A t01 4 0 an D al
Eighty-four years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, November 13, 1974

News Phone: 764-0552

420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104

Jerry couldn't save GOP

CLOSE YOUR EYES, people, and be-
gan to pray. If the words of
soothsayer Jerry are true, then world
peace is in jeopardy. The Congress is
Democratic and "our delicately bal-
anced two-party system is in some
trouble."
The smashing victories in both
Houses of Congress by thesDemocrats
have now caused Ford to work for
cooperation with the Democrats when
only two weeks ago he was accusing
the Dens of "creating most of the
problems we are faced with today."
President Ford's deplorable attack on
the Democrats was not only a cheap
shot, but many of the aforementioned
criticisms by Ford could be deemed
by some as highly debatable. What is
depressing about the whole thing is
that while the Dems have gained a
supposedly 'veto-proof' Congress, they
still remain in the position of having
to contend with Gerald R. Ford for
the next two years as he struggles to
keep world peace.
BEFORE THE ELECTION, Ford's
campaign tour took him through
some twenty states covering approxi-
mately 16,000 miles. Really sad is the
fact that all this campaigning didn't
really help GOP candidates as the
Democrats won 48 seats in the House
while losing only five, and took 4
GOP Senate seats and lost only one.
President Ford has stated that he
does not consider the election results
a referendum on himself, but the va--
lidity of this claim must be .disputed
when one searches through the re-
sults of the election. The GOP leader-

ship may well be in question since a
nation still remembering Watergate
and President Ford's controversial
pardon of former President Nixon did
not deem credible the predictionsdof
prophet Jerry.
When Ford blamed the Democrats
for most of the country's problems,
he must have forgotten that two of
the country's major problems are in-
flation and unemployment. We must
close our eyes to the fact that it was
former President Nixon (a Republi-
can) who made up- and fought for
the budget that gives billions of dol-
lars in aid to a corrupt Thieu re-
gime in South Vietnam, and support-
ed a CIA covert operation in Chile
for the benefit of ITT and other
American capitalist enterprises, while
cutting programs like OEO (Office of
Economic Opportunity) and various
other youth programs. These actions
put people out of work as well as the
American oil companies' 'shortage'
to which no substantial Republican
challenge was made. No major moves
were made to keep in check the out-
rageous prices that American busi-
nesses are charging, driving everyone
to charge higher prices which is
known as inflation.
JN THIS, THE 11TH consecutive elec-
tion in which the Democrats have
controlled the Senate, with their big-
gest margin in a decade, Ford's as-
sertion that he does not consider the
election a referendum on himself is
questionable. Perhaps he believes it,
but it just may well be wishful think-
ing.
--CLIFFORD BROWN

System-blame
By BETH NISSEN
WE ARE TAUGHT as little
children that there are dis-
tinct rights and wrongs. While
the rights are sometimes re-
warded simply by the absence
of punishment, wrongs are us-
ually punished when they are
noticed. Once the wrong is com-
mitted, the culprit is identified
and a suitable discipline fol-
lows. While there are noted ex-
ceptions (devised mostly by
guilty adults) the culprit is us-
ually a single specific, identi-
fiable human individual cap-
able of being both blamed and
punished.
Wedging into our simplistic
and linear childlike conception
of black/white, right/wrong is
a large and foggy gray triangle,
in no aspect right, yet not black-
ly wrong. In this safe area rest
the wrongs for which no one
takes blame or responsibility.
The individuals involved in this
grayish moral ozone carry nei-
ther blame nor guilt for the
committed action; all blame
and all guilt are given to a
system. Instead of being the
perpetrator of the wrong, the
technically guilty individuals
themselves become victims of
the system. The guilty individ-
ual joins the slain as a blame- x
less innocent caught in the ma-
chinery of misfortune.

