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February 19, 1971 - Image 4

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The Michigan Daily, 1971-02-19

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(14 f K4*Igan Bt an
Eighty years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552
Editorials printed in The Michigan Dailvyexpress the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.

Friday moring

Censorship: Heavy hand on the college press

by daniel zwerdiing

IDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1971

NIGHT EDITOR: LYNN WEINER

Regents' reply on judiciary

A CONTINUING problem at universities
throughout the nation is the estab-
lishment of judicial bodies that are fair,
effective and respected by all elements
of campus communities.
The rise of student activism over the
last decade has made such new judicial
systems essential. Students, who will no
longer accept trials conducted solely by
faculty members and administrators,
,have demanded trial by their peers -
other students who have a unique under-
standing of the social, political and cul-
tural conditions on any one campus.
The same activism that has fostered
new university judicial procedures has
also insured the downfall of some of the
judicial systems at other campuses. For
a legal system to work, it must have the
broadest possible acceptance and trust
of the various segments of the campus
community.
Here, for more than nine months, a
committee of students, faculty members
and administrators has been grappling
with a plan for a new University judi-
ciary.
THE PLAN is now under consideration
by the Regents, who must approve it
before it can take effect. In deliberating
on the committee's draft the Regents have
proposed several changes.
While these alterations do not change
the most crucial feature of the plan-
all-student juries in cases where students
are defendants -.they do threaten the
delicate balance the committee reached
after so many months of deliberation.
One of the most serious changes urged
by the Regents would alter the method
for making major procedural decisions
such as barring testimony and excluding
a defendant from the courtroom.
The committee had proposed that any
of the student or faculty judges c o u d
veto such unusual moves, while the Re-
gents insist that a majority vote be suf-
ficient to implement them.
Thus a presiding judge and a faculty
associate judge could limit testimony of
a political nature and throw defendants
and their lawyers out of the proceedings
over the objection of a student associate
judge.
THE EFFECT on the credibility of the
judicial system could be disastrous if
the presiding judge, an outsider to the
University community, and a faculty
member limit testimony in political cases,
which are expected to comprise a sub-
stantial percentage of the judiciary's
docket.
The Regents also proposed that decis-
ions of the jury on guilt and sanctions
be made by m a j o r i t y vote rather
than unanimously as originally proposed
by the committee.
In a spirit of compromise, the commit-
tee agreed that majority vote on sanc-
tions would be acceptable but insisted on
retaining unanimous decisions on ques-
tions of guilt or innocence.
An established legal principle is that
guilt must be proyed beyond a reasonable

shadow of doubt. This principle is em-
bodied in the requirement for a unani-
mous vote for conviction in most crim-
inal trials.
The widely divergent elements of our
society at large have not prevented de-
cisions in the criminal courts; there is
no reason to believe that the unanimity
requirement would do so in the University
setting.
. Under the Regents' draft of the judic-
iary plan, as few as four jurors could
convict a person. Considering the sever-
ity of possible penalties, defendants
should have the protection of a unani-
mous decision on guilt.
A NOTHER MAJOR change proposed by
the Regents would allow them to
choose the presiding judge and o t h e r
officials of the system from a number
of candidates proposed by Senate Assem-
bly and Student Government Council.
The committee had recommended that
the Regents have veto power to vote up
or down a whole slate proposed by the
two bodies but not to pick and choose
among possible candidates.
This alteration is an unwarranted at-
tempt by the Regents to exert their in-
fluence where it would best be delegated
to those on campus. Absentee landlords.
the Regents do not have adequate con-
tact with the University community to
make a judicious decision on the selection
of officers of the judicial system.
The final major change proposed by
the Regents was in the composition of
the judge panel to conduct proceedings.
The committee had recommended a half-
year trial period for each of two differ-
ent methods - one would have two stu-
dent and one , faculty associate judges
for student trials and the other would
have one faculty and one student assoc-
iate judge for all trials.
The Regents, insisting on the second
scheme, undermined a compromise that
was vital to acceptance of the plan by
student representatives, who agreed to
experiment on the makeup of the panel.
Because there is doubt over w h i c h
procedure would work best, the Regents
should allow the limited trial period.
Since the Regents will review the bylaw
at the end of a year of operation, they
will then be able to judge better which
is the best method.
While some of these changes m i g h t
seem minor, they could substantially af-
feet the functioning of the proposed judi-
ciary. The Regents, rather than trying to
second-guess the committee that draft-
ed the proposal, should listen to its rea-
sonable arguments and act accordingly.
THE MOST important thing, however,
is to get the new judiciary underway.
While neither the original committee pro-
posal nor the regental draft is perfect,
the general features of the proposed
scheme suggest that the University judi-
ciary can be the answer to the campus'
need for an impartial, widely respected,
legal system.
-DAVE CHUDWIN

