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Hitting the University
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By ROSE SUE BERSTEIN
I USED TO WORK in the South Quad kitchen, I really
hated it. Every Monday and Wednesday lunchtime,
I would dish out soup and on Friday I worked in the
dishroom. After three weeks I quit, but I had one more
paycheck to collect.
Last Friday was payday but I somehow forgot to pick
up my check. When I finally went Saturday to the desk,
the clerk was rather taken aback. How many people
leave money sitting around like that from day to day?
A bit hesitantly and giving me a strange glance, she
handed me my prized check.
Aha, I thought. Aha, now I'll just run down to Cam-
pus Corners and cash the check-it wasn't much but I
could really use the $14.57 I thought.
But my check wasn't for $14.57 or any such similar
amount. My that work was worthwhile, I mused. Boy,
they must have added severance pay and, vacation and
overtime. Wow, I must be in big trouble. I panicked, as
I looked at the University Payroll check made out, with
all the proper signatures, for $880.31.
GEE WHIZ, thought I. Some poor starving person
whom the University pays only $1.75 an hour to support
his family will suffer for this. But then I looked at the
stub, the tear-off portion which says keep for future
reference. And there I saw that my gross pay had been
$1225.70. That was for 700.4 hours. Now, on a bi-weekly
payroll system, how many persons could the University
find who would work 700.4 hours?
They even deducted the proper taxes. $314.72 for the
IRS and $30.67 for the state of Michigan.
That dishroom work was torture, I admit, but Satur-
day night it all seemed worthwhile. After all, the Uni-
versity hadn't accidentally given me someone else's
paycheck. It was a complete mistake. And, what was to
stop me from keeping the money? There it was, the
beautiful yellow check made out to me.
On utilitarian grounds, counselled one friend, I had
an obligation to keep the money since it certainly would
yield much more pleasure for me that it would for the
University. Sure, countered another friend, goading me
on. Think of the vacation in Europe you could have'.
Yeah, I thought, $880 is about equal to four years
of increases in tuition. Or, alternatively, couldn't the Ann
Arbor Women's Coalition really use that money? Or the
Martin Luther King fund? How about something within
the school? Like Solstis, or the Course Mart, or Outreach?
That way, the money would stay within the University
but I would have had the privilege of appropriating it.
CAN'T YOU understand, mom? I pleaded when I trie
to explain to her that the University is incompetent
to handle its own finances, that all they would spend
it for was war research and sexism and other similarly
ungroovy things whereas I could really enjoy it, but like
the law-abiding mother she }s, she told me that all
I could do is have it copied, write a story about it
and return it to "the authorities."
After a weekend of suspense I had made my decision.
Sunday night I had the check copied, for memory's sake,
and Monday morning, I resolved, I would return it, but
not to the South Quad desk. I wanted excitement. I
was going to take the check to Vice-President Pierpont.
My fantasies were shattered at breakfast Monday,
morning. As I sat down to luxuriate in the splendor of
cold South Quad scrambled eggs and the, University
Record, a strange bearded fellow approached. I at first
did not recognize him as my former boss, what is known
as a "student supervisor."
"Rose Berstein?"
"Er, yuh."
(rollackpot
He grabbed my meal ticket from my tray and told
me that I "could pick it up at the desk. They want to
talkto you about your paycheck."
Having pulled an all-nighter reading Kafka, I was
more than mildly astounded.
Shortly thereafter, my resident director came along
and told me that "everyone was very worried" that I
might try to cash the check. I gave her my word of
honor that I would not but that I just did not feel ready
to part with it yet.
APPARENTLY MY WORD of honor rates none too
highly among the South Quadrangle ruling class. No
sooner had I returned upstairs than did my R.A. come
running down the hall. "You woke me up," she charged.
"My apologies. I hadn't been aware that I was that
noisy. I wouldn't want you to have to awaken before
three P.M. ever ever." I tried to pardon my iniquity.
"No, no Rose, someone called about you. They'd like the
check back."
My goodness, this is getting to be quite a hassle, I
decided. Whose mistake was it anyhow? I mean, I mean,
did I make a mistake? Did I overpay anyone by more
than $800? Hell, no! What if they had underpaid me?
Then they wouldn't be in such a hurry.
The local authorities downstairs at the desk finally
decided how to handle this renegade child who insisted
on showing up the University's incompetence.