rees

individual

LAST FRIDAY, in the legal
judgment of two severe in-
stances of undeniable wrong, in-
dividual blame melted into be-
lated system blame.
The United States Army
granted parole to convicted
murderer Lt. William Calley.
Calley had been sentenced to
life imprisonment for the mur-
der of some twenty-two Vietna-
mese civilians in My Lai. Al-
though the legal process still
charges and sentences the spe-
cific individual, the deaths of
those Vietnamese villagers are
attributed to the massive, near-
ly uncontrollable and certainly
non-specific military system.
The hapless Calley is conven-
iently personally relieved of of-
ficial blame; that blame is ac-
cepted by the chain-of-com-
mand system of the Army. Iron-
ically, in Calley's case, the sys-
tem that lifted the blame from
the persecuted individual was
the same system that absorbed
the blame into its amorphous
self.
And in a District court in
Cleveland, a judge acquitted the
eight former members of the
Ohio National Guard unit accus-
ed of recklessly and fatally vio-
lating the civil rights of four
Kent State students.
WITH THE BLAME and ac-
cusations lifted from the eight
humans accused, the System
will absorb the crushing impact
of Kent State, regardless of

how precisely ballistics ex-
perts can trace specific deadly
bullets to the exact flexed Ohio
Guard finger. No number of
individuals will be held ac-
countable for the Kent State
deaths, yet four individuals
(lied ...
Perhaps a few human psyches
will be saved from terminal
guilt and suicidal teeterings on
insanity's edge by the paternal
forgiveness effect of system
blame. System - blame sponges
the lines of blameb Ninted at the
person into an indistinct and
directionless blur.
Yet system - blame does not
give satisfactory answers to our
instinctive questions of who is
to be responsible for senseless
and avoidable deaths.
An individual can be identi-
fied, tried, punished, and held
personally responsible for their
actions. A system cannot; it is
too large, too safe from public
outrage and justifiable anger.
Blame is necessarily directed by
humans toward specific some-
ones; when diverted toward an
intangible, blame cannot be as-
signed.
FAR ASIDE FROM a figure
toward which we can direct
blame, we perhaps suffer most
angry frustration and bitter
hopelessness when deprived of a
figure who will take responsi-
bility. System-blame holds no
one soul publicly accountable
for the abrupt and violent end

System fails Kent victims

WE WERE TOLD THAT justice was
finally being served, we were told
that the system was finally working.
All one can reply to this is that they
lied. By acquitting the Kent State
guardsmen Judge Battisti is allowing
them to get away with murder.
It is unfortunate that the only stu-
dents who have a vivid memory of the
massacre are now graduate students.
The nation's campuses were up .in
arms over the unconstitutional inva-
sion of Cambodia by American troops.
The first few days of May, 1970 were
filled with demonstrations and de-
nunciations of -the action Nixon had
taken. On May 4, four students were
gunned down in cold blood'.
America submitted to the rule of
the gun that day. Like so many times
in the past, the government found it
easier to stifle dissent with force than
TODAY'S STAFF:
News: Dan Biddle, Ken Fink, Tom
Preston, Judy Ruskin, Steve Selbst,
Tom Simonian, Becky Warner
Editorial Page: Marnie Heyn, Debra
Hurvitz, Steve Ross, Steve Stojic
Arts Page: Ken Fink
Photo Technician: Pauline Lubens
TUE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL
Pubishers-HalSyndicate, 1074

to turn a patient ear to those who
disagreed with national policy.
Many times we have been told that
the system takes care of its own.
Every time this is said, some innocent
soul replies that the law should not
work that way, that this is an unfair
system of justice. But it happens
nonetheless.
IT IS HARD to believe that killing
human beings is not depriving
them of constitutional rights. Judge
Battisti, however, believes that it is
not. Even so, there is a higher value
to be considered here. Those four
students were deprived of their right
to live, the most important of all hu-
man rights. They were cut down arbi-
trarily, their only fault being that
they were in the wrong place at the
right time.
The next time you walk across the
Diag, consider a line of soldiers on
the steps of the Grad Library firing
randomly into the crowd as classes
change. Then think of Kent State
and SCREAM BLOODY MURDER.
-TIM SCHICK

of the lives of a handful of Asian
villigers and four young stu-
dents.
Asked the father of a long-

buried Kent State student, "Who
is responsible for the death of
1y son?"
While a system may mask the

identity of the guilty man, that
responsibility is forever welded
to the soul of the one who end-
ed the life of the other.