PETER ZENGER would have fits in
Pueblo, Colorado, where the editor of
the Southern Colorado State "Arrow" was
fired by the University administration af-
ter writing an editorial on campus park-
ing problems. Or Peoli, Ohio where the
Central College "Ray" publications board
censored a Collegiate Press Service article
on political wristwatches.
When CPS surveyed 150 college newspaper
staffs recently, about 60 complained of ad-
ministration harrassment and 25 reported
overt acts of censorship. College adminis-
trations that don't like what their students
are reading have physically locked the
newspaper staffs out of their offices, with-
held student fees, physically cut articles
from pages and fired editors.
PRESS CENSORSHIP on the campuses is
growing, but in most cases the papers hit
aren't politically charged, radical sheets-
they're small campus papers, conservative
by Ann Arbor standards, which focus on
banal social events and campus personal-
ties.
Recent cases of censorship:
* Wisconsin's state colleges are having
trouble over abortion ads. After campuses
at River Falls and Oskosh ran ads on New
York counseling abortion services, the state
assistant attorney general wrote an informal
letter suggesting the ads might be illegal
because abortion is illegal in Wisconsin.
The state college presidents have ordered
all the ads killed-no legal opinions, no
court tests. At River Falls, the president
told the editor he would fire her or shut
down the paper if she disobeyed. That suf-

ficed; no more ads. At Oshkosh, the editor
ran the ad anyway; the faculty adviser
pulled it off the page, leaving a gaping hole.
! At Southern Colorado State College, the
burning issue of the day is parking prob-
lems: the university wants to turn over
jurisdiction for parking tickets to the city
instead of campus police. When the editor
of the "Arrow" wrote an editorial question-
ing the ability of the local magistrate to
handle campus parking problems, she was
fired. The managing editor quit. The student
publications board said the editor should
exercise ultimate control over copy, but the
president disagreed: he shut the paper
down.
The Arrow has suffered before. When it
tried in October to print an editorial criti-
cizing the university president, J. Victor
Hopper, the faculty adviser ordered the
printers to strike the entire edit page from
the issue.
* At Norfolk State College in Virginia.
the college dumped the associate editor by
getting a court injunction banning her from
the campus for 30 days. Her paper had ac-
tively criticized dorm coed visitation rules.
* At Dillard, a black Methodist-supported
university in New Orleans, the board of
trustees withheld all operating funds when
the paper was scheduled to begin pubhca-
tion in September. Administrators say it
was a financial matter. The real reason:
this year's editor, the trustees discovered,
maintains ties with Muhammed Speaks, is
chairman of the Black Student Press, and
wants the school newspaper to relate to the
community and the black struggle.

