Eighty years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan quixotic quest The dignity that is CaI/ey voick perloff 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 1971 NIGHT EDITOR: ROSE SUE BERSTEIN Threat to students' rights AS AMERICAN universities have grown into ' mammoth multiversities, there has often been a corresponding growth of bureaucratic insensitivity on the part of some administrators to t h e individual needs of students. Administrators have too often become remote figures who arbitrarily make de- cisions without realizing the full import of their rulings on the lives and futures of thousands of students. The eight-term rule recently put into effect by the liter- ary college is a good example of this in- sensitivity. Last November - quietly, and appar- ently without much thoughtful consider- ation - the LSA Administrative Board instituted a policy prohibiting under- graduate students from registering dur- ing, the regular fall or winter terms if they had not received their degree after eight terms. Almost capriciously adopted, the rule was passed by the Administrative Board without input from the LSA student gov- ernment or students, in general. The board did nothing to inform the over 12,- 000 students it handles about its heavy- handed action, AS A RESULT, about 100 fourth-year students have already been notified that they cannot register f o r the fall term, although they had not been pre- viously informed of the policy. The reasons given for the policy in a letter sent by Eugene Nissen, secretary of the Administrative Board, to the 100 stu- dents involved are "enrollment pressures" a n d "abstract -educational considera- tions. As for Mr. Nissen's "abstract educa- tional considerations," he and the other members of the board would do well to consider the effects of the eight-t e r m rule on many students. T h is policy endangers students, with low draft lottery numbers, heightens the problems of students who must w o r k their way through school, limits student involvement in extracurricular activities, creates difficulties for students who change their majors and generally les- sens. what little flexibility students have in planning their academic program. One of the most frightening effects of the rule is on students whose full-time enrollment at the University is the only thing between them and an unwanted trip to Indochina. While the 2-S deferment officially lasts four years, draft boards frequently allow students who have not graduated addi- tional time to finish their educations. With President Nixon's efforts at achiev- ing a zero-draft call, the added year or two could prove critical to students with a low draft lottery number. HE EIGHT-TERM rule also wo r k s hardships on students who are pay- ing their way through school with part- Business Staff JAMES M. STOREY, Business Manager' RICHARD RADCLIFFE SUZANNE BOSCHAN jAAdvertising Manager Sales Manager JANET ENGL ....................Personnel Director JOHN SOMMERS ..... Finance Manager ANDY GOLDING .. . Circulation Manager DEPARTMENT MANAGERS: Doug Buchanan, Beth Greelev, Fran Hymen,'Caryn Miller, Skip Woodward. Sports Staff MORT NOVECK, Sports Editor JIM KEVRA, Executive Sports Editor RICK CORNFELD .......... Associate Sports Editor 'ERRI FOUCHEY ... ..Contributing Sports Editor time jobs. In order to do well academical- ly and still make enough money to keep up with rising tuition rates, these stu- dents sometimes take a reduced course load. Although the Administrative Board has said it will take extenuating circumstanc- es into consideration in administering the rule, its policy will force students to either cut back the number of hours they work or to spend less time studying per course. While getting through school is no easy task for the poor student in the first place, the Administrative Board h a s heightened the uncertainty a n d pres- sures these students undergo. 0 A third effect of the enrollment limita- tion will be to discourage. extensive ex- tracurricular participation on the part of involved students. Often students heavily active in athletics, student government, drama, student publications, the Univer- sity Activities Center and various politi- cal organizations have taken less than a full program. THIS IS FULLY justifiable, because ed- ucation comes from many experienc- es besides traditional classes. To arbitrar- ily say that students cannot take a re- duced course 1 o a d is to limit students from engaging in these experiences and represents a restricted viewpoint as to the activities from which students learn. Another disadvantage of the r u 1 e is that students who change their majors might find themselves booted out of the college for the regular academic year be- fore they have completed t h e require- ments in their new field. Many students come to the University unsure of what area they wish to special- ize in. If students change their major early in their University career, few problems develop. If, however, students' interest change after their sophomore year, they might be forced to attend the University for an additional period to qualify for a degree in their new subject. This would generally not be allowed under the eight-term rule. THUS THE DECISION of the Adminis- trative Board to set a time limit on enrollment will have the effect of elim- inating leeway students have in planning their academic program. A student will have to fulfill degree requirements in an arbitrary period or forfeit the right to at- tend the University during the reglar academic year. As such this policy is ill-conceived, ed- ucationally harmful, and repugnant to those who believe t h a t an individual should have the greatest amount of free- dom in planning his education and his future. Acting Dean Alfred Sussman and the Administrative Board should reassess the situation and consider whether the eight- term rule is desirable. o HELP THEM along, Student Govern- ment Council, the