rape
To The Daily,
FROM THE tone of Ms.
Heyn's editorial concerning the
judicial action taken against the
rape victim, Inez Garcia, it is
evident that Ms. Heyn is only
concerned with adding her one
cent to the already platitudinous
advertising concerning women's
rights. The article, The Vagaries
of Justice, was an attempt to
defend the use of force against
force but the petty emotional-
ism that was replete throughout
the editorial only added to its
shortcomings.
First Ms. Heyn admonishes
the vigilante attitude then she
contradicts herself (woman's
right) by concluding with the
unqualified statement that ladies
should "tote a rod and shoot
without hesitation." Does Ms.
Heyn stoy to consider that rape,
like other social ills, is the result
of complex behavioral, psychol-
ogical and societal problems that
will never be blasted out of
existence?
Arming the female populace
will do little to stem the grow-
ing tide of murders and criminal
assaults in this nation. One can
easily observe that even the
police departments are befud-
dled at their ineffectiveness in
combating crime despite their
annual increases in arms and
personnel.
GRANTED, RAPE victims re-
ceive unfair treatment at the
hands of local authorities and
women have a right to self de-
fense but to condemn rapers,
potential rapers and people who
look like rapers (which is ulti-
mately how such things are in-
terpreted) to death by tiring
squad "without hesitation" could
have grave repercussi ans. Per-
haps instead of writing this let-
ter I should have org anPied a
raiding party and seized r h e
offices of the Michigan Daily
until, in turn, someone toting an

Letters
hunting
To The Daily:
I AM SUBMITTING this letter
in response to the deplorable
article written by Dave War-
ren that appeared in your paper
on November 9. Mr. Warren's
opposition to hunting was an
emotional appeal without a fac-
tual basis or a knowledgeable
perspective.
The woods and fields are not
for the use of hunters alone nor
are they for the sole fascination
of nature enthusiasts. All state
residents have rights to state
lands, and with luck will con-
tinue to do so despite the ac-
quisitive desires of minority in-
terest groups.
The facts are, that a majority
of people do not have strong
opinions for or against hunzing
according to the latest issue of
National Wildlife magazine. Un-
fortunately, a "very small ni-
nority" to quote Warren, are ey-
ing for the majorities onimon,
as he did when he rebuked hunt-
ing on the grounds of human and
animal deaths. Regrettably,
hunters have shot e a c h
other. But, it is a minority of
gunners at fault, known as the
"slob" hunters. We have no
more right to forbid hunting on
this premise that we do to forbid
driving to prevent deaths caus-
ed by reckless and careless dri-
vers. Indeed, as with driving,
we need more regulations of
hunting to prevent accidents.
TO FORBID shooting game is
unwarranted because killing ani-
mals is a fact. The meats we
eat aren't produced at the groc-
er's, but come from ranches and
are prepared at slaughterhous-
es. Unfortunately, progress has
played the trick of canning us
into cities. It has replaced our
traditional rural know-how of
food getting with a distaste for
the necessity of killing an ani-
nal to eat it.
Hunting is not the seven month
1,ina hnttle Warren cnnstrn~e