"The articles don't relate to Dillard stu-
dents and their activities," complains the
dean of students-he means fraternity par-
ties and fund-raising drives. In December,
the administration finally relinquished the
paper's funds, with a proviso that a faculty
adviser read every inch of copy before it
goes to print.
THE SCENARIO repeats at campuses
across the country-most often at small col-
leges where the students accept as second
nature, that the administration will control
what they print and what they read.
No one's advocating revolution, or the
overthrow of the campus administration.
The students are simply challenging local
authority, and making independent judg-
ments which administrators have jealously
guarded as their own perogative. Fighting
the system is nothing new: what's signifi-
cant is the petty, parochial level of , the
struggle in most of the nation. That's not
a slur on the students: it just indicates we
have a long way to go.
YOU DON'T HAVE to look to the sticks
to find press censorship. In California last
month, the Regents passed mandatory
guidelines for the entire state college sys-
tem, including Berkeley and UCLA. Last
fall, the Regents ordered campus chancel-
lors to formulate acceptable guidelines on
what the papers could and couldn't print.
or face withdrawal of all funds for campus
publications.
The nine campuses dutifully filed vague
guidelines based on the Canons of Jour-

nalism of the American Society of News-
paper Editors, vague notions which declare
that "freedom of the press is to be guarded
as a vital right of mankind," but condemns
news bias or articles and photos which vio-
late common decency. The Regents ac-
cepted them and tacked on guidelines of
their own: From now on, every paper in
the California system must be reviewed by
the administration within 24 hours of pub-
lication. Every chancellor can exercise dic-
tatorial power to fire or discipline any staff
member, or shut down any newspaper, when
he decides the paper has violated the guide-
lines.
EXACTLY WHAT can't a paper print'?
"I couldn't speculate," says John Canaday,
the Regent who proposed the system. "In
each case, its a matter of interpretation"-
interpretation by individual chancellors.
One thing is out, Canaday declares: no edi-
torial slant. The Regents call it "socio-
political advocacy." For every editorial
viewpoint printed, a paper has got to print
an opposing viewpoint.
It will be interesting to watch how Berk-
eley's chancellor Roger Heyns-who will
move to Ann Arbor's campus this summer-
will handle his powers. He calls the guide-
lines "one more effort to get chancellors
to engage in editorial control. I'm not going
to get involved in censorship," he says.
SOME ARGUE that if freedom of ideas
should exist anywhere, the university is the
place. The Regents don't see it that way.
"If you don't have guidelines for the press,"
says Canaday, "all you have is anarchy."

Al

t'I

4-

Letters to The Daily: Good teaching requires time

To the Daily:
I ASSUME that Robert K'a~lo-
witz, author of The Budget Crisis
in Tuesday's Daily, is an under-
graduate and hasn't been exposed
to the time-consuming problems of
getting sound information from
original sources and organizing it
into a logical, comprehensible pre-
sentation. Good teaching is not a
matter of chatting informally about
whatever happens to be on the top
of your head at the moment. For
each hour a professor spends in
class, many more hours must be
spent in preparation; the total
weekly average is usually much
more than forty hours. If such long
outside-of-class hours were not
spent in preparation, I'm sure Ro-
bert Kraftowitz would be the first
to complain about the quality n"
his education. You can't have your
cake . .
-Prof. Dorothy S. Luciano
Department of
Physiology
Feb. 17
Right on
To the Daily:
THE EDITORIAL on "Garris
victory" by Alan Lenhoff in Thurs-
day's Daily was the biggest bit of
trash you've printed in a long time.
How any man in his right mind
can interpret the vote as a victory
for Harris is beyond me. How any-,
one in his right mind can also say
that good staunch Democrats
crossed over to vote for the oppo-
sition in order to defeat a more
potential threat to Harris's con-
tinued farce in office is also incon-

ceivable. It defies the imagination
to say the least. I wonder, could it
not be that the people in Ann Arbor
are just sick and tired of the trash
they've been getting from city hall
and are finally getting up on their
hind legs to fight back? From
where I sit and from what I hear
the silent majority is about to rise
up and strike a blow for decency.
for law and order, and for every-
thing RIGHT!!
-Homer F. Bruneau
Feb. 16
Currency change
To the Daily:
I THINK Jonathan Miller's ar-
ticle on the new British currency
is rather naive.
As a South African, I can well
remember the confusion in that
country when the decimalized cur-
rency was introduced in 1961 to
replace the British-inherited duo-
decimal system.
The method adopted was precise-
ly that suggested by Mr. Miller and
yet banks had to close in prepara-
tion, people were confused, goods
carried two prices for a while, pric-
es generally rose and often people
were cheated.
In fact, the great merit of the
British decision to retain the
Pound as the basic currency unit at
its present value is that, unlike in
the South African experience, the
public will have the same standard
of reference for the cost of goods:
a car will still cost £1179 and not
R2358 (rands) as in South Africa,
a shirt £3.50 and not R7, etc. This