LSA student gov- ernment and concerned literary college faculty members should take the lead in denouncing this inept policy and press- ing the Administrative Board to rescind its decision. For too long faceless bureaucrats have been tinkering with the education and lives of students behind their backs. -DAVE CHUDWIN Managing Editor IT'S NOT THE h o1 y crusade, rambling through jungles, but he values certain principles like duty and honor and service to country - no he don't cherish them but thinks a man should do the right thing, so he strolls away to war. He's been told about the na- tional security, how Communism is wrong, must be stopped, so he's needed, afterdthe massacre say- ing "They didn't give it a race. they didn't give it a sex, t h e y didn't give it an age. They never let me believe it was just a phil- osophy in a man't mind. That was just my enemy out there." He's been in battle one hell of a while, this lieutenant, storm- ing fields, stomping blood so who wouldn't in the scorching shatter- proof second pinched into action by a scream maybe or some in- ane smell, who wouldn't react with gunfire.. HOW MANY TIMES as some protest yawns through the streets, not one brick blinks, not one pol- icy changed after five years, and the police . . a cop jabs a friend, and someone you perhaps crash into t h a t pig without rational aforethought, just a c t somehow and you maybe kill him. How many times someone near- ly slugs that cop but catches him- self only sometimes y o u, don't. How many times like in Pitts- burgh last month a man kills a cop he had called to his house to stop a burglar he thought he heard, thinking the cop was the burglar but not thinking just shooting. So Calley ain't no beast, his in- stincts, sometimes they're our language - especially those who slammed bricks into North Hall, the Ann Arbor Bank, even a silly stamp store on South U. to shat- ter the System last spring, not thinking only knowing that Cap- italism is the enemy except "they didn't give it a race, they didn't give it an age." No, if you are Calley knowing Communism Is Buzzards (or a student thinking Capitalism Glit- ters Oppression) then you fear the Enemy and you will not think, you will stab it anyway you can any- where you can, quite easy because the who does not exist. ALL THAT LIVES if you're like so no matter how you turned poor man tradition got spanked. No wonder a nation sympathizes with its lieutenant. That defiant martyr breathes every slap h i s countrymen bore ten years. And, ain't it a sight but the lieutenant isn't budging. He keeps that pride like a stubborn mad dog 'cept the lieutenant they don't call *nad. Oh, the lieutenant is dogged all right. He's themost american American this country has seen in some time and make no mistake, people know it. Because after ten years of is h a mn e and confusion folks can pull up their suspenders and strut down the street. ... ALL RIGHT, we couldn't beat them in Vietnam and maybe no one could melt that goddamn ghost, but y o u ain't seeing no American humbled. Why, you look at the lieutenant anddhe's stand- ing as tall and proud as river a man could. He's sticking to his decision to massacre; ain't yield- ing to no one. That never-say-die he's-his-own man rugged frontier soldier who- wouldn't give in to any chicken- bellied, lilly-livered, gum-chewing pack of commie-smelling, name- chanting, aromatic college stu- dents nor to a barrel of oriental fiends. Now, damn it all, the lieu- tenant did the best he could, didn't ask the help of any man, woman or child when he come back, only finds he's been branded for doing what's required in the course of war-time duty only he, came back a soldier, and alive, but didn't get any medal for t h a t. singing: "When the wars are over And the battles finally won Count me as a soldier Who never left his gun With the only right to serve my country As the only prize I've won As we go marching on." TheMyLDitchCisAnothe Victim The My Lai Ditch Caims Another Victim Calley is some effluvium, Com- munism; the indoctrinaires said it swarms above the sky and hov- ers a threat over mankind but in the fields when you try to hunt it, its emissaries creep away; when you capture some scraggly dwarf who admits he's of the enemy, you know that just can't be the flesh of Communism. Hell, they sent you here to wipe out Communists and not o n 1 y can't you kill them you can't even find them. So you scrounge every village, sniff through every ham- let, clawing in m a d hunger to catch a shimmer of the Enemy they told you to fight and you'll go to most any length - ravage a town, obliterate people - if that'll mean you'll confront this ghost they said was Communism. Except they never told you that ghost was some fantasy a tired general snorted up one afternoon long ago, and since then has be- come a fantasy with hades-like proportions - bubbling with such enormity of fear t h a t nothing. real could possibly approach it. . . . "When my troops were get- ting massacred and mauled by an enemy I couldn't see and I couldn't touch - that nobody in the mili- tary system ever described as any- thing other than Communism . .." WELL LIEUTENANT, a nation sympathizes; a nation accustomed to shining victory across its door- way has staggered through a de- cade when its honorable, hard- working boys have been f 1 n g snickers by an enemy at home and booted and baited and shamed by an enemy abroad which the boys couldn't see to begin with, which seemed to expand at every turn , . posing a threat to the Cali- fornia beaches, said Mr. Rusk ..) YES, INIEED, the only prize the lieutenant did win was the duty to his country but, says many Americans, after ten years of booby traps and sinking confus- ion, that's glory quite enough so wouldn't you know it but there is some dignity around; 'cept to oth- ers it's such a crazy sort of dig- nity and wretched type of defi- ance it don't deserve the label; only it don't merit spite