to

dough, and the lands their funds
buy nurture a wide diversity of
wildlife and plant forms. Much
of this land would be unavail-
able to us were it not for the
interests of hunters. They have
saved many acres of marshland
from being filled and develop-
ed.
MY ARGUMENT is not to
promote hunting, but to accept
it. As Tom Kimball, the Execu-
tive Vice President of National
Wildlife Federation believes,
"The hunting question is a per-
sonal matter," and each person
must decide for himself. Be-
sides, hunters and nature en-
thusiasts have similar goals,
i.e., saving our wildlife for the
future. There are too m a n y
environmental enemies to squab-
ble among ourselves. If you
must write your representa-
tives, as Warren suggests, don't
waste his time and ours with
counterproductive grievances,
especially without investigating
the issue beyond emotions.
-Doug Woodby
A Nature Lover
November 9
bias
To The Daily:
AS A STUDENT at this uni-
versity I am embarrassed by
the fact that the Daily is cur
supposed student newspaper. I
have never cared for this paper
but like so many other students
on campus I am exposed to it
nearly every day. However, in
the past months I have been
astonished by the level of trashy
journalism that even the Daily
is capable of.
Your coverage of this mud-
slinging, back-stabbing election
has been a series of never end-
ing surprises. Not only do you
enforce your own political choic-
es through selective coverage
but I have been amazed by the
fact that you have even stoop-
ed so low as to use your paper
to print cheapnshots at the noli-

F

Daily*
Let's keep the ads off the
front and the editorializing to
the editorial page and give the
students news. When we want to
read trash and hear-say stories
we'll read movie magazines and
detective newspapers. Wat we
need are the facts. Let us do
the deciding for once.
-Gary Ravit
November 2
electioni

I HAVE in front of me the
editorial page of the November
7, 1974 Michigan Daily. Never
before have I ever read a. more
laughable attempt at editorial
writing as the piece titled "State
Dems field turkeys". Tim
Schick displays an ignorance of
why Sander Levin and John
Reuther lost that makes me
wonderwhere he lives or if he
can read,
To compare the "Damman
scandal" with the Eaglet,)n af-
fair shows a lackof understand-
ing of one or both of those
events. Eagleton hurt George
McGovern because McGovern
fumbled around and appeared to
stab Eagleton in the back. Mil-
liken found out what the ' facts
were in the Damman case, made
a decision and stood by it. He
did not back Damman 1000 per
cent and try to ease out by
dropping hints to the press.
SCHICK'S statement t h a t
"Esch could hardly have won
had Reuther not been a grade
A gobbler" is unbelievable. The
Second Congressional district
is very diverse. It is almost
split in half in terms of party
support. It contains the Detroit
white collar Republican suburbs
such as Livonia and Plymouth,
the liberal Ann Arbor-Washte-
naw County area and the Toledo
blue collar suburbs of Monroe
County. The Detroit suburbs are
Republican as the vote totals
showed by giving Esch a 10,000
vote margin. Ann Arbor - Wash-
tenaw County went for Reuther

Reuther name is a great ad-
vantage is also false. There are
many people in this state who
have an intense dislike for the
U.A.W. and the Reuther family.
If one is looking for reasons
why Reuther lost (and he has
come closer than anyone before,
running against Marvin Esch)
try things like a close primary
victory calling for a recount
that took an abnormally 1 o n g
time to complete, a lack of
money and lack of exposure.
Finally it is very obvious that
Mr. Schick has never met Jon
Reuther personally.
To say that the Democrats
lost these two contests by run-
ning tirkeys is an interesting
idea. However, it doesn't sound
like a hypothesis that was a pro-
duct of much thought or re-
search. Levin and Reuther did
not lose their respective races
because of any resemblance on
their part to Ben Franklin's fav-
orite bird. The reasoning behind
the editorial in question is a
joke. One can only hope that
Tim Schick himself will make it
through the Thanksgiving Holi-
day.
-Scott D. Harmsen
November 7
GEO
To The Daily:
AS A SENIOR who will be a
graduate student next year I
supoort GEO's salary demands.
I think that teaching fellows at
this University deserve m o r e
than they are presently getting.
It is also time for the Univer-
sity to realize that if they want
to attract top notch graduate
students they are eoing to have
to increase the TF's stipends.
A TF in chemistry now earns
aonroximatelv $3400 per year,
and ot of this must come tui-
tion. At the University of Illi-
nois a TF in chemistry earns
$S0O'vear and all tuition and
fees are waived both for in-state

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