alone eliminates much inconven-
ience.
Incidentally, South Africa is now
in the process of decimalizing its
weights and measures and all the
old problems have arisen again.
It is surely apparent (except to
so biased an observer as Mr. Mil-
ler clearly is that these diffic'il-
ties are inevitable in implementing
such a sweeping change.
No, people resist uncomfortable
change but after some exposure.
adjustment to it follows. And so
there is every chance that in i
few years the British currency
change will have been forgotten
and hopefully, too, Mr. Miller will
have come to realize the antipathy
for American rather than local
solutions to other countries' prob-
lems-at least the British had 01-
sensitivity to realize this and with-
draw when it applied to them.
-Merton Shill
Feb. 18
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Jonathan Mil-
ler is British.)
Budget
To the Daily:
CONCERNING Mark Dillen's
news analysis of Gov. Milliken's
announced cut-back in State ap-
propriations to the University of
Michigan: I agree categorically
with Mr. Dillen's assertions that
the proposed cut-backs, in all their
ramifications, will curtail t h i s
University's present expansionary
growth. Indeed, the cut back may
even result in a deflationary pro-
cess of institutional shrinkage.
There may well be fewer students

0w,

The New Nixon

Keep military research:
A letter from Willow)Run

r r .w . i i + i Y

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1971, The Rees~tor
r } and Trbune Syndicats.
I ___ __
*1 *'
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To the Daily:
THE TOPICS of sponsored, De-
partment of Defense, and/or
classified research were thoroughly
analyzed over a two-year period a
few years ago. As one who is close
to the scene, perhaps it would be
useful if I provided a summary of
the news since that time. None of
the philosophical considerations
have changed. The overall level of
sponsored research in engineering
and closely related fields at Michi-
gan has dropped off significantly,
causing serious problems for some
of our staff. The level of research
directed at using advanced tech-
nology for nonmilitary applications
has greatly increased. For exam-
ple, since 1968. environmental re-
search (e.g., earth resources sur-
vey) at the Willow Run Laborator-
ies has grown from a few percent
to forty percent of the total activity.
The most newsworthy event at the
Laboratories has been the trans-
fer of state-of-the-art technology
developed under Department of
Defense sponsorship) to environ-
mental problems such as the detec-
tion of water pollution, the survey
of agricultural crops, and the an-
alysis of earthquake effects.

people in numerous agencies, es-
pecially NASA. This ealtivation re-
quired about five years, and in
1965 a contract to research the
concept was establioned between
NASA and The University of Mich-
igan. Currently, N kSA activities
involve three satellite systems and
many aircraft, a research effort
funded at a two millio* dollar level
with the Willow Run Laboratories,
and an overall research effort of
hundreds of millions of dollars con-
ducted on a worldwide scale.
OTHER AREAS have developed
in a similar manner; coherent ra-
dar, infrared technology, and co-
herent optics and holography have
been pioneered by the Willow Run
Laboratories. The moral of such
stories is the following: serious,
competent, dedicated, hard work-
ing, talented people stimulate great
progress.
The question remains as to the
possible value of the wholesale
condemnation of such research pro-
grams that are in part classified.
There are many who feel a grave
concern for the suffering inflicted
by the protracted Vietnam war.
They may identify research done
irnrer +heaegais of the militaiv with