either, just some lonely crumbs of pity. V -i Letters to The Daily Confronting sexism: IBerstein vs. Canham 'Eight-term' rule To The Daily: I URGE the LSA Administra ive Board to reconsider its "eight- term" decision, which forces stu- dents, regardless of their desires, to take at least 15 hours each term. I appreciate the problem faced by universities these days, squeezed between growing commitments and declining funds. But I feel strong- ly that this is not the way to solve the problem. University education, education, that is, for young adults, has al- ways involved vastly more than class room lectures and assign- ments. The so-called extra-currie- ular activities (whether campus politics or poetry readings, ath- letics or just desultory conversa- tion and general reading) are es- sential, not peripheral to it. Moreover, is there not by now enough evidence that our society is undergoing a fundam.ntal trans- formation towards more diversi- fied, freely chosen, and more per- sonally meaningful rife patterns as well as towards greater ease, a less compulsive, more relaxed at- titude toward life and work. And what about the really good stu- dents, those who want to probe deeply and imaginatively in and about their studies and who, therefore, prefer to take fewer courses? Surely, some of you at least must share my dismay at watching students rush through, skim and cram great works of thought and literature because of the pressure of too many courses, excessive assignments, and rigid deadlines. I find it particularly de- pressing to think that teachers (in contrast to administrators) should now be taking a further step to- ward encouraging this mockery and corruption of authentic educa- tion. I FEEL AS keenly as I do about this now, I think, because I have just been involved in similar ques- tions at the next, graduate, phase of the grind. For, having been rushed headlong through the first four years, the students will find in graduate school exactly the same oppressive pressure-or even explicit requirement - to speed along to completion. There is another way. The finan- cial impass can be turned into a splendid opportunity for quality (as against time-and-motion) edu- cation. If there are too few rooms and teachers, then encourage stu- dents to take lighter loads (what they do not take, others can), and, most important, reduce class "con- tact" hours: let the students do much more on their own, outside of class, away from their teachers. In other words, trust them. They will flourish in this greater freedom. As for those, who would not, is it likely that they are getting more from the present skim-cram con- veyor-belt? -Arthur P. Mendel Professor of History April 12 Conservatives To The Daily: SATURDAY'S EXPOSE of '"U" conservatives" was exactly the kind of reporting which has won the Michigan Daily its wonderful reputation both within and without the University community. Besides the usual Daily carelessness with easily researched facts (e.g. Wil- lam Buckley is not publisher but, editor of National Review), your reporter seriously distorted the diverse (as distinct from divisive) nature of conservatism at U. of M. The conservative movement at U. of M. has, in fact, been a model of cooperation between individ- uals dedicated to the establishment of a more free and humane so- ciety This cooperative conservative movement should not be simple- mindedly equated with the U. of M. College Republican Club. With- in this latter organization there is a small but vocal contingnet of left-wing Ripon Society liberals (i.e. "Republicans for Respon- sible Government") FOR THE MOST part, in other words, differences with CR have been along classic liberal-conserva- tive lines and not within the con- servative movement. Therehare a handful of CR conservatives who have misinterpreted Kevin Phil-. lip's book, The Emerging Repub- lican Majority to mean that lead- ership of the Republican Party in Michigan must be conceded to the Ripon-type representatives of the "liberal establishment." I anticipate, however, that these individuals will rather quickly find their true philosophical nome as it becomes more and more clear that we cannot afford the luxury of poli- tics-as-usual while the Ripon-types are so intent on ruling and so cap- able of ruining both )arty and country. In short, I expect twe con- servative movement at U. of M. to continue its rapid gains in size, confidence and unity-regardless of the Michigan Daily. -Mark V. Ruessm inn Chairman, U. of M. YAF former Membership Chairman, CR U Towers To The Daily: IN REGARD to the Daily article about "U Towers", in which it was stated that there were cockroaches on the lower floors last Septem- 4, By JONATHAN MILLER ATHLETIC DIRECTOR Don Canham will shortly decide to bar Rose Sue Berstein from her seat on the Board in Control of Intercolleg- iate Athletics. He will cite, as justification for his action, a provision, in the Regents by-laws which provides that members of the board must be men. No matter to Canham that Berstein ran for her seat and won it in the all-campus elections held last month - the regulations speak for themselves and Berstein will be deprived of her right to a seat, as will those who voted for her be deprived of the representative of. their choice on this highly important board. The reason for the existence of a regental by-law which so clearly discriminates against women is obvious. There are no womens' sports at the intercollgiate level. Canham, prefering to concentrate on his football and basketball squads, with an eye for the future of hockey, has consistently iignored women's demands that they be permitted a piece of the multi-million " dollar Athletic Department action. CANHAM WILD not be able to claim that he is "only following orders" when barring Berstein from the board because Canham ttraditionally' follows orders from nobody. This can be seen in the case of his pre-football game press smokers, from which women are'* =