I WAS DELIVERED an ultimatum. Since there was a
hold placed on the check as of Monday morning, I could
not cash the check, but I was not to receive my real
check until I returned the mistaken one. That'll teach
her, they thought.
And it has. Money speaks, doesn't it?
Vo
Eighty years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
notes and comments
What are women trying to liberate?
ron Idsmnan
420 Maynoid 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.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1970I
NIGHT EDITOR: LYNN WEINER
SGC referendum
THE SGC REFERENDUM to give t w o
students and two faculty members
non-voting seats on the Board of Regents
merits a 'yes' vote despite its token na-
ture..
The referendum, approved unanimous-
ly by SGC, reads: Should two students
and two faculty be seated with the Board
of Regents, said students and faculty to
have all regental privileges except the
right to vote?"
The proposal clearly would not make a
significant difference in the governance
of the University. The opening of all Re-
gents meetings to the public would pro-
bably be more important in improving
Regent-student relations.
The proposal's sponsors believe its pas-
sage would be a first step in reforming
the decision making process at the Uni-
versity. Perhaps the Regents would be
more responsive to student and faculty
opinion if it is presented in a non-threat-
ening manner. What could the Regents
lost but their secrets? After all, the four
new members of the board Would be un-
able to vote.
But a strong student vote for the re-
ferendum need not indicate support for
the specific plan proposed. A 'yes' vote
should be interpreted as support for
whatever democratization of University
structure students can 'successfully im-
plement.
Past experience indicates the Regents
will not accept the results of s t u d e n t
referenda as binding. Thus, there is little
chance that the plan will go into effect
even if it is approved.
Working by such tactics as trying to
establish student representation on gov-
erning bodies appears to be like banging
one's head against a wall.
But the referendum does give students
another chance to indicate their dissatis-
faction with the University's present
hierarchical structure. On this basis, the
referendum should be approved.
-ROSE SUE BERSTEIN
Editorial Staff
MARTIN A. HIRSCHMAN, Editor
STUART GANNES JUDY SARASOHN
Editorial Director Managing Editor
NADINE COHODAS ......... Feature Editor
JIM NEUBACHERA ...Editorial Page Editor
ROB BIER............Associate Managing Editor
LAURIE HARRIS.. .. ........ Arts Editor
JUDY KAHN ......... Personnel Director
DANIEL ZWERDLING... ...PMagazine Editor
ROBERT CONROW............... .... Books Editor
JIM JUDKIS. ......... . .....Photography Editor
W OMEN HAVE IT tough.
Given as m u c h education as
men today, t h e y are inhibited
from using it. Taught that they
are sexually free, they still carry
the burden of error. Urged to be
more than bearers of children and
life-mates of men, they are pun-
ished for trying.
All of which is very unfortunate,
to say the least.
But from these first problems to
start prattling about male con-
spiracies and how cruel we all are
is like blaming poor white pre-
Civil War Alabama share-crop-
pers for slavery, or the sons of
the working class conscripted into
the Army for the Vietnam War.
Wrongs these all are, but who is
guilty, if anyone?
In a recent column (Daily, Nov.,
14), Managing Editor Judy Sara-
sohn trotted o u t the standard
lines for what was ostensibly a
classic Women's Lib attack on
male chauvinism. '
The column was basically a uto-
pian plea for men to be nice, a
complaint t h a t life is difficult
and a grasping out for what to do
about it all.
THE READER was first set up
with (or put off by) the usual
cliches - "support of sisters,"
"cleared my he a d," "my body,
womanhood, the beauty of true
love," "repressed a n d unnatural'
women who have died or who are
living in estranged bodies," and
so on.
Stock phrases. Rhetoric. Incom-
petent sophistry,
Daily editors seem to take
pleasure in writing for their fav-
orite cliques, using the standard
phrasesathat indicate membership
in, or at least sympathy for, the
group in question. They seem not
to care, or to be unaware, that
this isn't communication, that it
isn't persuasion and influence. It
is, as the current phrase goes, in-
tellectual masturbation.
THE NEXT STEP is introduc-
tion of the conspiracy, also very
standard.
"They, (women) face laws pass-
ed by men governing their bodies
and morals."
I don't have public opinion poils
to prove it, but it strikes me as
being a reasonable conjecture that
women support those laws-abor-
tion and the usual moral code -
as much as men do. And if wcmen
passed those laws, would they be
any better?