nated. This is the position, of
course, arrived at by some sincere
people. But the logic is specious.
The fact is that we, in any role
we find ourselves, are a part of
society and must move it in the
direction we believe to be correct.
This is, of course, an extremely
subtle and difficult problem. But it
is the problem. The solution will
evolve through positive effort, rath-
er than from negative recommen-
dations of surgery for varicus :seg-
ments of that society deemed to be
undesirable by some people.
A few additional notions should
be mentioned. Professional staff
must do some proprietary work for
clients and sponsors, or else the
staff becomes separated from the
profession and loses its potency.
The word "classified" is attached
to information that our govern-
ment judges to be proprietary. The
government performs this function
in the public interest. Since the
function of this university is to
create value for the public, it is
incongruous that this particular
case of proprietary service is sing-
led out for debate.
MANY OF US were a'tracted to
this university heause it was a

here next year, as well as fewer
faculty and administration mem-
bers, there may be no city police
at all on campus and the Univer-
sity may be forced to refine every
use of resources to the point
where total efficiency is reached.
It baffles me, however, to find
Mr. Dillen, a student, emotionally
upset over the proposed cut backs.
I say this because I think m o s t
students would agree with the as-
sertion that the University Ad-
ministration is horribly failing in
many aspects of dealing with the
number of students presently en-
rolled here. Anyone who has found
it impossible to talk to an instruc-
tor because there are two hund-
red other students in class ahead
of him, anyone who has had to
cut through the red tape at Fin-
ancial Aids or Student Certifica-
tion or Veterans Affairs, anyone
who felt he had to add or drop a
class or change concentrations or
really talk to an informed coun-
selor about degree requirements or
fight off a 'Hold Credit' or find
married housing or reasonably
priced housing, anyone who has
had something go wrong - a card
missing - at registration, any-
one who has had to deal with the
Administration at almost any lev-
el knows that something is gross-
ly wrong. Either everybody in the
Administration is incompetent, or
the red tape is so thick that noth-
ing short of dynamite will blast
through it: Sometimes, one feels
the only alternative is to drop out
and go to a smaller school - at
least there you might be able to
talk to your history instructor..
One of the more radical hypo-
theses floating around today is
that there is a time when expan-
sion must stop and refinement
must begin. Whether it is a call
to stop polluting and clean up the
environment or stop pursuing an
imperialistic foreign policy and
destroy the ghettoes at home, the
call is essentially the same: Stop
expanding and improve the quality
of what you already have.
In effect, this is exactly what
Gov. Milliken seems to be saying
about higher education in Mich-

growth may result in complete col-
lapse.
Though it is only my opinion
that this University has reached
a point where further growth may
result in collapse, it seems a veri-
fied fact that this University has
reached a point where it alien-
ates a huge number of students
and where further growth will only
result 'in further alienation of
even more students.
THAT GOV. MILLIKEN was
once a member of the Board of
Trustees at Michigan's first Com-
munity College (Northwestern
Michigan College in T r a v e r s e
City) seems to justify the asser-
tion that Milliken's proposals sim-
ply reflect the philosophy of those
who support community and smal-
ler four year colleges. They are
not enemies of the large universi-
ties; they are friends who simply
believe that further expansion of
majoruniversities is expansion at
the expense of sound education.
They believe that community col-
leges, especially, should absorb
much of the impact of the ever
increasing demand for education.
And they believe that the smaller
educational institution has more
to offer many young people than
does a multi-versity like the Uni-
versity of Michigan. It is a subtle
but profound philosophy that
makes a distinction between ex-
pansion and refinement, a dis-
tinction Mr. Dillen did not make in
his news analysis.
-Robert B. McNabb, '72
Feb. 13
Research
To The Daily:
THE IDEA of ending war re-
search immediately is unrealistic.
It seems that people working to-
ward this goal have their logic re-
versed. The United States forces
are engaged in combat with an
enemy who is intent upon killing
them. The point here is that kill-
ing is going on, whether it is mor-
al or not is irrelevant. Now, the
only way an American soldier can
survive under these conditions is

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