
ner's course. I believe that I used
the term "pandering", and I be-
lieve that in its figurative sense
the word is accurately descriptive.
Furthermore, "heated" does' n o t
adequately describe the accusa-
tions of duplicity made by me and
others. Perhaps these accusations
were unjust, admittedly they were
impolite, but certainly they were
heartfelt.
In my judament the committee

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT,

#i

I listened to your State of the Union address the other night, and
I felt I had to write you about it.
It was very good. In fact, I've heard most of your speeches, and
I'd say this was one of the best.
You've certainly proven wrong the doubters who said we wouldn't
be able to influence you. You used practically all the old phrases we
used to use till we stopped cause they had become cliches.
Return power to the people, you
said. People should not tolerate
the gap between promises and per-
formance in government. Reform
the entire structure. Shape our
destiny, you said. People must
have full and effective participa-
tion in the decisions that affect
their' lives.Y
Open the way to a New Amer-
ican Revolution, you said. You
talked about "the people" more
than I've heard since the old days
of marches and demonstrations. I
was sort of disappointed when you
didn't raise a clenched fist before
you stepped down from the pod-
ium.

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Some people dofi't think we
meant the same things when we
used to say those words as you
did, and the speech was pretty
general, but I figure the way you were talking our ends must be the
same. I guess you'll clarify things in the near future. We know
revolutions aren't made in a day.
Certainly your proposals on medicine no one can fault you for.
I think everyone will be happy to hear that from now on doctors are
going to concentrate on keeping people well rather than curing them
after they're sick. I think that's an excellent idea. I'm happy that
we will have better medical care at less cost. I also really liked your
idea for curing cancer.
IT WAS REALLY too bad that all the black Congressmen were
boycotting the speech. Some of them would certainly have been happy
to hear it if what you meant was that black city dwellers will have 1
full participation in the decisions that affect their lives in their
communities. I guess that woulld include police, schools, hospitals.
I have some questions of my own which I'm sure will be clarified
as your revolutionary program unfolds. I've been sort of worried I'd
end up working for a newspaper where I'd feel I was just a technician,
doing a job for an enterprise owned and controlled by others, in which
I wouldn't have any control over the direction of things. I eagerly await
power over institutions coming down to the people.
Also, there's a big open lot near my family's house in New York.
Our neighborhood's fairly crowded, and the next playground is quite
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