At least Sarasohn should find
the right fault - that the laws
in question are essentially wrong
no matter who passed them or
how, and the simple fact that men
were the agents doesn't mean men
conspired to oppress women.
Again: "A woman's own up-_
bringing does not provide the
strength to withstand the pi s-
sure to guide her family by the
corporation men who dictate what
kind of entertaining must be done
in the name of 'your husband's
career,' how she must dress and
behave, and how she must bring
Up their children (the right school
and the right ambitions.'
I suppose corporation men have
done all that. God knows they've
done damn near everything else.
But what of the Organization
Men? Aren't men at least as' pro-
grammed and controlled by out-
side social forces? Aren't the sons
of factory workers andclerks pro-
grammed to be factory workers
and clerks? The catalogue of who
gets repressed and socialized by
whom is longer than Sarasohn or
I would want to recount.
Agreed, women are socialized to
play inferior roles. But it is a bit
more complex than a cabal of cor-
poration men plotting furiously
away up in their plush conference
rooms in the offices of GM, Uni-
lever and Royal Dutch Shell.
WE COME NOW to the big con-
tradiction.
For a woman to make it in a
man's world, she can't be a wo-
man - neither a real woman, nor
the packaged, corporation man-
approved kind - for fear of be-
ing dismissed as a "hard bitch."
And then :
"I feel this terrible conflict in-
side. I want to be feminine and I
want to be loved, but I also want
to be able to think," Sarasohn
t e l1s us an incipient Worman's
Libber said.
We have two choices. Either the
speaker isn't liberated enough yet
and it is simply a matter of time
before she casts off the repres-
sions that taught her to want to
be feminine and loved, or there is
in fact such a thing as femininity
and a distinctly feminine set of
emotions.
. Sarasohn is kind to tell us it is
the latter. She wants women to be
at once both feminine, in women's
Women are different, physically,
emotionally, caught in a c r u e 1
b i n d between a genetic history
that made them different from
men and spawned a social system
that encouraged those differences,
and a contemporary technology
that shows t h e m they can be
man's equal.
It is not the only paradox of
genetics and technology. The nak-
ed carnivorous hunting ape was
not raised to fight with guns and
bombs. The genetically program-
med inhibitors of intra-species ag-
gression don't work when you can
kill from 200 yards or 2000 miles
away. Civilized man becomes the
warring animal.
Nor was man intended to work
under strain. The simplicity of
choices for prehistoric man -- a
short 1000 generations ago, hard-
ly long enough to remake a spec-
ies without planning - did not
prepare him to live in today's so-
cial environment of offices and
huge business organizations and
metropolises of millions of inhab-
itants.
MAN HAS outsmarted himself.
And among the changes be must
cope ' with are the new relations
between men and women. Th e
idea of putting women in the roles
they currently occupy did not
burst full-grown from ; the minds
of Sarasohn's corporation men. It
is a problem 6f long gestation and
rich growth that will not be solved
by casting blame, especially inac-
curate blame.
Sarasohn ignored that partic-
ular view of 'the problem, prefer-
ring the easier rhetoric of one
segment of Woman's Lib. But that
rhetoric was still just a cover for
her real message, taken f r o m
Matthew 5:3:
Men, Sarasohn says once or
twice, are men. They suffer from
a stereotype that won't let them
be "people" or "persons."
"We must learn new definitions
so, that women can be truly wo-
men and then maybe men can be
truly people," she Foncluded her
opus.
Men are not people, she im-
plies, because they are taught to
hide their emotions and be tough.
While women today have the op-
tions of being weepy females or
hard bitches, men have no choice
but to be cruel, tough, unfeeling
nonpersons - men.
Her column, thus, was not an
argument for t h e liberation of
women, but for the liberation of
the meek, a plea for the timid
against the strong and the fearful
against the brave.
If Sarasohn thus envisions her
future ideal society, that'is her
prerogative. She ought at least to
come out and say so. I, for one,
see a virtue in man contending
against the fates, in sharpening
his skills and wit in combat -
civilized combat - w i th other
men, against the real world. If
Sarasohn feels otherwise, I have
a sneaking suspicion t h a t Wo-
men's Lib is not for her.
terms, and capable, in men's
terms.
But if women do h a v e these
special features, a special emo-
tionality, special feelings, what of
all the conspiring that men were
doing a few paragraphs earlier to
make women good mates, mind-
less, obedient, etc.? Isn't ,here at
least a grain of reason in the sit-
uation Sarasohn describes -- Con't
the corporation men then call up-
on some instinct or desire in wo-
men that is innate?
Implicitly, Sarasohn's answer is
yes.
THEREIN LIES the problem.
Endorse ments
THE FOLLOWING endorsements
for Student Government Coun-;
cil candidates were made in Tues-
day's Daily:,
EXCELLENT: Paul Teich, Jeanne
Lenzer;
GOOD: Marnie Heyn, Andre H u n t,
Brian Spears;
ACCEPTABLE: Jeff Lewin, Jay Hack,
Al Ackerman;j
NOT ENDORSED: Paul Travis, Hen-
ry Clay, Russ Garland, Jim Kent,
Mark Ruessman, Edward Steig,
Bahr Weiss.
-THE SENIOR EDITORS
Letters to The Daily
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To the Daily:
FOR SOME TIME the influence
of The Daily has concerned me.
The paper's gentle bias pervades
everything from sports to music
and such bias has been noticed by
many members of the University
Community. The paper's manifest
political prepossessions are n o t
uninteresting as a phenomenon,
but they are dangerous to the
honest communication and in-
formational service which I feel
a newspaper should provide.
A problem which all literate peo-
ple face is that readers often do
not discriminate the source from
which their information is taken.
Also, readers all too often believe
that which is printed most certain-
ly must be the Truth. Combining
this belief in the printed word with
nondiscrimination of; source, a
great amount of influence is pos-
sible via the printed word. It dis-
turbs me greatly to see the large
influence of The Daily realizing
that it is based on political theor-
ies which are again and again in
every quarter presented as, simply,
Truth.
More specifically, a Daily read-
er will soon find the quintessence
of personal presentation of opin-
ion by the editors of dte paper:
SGC and LS&A Council endorse-
ments. The editors of course never
specify on what these grades are
based; they are just "the w a y,
things are." Because I believe that
in campaign issues especially the
Daily's extraordinary prejudiced
nrinnin eshiould note h alone n
will begin discriminating, observ-
ing the relationship of source and
content. Until such time as s o m e
semblance of objectivity is restor-
ed to the University newspaper I
continue to enjoy the Daily as a
phenomenon.
-Bob Schwartz
Nov. 14
(The writer is a candidate for the
LSA Student Assembly)'
Mayor
To the Daily:
AFTER READING about the
BAM incident of March 19, 1970
in your paper, I wrote to M a y o r
Harris and ,asked for his opin-
ions. He responded by sending me
a copy of all the reports that have
been related to the above men-
tioned incident.
In reading over the reports, I
find myself asking why you chose
to focus on the Mayor's responses,:
as opposed to that of the C it y
Administrator who was the person
who supplied the apparent facts
which could only lead to one con-
clusion - that the City should
not seek to prosecute the officer
involved. I really don't see how you
could expect the Mayor to press
charges after being presented with
the "tight" report that Mr. Larcom
so very carefully prepared. As to
the validity of the report - this
is a whole different story, but I
still don't understand ' how you
could expect the Mayor to do any-
thing other than what he did.
In that I have only these re-
ports that were sent by the Mayor,
I would appreciate any other in-
for the spiritual and physical well-
being of the Jews of the Soviet
Union and of the State of Israel.
The unusual vehemence of his re-
marks (Letters, Nov. 13) brings me
to reply.
His quotation of the Biblical
verse "an eye for an eye .. ." was
used in implied justification of a
Middle-East blood feud, and clear-
ly reflects his misunderstanding.of
the intent of the statement. At no
time since its writing was this in-
junction intended to be taken
literally.
In fact, it was Biblical law? that
first instituted, improving on
Hamburabi, full remunerative pay-
ment for injury done (the actual
intent of the verse), rather than
exacting literal payment of in-
jury for injury. Even in the in-
stance of murder, Biblical law is
well-known or should be for its
abhorrence of capital punishment.
Such a penalty does not exist in
the State of Israel, only being in-
stituted in the extra-ordinary case
of Adolph Eichmann. Mr. Fau-
man's interpretation of Biblical
law has not been shared by Jewish
courts, either ancient or modern.
As for his indictment of "goyim"
for their seeming unconcern for
Jewish suffering, he is factually
correct, but I am afraid we all be
"god-damned" unless we turn to
each other with humanity rather
than vituperation.
-David Krohn
Nov. 13
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